Queering Christianity
On queer Christian resilience and the gratitude I feel for the LGBTQ+ cloud of witnesses who have gone before me
Hey friends! There was no post last week because I had a lot of reading and paper writing to do, but you will (hopefully) get two posts this week! Today’s post is the usual poem and commentary, and then sometime this week I’ll make a post about what is emerging for me in seminary so far (but will still include a short seminary life update at the end of this post).
The following poem came from a prompt to write a poem and then to cut down the same idea/heart of it to five lines (I forget whether the first poem had a required line minimum). I am including both because I like both for different reasons.
Version 1: We take the Good Book that put bullets through our skin, examining our wounds, pulling out each verse that has been hurled at us. We turn the bullets in our fingers and break them apart, seeds spilling from them. We take these new seeds and plant them in the ground of our bleeding flesh. In this supplantation, we are healed. Version 2: We take the book that put bullets through our skin, examining our wounds. We turn our bleeding flesh into the ground in which we plant new seeds, salvaged from the scraps of metal.
When I think of the resilience of queer Christians, I think about this blog post from Laura Jean Truman. She discusses the “well of queer Christian grief that is always full, always there behind the Church’s crisp white walls.” But she also talks about the beautiful ways that God shows up in the LGBTQ+ Christian community, that we “embody the promise that God is making all things new, and new, and new again.”
I sometimes get overwhelmed when I think about the LGBTQ+ people who are no longer on this earth anymore because of how they were treated by their families and churches (especially I think of trans folks on this Transgender Day of Remembrance). I think about the shooting that happened in Colorado this weekend, where what was a safe space was made a lethal one. As Kevin Garcia would say, Bad Theology Kills. Literally.
I realize in light of the shooting the bullets metaphor might come off as distasteful, so I want to be clear that what I am about to say is not supposed to be a silver lining or any kind of theodicy, but rather something I have seen in the lives of LGBTQ+ Christians: sometimes we can take those weapons in Leviticus and Romans and Genesis 19 and find ways to see the text in a new way. For the record: I don’t think the Bible has to explicitly be 100% LGBTQ+ affirming for being queer to be okay, because the Bible is not perfect. Paul was wrong sometimes, and the people writing Leviticus were deeply rooted in their own cultural context and God met them where they were. However, for folks who want to explore the Bible and understand what those texts are actually talking about (pretty much none of them speak to loving same-sex relationships as we understand them today) and explore ways that queerness even shows up in the Bible, it can be life-giving. And we can reclaim the Bible, like Laura Jean Truman does in their post, citing Isaiah 40:3-5 to talk about God’s dreams for wholeness in our world, ever-expanding and ever-widening.
I think about all the LGBTQ+ people, particularly those in the Christian faith who have defiantly called out against the bigotry and spiritual abuse in their churches, the people who have told their stories and advocate for full inclusion (and I also think about my LGBTQ+ Christian friends who are not out yet, and I also admire their stories and bravery): Kevin Garcia (who I interviewed on my podcast last month), Matthias Roberts (who I’m getting coffee with in December—I don’t mean to brag but these are things that give me joy), Julie Rodgers, Erin Green, Pauli Murray, Matt Nightingale, Jennifer Knapp, Ellie Dote, Bailey Brawner, Bishop Karen Oliveto, SueAnn Shiah, Caitlin Stout, Virginia Mollenkott, and so many others.
These people are part of the “cloud of witnesses” that the anonymous author of Hebrews (not Paul!! Jeopardy got it wrong) speaks of, that the stories of our LGBTQ+ siblings can provide strength for us to continue to do the hard work of healing and storytelling and justice. I am so grateful for them, and they are part of the reason why I became affirming and why I decided to come out and why I am writing about my experiences and being as loud on social media as I can, because I hope that I can be that for someone else—someone who shows me that there is a different way of thinking and being and that everyone is invited to God’s table.
May we remember the stories of our LGBTQ+ and particularly trans/non-binary siblings today, and honor them and hold gratitude for their presence in our lives. And may we hold hope that we can turn swords into ploughshares.
Seminary life update: I had two papers due last week. One of them was just a three-page reflective essay but I got really into it (and if you’re reading this, DL, I cited your Are You a Religious Fundamentalist post to discuss how faith communities can take advantage of neurodivergent people) and the other was an eight-page paper putting two authors in conversation, Sara Miles and Parker Palmer, around the topic of navigating action and contemplation as a spiritual person. I really don’t know how I made it to eight pages. I leaned on a long conclusion paragraph to get me through and tried my best to bring up good quotes even though I have only read like a quarter of the Palmer book and less than half of Miles (yes, I’m writing this even though the professor who will be grading said paper joined my email list recently, because that’s not going to stop me from being real on here). Also was citing in Chicago because that’s what the school requires for theology papers and ya girl is too used to MLA, so I hope I cited everything correctly (and I erred on the side of overciting). It was a lot, and it was stressful, but I got through it and now have a week off of classes to start working on the big ass assignments I have due for my classes in December. Almost done with first term, kind of wild.
Who is part of your cloud of witnesses? Whose stories do you find strength or comfort in? And if you have gone down the path of reclaiming Scripture or researching different perspectives about it, what have been some of your favorite discoveries in that process?