1. See the author’s note regarding pronoun usage in this book.
2. Queer theory is a field of critical theory that seeks to comprehend queer perspective and make public discourse about queer experience possible. Annamarie Jagose offers a useful primer on the topic in her book Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
3. The earliest followers of Jesus considered themselves to be part of Judaism. Within a few centuries the movement broke with Judaism, becoming its own discrete tradition; but the sacred texts of Judaism, in which the teachings of Jesus and Paul were rooted, remained foundational texts for Christianity. The Christian bible is thus composed of both Hebrew scripture, which the Christian tradition inherited from Judaism, and Greek scripture, which includes the Gospels, Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, and the book of Revelation.
4. Please see the author’s note regarding my careful use of this terminology. I deny the assumption that Christianity is inherently queerphobic and affirm the many progressive denominations that celebrate queer lives as part of their Christian call. I am gesturing here toward people who call themselves Christian and who proclaim what I would describe as a flawed iteration of Christianity.
5. Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), 142–56.
1. This point was established as a matter of orthodoxy at the Council of Chalcedon, 451 CE.
2. John 13:35.
3. 1 Cor. 13:7.
1. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Knopf, 1952). See especially the introduction.
2. Andrew Solomon describes this as “horizontal identity” in Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (New York: Scribner, 2012).
1. Judith Butler explores this idea and posits the concept of “performativity” in her groundbreaking book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
2. Hannah Phillips succinctly unpacks these clerics’ arguments, observing both the easy target that gender construction has been for conservative religious and political leaders and also the “deliberate intellectual laziness” that is involved in these attacks. “Democracy in a Clergyman’s Attire? Gender and Catholicism in Poland,” Crossing the Baltic (blog), September 9, 2014, http://crossingthebaltic.com/2014/09/09/democracy-in-a-clergymans-attire-gender-and-catholicism-in-poland/. Slawomir Sierakowski quotes a Polish bishop asserting that the “ideology of gender presents a threat worse than Nazism and Communism combined.” “The Polish Church’s Gender Problem,” New York Times, January 26, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/opinion/sierakowski-the-polish-churchs-gender-problem.html?_r=0.
3. Asked about environmental concerns, Pope Francis spoke of “Herods” “that destroy, that plot designs of death, that disfigure the face of man and woman, destroying creation.” “Let’s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings,” he continued. “Let’s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation.” Quoted in Joshua J. McElwee, “Francis Strongly Criticizes Gender Theory, Comparing It to Nuclear Arms,” National Catholic Reporter, February 13, 2015.
4. Luke 17:33; Mark 8:36.
5. On February 25, 2014, CBC News posted an interactive graphic documenting the status of these laws: http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/map-same-sex-criminalization/.
6. Associated Press, “Egypt’s Gays Go Deeper Underground, Fearing Crackdown,” December 19, 2014.
7. Andrew Buncombe, “India’s Gay Community Scrambling After Court Decision Recriminalises Homosexuality,” Independent, February 23, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/indias-gay-community-scrambling-after-court-decision-recriminalises-homosexuality-9146244.html.
8. Drazen Jorgic, “Museveni Says He Plans to Sign Anti-Gay Law After All,” Reuters, February 14, 2014. The article refers to the notorious Ugandan law, which, the article notes, “initially proposed a death sentence for homosexual acts, but was amended to prescribe jail terms . . . for what it called aggravated homosexuality.”
9. Adam Nossiter, “Wielding Whip and a Hard New Law, Nigeria Tries to ‘Sanitize’ Itself of Gays,” New York Times, February 8, 2014.
10. Adam Nossiter, “Mob Attacks More Than a Dozen Gay Men in Nigeria’s Capital,” New York Times, February 16, 2014.
11. Marc Lacey and Laurie Goodstein, “African Anglican Leaders Outraged Over Gay Bishop in U.S.,” New York Times, November 4, 2003.
12. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Hate Violence in 2012 (New York: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2013). NCAVP notes that because its findings are based on reports made by victims and survivors to the local organizations that are members of the coalition, it is unlikely that these numbers reflect all incidents of violence against LGBTQ and HIV-affected people in the United States.
13. Ibid.
14. Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (Montgomery, AL: Equal Justice Initiative, 2015). The report summary can be found at http://www.eji.org/files/EJI%20Lynching%20in%20America%20SUMMARY.pdf.
15. Ibid., 6.
16. Initial efforts to combat lynching were led by African Americans who stepped into places of enormous risk in order to call public attention to the epidemic of lynching, protect those who had been targeted, and demand that perpetrators be brought to justice.
17. Walter White of the NAACP accused Southern evangelical Protestantism of being complicit in lynching in his searingly titled study Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002). Jessie Daniel Ames, founder of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, shared his concern and launched an investigation into possible connections between church revivals and lynchings. Ames’s findings were never publicized, but Rachel McBride Lindsey notes that Ames saw the religious problem clearly: “On the one hand, religion was approached as the framework from which to condemn and eliminate lynching and, on the other, it was understood to generate and sustain the racialized animus that lynching manifested.” “This Barbarous Practice: Southern Churchwomen and Race in the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, 1930–1942,” Journal of Southern Religion 16 (2014).
18. Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America, 7. In “This Barbarous Practice,” Lindsey explores the complex interplay of race and gender and of politics and religion at work in the activism to end lynching. She notes that most of the white women involved in this campaign held fast to “conservative theological anthropologies”: “What is clear is that the Association, like other cultural arenas in the 1930s, was invested in the racialized designation of ‘white’ Americans as much as ‘the Negro.’” Reluctance to address deeper theological issues, or to appear political, had a significant impact on the movement: the association, fearing schism in its ranks, declined to support federal antilynching legislation.
19. Romans 5:5.
20. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney,” College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, June 26, 2015.
21. Lizette Alvarez, “Families Hope Words Endure Past Shooting,” New York Times, June 25, 2015.
22. I do not in any way mean to disregard the very real dangers that many people face in coming out. The challenge is especially acute for people who do not yet have a community of support, due to isolation of one kind or another. I will take this up—and discuss the imperative of safety planning—in chapter 8.
23. John 2:1–11.
24. I specify “gay friendly” here rather than “queer friendly” because while growing numbers of churches are developing comfort in recognizing gay and lesbian congregants and clergy, embracing others in the queer pantheon, including trans* individuals, lags behind, as does comfort with the word “queer” itself.
25. Romans 4:21–22.
26. Gen. 22:1–14.
27. Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982).
28. The original quote is attributed to Theodore Parker, a nineteenth-century Unitarian minister, but it was frequently paraphrased and thus popularized by Martin Luther King Jr., including in his essay “Out of the Long Night,” Gospel Messenger, a publication of the Church of the Brethren, February 8, 1958.
1. See Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (Tucson: Kore Press, 1981).
2. 2 Cor. 11:2.
3. Thanks to Michael Bacon for his gnostic and queer insight into the bridal chamber.
4. Biblical scholar and bishop N. T. Wright, for example, offers an artful deconstruction of dualism in his paper “Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All: Reflections on Paul’s Anthropology in His Complex Contexts,” presented at the Society of Christian Philosophers Regional Meeting, Fordham University, New York, NY, March 18, 2011.
5. See, for example, Mark 1:40–45, KJV.
6. Isa. 6:1–9.
7. 1 John 4:18–20.
1. In The Shawshank Redemption, Red says this exact same sentence in response to Andy’s proclamation about hope. It would appear that Miss Claudette is quoting him.
2. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “scandal,” http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/scandal.
3. Gerhard Friedrich, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1971), 7:339–58, s.v. “skandalon.”
4. Michael Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York: Free Press, 1999), 34.
5. Ibid., 35.
6. Ibid. Emphasis mine.
7. Matt. 16:21–23.
8. Matt. 16:18–19.
9. Matt. 26:31–35.
10. 1 Cor. 1:18, 22–24.
11. Patrick S. Cheng, From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ (New York: Seabury, 2012), 118.
1. L. E. Durso and G. J. Gates, Serving Our Youth: Findings from a National Survey of Service Providers Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth Who Are Homeless or at Risk of Becoming Homeless (Los Angeles: The Williams Institute and True Colors Fund and The Palette Fund, 2012).
2. Queer activists in the United States have been working for decades to pass a federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). As originally drafted, ENDA would have barred employers with more than fifteen employees from discriminating in hiring and employment based on sexual orientation. “Gender identity” was added to the bill as a protected status in 2007; however, because of fear that the bill would not pass as written, “gender identity” was removed. Many queer activists were outraged by what was seen as an abandonment of trans* members of the LGBTQ community. The stripped-down bill did pass in the House of Representatives but failed to pass in the Senate. A trans*-inclusive bill was reintroduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D–MA) and by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) in 2011. The bill passed in the Senate in 2013 with bipartisan support, but as of 2015 had not passed in the House of Representatives.
3. Acts 9:1–19.
4. Isa. 42:6.
5. Brigitte Kahl’s Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010) has profound implications for many of the vexing issues that hamper progressive Christian engagement with Paul. Her commentary on Galatians is essential reading for exegetes, pastors, and preachers seeking to understand how the impulse to rupture binaries is embedded in the Christian tradition, and how and why it was forgotten by the church.
6. Gal. 3:28–29, 4:4b–7.
7. Kahl, Galatians Re-Imagined, 10–11.
8. Kahl’s argument is informed by J. Louis Martyn’s deconstruction of antinomies in Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997). See Kahl’s discussion of Martyn’s work in Galatians Re-Imagined, 19–21.
9. Matt. 13:44.
1. Charles M. Blow, “Up from Pain,” New York Times, September 21, 2014. Adapted from Fire Shut Up in My Bones (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).
2. Cheng, From Sin to Amazing Grace, 118.
3. From here on out I’m going to use “Pride” with a capital “P” to signify queer Pride and, by extension, a kind of self-valuing that is healthy. I’m going to use “pride” with a lowercase “p” to signify conventional definitions of pride as spiritually problematic self-aggrandizement and hubris.
4. For a discussion of “religion as an optional extra,” see Alison Webster, Found Wanting: Women, Christianity and Sexuality (London: Casell, 1995), 164, and Elizabeth Stuart, Religion Is a Queer Thing: A Guide to the Christian Faith for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered People (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1998), 14–15.
5. Valerie Saiving, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” in Womanspirit Rising, ed. Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 25–42.
6. Judith Plaskow, Sex, Sin, and Grace: Women’s Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1980).
7. Gen. 22:1.
8. Exod. 3:4.
9. 1 Sam. 3:4.
10. Luke 1:38.
11. For example, the Episcopal Church (US) has commissioned the Task Force on the Study of Marriage, which is encouraging church-wide conversations. It has also issued a guide: Brian C. Taylor, ed., Dearly Beloved: A Tool-kit for the Study of Marriage (New York: Episcopal Church, June 20, 2014), which can be found at https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/download/10613.
12. Lisa Isherwood and Marcella Althaus-Reid, “Introduction: Queering Theology,” in The Sexual Theologian: Essays on Sex, God, and Politics, ed. Lisa Isherwood and Marcella Althaus-Reid (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 3.
13. Ibid.
1. I use the word “homosexuality” intentionally, referring to public discourse that treats LGBTQ justice as an issue about which one can freely opine, rather than as a matter that concerns, first and foremost, the lives of real human beings.
2. For contact info at AVP, including the hotline number and a list of other US and Canadian organizations that work to reduce violence against LGBTQ people, go to www.avp.org.
3. Luke 24:48.
4. Elizabeth Stuart, “Why Bother with Christianity Anyway?” in Religion Is a Queer Thing: A Guide to the Christian Faith for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered People (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997), 15.
5. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), xvi.
6. There is an interesting and robust conversation taking place among young evangelical Christians about what it means to be countercultural in today’s world. See, for example, Laura Turner, “The Trouble with Being Counter Cultural,” Entertaining Faith (blog), February 5, 2015, http://lauraturner.religionnews.com/2015/02/05/trouble-counter-cultural/#comments; and Matthew Lee Anderson, “Writing as Though History Happened: On Being Countercultural Christians,” Mere Orthodoxy (blog), February 10, 2015, http://mereorthodoxy.com/writing-though-history-happened-countercultural-christians/.
7. Michael Paulson, “Church Is Now More Informal, Study Finds,” New York Times, September 12, 2014.
8. Walter Brueggemann, The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 45.
9. Michael Eric Dyson, “Racial Terror, Fast and Slow,” New York Times, April 17, 2015.
1. Sean Yoong Putrajaya, “Malaysia Marks National Day,” China Post, September 1, 2003.
2. Patrick S. Cheng, Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology (Seabury Books, 2011), 74–75.
3. Nossiter, “Wielding Whip.”
4. Davis Mac-Iyalla, “Unite to Condemn Homophobic Laws: An Open Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primates of the Anglican Communion on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” Guardian (UK), November 10, 2009.
5. Jenn Cruickshank, “Out of the Ashes: Grief, Conflict, and Growing in Love in a Community of Faith” (working paper, New College University of Edinburgh, 2010). Per standard practice following a clergy departure, I had no contact with Jenn or the other students at Canterbury for several years. Four years after I left, Jenn reached out to me and sent this paper as a gesture of good faith, and good intention.
6. John 13:35.
7. Thanks to Caroline Perry for her insight into this dynamic.
8. To be clear, the Canterbury community includes its board of directors and exists within the larger community of a diocese. It would not have been appropriate for me to process this issue with the undergraduates in my ministry, but it would have been both appropriate and wise to bring it to my bishop and to my board of directors sooner than I eventually did.
9. 1 Cor. 12:14–15, 18–21.
10. For example, the African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded by Richard Allen and other African Americans in 1787 after white members of a Methodist church in Philadelphia forcibly segregated black worshippers. Allen’s friend and colleague Absalom Jones went on to become the first African American ordained in the Episcopal Church. Rather than building a new denomination, Jones wanted to establish a congregation that would be governed by its black members while remaining inside the Episcopal Church. The African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, founded by Jones in 1794, is still active in Philadelphia.
1. Elizabeth Stuart, “Sex in Heaven,” in Sex These Days: Essays on Theology, Sexuality and Society, ed. Jon Davies and Gerard Loughlin (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 195.
2. Rev. 1:4.
3. Jürgen Moltmann, “Theology as Eschatology,” in The Future of Hope: Theology as Eschatology, ed. Frederick Herzog (New York: Herder & Herder, 1970), 11.
4. Exod. 3:7.
5. “Dreamers” refers to young people who have advocated for both federal and state iterations of the Dream Act, legislation that would allow undocumented students to receive financial aid for higher education.
6. José Esteban Muñoz was a queer theorist who, like Moltmann, was influenced by Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of hope. Where Moltmann sees the future as a modality of God, Muñoz argues that “the future is queerness’s domain.” His book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity explores eschatological themes running through queer political movements and literature. Articulating his own eschatological vision, Muñoz posits a rupturing in which “we must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there.” Pursuing queerness, he writes, calls us to “dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.” Cruising Utopia (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 1.
1. Winnie Varghese, Palm Sunday sermon, St. Mark’s in the Bowery, New York, NY, April 13, 2014, http://stmarksbowery.org/welcome/sermons/palm-sunday/.