Faith’s Queer Pleasures: The Post-Civil Rights Politics of Race, Sexuality, and Christian Identity by Carol L. Lautier-Woodley B.A. in Women’s Studies, May 2006, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill M.A. in African American Studies, May 2008, Columbia University A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 10, 2019 Dissertation directed by Erin D. Chapman Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies Joseph Kip Kosek Associate Professor of American Studies The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Carol L. Lautier-Woodley has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of August 22, 2018. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Faith’s Queer Pleasures: The Post-Civil Rights Politics of Race, Sexuality, and Christian Identity Carol L. Lautier-Woodley Dissertation Research Committee: Erin D. Chapman, Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies, Dissertation Co-Director Joseph Kip Kosek, Associate Professor of American Studies, Dissertation Co- Director Jennifer C. Nash, Associate Professor of African American and Gender and Sexuality Studies, Committee Member Gayle Wald, Professor of English, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2019 by Carol L. Lautier-Woodley All rights reserved iii Acknowledgments I am grateful to Kip Kosek, Erin Chapman, and Jennifer Nash for their support and guidance. I offer special thanks to Erin Chapman for helping me through the final years of the writing process. Thanks to Scott Larson for faithful friendship, beers, and many acts of kindness. I am grateful, also, to Justin Mann, Joan Fragaszy Troyano, Emily Dufton, Meghan Drury, Katie Brian, Kimberly Yates, and Brian Santana for moments of levity, good conversation, and sound advice on navigating graduate school. I offer appreciation and love for the support of all the friends and “holy trouble- makers” who nurtured me as an academic, organizer, and person of faith: Michele Berger, ABilly Jones-Hennin, Reverend Rodney McKenzie, Jr., Reverend Dr. Yvette Flunder, Sylvia Rhue, Reverend Dr. Rebecca Voelkel, Reverend Candy Holmes, Bettina Judd, Meredith Coleman Tobias, Robin Criffield, Evangeline Weiss, and Thérèse Murdza. I am indebted to everyone who held up me when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thank you for loving me back to health. Lastly, my deepest gratitude to Hazel, Rosa, Louise, Robert, Evelina, Jake, Walter, and the rest of my wonderful family. You taught me the meaning of grace and you remain the smartest folks I know. iv Abstract Faith’s Queer Pleasures: The Post-Civil Rights Politics of Race, Sexuality, and Christian Identity Faith’s Queer Pleasures studies the politics of Christian Identity in the post-civil- rights era to examine the silences and erasures that perpetuate the belief that people of faith are not lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender and that LGBT people are not people of faith. It also shows that silences and erasures have also made it possible for Christian segregationists and Christian civil rights activists to plausibly appeal to the same religious tradition. My dissertation, Faith’s Queer Pleasures: The Post-Civil Rights Politics of Race, Sexuality and Christian Identity, therefore argues that Christian identity references no single moral position. Rather, Christianity derives its meaning from the dominant or normative condition that its believers seek to effect. The point of Faith’s Queer Pleasures is not to deny the truth of sincere religious conviction. Nor to suggest that religion-based biases are historically identical. Rather, it is to attend to the fact that religion functions identically to multiple and oppositional political ends. Although the project analyzes the activism of lesbian and gay Christians, I do not argue that Christian belief, identity, and practice were socially and politically liberatory in themselves. Rather, as tools they provided ways to press the boundaries of what it meant to be Christian and homosexual. Each chapter examines the indeterminateness of Christianity—that is, the fact that Christianity means different things to different people, that its meaning is conditioned by what it is asserted in relation to, and that we can better understand what religion means by simultaneously examining its intersection with race and sexuality and the social change people are working to achieve. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Abstract ............................................................................................................................... v List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii Introduction: Faith in the Politics Religion and of Identity ................................................ 1 The Intersection of Race, Religion, and Sexuality in Christian Community ................ 11 Identity and Christianity ................................................................................................ 18 Recent Scholarship on Sexuality and Christianity ........................................................ 21 Evangelical Christianity, Sexuality, and Social Reform ............................................... 26 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 35 Chapter 1: If Jesus Is the Answer, What Are the Questions?: How Americans Use the Simple and Social Gospels in Social Reform Movements and the Politics of Christian Identity .............................................................................................................................. 37 The Simple Gospel ........................................................................................................ 42 Explo ’72 ....................................................................................................................... 48 The Social Gospel ......................................................................................................... 57 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................64 “God Has His Hands on This Boy”: The Origins of Perry’s Affirming Faith .............. 82 “We’re Not Afraid Anymore!”: UFMCC and the Origins of LGBT Christian Activism ........................................................................................................................ 90 The Civic Center Rally in Los Angeles, November 16, 1969 ....................................... 95 LGBT Christian Conversion: Faith in Race and Sexuality ......................................... 103 vi Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 106 Chapter 3: Race, Faith, and Sexuality in James Tinney’s Christian Identity Politics .... 109 From Identification to Identity .................................................................................... 112 Christian Identity Politics and Conversion .................................................................. 129 Black Consciousness ................................................................................................... 138 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 153 Chapter 4: “The Homosexual Explosion” in The Body of Christ: Race, Conservative Christian Identity and Resistance to Gay Rights ............................................................ 158 Creating a Color-Blind Christian Conservativism ...................................................... 169 Washington for Jesus .................................................................................................. 182 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 196 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 203 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 209 vii List of Figures Figure 1: Tinney and church leaders laying hands during prayer and asking for God to touch the person in need. From the private papers of Elder Michael Vanzant, of Tinney’s church, Faith Temple. ...................................................................................... 130 viii Introduction: Faith in the Politics Religion and of Identity1 The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s (NGLTF) 1999 Creating Change Conference featured a plenary entitled “Religion as an Agent of Social Change.”2 Reverend Ken South, plenary moderator, acknowledged that the LGBT community had been hurt and abused by religion, but he was quick to remind the audience of gay rights activists that many had also been hurt by the “petty politics of activism.” 3 He opened the session by sharing that people often pointedly asked: “Why, as an openly gay man, would you want to stay in a hostile institution?” And less thoughtfully: “Isn’t being a gay Christian like being a Jewish Nazi?” He offered a quick and direct reply: “I was Christian for at least