Introduction
“I am male and female. Male by body and female by heart. I was attracted to boys by my early teens but I never acted on it because I was brought up as a ‘good’ Christian boy, who shunned everything sexual. I did love a lot of things that were gender-constructed to be female or effeminate, be it dressing up or drape(y) clothes. I never disliked the male body in which I was born in. the first person that I ever came out to is me, followed by my best friend, colleagues and family. My mother was the last to know. She didn’t accept me initially, but over the years, we have made our peace.” narrates his experience, Romal M Singh, 30, stylist, writer and activist, Bengaluru. His experience gives a glimpse of the various emotional, social, psychological and religious implications for the complexity that he had within himself. Religious factor of a person is so important to be his/her own in the society, especially in matters of sexual orientation and identity. The feeling of guilt, pain and duality is much more because of the religious influence. The need to make the religion more comforting, encouraging and accepting is felt immensely and it could be possible only through the effort of theology. Gerard Loughlin claims that theology is a queer thing and it is has always been a queer thing. Queer theology is a new branch of the twentieth century theology, which is slowly gaining recognition across the world.
The Term ‘Queer”
Patrick S. Cheng identifies three meanings for the word ‘queer’, first, as an umbrella term; second, as transgressive action and third as, erasing boundaries. Historically, the term “queer” has been used in a negative way. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED) defines “queer” as “strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric” as well as “relating to homosexuals or homosexuality.” The OED online traces the word back as far as a 1513 translation and it speculates that the word is derived from the German word “quer”, which means “transverse, oblique, crosswise, at right angles, obstructive.” OED online also mentions that the term was used in a neutral or positive term since the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, LGBTIQA scholars (i.e., scholars who have self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning or allies) have reclaimed the word “queer” from its previously negative connotations.
Queer as Umbrella Term
One common use of the word “queer” is as an umbrella term that refers collectively to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-gender, intersex, questioning, allies and other individuals who identify with non-normative sexualities and/or gender identities. Sexuality refers to the ways in which people are attracted emotionally and physically to the opposite sex, to the same sex or to both sexes. Women who are primarily sexually attracted to other women are “lesbians”, whereas men who are primarily sexually attracted to other men are “gay”. People are sexually attracted to both women and men are “bisexual”. People who are sexually attracted to the people of the opposite sex are “straight” or “heterosexual.” People who identify with a gender that is different from their assigned sex at birth are “transgender.” People who are born with ambiguous genitalia of both sexes are “intersex”. Finally the term can also include “allies”, who may not themselves identify as LGBTIQ, but stand in solidarity with their queer sisters and brothers in terms of seeking a more just world with respect to sexuality and gender identity. In other words, “queer” is a synonym for acronyms such as LGBTIQA.
Queer as Transgressive Action
There is a second meaning of “queer” that is an intentional reclaiming of a word that previously had only negative connotations. In recent years, the word has been used by many LGBT people as positive label that proudly embraces all that is transgressive or opposed to societal norms, particularly with respect to sexuality and gender identity.
Queer as Erasing Boundaries
A third meaning of “queer” is grounded in the academic discipline known as queer theory, which arose in the early 1990s, put simply, queer theory views sexuality as something that is “continually undergoing negotiation and dissemination, rather than as a mere natural fact. In other words, queer theory challenges and disrupts the traditional notions that sexuality and gender identity are simply questions of scientific fact or that such concepts can be reduced to fixed binary categories such as “homosexual” vs. “heterosexual” or “female” vs. “male”. Thus, the third meaning of “queer” is the erasing or deconstructing of boundaries, particularity with respect to the essentialist or fixed binary categories of sexuality and gender.
Defining Queer Theology
If theology is defined as “talk about God” (that is, theos [God] + logos [word]), then queer theology can be understood as queer talk about God. In the light of the above explanation for the word “queer”, the definition of the theology can be viewed. First it LGBT people “talking about God.” Second, taking about God in a self consciously transgressive manner, especially in terms of challenging societal norms about sexuality and gender. Third, queer theology is talk about God that challenges and deconstructs the natural binary
Nancy Wilson calls it as “queer theology of sexuality” that is grounded in bodily hospitality, meaning that it speaks to the LGBT community. This theology seeks to unearth silenced voices or hidden perspectives. Bisexual theologian from the University of Edinburgh, Marcella Althaus-Ried calls queer theology as Indecent Theology, which should shock people out of their complacency and help them see theology in a new light.
In other words, Christian theology is fundamentally a queer enterprise because it focuses upon the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension and coming of Jesus Christ, all of which are events that turn upside down our traditional understanding of life. Hence queer theology is not a conventional way of thinking and doing theology but breaking the boundaries of various social norms including gender and sexuality.
Queering the Sources of Theology
Cheng claims that at least there are four sources for queer theology, that is, a. Scripture, b. tradition, c. reason and d. experience. This multiplicity of sources is important because, on the one hand, theology has never been simply about reading the Bible literally (Scripture) nor simply about what the church authorities have taught (tradition). On the other hand, theology has never been simply a matter of drawing upon philosophy (reason) nor has it simply been equated with the human experience of the divine (experience). Theology is a synthesis of all four sources and each of these sources acts as a “check and balance” for the other three. So each source must be dealt separately and dialectically to create a meaningful theology from the perspective of queer community. Each source will be explained in detail for a better understanding.
Queer Scripture
Queer theology draws upon the Scripture (the Hebrew and the New Testament) as the first source in creative ways. Although Scripture traditionally has been used as a means of oppressing LGBT people, queer biblical scholars in recent years have not only countered these antiqueer readings with alternative readings, but they have also “taken back” or “reclaimed” the Bible by interpreting it positively and constructively from their own perspectives.
For example, take the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, which has been the paradigmatic story for God’s punishment of same-sex acts. In that story, two angelic visitors say overnight in the town of Sodom. However, the lawless men of Sodom demand that the visitors’ host Lot, turn the visitors over so that they may “know” them. The visitors escape along with Lot’s family and God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, with fire and brimstone.
Queer biblical scholars like Nancy Wilson and Kathy Rudy have argued that the story is actually a condemnation of the sin of inhospitality toward strangers which had life or death consequences in the harsh desert environment of the biblical world. Rudy even went to the extent of suggesting that nonmonogamous sex acts – including anonymous and communal sex – can be viewed in terms of a progressive ethic of hospitality. Nancy Wilson has argued that LGBT people can be found in a number of biblical narratives – including David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, the Roman Centurion, the Ethiopian Eunuch and Mary, Martha and Lazarus – which she refers to as “ our gay and lesbian tribal texts.” Gerard Loughlin expounds that the wedding at Cana was between Jesus, bridegroom and his disciple John, bride.
In 2006, over thirty LGBT religious scholars, ministers and writers contributed to The Queer Bible Commentary, which was the first queer commentary on all the books of the Bible. As the preface states, the commentary shows that biblical texts have the “ever –surprising capacity to be disruptive, unsettling and unexpectedly but delightfully queer.” By engaging with scripture, queer people are able to articulate more clearly how the Word of God has touched us, and how we in turn can “talk about God” from an authentically queer perspective.
Queer Tradition
Queer theology draws upon tradition – that is church history as well as of the teachings of the church over the last two millennia – in creative ways. Christian tradition usually has been seen as being uniformly anti-queer. In 1955, Derrick Sherwin Bailey’s work Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition, challenged and changed the negative Christian traditional view towards LGBT people. John Boswell argued that Christianity was not uniformly homophobic throughout its early history and that it only became significantly homophobic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. He also claimed that same-sex blessing rites existed in the Christian church for centuries. Other scholars like Bernadette Brooten, who wrote about female homoeroticism in the early Christianity, Judith C. Brown, who documented the story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, a lesbian abbess in the sixteenth-century Italy. Gerard Loughlin also argues that most churches – at the start of the third Christian millennium – are being asked to acknowledge the marriage of same-sex couples, to acknowledge the union in Christ of men with men, and women with women.
The queering of the tradition did not cease only with excavating the history but also reinterpreting the works of medieval theologians like Peter Damian and Thomas Aquinas. Jordan concluded that the theological term “sodomy” was invented by medieval theologians as a result of their fear of pure erotic state (sexual pleasure without any connection to biological reproduction) and thus created a category by which such a state could be condemned unequivocally by the Church. Reclaiming and reinterpreting the history of the church and tradition is an important aspect to construct a theology for the queer.
Queer Reason
Queer theology uses reason as one of the important sources, because it is our ability as human brings to observe the world and use philosophy to know God. Traditionally, reason has not been as a queer – friendly source of theology. This is due in large part to the Roman Catholic view that nonprocreative sexual acts (including same sex acts) are always intrinsically evil as a matter of natural law. catholic theologian Gareth Moore Questioned this stand of the Church and claimed that there are hundreds of animal and bird species in the natural world that engage in same-sex acts or gender-variant behavior. Furthermore, there have been numerous Roman Catholic Bishops, Priests, members of religious orders and laypersons who have come out of the closet and written their experiences as LGBT people. He concludes that only rational course at the moment is to continue to believe in the possible goodness of homosexual relationships.
Queer theologies have increasingly drawn upon reason in the form of poststructlaist philosophy – that is, queer theory- in constructing their queer theology. Queer theory rejects the traditional view that categories of sexuality (homosexual vs. heterosexual) and gender identity (female vs. male) are “natural”, “essential” or fixed. Instead as articulated in the queer theory that the meanings of such categories are socially constructed. Queer theorists argue that there is no reason why a person’s genitalia must automatically determine everything from hair and clothing styles to preferred colour to family role to career choices. These theologians have also questioned the boundaries relating to Christian theology. Cheng ascertains that the Christian theology is a queer enterprise.
Queer Experience
Finally, queer theology draws upon experience as a source for its theology. As in the case of other contextual theologies, queer theology is premised upon the belief that God acts within the specific contexts of our lives and experiences, despite the fact that LGBT lives and experiences have been excluded from traditional theological discourse. Indeed, queer experience is an important source for doing theology from queer perspective.
Queer theologians of all backgrounds and perspectives have used experience as a source of theology. For example, Robert Shore-Goss has written provocatively about his erotic love for Jesus in constructing a queer Christology. Shore-Goss narrates that he imagined a “naked Jesus as a muscular, handsome, bearded man and passionate lovemaking, I felt Christ in a way that I only experienced in my solitary erotic prayer.” Marcella expounds that “we also have our own stories, significant enough for us and our communities to add. That is, stories to relate by means of making alliances between Queer-biographical theology and church traditions. The experience that she recounts is about the church tradition of kneeling, specifically to kneeling in front of a priest’s penis from her Latin American background. Experience is the main source for the contextual theologies because it determines their hermeneutical method for their theology.
Historical Growth of Queer Theologies
Though the term “queer theology” is fairly new, LGBT- positive theological works actually have been in existence since the mid 1950s. Cheng divides the growth into four different strands : 1. Apologetic theology, 2. Liberation theology, 3. Relational theology and 4. Queer theology. The first strand, apologetic theology, can be summarised by the phrase “gay is good”. Its primary purpose is to show that one can be both LGBT and Christian. The second strand, liberation theology, goes beyond mere acceptance and argues that liberation from the oppressions of heterosexism and homophobia is at the very heart of the gospel. The third strand, relational theology, centres upon the notion that God is found in the “erotic” – that is in the midst of mutual relationship with another. The fourth and final strand queer theology, challenges the notion that binary categories with respect to sexuality (homosexuality vs. heterosexuality) or gender identity (female vs. male) are fixed and impermeable. It is important to note that these four strands of queer theology are roughly chronological ways of describing certain trends in the development of queer theology over the last fifty years.
Conclusion
In the Indian context David A. Dorapalli compares the dalit experience and theology with the queer theologies. The very word ‘queer’ is very much related to the word ‘dalit’ meaning crushed outcastes. He also develops several similarities between the two like, exclusion of both the communities in the Church and in theology; both sexuality and caste cannot be chosen by a person by him/herself. The state of the sexual minorities in the Church and the society is very pathetic due to the dominant idea of heterosexuality as “normal” and looking at other sexualities as inferior and “deviant”. The main role of the queer theologies is to eradicate this kind of binary thinking from the minds of the humanity, so the church should be open enough to welcome the LGBT communities into her fold and recognise them as well the children of God and listen to their experiences as God’s invention. In this process, the role of the theologians to construct a theology which will include and affirm the LGBT communities is much needed. Regarding the praxis side of the theologies, the bold conviction and commitment of the church leaders, authorities and Pastors plays a vital role because the church is under their responsibility and finally, the congregation should also engage in active participation to know the nature, problems and needs of the LGBT communities to have a mutual relationship with “radical love” . Especially, a community like an Indian context, where speaking of heterosexuality in public or in the church itself is considered taboo, the inclusion of queer communities into the church is an herculean task but not impossible
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