Queer Theology As Change Agent

3rd March, 2009 - Posted by nwilsonadmin - 4 Comments

Queer Theology as Change Agent

Creating Change Conference, Denver, Colorado

January 31, 2009, Address at Workshop

Rev. Nancy Wilson

 

I am glad to address you today as the spiritual leader of Metropolitan Community Churches. MCC started 40 years ago, just before the Stonewall Rebellion, by a Pentecostal gay man, Rev. Troy Perry.  We have about 300 congregations and communities in about 30 countries. We do human rights work all over the world, and have a dynamic relationship with The Fellowship, an African American same-gender loving friendly church.

 

I have been a lesbian/feminist activist, AIDS activist and MCC minister for 36 years. And, I am a Christian who thinks Jesus would be more at home at Creating Change than at the Vatican or at Saddleback Church, or even the Methodist Church I grew up in.  I am a Christian who does not need for anyone else to be a Christian the way I am a Christian, and for whom someone like Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist teacher and activist is also my brother and teacher.  Even Vatican II said, “We reject nothing true in other religions.”

 

Today, mostly we want to provoke you, to have you try on the idea of yourselves as queer theologians; or, if you are not religious, to think about why religion might be important to our movement! While we are changing the world, changing churches and religious institutions, we have the joyous responsibility of doing the creative and imaginative work of doing queer theology!

 

It was so moving to hear Patti Berne (a presenter at the institute) share her work on the intersectionality of race, class, sexuality, disability and spirituality. That’s truly queer theology in practice. . .

 

The starting point of queer theology is queer bodies and queer lives and stories!

 

How many of you consider yourself religious, with a serious connection to a faith tradition and community/institution? How many of you consider yourself spiritual, but not religious? How many of you are most definitely not religious or spiritual? How many are undecided? I want to respect the diversity in this room, and acknowledge it and celebrate it.

 

At the risk of oversimplifying, the majority of people at this conference, and in our movement, fall into one of two categories:  1) they are religious, or grew up in a religious home, and were alienated, disappointed, or harmed by a faith community; or  2) they have had no connection to any religious group at all, but still have a very negative view of the role of religion in society. In other words, religion just pisses you off and you are not sure what having a spiritual life might mean!

 

If you are in recovery, your recovery program may have challenged you to have a spiritual connection. There is a much smaller group of us here, representing a much larger group out there, who have found our way to integrate faith, spirituality, and being same-gender-loving LGBTQI/queer. . .

 

It is funny to me that everything else, including our movement is good when it is organized – except religion! We are rightly suspicious of religious institutions because of the abuse of power, and the toxic alignment of religion with colonialism and capitalism. Yet, there are progressive, indigenous spiritual and religious movements that have much to contribute to our ideals of collaboration for justice, wholeness and peace.

 

Top Twelve Reasons Religion Matters Whether You are Religious or Not:

 

v    Religion is a global phenomenon, and a majority of the people in the world identify with a religion, even if nominally. Fundamentalism is a pan-religious, modern phenomenon that is has not quite peaked yet and must be challenged.

v    In the US, religious people, especially conservative religious people, vote.

v    Laws, especially oppressive laws about bodies and sexuality, are often based on religious ideas that have still not been properly refuted in the public arena – for instance, most people would say the Hebrew scripture and Christian Bible condemn homosexuality, which now, most people in the guild of scripture scholarship would say is not true.

v    Progressive religious movements and people led the abolitionist movement, support for women’s suffrage, peace movements, in the US and globally. There was a great story in the New York Times, editorial page, today, January 31, 2009,  telling the story of how one woman’s dream, and getting her Lutheran Church to pray for peace lead to a mass movement that over threw Charles Taylor, the ruthless dictator of Liberia – and they now have a woman president!

v    The African American church was the cradle of the civil rights movement, and the language and music of faith were the language and music of the movement

v    Religion is not just about beliefs – it is about culture, and race and class and family. Just ask any Roman Catholic!

v    There are queer communities in this country and in other countries that cannot be organized without a spiritual or religious component, without addressing the need for spiritual community.

v    What you don’t know, or underestimate people’s religious sensibilities and deeply held beliefs, can lose campaigns, like Prop 8 in California.

v    Queer people of faith have played an important part in leading our movement, but have often been marginalized.

v    In our post-modern world, loss of transcendence, spirituality and loss of confidence in meta-narratives has caused a collective grief, and a loss of confidence in claiming our values and ethical constructs.

v    Religion can be the most divisive, destructive force, the cause of wars and violence; or it can be a powerful voice for justice and peace.

v    People of faith can be influenced to change their minds on important issues, if they can see that a more important religious value is at stake

 

At Creating Change this week, John D’Emilio spoke of the age of Barack Obama and “the common good,” a politics of values that might be able to help us transcend identity politics as the be-all and end-all. People of faith understand this language, and what means to form coalitions for a higher cause. Use us!

 

Rev. Deborah Johnson spoke of the “worm hole moment” we are in, that we have a spiritual opportunity, and must not apologize for who we are, but be authentically who we are, everywhere we are. You might have heard that she went from speaking to preaching for a minute in that room Thursday morning, and that call and response from the audience was her religious heritage being lived out in a queer context! It was exciting for many and uncomfortable for some all at once!

 

What we are lumping together today and calling Queer theology owes an enormous debt to Liberation theology, which started thirty five years ago, which spoke about the “epistemological privilege” of the struggling poor – in other words the poor know something about Transcendence, about God that the rest of us do not know. It critiqued the marriage of Christian theology, colonialism and capitalism.

 

Black theology took up the Blackness of Jesus, and the beauty and power of being black, especially in America–the goodness of black bodies. Queer theology is in debt to black theology.

 

Queer theology is also a descendent of Feminist theology, which taught us that when god is male, male is god; and to the understanding that heterosexism is derived from misogyny. Queer theology owes a debt to queer theory’s notions of resistance and subversion, as queer people deconstruct and reconstruct theologies from the social location of being queer.

 

Queer theology is about claiming our innate spiritual authority – as sentient beings, as Children of God. It is about having the confidence to speak up for what we know to be true, and good and beautiful. To speak truth to power in our times, to cry out for justice to claim our community values as spiritual and moral values.

 

Queer theology says that our experiences – the pain and the joy, the closet and the coming out, being gender non-conforming, our relationships, our families — these are all theological and spiritual categories, and  say something about what it means to be human and divine.  Humankind and the Divine are not complete without us. We are the queer image of the Divine.

 

Queer theology is a lens on queer existence, that there is a peculiar spiritual meaning to our being in the world. To paraphrase Rick Warren, it is to discover “The Purpose Driven Queer Life!” And, conversely, Queer existence says something about the nature of the Divine.  

 

Queer theology today is done by Catholics, Protestants, MCCer’s, people from every Christian perspective, Unitarians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Indigenous practitioners and pagans; by academics, by poets and activists.

 

If you are a queer community organizer, political activist, and you know nothing about this dimension of queer community, we want you to know about it.

 

Finally, I want to share three “roles of religion,” Queering H. R. Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture:

 

Religion of Culture – supports the status quo, the present power structures; denies that it has privilege; is silent about sexuality. This kind of religion says, “Don’t scandalize us. Don’t rock the boat, this is not a good time to bring up queer issues” It tends to serve the middle and upper classes, valuing intellectual approach not comfortable with the body, or conflict, or dealing with social issues at all.

 

Religion against Culture – This is the religion of alienation, separation, of fundamentalist Christianity, Islam and others. This is religion called “Holiness,” Pentecostal; and, until recently, these folks were not encouraged to vote, and felt persecuted as working class and poor people. They tend to preach, “Our way or the highway.” There is a hostility to modernization, and a tendency to be anti-intellectual and anti-science; conformity to rules, and based in fear. However, they provide social structure, comfort, help for those at the bottom of the power pile. Unfortunately, sometimes they buy into myths such as “Queers will destroy us” (our marriages, our families, our “way of life,” unexamined patriarchy).

 

Religion transforming culture – this is religions that is oriented “for the common good,” and values justice, peace and liberation. It relies on the prophetic traditions. This religion creates coalition with secular groups, other religious for a larger, common good. It takes risks, it sides with the oppressed. It will cross class and racial boundaries.

 

How do we see the religious traditions we came from in this framework? How does it affect the ways in which we work together for change?

 

 

Claim your right to be a queer theologian!