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The Queer God THE QUEER GOD There are those who go to gay bars and salsa clubs with rosaries in their pockets, and who make camp chapels of their living rooms. Others enter churches with love letters hidden in their bags, because their need for God and their need for love refuse to fit into different compartments. But what goodness and righteous- ness can prevail if you are in love with someone whom you are ecclesiastically not supposed to love? Where is God in a salsa bar? The Queer God introduces a new theology from the margins of sexual deviance and economic exclusion. Its chapters on Bisexual Theology, Sadean holiness, gay worship in Brazil and Queer sainthood mark the search for a different face of God – the Queer God who challenges the oppressive powers of heterosexual orthodoxy, whiteness and global capitalism. Inspired by the transgressive spaces of Latin American spirituality, where the experiences of slum children merge with Queer interpretations of grace and holiness, The Queer God seeks to liberate God from the closet of traditional Christian thought, and to embrace God’s part in the lives of gays, lesbians and the poor. Only a theology that dares to be radical can show us the presence of God in our times. The Queer God creates a concept of holiness that overcomes sexual and colonial prejudices and shows how Queer Theology is ultimately the search for God’s own deliverance. Using Liberation Theology and Queer Theory, it exposes the sexual roots that underlie all theology, and takes the search for God to new depths of social and sexual exclusion. Marcella Althaus-Reid is Senior Lecturer in Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Indecent Theology, also published by Routledge. Este libro esta dedicado a todos mis amigos y amores y para todos aquellos que en la vida andan como yo, ‘sueltos y sin vacunar’, buscando a Dios en medio de amores, amoríos y tántas soledades. THE QUEER GOD Marcella Althaus-Reid First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2003 Marcella Althaus-Reid All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, with- out permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-33145-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-38721-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–32323–1 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–32324–X (pbk) CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Theology in Other contexts: 1 on gay bars and a Queer God PART 1 Queering theology 5 1 Kneeling: deviant theologians 7 2 Queering hermeneutics 23 3 Queering God in relationships: Trinitarians and God the Orgy 46 4 Libertine disclosures 60 5 Permutations 77 6 The economy of God’s exchange rate mechanism 94 PART II Queer promiscuities 111 7 Popular anti-theologies of love 113 8 Demonology: embodying rebellious spirits 133 9 Queer holiness: post-colonial revelations 154 Notes 172 Bibliography 176 Index 183 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Behind every book there is a mixture of struggle and pleasure. There are also dis- cussions with friends, disagreements, coincidences and laughter. It is in this sense that any book becomes sacramental, because in the process of being written it has gathered a community around a common table, where the exchange of ideas and stories shared has been a communion. Behind The Queer God there has been such a communion. I would like to express my gratitude to the group of friends and colleagues with whom I have been able to discuss theology, politics and love. I would like to thank Alistair Kee and Gordon Reid for reading the early drafts and making constructive suggestions. Also Lisa Isherwood, Jeremy Carrette, Graham Ward, Timothy Gorringe, Elizabeth Stuart, Jack Thompson and José Miguez Bonino for their friendship and inspiring discussions on Queer Theory and liberation theology in the times of globalisation. I would like especially to acknowledge the support and inspiration I received from the people who held the American Academy of Religion Women and Religion Section and Lesbian–Feminist Issues and Religion Group to discuss my previous book Indecent Theology in Denver, Colorado in 2001: Kwok Pui-Lan, Robert Goss, Mary Hunt, Lisa Isherwood, Emily Townes and Kathleen Sands. I also need to mention Roberto González, Tom Hanks and Fabiana Tron from Buenos Aires and Carol Stobie and Lesley Orr Macdonald for being good friends. Of course, the ideas represented in this book are my sole responsibility. INTRODUCTION Theology in Other contexts: on gay bars and a Queer God The body does not lie, but the truths it tells us may seem strange … (Califia and Campbell 1997: 113) Where are my Latin sisters Still praying to Virgin Mary Rosarios, Novenas, Promesas, despojos ¡Ave María purísima! Forgive me for loving you The way I do. (Vega 1994: 240) Salsa and theology Where is the salsa in Contextual Theology? Suppose that, as in the poem from Brunilda Vega, someone tells you that Latinas go to the same bar that has been recommended to you. Suppose that you are feeling lonely and think that the world is not a loving place anymore. Then you decide to go to the bar after praying your novena to your saint, or to the Virgin Mary. Perhaps you are ask- ing San Antonio for a lover and you know that at the door of the bar nobody checks for rosaries or religious stamps in your pocket. The same can be said when you are at the door of the church. They don’t ask you for that old love letter that you still keep in your bag neither do they realise whose hands your loving hands like to hold. Now suppose that in your mind the church and the Latina bar somehow get mixed up with fragments of memories of the Nicene Creed and of a Christ who died of love for you some time ago contesting the fact that nobody else seems to be dying of love for you anymore. You are think- ing about a religion of courage and you go to the salsa bar where a Latina may be friendly with you. But then, torn between love and rosaries, you may won- der what life would be if you were to love her. Remembering the poem from Vega, you know that in the end, you may pray for God’s forgiveness: ‘Forgive me for loving you the way I do’. But we need also forgiveness for loving God too. Introduction What goodness and righteousness would prevail if you were now in love again, and in love with one whom you are (ecclesiastically) not supposed to love? Where would God be in a salsa bar? Where would the church stand on all this? And where would your Latina sisters be anyway doing their Contextual Theologies? Are they not loving each other on Sunday evenings, between the novenas? Why not? There are many sexual dissenters whose theological community is made up of the gathering of those who go to gay bars with rosaries in their pockets, or who make camp chapels of their living rooms simply because there is a cry in their lives, and a theological cry, which refuses to fit life into different compartments. The question is ¿Va a haber amor? (Will love prevail?). The search for love and for truth is a bodily one. Bodies in love add many theological insights to the quest for God and truth, but doing theology from other contexts needs to con- sider the experiences and reflection of Others too. Many years ago, Liberation Theologies started to become suspicious of ideolog- ically determined definitions such as what theology is, or who is a theologian. It was the time when liberationists would say that the theologian was a factory worker, or a miner trying to discern the presence of God in a politically and eco- nomically oppressed community. It did not occur to them at that time that it was necessary to dismantle the sexual ideology of theology, and for theologians to come out from their closets and ground their theology in a praxis of intellectual, living honesty. God, meanwhile, was also kept hidden in God’s own closet. Nobody thought about doing theology in gay bars, although gay bars are full of theolo- gians. Women theologians recorded reflections amongst the poor, heterosexual women of Latin America but never went to salsa bars. The point is that the under- standing that arose in Liberation Theology of the possibility of doing a theology for social transformation should also lead us on the journey of re-discovering (or unveiling) the true face of God as part of the Queer theological quest. Far from leading people towards nihilism, Queer Theology has taken Contextual Theologies to new limits and thinking of alternatives which are sexual and political too. The Queer God The Queer God is a book about this re-discovery of God outside the heterosexual ideology which has been prevalent in the history of Christianity and theology. In order to do that, it is necessary to facilitate the coming out of the closet of God by a process of theological queering.
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