Queer Theologies-Playing with Theology

Theology & Sexuality

Embodied Religion (Handbook on the Study of Religion), 2016

Today, many of us hear the word queer and don't bat an eyelash. This is not the case for everyone, of course, but chances are that if you are of the millennial generation or in college in the United States, queer is common parlance. You may have friends who identify as queer-perhaps you identify as queer-or you've heard the term in your intro to sociology or literary studies course (or even had a course in queer theory). For many, the only eyelashes seen batting at queer are those worn by the drag queens during the show at the local gay bar on Friday nights.

Feminist Theology, 2007

This article examines what it is to think through queer eyes, that is what may queer theory offer to the study of theology. It shows what queer is in this context and challenges the reader to think in other ways. The article examines how queer theory helps to illuminate the radical nature of incarnation at the same time as examining some of the concerns expressed by theorists about the nature of the queer theological project.

2021

This special edition is a form of pride. It is a celebration of thirty years since the birth of queer theory. Of course, being queer, this was no normative conception or birth. More of an artificial insemination and fusion of gene pools, characterised by anarchy, activism, subversion, deconstruction, alongside identitarian and non-identitarian concerns. Queer theory transcends many disciplines. Raising suspicion from those concerned with normative ideas of scholarship, queer oscillates between delighting the academy with its offer of dense critical theory and radical undoing, yet it also disgusts traditionalists who hold allegiances to normative scholarship. With its agenda of subversion and playful parody, it is no coincidence that the term "queer theory" was first coined as a joke. Teresa de Lauretis had heard the term "queer" reclaimed on the streets by gay activists, and, as David Halperin comments, "she had the courage, and the conviction, to pair that ...

Meaningful Flesh: Reflections on Religion and Nature for a Queer Planet, 2018

Drawing on the creativity of the nascent field of “queer ecology,” I argue for a kind of irreverent ecocriticism (Nicole Seymour) and a constructive theological posture of irreverence towards the twin metaphysical concepts of “God” and “Nature.” I do so by engaging the work of feminist philosopher of science, Karen Barad. Barad’s writing is key for enhancing and collaborating the insights of queer theory, philosophies of science, and ecology. Particularly, I stage an encounter between Barad’s concept of “posthumanist performativity” and the sixteenth-century reformer and monk Martin Luther’s peculiar understanding of the incarnation of Spirit. What emerges is a queer ecotheology where Luther’s passion for incarnation, critically informed by Barad’s work, offers the potential for a queer incarnation of divinity where that divinity is caught up—even plays several roles—in the performative indeterminacy of the earth and of the cosmos. Creation becomes Divinity in drag.

Nova Religio, 2008

Descentrada

Revisión del libro Meaningful Flesh: Reflections on Religion and Nature for a Queer Planet por W. A. Bauman

Robert Goss (2002) has observed that trans theology is "further along" than bisexual theology. This is true. Although the movement for bisexual liberation is over thirty years old, bisexual theology is still in its infancy. Today I will present five themes in the work of Marcella Althaus-Reid that provide a valuable resource for shaping bisexual feminist theology in ways that correspond with other theologies of liberation. These themes are: 1) valuing queer culture, 2)

Glq-a Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2009

Scholar & Feminist Online, 2017

“Queer” and “religion” are arguably uneasy bedfellows. Both can be—and are being—used as categories for the projection of identitarian yearning and belonging, often constructed as mutually exclusive types of belonging. Both categories are problematic; both are contested. In this paper I investigate queer (and) religion using different discursive threads such as Human Rights; ethics; bodily integrity; spirituality; and resistance. I build herein on my theory of aphallophobia as underlying heteropatriarchal oppression and challenge the myth of “religion” as an essentialized positive category. Instead, “religion” is shown to be value-neutral and morally protean; while on the other hand “victimhood” does not equal sainthood. I introduce the term homosecularism to describe the homonormative expectation of belligerent secularism. Finally, I propose a way forward for a mature, constructive and jouissant relationship of “queer” and “religion”: however messy, uneasy, hybrid and/or idiosyncratic embodied queer religious identities, I propose queerthought religion as embodied compassion-in-action.