Review – Gay and Lesbian Theologies: Repetitions with Critical Difference

Review – Gay and Lesbian Theologies: Repetitions with Critical Difference

Elizabeth Stuart

Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2003

ISBN 0 7546 1658 4 (Hbk)

ISBN 0 7546 1661 4 (Pbk)

In the opening chapter Elizabeth Stuart contrasts the way Dante sees the love for others that eclipses the love for God yet which nevertheless finds its origin in God, with the modern Christian view that all love finds its origin in heterosexual marriage. She gives this as an example that those who claim to represent “traditional” Christianity actually have very little awareness of the variety and difference of human love within the Christian tradition.

Yet she also argues that much gay and lesbian theology also makes similar assumptions to the “traditionalists” about the lack of variety in the Christian tradition, resulting in both sides reaching a stalemate in the current debate. Stuart does however see hope in the newly emerging ‘queer theology’ which “is able to engage creatively with this tradition and bring gay and straight together in the quest to take part in the redemption of sexuality precisely because it questions the notion of stable sexual identity.” (p.4)

Stuart reviews the four types of modern theology:

liberal theology, as exemplified by Friedrich Schleiermacher, with its emphasis on the divine in human experience;
neoorthodoxy, as exemplified by Karl Barth, with its emphasis on God as wholly other;
theologies of liberation, as exemplified by Gustavo Gutiérrez, with their emphasis on justice and human rights;
postmodern theology, as exemplified by Mark C. Taylor, with its emphasis on the loss of Truth, Self and God.

Although these have chronologically succeeded each other, today all traditions still exist and lesbian and gay theology have worked in all traditions, with perhaps the exception of neoorthodoxy as Barth felt homosexuality was fundamentally a contravention of the divine command that male and female should exist in fellowship, and indeed he argued against any segregation of the sexes including in religious orders. Nevertheless within the other modern theological traditions there has been the assumption that the homosexual or lesbian identity was a given (JM note – although if you class Tillich as neoorthodox this is not the case, for example Bill Johnson begins his essay ‘The Good News of Gay Liberation’ by referring to Tillich’s ‘’courage to be’).

Beyond all these traditions, however, Stuart argues that Queer theory challenges exactly this identity. Utilising many of the insights from Michel Foucault, books such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwich’s Epistemology of the Closet and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble both argued that identities are social constructs and the identity of ‘woman’ is not bound to the female body but is a performance that follows the gender scripts of our culture. The essence of Queer Theory, then, is that there is no essential sexuality or gender.

In the chapter Gay is Good Stuart reviews the varieties of gay theology. For example Chris Glaser for example understands the process of coming out as a sacrament:

it is like baptism because it involves dying to an old life and rising to a new one;
it is like reconciliation because it repents of the closet;
it is like confirmation because it affirms the creation of gays and lesbians;
it is like anointing the sick because it involves healing;
it is a form of ministry because it is a witness to the truth;
it is like marriage because it makes authentic relationships possible
it is like communion it creates at-one-ment with God and others.

Nancy Wilson hopes we can embrace sexuality like Jesus wanted the Sabbath to be embraced, as a gift to be enjoyed, not an over-regulated burden.

Stuart however concludes that although there is much that is good and moral and wise in gay and lesbian theology, intellectually it has reached a dead-end and is unable to progress any further in the dialogue with the rest of the church.

In the chapter Exodus, Stuart reviews Gay liberation theologians who position gay Christians against the church and seek an exodus from the oppression of the church. The Church is seen as condemning same-sex relationships yet at the same time manufacturing same-sex desire through its liturgy and devotional system. Opposing this view Stuart argues that the church is itself the exile community, the exodus community and that gays and lesbians should not be too quick to leave the church.

In Erotic Theology, Stuart reviews the ideas of Carter Hayward, who is best know for identifying the divine with the erotic, for understanding the divine as an erotic power and which therefore requires a sex-affirming ethic in which non-abusive sexual pleasure is a moral good. Stuart is concerned that while such ideas can have a deconstructive influence on the dominant theology, they are ultimately based on experience and hence end up being more an ethical system than a theology.

The following chapter reviews the experience of AIDS and the influence it has had on gay spirituality. Clearly the experience of sitting with a loved one in hospital, attending their funeral and reflecting on death gave many gay men the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of life and death. It led many to ask whether there is life after death, is there a heaven, is there the hope of resurrection? Stuart concludes that while AIDS was killing huge numbers of gay men in the 1980s and 1990s, gay and lesbian theology had little to say about AIDS and it was in this climate it became replaced by queer theology.

Stuart sees Robert Goss’ 1993 book Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto as a bridge from gay and lesbian theology into queer theology:

he identifies how the gay/lesbian identity was created;
transgressive activism destabilises dominant discourses for example The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence ‘canonise’ gay activists and make them saints;
argues that the gay/lesbian identity can be consciously reconstructed by gay and lesbian people;
Jesus’ Kingdom of God is a one in which sexual, social, political and religious distinctions are irrelevant, Jesus sided with the outcasts which means Jesus is black, Jesus is female (Christa) and Jesus is queer;
Bible ‘texts of terror’ apparently condoning homophobic violence have alternative readings: Sodom and Gomorrah is about infringing ancient codes of hospitality; Levitical and Deuteronomic texts are aimed at male cultic prostitution; 1 Cor 6:9 is against male prostitutes; Jude 7 and 2 Peter 2:10 are about violating the natural order by lusting for angels, while Rom 1:26-27 is about deviating from nature due to idolatry;

Stuart still sees some of the old gay and lesbian theology in Goss’s work, but sees the work as a watershed in that this was real theology being done that could begin to engage with those outside of the gay and lesbian community.

The chapter Queer Theology discusses various works. Michael Vasey’s Strangers and Friends argues that the modern construction of male identity so embraced by evangelical Christians hides many important aspects of friendship and displays of public affection that are evident in the Bible. This “idolatry” of the modern is challenged by the practises of gay and lesbian people who promote many of the qualities praised by St Paul yet which are not part of modern heterosexual male behaviour. Vasey therefore argues that gay and lesbian Christians have much to teach the church if they could be received with fellowship and acceptance. To justify this response he identifies four strategies used by St Paul:

pragmatic acceptance: just as St Paul recognised the Roman Empire would not go away and worked to accommodate it, so the church should work with gay and lesbian Christians;
in Galatians Paul refuses to identify Christ with any ethnic or gender identity, so the church should see sexual identity as unimportant;
acceptance without agreement, the way St Paul treated the issue of eating food sacrificed to idols;
the example of 2 Corinthians shows we all need to admit our errors and vulnerabilities in order to achieve reconciliation.

Kathy Rudy argues that the cultural construction of same-sex desire and the concept of homosexual identity is little over one hundred years old. This same construction created separate spheres for men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals. The Christian refusal to only see people as divided and instead see everyone as people of God matches the queer desire to question the categories of sexual identity. She argues even male and female are not theological categories – Christians reproduce through conversion not biology, through acceptance of outsiders not bearing children.

Eugene F. Rogers finds within traditional Christian theology the tools for a radical critique of modern discourses on sexuality. Concepts of homosexuality and heterosexuality need to be replaced by baptism and marriage. In Romans 11:24 it is same-sex activity that characterises Gentiles from Jews and God acts ‘contrary to nature’ to graft them in, so ‘baptism’ is the pouring out of God’s spirit on gay and lesbian people. Marriage is fundamentally about hospitality – the parents take in the stranger in the form of their child, monasticism similarly is about hospitality to the stranger. To accept gay and lesbian marriage is about God’s hospitality and acceptance to welcome in the stranger. If the Trinity is the original image of the family it is not based on the procreation of the Spirit for there is no procreative principle enshrined in the Trinity.

The Radical Orthodox theologian Keith Ward sees the body of Jesus Christ as performing its gender within the social context of its time and space, yet also unstable and displaced:

the baby boy is born from purely female matter;
his body swells to contain the future Church;
the bridal chamber is the womb which the bridegroom will impregnate with his seed, while also being the womb from which he emerges;
in the Eucharist Jesus’ body is transposed into the gender neutral form of bread, so bodies are revealed as being transposable;
discipleship becomes a participation in this ‘permeable, transcorporal and transpositional’ body.

So the body of Jesus is part of a complex web of symbolic relationships. Materiality, gender and sexual identity are drawn into and dissolved in the body of Jesus and as members of the body of Christ, Christians can participate in this process themselves.

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott sees in Genesis 2:21-24 that the original human creature was non-gendered, and the complex nature of the gender of Christ recalls this fact. The Church has canonised many saints who have defied gender roles and in some cases crossed them, such as Joan of Arc, Saint Pelagia, Saint Marina, Saint Eugenia and Saint Anastasia. John Milton envisaged a queer heaven with angels shifting genders, Mollenkott sees this crossing of boundaries to be part of the queer tradition but also part of Christianity.

Marcella Althaus-Reid calls her theology ‘indecent theology’ which both draws attention to and subverts sexual and gender codes. In Latin America Santa Librada is a popular figure of devotion, she is a cross between Jesus and Mary, a saint of ambiguous gender, bearing a resemblance to Mary but crucified like Christ.

In the concluding chapter Christianity is a Queer Thing Stuart summarises the theological insights of Queer Theology.

Baptism reveals the inadequacy of all other forms of identity, being an unnatural act of God it deconstructs the assumed goodness of ‘the natural’;
Eucharist is the repetition with critical difference of the Last Supper; non-identical repetition is intrinsic to the Christian faith;
Religious communities show societal categories are not fixed: men dress in clothes society labels feminine, they are called ‘Father’ although they may not be a biological father, women are called ‘sisters’ or ‘mothers’ yet have names such as Augustine or Bernard Joseph.
Until the Enlightenment there were different genders but one sex – female bodies were imperfect inversions of male bodies; such a view allows the possibility of flux and change, which ended with the Enlightenment, therefore much within Christian Tradition allows for this flux, for example for women becoming more manly or even becoming models of manliness for men;
The Church is the community of the redeemed who should play out their sex and gender in such a way as to reveal their lack of eschatological significance.

Christians need to create an atmosphere in which those on both sides of the divide over issues of sexuality will realise if we persist in this divide we have put our faith in sexuality rather than in God.