Meaningful Flesh: Reflections on Religion and Nature for a Queer Planet Bauman, Whitney A

Meaningful Flesh Flesh Meaningful Whitney A. Bauman, editor Meaningful Flesh Reflections on Religion and Nature for a Queer Planet Whitney A. Bauman, editor meaningful flesh Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ https://punctumbooks.com/support/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contri- butions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our ad- venture is not possible without your support. Vive la open-access. Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490–1500) meaningful flesh: reflection on religion and nature for a queer planet. Copyright © 2018 by editors and authors. This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://creativecommons.org/li- censes/by-nc-sa/4.0/ First published in 2018 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way. https://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-1-947447-32-5 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-947447-33-2 (ePDF) lccn: 2017957481 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress Copy editing: Andy Doty Interior design: Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Cover design: Chris Piuma Cover image: Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur (1904), plate 8: Discomedusae Meaningful Flesh Re ections on Religion and Nature for a Queer Planet Whitney A. Bauman, editor Contents Preface · Queering Religion and Nature · 11 Introduction · Religion, Nature, and Queer Theory Daniel T. Spencer · 15 Polyamorous Bastards: James Baldwin’s Opening to a Queer African-American Religious Naturalism Carol Wayne White · 23 Irreverent Theology: On the Queer Ecology of Creation Jacob J. Erickson· 55 Liberating Compassion: A Queerly Theological Anthropology of Enchanting Animals Jay Emerson Johnson · 81 Queer Values for a Queer Climate: Developing a Versatile Planetary Ethic Whitney A. Bauman · 103 Queer Green Sex Toys Timothy Morton · 125 Contributing Authors · 147 ix Preface Queering Religion and Nature Religion is much queerer than we ever imagined. Nature is as well. These are the two basic insights that have led to this book: we hope to queerly go where no thinkers have gone before. The combination of queer theory and religion has been happening for at least 25 years. People such as John Boswell began to exam- ine the history of religious traditions with a queer eye, and soon after we had the indecent theology of Marcella Althaus Ried. Jay Johnston, one of the authors in this volume, is among those who have used the queer eye to interrogate authority within Chris- tian theological traditions. At the same time, interrogating nature from a queer perspective has begun, perhaps most notably in the work of Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow and with the works of Anne Fausto-Sterling. However, the intersections of religion, nature, and queer theory have largely been left un- touched. With the exception of Dan Spencer, the author of the Introduction for this volume and one of the early pioneers in this realm of thought with his book Gay and Gaia, and Greta Gaard, whose work is developing a queer ecofeminist thought, authors have largely ignored religion and nature or religion and ecology in the realm of queer theory. In part, the blinders to queer theory on the part of eco-thinkers (religious or otherwise) are the same as the blinders eco- thinkers have when it comes to postmodern thought in general: 11 meaningful flesh namely, if there are no foundations, how does one create an environmental ethic or a “nature” to save? Do we really have time to be dealing with all of these theoretical issues when the earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction and a rapidly changing climate? Obviously, the authors in this volume think it is important and that these questions need new responses and thoughts unprecedented in comparison to previous ones. In broad strokes, the authors agree that queer theory has some- thing to tell us about how to live to achieve a better planetary future. For this reason and many others, the current volume on religion, nature, and queer theory is quite groundbreaking. Carol Wayne White starts us off with the issue of race, religion, and queer theory and how together they might help to develop an African-American Religious Naturalism. Jake Erickson’s piece provides us with a fascinating combination of Isabella Rossel- lini’s “Green Porno” and Martin Luther’s thought in order to develop an indecent theology. Continuing on the theological theme, Jay Johnston’s “Master and Pup” helps to open up the imago Dei (or what it means to be “made in the image of God”) to the more-than-human world and to rethink theologically the status of non-human animals. My own chapter attempts to look at climate change, globalization, and queer theory as the grounds for new possibilities for planetary becoming. And finally, eco-critic Timothy Morton, whose seminal essay “Queer Ecology” is so important for these intersections of thought, de- velops a critique of “agrologistics” in dialogue with queer theory and postmodern thought. Though these essays span many different disciplines and themes, they are all held together by the triple focus on religion, nature, and queer theory. Some focus more on one of those loci than the others, but all of them at least mix with each of them. They can be read in order, out of order, together, or as individ- ual reflections. There is no right or wrong way to engage with the chapters in this book, but hopefully engaging with them in some way will help inspire new ways of thinking about (and perhaps even becoming in) the world for you, just as they have for 12 preface me. Without being too ambitious, I hope that these essays help to open up a whole new trajectory of conversation at the intersection of religion, nature, and queer theory. As with all books, this one too only appears as a result of a lot of work both seen and unseen. In addition to the countless activ- ists and academicians who have come before us, paving the way for such a volume, I’d like to thank a few groups of people more specifically. First and foremost, I’d like to thank the authors of this volume for seeing the project through to publication. Sec- ondly, I’d like to thank my colleagues and friends at Florida In- ternational University, at the Religion and Ecology Group of the American Academy of Religion, at the Forum on Religion and Ecology, and at the International Society for the Study of Re- ligion, Nature and Culture. Without the fruitful conversations that have happened in these spaces this volume would not have emerged. Third, I want to thank the anonymous reviewers of earlier versions of these chapters; without their critical insights these essays would not be as complete as they are. Fourth and finally, I’d like to thank the editorial team at punctum books for taking an interest in this volume and seeing it through to publication. — Whitney A. Bauman 13 introduction Religion, Nature, and Queer Theory Daniel T. Spencer In 1989 I began doctoral work at Union Theological Seminary to integrate insights from ecology, liberation theologies, and ecofeminism — what eventually emerged was my book, Gay and Gaia: Ethics, Ecology and the Erotic. I now welcome this oppor- tunity to look back at how the emerging intersections among religion, nature, culture, and sexuality in the 1980s and 1990s shaped those reflections, and to look forward to the insights of a new generation of queer scholars of religion. Trained as a geologist who came late to theology and ethics, my intuitions about this intersection began to form in college when I studied volcanoes in Costa Rica in 1978 as a deeply closeted gay man. Here I was exposed to human rights issues and poverty, exacerbated by the many civil wars engulfing Costa Ri- ca’s neighbors. I first enrolled at Union in 1980 to try to address the many theoethical issues that my time in Central America and my closeted sexuality were raising, having little inclination then how deeply intertwined the answers would become. Hav- ing recently come out to family and friends, I returned to Costa Rica in 1982 to study liberation theology. I spent my weekends working with refugee children from El Salvador, displaced from their homelands by the combination of military violence and 15 meaningful flesh ecological degradation from the scorched earth tactics of us- sponsored counterinsurgency tactics. Coming to terms with my own gay identity has therefore always been deeply intertwined with my love of the earth and its diverse ecosystems and my commitment to social justice for the poor and exploited. Gay and Gaia was my effort to integrate the insights of ecology and environmental ethics with liberation theologies — particu- larly gay and lesbian, black, Latin American, and feminist — and ecofeminism.

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