There’s been a great deal of buzz among the LGBTQ+ Christian community as of late over The Reformation Projects denouncing of Queer Theology. For those of us engaged in this work regularly, this position was not new or surprising. But it did raise a number of important questions about the different affirming approaches that exist for LGBTQ+ Christians and what the broad goal of LGBTQ+ Christians is.
Obviously, no organization or individual can speak for all LGBTQ+ Christians- but over the last five years, there has been a growing movement among LGBTQ+ Christians who once identified as “affirming” like Vine’s defines it towards a more progressive, inclusive, Queer theological perspective that has moved many of us beyond “orthodoxy” towards a new way of being Christian. This path has been the only way that many of us have found healing and true reconciliation between our faith and our identities. So to see a fellow LGBTQ+ Christian leader publicly standing up and opposing the very theology that has led to our liberation and healing was shocking and frustrating for many, causing many queer Christians to speak up and defend Queer Theology.
Earlier this week, I engaged with the good folks over at Baptist News Global about why I think Vines’ position is unhelpful and frankly, wrong. Today, they released a feature piece on the differences between affirming theology and queer theology here. I invite you to take a read- it’s a very in depth piece.
After you take a look at this important article, I invite you to read the full op-ed I submitted to BNG on this issue below, for some added context. I hope you find this helpful!
Our Theology Must Be Queer, Or It Will Be Harmful
At The Reformation Projects latest conference, founder Matthew Vines delivered a talk critiquing queer theology in favor of “affirming theology”- the perspective that his organization has taken for the past ten years. Essentially, according to Vines, affirming theology suggests that Christians have merely misinterpreted the six anti-LGBTQ+ clobber passages of Scripture, and thus should reinterpret them to be non-condemning of LGBTQ+ relationships while still upholding traditional evangelical theology including things like the inerrancy of Scripture and committed, monogamous marriage as the only proper way to express sexuality and romantic relationships. In other words, affirming theology seeks to tell LGBTQ+ Christians that they only need to develop an apologetic argument for the clobber passages, and once they have that down, they should continue to believe, practice, and belong to evangelical faith communities, assuming that all the other doctrines of evangelicalism are true and good.
Vines notes that Queer theology, on the other hand, is fundamentally transgressive- it seeks to push against anything belief or practice that demands conformity, that prescribes a singular “right” way for expressing one’s sexuality, gender, or relationships, and the reinforces patriarchal and oppressive theologies that perpetuate repression of an individual’s true self and unique spiritual journey. On The Reformation Projects website, Queer Theologian Patrick Cheng is quoted as saying “‘Queer’ is used to describe an action that ‘turns upside down, inside out’ that which is seen as normative… To ‘queer’ something is to engage with a methodology that challenges and disrupts the status quo.” (Cheng. Radical Love, p. 6.) In other words, a truly queer approach to theology is one where nothing is above reexamining and reforming, where all the core ideas and beliefs of Christianity are questioned and challenged, especially in the ways that they contribute to the marginalization and oppression of not just queer people, but all minority communities. Queer theology is committed to turning Christianity inside out and upside down to discover the profound liberating message of Christ for our modern world.
In his talk, Vines comes out strong with his rejection of queer theology- yet anyone who has followed The Reformation Project for any amount of time will know that this is not a new perspective. Since the publication of his book God and the Gay Christian, Vine’s has been a strong proponent of “affirming evangelicalism” and has remained such over the last decade, even while many other LGBTQ+ Christians have recognized the inherent flaw of the ”affirming” perspective. On my own journey as a queer Christian, I realized early on that the problem wasn’t merely that six verses of the Bible have been misinterpreted (though they have), but that the entire paradigm of evangelical theology was untrue and oppressive from the ground up.
For instance, the way evangelicals define God is itself a problem- a traditional evangelical version of God is a divine patriarch, with a very limited capacity for creativity and very low tolerance for diversity. The way evangelicals view the Bible- as the divinely dictated and inerrant word of God- is ahistorical and results in evangelicals arguing for our modern ethics and beliefs to reflect that of the first century world, despite many of those standards being gravely deficient and responsible for unnamable abuse and oppression throughout history. And the evangelical doctrines of sexuality and relationships are likewise rooted in ancient patriarchal standards that do not consider the broad diversity of sexuality, gender expression, and possibilities for intimate relationships that can be just as ethical and life-giving as life-long monogamy.
It is understandable that many LGBTQ+ Christians who begin their journey to reconcile their faith and sexuality resonate with the apologetic approach that Vines offers. When your entire understanding of Christianity has been shaped in an evangelical or traditional Christian environment, it can be helpful to see another queer person affirming that view of theology while also suggesting that there are better ways to understand the clobber passages that don’t require you to rethinking Biblical authority. But the truth is that very few LGBTQ+ Christians maintain this posture for a long time. Because when you realize how wrong the Church has gotten something as basic as interpreting six verses of Scripture on same-sex sex, you can’t help but wonder what else the Church might be wrong about. And when you begin to study the history of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in Christianity, you quickly begin to see that there are much larger theological issues that provided the foundation for anti-LGBTQ+ Christian theology to flourish. And so, many queer Christians begin to rethink the whole of their faith- and often end up embracing a much queerer version of Christianity that centers the very people that Jesus himself centered: the marginalized and oppressed.
Affirming Christians have long critiqued Queer Theology as being counterproductive, seeing it as too radical and fearing that it will cause the powerbrokers of the Christian Church to turn away from the plight of LGBTQ+ people and double-down on their non-affirming beliefs. Frankly, they’re right. Ten years ago, when I was an affirming Christian, I would regularly be invited to talk with evangelical leaders about my theology and help them think about how they could embrace it in their own churches. Today, most of those evangelical leaders believe that I’ve gone way too far and have little interest in hearing the perspectives of queer Christians that are not willing to conform to their theology and traditions. I don’t lament that I no longer get to talk to these people, because I now realize that they are often just as problematic as non-affirming Christians. I’ve come to realize that it is not enough to tell LGBTQ+ people their love and relationships are not a sin- no, one must also be prepared to reexamine their entire theological paradigm to see the ways that it perpetuates beliefs and practices that force all people to conform to standards that are dishonest, unhealthy, and non-essential to true Christian faith.
It is my belief that authentic Christianity is queer Christianity. Queerness, in this context, is used as the posture of skepticism towards norms, a willingness to be creative in our articulation of our theology and practice, and a fundamental belief in an eternally expansive Creator that cannot be confined by any creeds, dogmas, or traditions. A queer Christianity is one that questions the so-called authorities that produced what we know as “traditional Christianity” and seeks to listen for the voices of those who were silenced by those authorities, convinced that the truth is ultimately found not among the privileged or powerful, but the ones whom the privileged and powerful have sought to silence. Queer Christianity isn’tjustabout expanding our understanding of the place of LGBTQ+ lives and loves in the Church, but about expanding the faith itself, believing that the Spirit of God continues to speak in our age and continues to call us towards new ways of seeing and being in the world. This is what an active and life-giving faith looks like- not just for queer people, but forallpeople. And to draw a line in the sand and declare oneself against Queer Theology is to situate yourself among the powerful and the privileged, where you are sure to miss the true work of the Spirit of God, which is never to be found in such
I feel that this is the right take on this. I do not believe that looking at the etymology of certain words and phrases in the clobber passages is a very effective or culturally accurate way of making an apologetic, anyway (because, let's face it, Leviticus does speak of man-man sexual intercourse in a negative way, and the sections in which this occur do not appear to be limited to cultic prostitution, nor was pederasty a major concern until the Hellenistic period). Probably the most sound way of looking at the matter, to me, is recognizing that there was a reason for inclusion of prohibitions on same-sex relationships between males (women were not prohibited from engaging in same sex relationships within the canon), and trying to figure out the cultural environment in which such relationships might cause a harm. Figuring out that the harms perceived were inextricably related to heirarchy maintenance in the patriarchal social orders of the ANE, and late BCE/early Common Era Greece and Roman civilization, we can then analyze the Clobber Passages. However, one cannot stop there, but to recognize that the entire whole of the biblical sexual ethic and more broadly, gender roles is conditioned by and motivated by the hierarchy maintenance of the patriarchal social order, then you cannot help but see the holes and problems in the Christian sexual ethics of the evangelical and fundamentalist churches.
By recognizing the problems with the interpretation and application of those 6 clobber passages in the evangelical church, but then failing to take it further and analyze the biblical, cultural, scientific, and historical problems of other parts of the evangelical framework for gender and sexuality ignores the suffering that has been caused by other doctrines which are incorrect: things like purity culture, strict separation of gender roles and norms, toxic masculinity, oppressive femininity, all have unnecessarily caused harm and justified violence and rejection of people who are ethical and embody the holy spirit (while excusing sexual and physical abuse of church leaders and thought leaders).
By today's standards, Paul (the real Paul) is a misogynist, but even pseudo-Paul (the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles) shook the patriarchal framework to the core. Don't believe me? Compare the writings of Paul to contemporary theologians and philosophers at the time, such as Philo of Alexander. God's love, properly understood, tears down the hierarchical structures.
Keep up the good work, Brandan!
I figured out that I believe in queer theology a few months ago when I kept just believing God HAS to be queer. Not in the context of being apart of the LGBTQ community but God’s love is boundary breaking, earth shattering, incomprehensible, flips our idea of what love is upside down… isn’t that all that queer people are doing??
double down on queer theology 💪🏾💪🏾