Queer discussions with a Bishop

A Bishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa, who will remain nameless, recently invited me in for some discussion on the 'Queer' issue. Now, let me start by saying, he is a good guy. He has a long history of involvement in the struggle for justice and equality in South Africa. He is sensible. He reads (which is a huge pleasure to behold!) and he is extremely thoughtful. But more than that, he values the opinions of others, which is not necessarily a common episcopal trait.

I understand (though I did not ask) that he is straight. But despite this handicap, he undoubtedly has a passion for issues of justice and queer justice being one of them. How rare is that, I ask you? And I wonder how much easier it would be for Christian Queers, if there were more people in positions of authority in the Church who did start with a passion for justice, in all its myriad needs and forms, and only then proceed to a discussion about homosexuality and whether or not Anglicans should allow; ordain; consecrate or marry homosexuals. I have a suspicion, things would be a lot easier, if a pre-requisite to the debate was a committment, not just in word, but in deed, to those issues of social justice.

Anyway, I had taken him one or two books to read. The one which he enjoyed the most was Leo Steinberg's The Sexuality of Christ in Rennaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (University of Chicago Press, 1983 (revised 1996). It is an extraordinary book, unbelievably well researched and hugely informative.

The other, was a book I have already reviewed on this site - The Queer God, by Marcella Althaus-Reid - which had the desired effect of blowing him away - just because that is what it does! I sent him my review as well, and it was this which he homed in on, in our discussion. In it, I made the following points:

• We Queers are only allowed to speak, if it is in the language and grammar of the hegemonic power. We are not allowed to explore our own language, our own culture, our own norms, our own reality. That is the dungeon to which we are confined, within the church and the dominant theology.
• In the end, in the fullness of time, we Queers will make ourselves heard. And not in a way which accepts that the dominant heterosexual project is the right one and that we somehow fit in with that. Queer Theologians are saying, "you have got it thumpingly wrong!" If we are excluded, if we are kept at the gate, if our voices are silent and if our culture and practice is condemned and excluded, you are wrong! Do not think for a moment that we will give up the struggle, or that we will be marginalized or silenced. Because the God is not a heterosexual God. In fact, that God is a blasphemy, an abhorrence and a sham.

The Bishop drew my attention to what I had said in a review of the book (i.e. the above) and said it sounded "angry". I was surprised about this, because I do not feel particularly angry. Mostly, I feel resigned, because I know that eventually, the Church will be dragged kicking and screaming into a more reasonably position than it has at the moment - eventually.

And then, secondly, the issue which perplexed him was, of course, the issue of my questioning the rightness of the hetero-normative church on its views relating to single, committed partnerships - as a model of marriage.

I said that I did not necessarily have a problem with it. What I have a problem with is the absolute refusal to even consider anything else! That is no way to have a debate. That is certainly no way to "listen" to those on the other side! You cannot, in any negotiation, start with the bottom line!

His point, about the debate was interesting. He said, granted, that was probably the bottom line for them. But what was the actual objective. If one starts with that point, we will probably never get any further. And the objective is, he would have thought, to kind of "get a toe in the door", as it were.

Although, at the time, I think I agreed with his position, on reflection it sounds very much like those who, during apartheid, argued that blacks and others in the liberation struggle, should pitch themselves a little lower than the full take-over of power from the white minority. A range of mechanisms were suggested: tri-cameral parliaments; bantustans; separate development etc etc. None of them worked, because the black majority, and those of us who fought alongside them, refused to accept "crumbs from the master's table".

I would suggest that it is much the same with the women's struggle and I would suggest it is much the same for us Queers. It is actually inauthentic to suggest anything else.

The Queer God

The Queer God

By Marcella Althaus-Reid
Routledge, London and New York, 2003
186pp

I have been having some discussions recently with one or two people in the South African ecclesiastical scene, who are wanting to take forward the issue of equality for Gay and Lesbian priests in this corner of the world. I am constantly struck, however, by the way in which Gay and Lesbian people, inside the church, are often considered beggars at the table. They are treated fairly nicely. There is some measure of respect (certainly in the South African context - I am not talking of elsewhere in Africa). But there is no thought that actually we could ADD something to the rather sterile world of hetero-normative theology. That is taken as the given. So my thoughts turned again to a book I read some years ago, which changed absolutely the way I thought of theology. That doesn't happen often.

On the cover of this book, is a picture of Jesus. Nothing unfamiliar, particularly if you are Roman or Anglo-catholic. But under the title, the picture takes on a bit of a different meaning. Because, Jesus is, frankly, as camp as a row of pink tents! Clearly effeminate, limp-wristed, positively trans-sexual and probably transvestite as well.

The cover of the book is powerfully descriptive of what is the major concern of the book – a relentless exploration of the somewhat contradictory hegemony which patriarchal, heterosexual theology has on the way in which the Bible (and God) is perceived and read.

Some years ago I wrote an article on the tension between “gay” and “straight” perceptions of God. I gave an abridged version of it to my priest to read. His comment at the end of it was that there were one or two things with which he radically disagreed. One was the matter of multiple sexual partnerships, which I had raised as a feature of gay sexuality. He said that was an absolute non-negotiable for a Christian.

I thought of this incident when I watched the shenanigans following the so-called Windsor Report, where Queer priests and bishops in the Anglican Communion were firmly put in their places in 2004. I wondered what possible credibility, for instance, a political settlement would have had in South Africa, if a solution had been drafted by only one side of the conflict – and then imposed summarily and vigorously on the other. None! is the answer. And I would venture to suggest that the same is true on the question of homosexuality.

Marcella Althaus-Reid describes the Queer person as “the stranger at the gate”, the “exile”. The Queer Theologian is confined to the attic or the dungeon.(p.88). We are expected to behave in a “neutral” way, which has the same effect as putting our heads through one of those funfare cut-out figures, being forced to adopt a variety of cross-dressing identities, all of the time (p.90)

We are only allowed to speak, if it is in the language and grammar of the hegemonic power. We are not allowed to explore our own language, our own culture, our own norms, our own reality. That is the dungeon to which we are confined, within the church and the dominant theology.

But she explores a range of oddities within that dominant theology, utilizing symbols and images from queer expression and experience, together with the extreme sexual subversiveness of the Marquis De Sade. It is sometimes bewildering and certainly makes for extremely difficult reading. But it is also, I found, exhilarating. This is not, I want to warn, a book for the faint-hearted!

Her view is that Queer Theology is not, as are many liberation theologies, a theology from the margins. Rather, it is a theology from the other side completely! God is seen not in the familiar, but in the completely strange. The theological project is one then, of “queering” divine relationships and ensuring that the heterosexual obsession with binary relationships is challenged and reformulated. The Trinity, after all, is anything but binary, and the relationship between genders within it, deeply suspect from a heterosexual point of view. The queer theological project consequently sets God free from the dyadic/procreative formulations of origins. The queer project points to a world where reproduction is neither a necessity, nor a requirement of the evolutionary trajectory. In other words, human evolution needs to be more than the endless succession of what happens between sperm and ovum. She calls this “sodomising hermaneutics”, which involves processes of subversion, submission and deconstructionism which cannot be found in heterosexual presentations of God. This is the true “emptying” or kenotic process of the divine.

I have always found the story in Genesis chapter 19, of Lot and the two “angels” who came to visit Sodom, a very peculiar one. Besides anything else, why on earth does Lot offer his daughters to the “men of Sodom”? I mean, where is the morality in that, for heaven’s sake? And why is this seen, by hetero-normative readings of the text, to be the preferable, or even moral option? But one thing which I had not noticed before, which Althaus-Reid drives home so forcefully, is the essential over-riding violence pervading the text. A violence, from which not even God is exempt. The men from Sodom have violent intent against the visitors. The father has violent intent against his own daughters. God has a violent intent against everyone and everything, threatening to destroy both people and the environment alike. However, underlying this violence in the text, there is another discussion. In Sodom, the issue (and the warfare) is about sameness and difference. In Sodom, otherness was the norm. That was unacceptable to the monochrome God of same-ness. Difference – otherness, needs to be systematically uprooted and destroyed. It is a warfare between two projects: the dominant and the subversive. “The Sodomites must be resurrected one day …(and) by them, sexual justice will become a key hermeneutical clue for any reading on the sacred and people’s lives”. (p.93)

This is, as I have said, an extremely difficult book, not only because of the ingenuity of the approach, but also because of the sometimes opaque language which is used. But it is quite brilliant in its approach and its uncompromising , scandalous utilization of symbol to confront symbol. I give you the following: The bisexual nature of the theologian; Finding God in dark alleys; The Voyeur God; Leading God by a dog –collar; The closeted Trinity; God the Sodomite; Premature ejaculations – God in transit; Sade and holiness – and you will get a feeling for the approach. It is bold, original, perhaps disturbing but also extremely enlightening. I doubt many will read it. What I do not doubt however, is that it will set a direction for Queer Theology in a way which has not been done so far.

Because, in the end, in the fullness of time, we Queers will make ourselves heard. And not in a way which accepts that the dominant heterosexual project is the right one and that we somehow fit in with that. Queer Theologians are saying, you have got it thumpingly wrong! If we are excluded, if we are kept at the gate, if our voices are silent and if our culture and practice is condemned and excluded, you are wrong! Do not think for a moment that we will give up the struggle, or that we will be marginalized or silenced. Because the God is not a heterosexual God. In fact, that God is a blasphemy, an abhorrence and a sham

Queer Images of Jesus

When a book starts with the words ‘ “Lets make love,” the Holy Spirit whispered while I was praying…’ (and the “I” mentioned is Jesus), one can be fairly certain that one is not going to get quite what one is used to. And so it is - precisely as one does not expect. Jesus in Love. A Novel, by Kittredge Cherry is an extraordinary book, just by virtue of the subject matter.

The basic subject matter is Jesus. Now in that, there is nothing extraordinary. Trillions of books have been written about him. Trillions more will doubtless be written in the future. But this novel – because that is what it is – is groundbreaking both in genre and in content, in a way that few of the other of the trillions of books about Jesus have and will be.

Jesus is presented as a sexual being. A multisexual, polysexual, bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual being. A being who at one and the same time can experience sensual and erotic love for his disciples and for Mary of Magdala and for the Holy Spirit. He is a being not limited by tradition, or censure, or what people might think of him. He is free to be what he is, wherever he is and with whomever he is with at any time. He is - very succinctly, according to the book - God and this multivalence which is expressed sexually, follows from that position.

Now, before mother and father Grundy start leaping for their pens, slings and arrows and other assorted weaponry - to say how disgusting and distasteful they find this, I would urge them to first read the book before commenting on it. Personally, I did not find it disgusting, or distasteful, or, to be perfectly frank, terribly shocking, but I am fairly certain I don’t represent the majority in this. Cherry is a devout (and I wish to underline that word) Christian. She also happens to be a Lesbian and she writes from the depths of Christian devotion. She is terribly careful to remain true to the way in which she reads the Gospels. Doubtless, it is not the way most people read the Gospels, but she remains true to the text, certainly in terms of chronology. It is emphasis which she stretches and broadens. Where there is a hint, she makes it explicit. Where there is the merest possibility, she makes it an opportunity.

And it is this which I found difficult. Not because I was offended by it, but because it reads a bit like a sort of first century Soap Opera. I could almost see the fades, hear the music, see the scene shifts, read the dialogue cues. I found that strange and disconcerting and in the end, difficult to relate to. Now, I hasten to add, I find all Soaps – as a genre – difficult to relate to. Indeed, I watch none. So, I am, perhaps, not exactly the intended audience. So, after the first few pages, I found myself dealing with the book with much the same reaction as I have to Soap Operas – negatively. But that is, perhaps, my own particular prejudice.

God is surely not heterosexual. And gender assignments made by humans to the divine, are surely human constructs at best. At worst, they are baffling and disorientating and confusing. But more than that, a hetero-normative world view simply distorts reality and then seeks to impose that basic distortion onto God! It is too silly for words!

Cherry’s latest book is much more accessible. It is called Art that Dares. Gay Jesus, Woman Christ and More. It has a variety of images of Jesus on the one hand, as Gay or Lesbian and on the other as a woman. I think these images would be, in the main, deeply shocking to most common or gardinal heterosexual Christians. They will probably be denounced as blasphemous, because they differ very strongly from the traditional images of Jesus which we are all so used to.

They come from a rooting in a theology of the Incarnation – God becoming flesh – representative of all flesh, not just some flesh. Not just white flesh, or black flesh, or Chinese flesh or French flesh. Not just healthy flesh, or normal flesh, or male flesh. The point being, Gay and Lesbian flesh, and certainly the flesh of a woman, is part of what the Incarnation is about. And one would go on to say that if it is not about all of that, then it is about very little indeed.

There is a very clear “evangelical” message in the variety of images, from a variety of artists which are portrayed in this book. To some people being Lesbian or Gay is a wonderful thing. It is a thing to celebrate. It is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. And if that is the case, then our image of God, in the shape of Jesus, should surely accommodate that celebration. Because, lets face it, some of the epithets applied to the Christ figure, lend themselves very well to a Lesbian or Gay (or Womynist) interpretation. He was despised and rejected. He was treated as a curiosity in the Synagogue. He was an outsider in very many ways. He was crucified and left for dead. His view of God was thoroughly rejected by the orthodox people of his day. He was more comfortable consorting with the rejects of society than the acceptable. This is the experience of many Gay and Lesbian Christians, the world over

So, Kitt Cherry’s books are extremely important. Just because they thumb the nose at the prevailing and dominant sexual hegemony within the Church. And let’s make no mistake about it, that hegemony is pretty powerful and pretty strong. It is going to take a lot more books like this to make any difference. Hers are a very brave and very creative first bunker in the ongoing battle for liberation.

The books are:

Kittredge Cherry, Jesus in Love. A Novel., Berkeley CA, Androgyne Press, 2006

and
__________ , Art that Dares. Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More, Berkeley CA, Androgyne Press, 2007