There are many people, both on the right and on the left, who claim that Christianity is incompatible with queerness. I strongly disagree. In fact, I am convinced that Christianity, at its very core, is a queer religion.
Why? I believe Christianity is queer because radical love lies at the heart of both Christianity and the queer experience.
Radical love, I contend, is a love so extreme that it dissolves our existing boundaries, whether they are boundaries that separate us from other people, that separate us from preconceived notions of sexuality and gender identity, or that separate us from God.
Radical love is at the heart of Christianity because we Christians believe in a God who, through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, has dissolved the boundaries between death and life, time and eternity, and the human and the divine.
Similarly, radical love is at the heart of queer experience because lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people dissolve our society's traditional boundaries with respect to sexuality and gender identity (for example, "gay" vs. "straight," or "male" vs. "female"), and show that such boundaries are social constructions and not essentialist, or fixed, concepts.
It should be noted that radical love is not about abolishing all rules or justifying an antinomian existence, sexual or otherwise. Radical love is ultimately about love, which, as St. Paul teaches us in his First Letter to the Corinthians, is patient and kind, and not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude. As such, radical love is premised upon safe, sane, and consensual behavior. Thus, nonconsensual behavior -- such as rape or sexual exploitation -- is by definition excluded from radical love.
In fact, Jesus Christ can be understood by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as the embodiment of radical love. Jesus Christ's earthly ministry also reinforces the notion of Jesus as the embodiment of radical love and boundary-crossing.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus constantly dissolved the religious and social boundaries of his time. He ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners. He touched "unclean" people such as lepers and bleeding women. He spoke with special outcasts such as Samaritans. In other words, Jesus Christ dissolved the "holy" boundaries of clean and unclean, holy and profane, and saint and sinner.
Jesus Christ is the embodiment of radical love because -- in addition to crossing divine and social boundaries -- Jesus also crosses sexual boundaries. This is, Jesus' life and ministry can be viewed as dissolving the rigid line between "heterosexual" and "homosexual."
In terms of bisexuality, the Rev. Nancy Wilson, the current moderator of the Metropolitan Community Churches, raises the interesting possibility that Jesus Christ was sexually attracted to both women and men. She discusses Jesus' household in Bethany -- that is, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus -- and speculates that Jesus could have been attracted to both sexes. As Wilson writes in her book Our Tribe, "the most obvious way to see Jesus as a sexual being is to see him as bisexual in orientation, if not also in his actions."
Finally, Jesus Christ is the embodiment of radical love because Jesus crosses gender boundaries. As Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians, "there is no longer male and female" in Christ Jesus. To that end, a number of theologians have written about the transgender Christ, or Jesus Christ who dissolves the boundaries between "female" and "male." As in the case with bisexuality, transgender discourse challenges binary and hierarchical thinking about gender.
As an openly gay theologian, seminary professor, and ordained minister, I have been continuously amazed at the ways in which the radical love of the queer community has helped us to overcome the seemingly insurmountable religious, legal, political, societal, cultural, and other obstacles that present us from fully loving one another and being who God has created us to be. As Paul writes beautifully in the eighth chapter of his Letter to the Romans:
"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord."
What could be more boundary-transgressing and radical than the love that Paul describes here? This is why I am convinced that Christianity, at its very core, is a queer religion.
This essay was adapted from Patrick S. Cheng, Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology (New York: Seabury Books, 2011).
Follow Rev. Patrick S. Cheng, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/patrickscheng
Johann Hari: How Can Conservatives Object to Protecting Gay Kids?
- Liber Al vel Legis, The Book of the Law
Xtianity is an old aeon patriarchal religion with an unhealthy obsession with death. Women, gays, atheists, etc., ultimately have no place there other than as property or sinners.
93* 93/93
T.'.
So here is my question for those with the above argument: Why not just change the book? Take out the parts you don’t agree with. Leave the good stuff. Thomas Jefferson did it. The reply is always something like, well, the Bible is God’s word, we can’t change it. We just have to interpret it using the holy spirit. This begs the question of “Why if the Bible is supposedly written by an inerrant omniscient author, is there any room at all for interpretation?â€. If you’re not willing to change it, then you have to obey it as it is, right?
Look, my point here is that those who think Christianity is a gay-friendly religion simply haven’t a biblical leg to stand on. Fine. Believe what you want, you can’t at the same time tout the Bible as a perfectly consistent document written by an omniscient and perfect being while rejecting a large part of the moral system is creates.
Galatians 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
25 But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
Nope.
Not my book. Not my religion. Not even in the right century or continent.
Then throw out the book.
Problem solved.
Leviticus 18:22 tells us that homosexual acts are an abomination to God.
Leviticus 20:13 commands us to kill consenting homosexual partners.
Deuteronomy 22:5 tells us that crossdressing is an abomination to the lord.
1 Kings 14:24 paints a picture of a homophobic God who sees sodomy as an abomination.
1 Kings 22:43,46 tells the story of how Jehosophat removed all the gays from the land and had them killed and that this was right in the eyes of the lord.
But these are all in the OLD TESTAMENT! Wrong. The list goes on.
Romans 1:26-28 shows us that the New Testament writers despised homosexuals just as much, as “Paul†issues a strict condemnation.
Romans 1:31-32 tells us that gays and their supporters are worthy of death.
1 Corinthians 1:9-10 contains a list of things that will keep you out of heaven and homosexuality makes the cut, along with being “effiminateâ€.
1 Timothy 1:10 describes gays as lawless and profane.
Gays? Well, here is where things get tricky. Because while the Bible can be downright ambiguous on most issues, it’s actually pretty clear on the issue of homosexuality. That’s why I was surprised to read Reverend Patrick Cheng’s defense of Christianity as a gay-friendly religion in the Huffington Post.
The basis of Reverend Cheng’s opinion here is this idea of “radical loveâ€. To put it in a nutshell: Radical love lies at the heart of Christianity, and radical love dissolves all boundaries, even those that seperate us from God.
Reverend Cheng goes on to make appeals to the character of Jesus, painting a picture that Jesus’ love of all people is enough to basically override the Old Testament laws prohibiting homosexuality and open the door for gays to enter heaven. The sad fact of the matter is that this is about as unfounded bibically as an idea can possibly be.
After all, wasn't John the "Disciple that Jesus Loved"?
While I admire you for your support of gay people, I think you're completely twisting both Christianism and Queerness.
- Jesus didn't come to abolish the Law but came to make it respected AGAIN as the Jews had forgotten their Sacred Alliance with God. Hence Jesus obviously didn't want to abolish the societal rules of heterosexual marriage and family.
- In the Jewish society of the first century, to have homosexual encounters was regarded as a sin, period (contrary to the Roman culture that didn't "encourage" it at all but accepted it more or less graciously). The very concept of being bi or gay is ridiculous when applied to someone of this time and country. Those modern (or even Post-modern) identities DIDN'T EXIST! It is as ridiculous as saying that Mme de Maintenon (one of King of France LouisXIV's official mistresses) was a polyamorist because she had sex with both her husband an the King :people of this time simply didn't think/define themselves using those intellectual representations.
- "radical love is at the heart of queer experience because LGTB show that such boundaries are social constructions and not essential concepts." That is stretching at bit far the queer studies : heterosex is still the biological norm (humans are a specie of binary sex/gender). And queer experience is about be respected and included as a legitimate social norm equal in value to the hetero one, not about "radical Love" or destroying the social norms.
http://thinkunity.com
You're just eating your own tail on this issue - if all you can do to establish the relevance of biblical decrees (cherry picking as you go) is by referencing the bible, you've "still got your work ahead of you".