You know how sometimes, in a word or a phrase, or in a picture, or in a moment – suddenly something becomes clear? Archimedes “Eureka”? Oprah’s less durable “Aha” moment? Well, it happened to me yesterday in conversation with a friend. It was what she said that gave me that moment of clarity.
We had been discussing an article that I and a colleague had written nine years ago, in a little known Festschrift for Albert Nolan. It was called “Oil and Water: the impossibility of Gay and Lesbian identity within the Church”.
This long-forgotten article has suddenly re-surfaced the other day. It was found a by an apparently not unsympathetic cleric, who is attached to the University of Cape Town, and who is valiantly trying to “listen” to LGBTI people in the “conversation” which the church is presently supposed to be having on the Gay issue.
The article had given him quite a shock,apparently. Because it is completely uncompromising and unforgiving. Both I and my Lesbian colleague described, in some fairly graphic detail, the journey we had taken to get us to this place. We decided not to pull any punches and consequently, the piece is fairly candid.
And that was that for a very long time. It seemed to have been studiously ignored, until now, when a shocked Dean of Studies from the University of Cape Town stumbled across it and raised the alarm. He is, I understand, one of the few Evangelical Anglicans around who is willing to even consider the issue.
So, I was talking to my friend about how it is that this, out of all the things I have written and said about the Church, should become the focus of concern? I have had “controversial” views on a range of things, and I have written extensively about them. But this is the area where the alarm persistently gets raised.
The article said, in brief, that sex should not be determinative of relationship. That there are other things much more significant than sex, which determine and define relationships. That of itself, sex is not particularly significant and should not be held as the grounds to decide anything at all.
And specifically with regard to homosexuality, we argued that a church which was entirely and disastrously hetero-normative cannot expect homosexuals to simply buckle under and accept (or even worse – promote!) hetero-normative standards and ideas. Because time has proved these to be changeable things in themselves and that the path chosen by the church is both unrepresentative of the human reality and disastrous in its own right.
So, if there is to be a “discussion” or a “debate” or “listening” to LGBTI people, then it has to consist of much more than the one side happily talking to itself, while the other side stands obediently silent. If the church wants to listen to the experience of Gay and Lesbian people, then it needs to accept the possibility that its present hetero-normative paradigm regarding sexuality might be so seriously flawed as to be worthy of being dumped. And if that is not at least a possibility, then the conversation is not worth having.
My friend then made the point which sharpened my perspective. She said this: She said that the view of the Church is essentially the view of an addict. When a food addict is at a party, they will know what every person in the room has eaten; they will note each time a person returns to be buffet table and they will observe what has been placed on the plate. An alcoholic will know where the liquor is in every house they visit. They will know where the liquor store is in every suburb. They will know the alcoholic content of every drink.
It is an obsession. It is a sickness. It is something which takes over rational thinking and distorts it and twists it and produces a view of reality which is profoundly dis-ordered. It shows itself in the kinds of decisions which have been made protecting priests who are paedophiles. It shows itself in the way in which parts of the church have handled intersex people. It shows itself in the discrimination which of Gay and Lesbian people in the church routinely endure. It is an obsession. It is an illness. It is not wholesome.
It cannot be expected that Gay and Lesbian people have any responsibility to protect this obsession, or to perpetuate it. It cannot be expected that we have any reason to tolerate or entertain a system of wrongdoing which is so clearly and obviously distorted, in its view of reality.
So when the Church tells us that they want to “listen” to us – then that is what they need to do. It needs to start by shutting up and allowing us to say what we need to say. It needs to start by dumping the sanitized and doctored versions of tame homosexuals who actually believe that the homosexual orientation is something less glorious than the heterosexual one. They are the “Bantustan leaders” on the sexual map. They are the “Uncle Toms”.
If the Church is not willing to accept that LGBTI people can teach it a new and better way of being the Church, then frankly, they should just stop talking. It is wasting everyone’s time. Because the sickness lies within the Church, not elsewhere.
The article I refer to above is in:
Spekman MT & Kaufmann LT (eds) Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology. Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan. Pietermaritzburg, Cluster Publications, 2001.
Garner H and Worsnip M, "Oil and Water: The impossibilility of Gay and Lesbian identity within the Church".
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Queer God
The Queer God
By Marcella Althaus-Reid
Routledge, London and New York, 2003
186pp
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.
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)