Beyond Apology and Tolerance: Queer Gifts in Our Own Backyard

The Rev. Jay Emerson Johnson, Ph.D.

“For Just Such a Time: Living Out the Call”

Brethren Mennonite Council/Supportive Communities Network Conference

San Francisco, California

June 2007

I want to begin this evening by sharing with you an open secret. This secret is “open” because it’s available for anyone with eyes to see it and ears to hear it. It’s a “secret” because there are some powerful historical and contemporary forces at work trying to keep it hidden from view. I suspect that most if not all of you here this evening already know this secret, if not explicitly then at least intuitively.

The open secret is this: Christianity itself is a queer thing.

By “Christianity” I mean all those ancient texts, traditions and practices that emerged from the first-century Jesus movement and have evolved over many centuries and have taken many different shapes and forms. By “queer” I mean that which seems a bit strange, peculiar, out of place or doesn’t quite fit standard modes of expectation.

This evening I want to suggest that it is precisely the “queerness” of Christianity that makes Christian faith a matter of genuinely good news, and not just for those who might identify in some form or fashion as “LGBTQIQA” in American society or in our churches but also for all Christians and even those who have given up on Christianity because all they’ve ever heard about it comes from television evangelists.

I also want to invite and encourage you this evening to discern where and how you might take up the vocation of being God’s queer people in the world with renewed energy and commitment. That vocation, just like Christianity itself, will take many different forms, both inside and outside traditional faith communities. But I do believe it is a divine vocation.

I also believe that God is calling queer folk to this work with some urgency in a world that is currently in an awful mess, a world where people are deeply hungry for the queerly good news of Christian faith even if they don’t realize it yet.

And if that sounds like a good old-fashioned Evangelical altar call, it is. For far too long lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been on the defensive when it comes to religion. This would be deeply ironic if it weren’t so tragic. LGBT people frequently demonstrate remarkable insights into the dynamics of faith itself that our religious institutions and communities actually need, not only to survive but also to thrive.

The time has come to offer those insights boldly and without apology. Indeed, for just such a time as this when not only the world around us but also Christianity itself is in crisis, God is calling us to retrieve the queer gifts in our own religious backyard for the sake of human thriving and flourishing.

How and where each of us is called to this work will vary, but we are being called. We are not called to this work by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force or by the Human Rights Campaign. We are not called to it by progressive religious institutions, whether that means a seminary or a denominational LGBT caucus. We are called to this vocation by God.

So this evening I want to offer just a few brief observations about that vocational work. First, I want to say a bit more about that rather troubling word I’ve been using – “queer” – and its significance for Christian faith. Second, I want to offer some reasons why I believe the notion of “vocation” is so important. Third and finally I want to encourage us to deal constructively with the Bible in this vocation, or what I will suggest instead is really dealing with the notion of Scripture.

I. “Queer” and Christianity

The word “queer” is of course highly controversial. In some circles today it’s being used as a kind of shorthand way of talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and otherwise gender-sex questioning people. In other circles, it means much more than that.

Just consider the experience of filling out standardized application or government forms and checking one among several identity boxes on the form, whether for your gender or your race or ethnicity and on some forms these days, your sexual orientation. Increasingly people have the experience of not fitting any of the standardized boxes and wanting to check instead “none of the above.”

We could, of course, just increase the number of the boxes from which one can choose. Those doing work under the banner of “Queer Theory,” however, want to question the whole notion of squeezing human identity into a box. As William Turner has noted in his book, A Genealogy of Queer Theory, perhaps everyone is in some sense queer. Surely everyone at some point or other has the experience of not fitting into the standardized system of classification and categorization on which modern society depends.

In theological terms, this is the realization that boxes of any kind cannot possibly capture the richness, complexity and diversity of God’s creation. It’s certainly interesting to realize that the same problem occurs when reading the gospel texts. In those texts Jesus himself appears rather cagey about his own identity. And the gospel writers don’t give us just one or even two but multiple ways of thinking about and identifying Jesus: teacher, healer, “son of God,” miracle-worker, bread of life, both sheep and shepherd, prophet, living water, and so on – and those are just a few possibilities from the gospel texts; the list expands considerably if we consider the rest of the Christian Scriptures.

So this evening I invite you to think of the word “queer” as that which calls into question the many assumptions or “givens” of our society or all those supposedly “self-evident truths.” A classic example of that would be the opening line of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Well, who exactly is this “we” and what’s so self-evident about equality when such a line is penned by a slave-owner?

Disturbing, troubling or “queering” cultural “givens” is, I believe, right at the heart of Christian faith and at the heart of the vocation to which God is calling us.

In its very origins and by definition Christian faith overturns cultural expectations and scrambles social distinctions – whether in the encounter Jesus had with the Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark’s gospel, or the baptism of an Ethiopian eunuch in the Acts of the Apostles, or St. Paul’s truly radical claim that “in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male and female” (Gal. 3:28) – a claim, by the way, that nearly 2,000 years later Christians are still trying to digest.

Indeed, all one has to do is to turn to nearly any passage in the Bible or to nearly any chapter in historical theology to see how strange, peculiar, odd and, well, queer this whole business really is. Just pick your topic of choice: the culturally rebellious posture of Jesus in the gospels; or the gender twist of imagining men as the “bride of Christ”; or the displacing of marriage and biological families in favor of faith communities; or the ecstatic relations of a Trinitarian God; or the erotic rhetoric and visions of medieval mystics; or the excessive and campy performances of liturgical rites, to name just a few of the queer locations in Christianity’s own backyard.

Again, these are not just queer locations; these are queer gifts in our own religious backyard, gifts that animate Christianity with the energy of hope and “good news.”

But let’s be clear about this: Referring to Christian faith as “good news” does not mean that it’s easy and comfortable. To the contrary, the queerly good news of Christian faith is demanding and unsettling. As Flannery O’Connor once famously observed, “You shall know the truth it will make you odd.”

This has always been the case but perhaps especially so today. For more than a century now, Christianity has been increasingly aligned with and wedded to the economic forces of free-market capitalism and the ideologies of an American political and cultural imperialism. The vocation to which God is calling us, in other words, involves recognizing that the struggles faced by LGBT people are part of the deep collusion between institutional Christianity and the patriarchal, white supremacist postures of the modern West.

Not merely for the sake of tolerating LGBT people but for the sake of the whole household of God and indeed for human thriving and flourishing, God is calling us to retrieve the queer gifts in our own religious backyard. So let me say just a bit more about why I believe the notion of vocation is so important here.

II. Beyond Apology: The Queer Vocation

For decades now lesbian and gay people of faith have been engaged in what I would call the “apologetic task.” I’m sure we’re all well familiar with that task; many of us have been around that block many times before. It usually involves refuting biblical and theological arguments that condemn homosexuals as “sinners,” and the hope in such work is to foster tolerance and to create a “place at the table” for same-gender loving people.

While that work certainly has been important, it’s also important to realize that the terms and parameters of that work have been set by others, by those seeking to condemn and exclude. It’s for that reason that we seem always to return, again and again, to the same five or six biblical passages that still sit like roadblocks in the middle of our religious institutions. More pointedly put, the apologetic task is what has left so many of us feeling as if we ourselves must bear the burden of proof for our own dignity, for our own status as cherished creatures of God.

What has been emerging since the 1990s however is a much more positive and constructive approach rather than a negative and defensive one. Over the last twenty years or so queer people of faith have been increasingly finding a place in Christianity not in spite of their queerness but because of it – precisely because of the experience of being a bit peculiar, odd, strange and of not quite “fitting in,” which is precisely the energy and shape of the Gospel.

So more than working for tolerance or even acceptance, sexually queer and queerly gendered people have begun articulating some profound insights into the meaning and purpose of Christian faith drawn from their own queer experiences, sensibilities and relationships. Much to the surprise of many, not least queer people themselves, these insights carry the potential to transform and revitalize Christian churches and Christian witness in the twenty-first century.

It’s for that reason that I believe working for “tolerance” is aiming far too low and why I want to encourage LGBT people of faith to embrace their queerness as a divine vocation, as a way to think and a way to live in the household of God that calls all God’s people back to the radical roots of the Gospel.

Recently I’ve been thinking about this vocation as being “queer home economists.” I like that image for several reasons. It assumes for example that queer people are already part of the home, part of the household of God. We’re not asking to be let in because we’re already there. More than that, we’re taking responsibility for the well ordering of that household, which is what every good home economist does.

And this is queer household work because, quite simply, we’re followers of Jesus, who showed us in how he lived and what he taught that queerness is in fact divine.

Just consider a few of the many gospel texts we might choose in that regard. The vocation to which God is calling us taps into the energy Jesus described, for example, in the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep behind to find the one that is lost (Mt 18:12-14). That is the same energy he described in the man burying treasure in a field and then selling everything he has to buy that field; or in the woman turning her house upside down to find one missing coin; or in divesting one’s self of all possessions to purchase the one pearl of great value (Mt 13:44-45; Lk 15:8).

All of these, notice, are economic images that Jesus used to describe what he called “the kingdom of God,” and by most economic standards today the energy in each case is foolishly spent. It makes no economic sense to put ninety-nine sheep at risk for the sake of just one or to liquidate one’s resources for the sake of buried treasure or a single pearl, no matter how valuable, or to devote so much time and effort to recovering one coin. These are remarkably queer economic strategies Jesus used to describe the essence of faith, and queer people today are taking up those strategies in the work of transforming the whole household of God.

Home economists likewise recognize the inevitable moments of chaos and disorder that arise in the process of transforming a household. A woman furiously sweeping her house in search of single coin can raise quite a cloud of dust, creating even more work to do when the coin is finally found.

Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for precisely this kind of economically queer work by reminding them that a wise householder brings out of the household treasure not only what is old but also what is new, surprising and fresh (Mt 13:52). Even more pointedly, he reminded them what happens to old wineskins when they’re filled with new wine – eventually they burst (Mt 9:17).

In those moments of chaos and transformation, it becomes particularly important to remember why anyone should take up this kind of work – it’s not only for the treasure, the pearl and the coin but especially for that one out of a hundred who is lost – and not merely lost but abandoned, neglected, tossed aside, beaten down, and left for dead.

Like I said, I believe God is calling us to this vocational work with some urgency. For many, this work is quite literally a matter of life and death.

And as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been dealing a good bit with biblical passages this evening and perhaps you’ve also noticed that not once have I mentioned any of the so-called “clobber passages” that are so often used against same-gender loving people. And I’ve been doing this intentionally as a way to model what I believe is a key component of the queerly divine vocation to which we are called: The positive and constructive reclaiming of biblical texts as Scripture. So let me conclude this evening with a few brief observations about that.

III. The Bible in Queer Home Economics

There is of course much more to the vocation to which God is calling us than dealing with the Bible; but we can’t ignore those texts either, especially given how those texts have been used and abused. Among its many abuses is certainly the way in which those texts have been used to short-circuit the vocation of spiritually and theologically gifted queer people of faith. Only God knows how many treasured gifts we’ve lost in the household because of that kind of abuse.

So right up front let’s all be clear about this: There is absolutely no need to be on the defensive when it comes to the Bible. In fact, I want to encourage LGBT/queer people of faith simply to disengage from those encounters and situations in which the Bible is being used against them. There are plenty of resources out there that you can recommend to those who are concerned about your biblical status.

Meanwhile, there is in my view much more important work to do as queer home economists as we seek and retrieve queer gifts from our own religious backyard, and that includes Scripture. Among the many aspects of doing that queerly constructive biblical work, I want to mention just two this evening.

Modern Approaches to the Bible

First, modern approaches to the Bible have nearly erased how queer those texts really are. From a modern perspective it is most certainly a queer thing indeed to have collected all those diverse texts between the two covers of a single book. Modern religious sensibilities have tried to conceal that queerness by insisting that all those many peculiar texts, produced by many different communities and writers stretching over many centuries must always conform to historical and scientific fact and must tell but one, coherent story.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s just absurd. The writers of Leviticus and Isaiah, for example, are not by any means addressing the same questions nor do they share the same vision for Israel’s divine vocation. And if you read the Gospel of Matthew next to the Gospel of John you can’t help but wonder if those evangelists are really writing about the same Jesus. Or take for example the differences in Christian ministry between the account of it in the Book of Acts and the account of it the first and second letters to Timothy. Likewise, there are some rather profound theological differences between, for example, the Letter of James and the Letter to the Galatians on such key issues as the relationship between grace and law and between faith and works.

So engaging in the vocation of a queer home economist would involve, at the very least, not only noting but also embracing how the Bible reflects a remarkably diverse and evolutionary approach to reflecting on and describing encounters with God and what those encounters mean for human life. And this suggests to me a very different and therefore promising approach in retrieving biblical texts as Scripture.

From Bible to Scripture

In that regard, and second, a striking feature of modern western culture in religious circles, which has only become even more pronounced over the last thirty years or so, is the extent to which critical issues and difficult questions are discussed and argued by appealing first and last to the Bible. This has become so common in our churches that many of us just take for granted that that’s how you make a religious argument.

This feature is striking precisely because that’s not how theological arguments have been made for most of Christian history prior to the modern period. Scripture was certainly included in those deliberations in previous centuries, but never in isolation from broader theological, philosophical and spiritual conversation.

This modern shift is not so surprising given the constant fracturing of Christian denominations and the gradual retreat of institutional religion from the center of public life. As institutional Christianity takes many different shapes and forms in the modern period and seems constantly to change, people increasingly turn to the one thing that apparently does not change – the text.

This means in part that the Bible is increasingly treated with the kind of authority – and in some circles, inerrant authority – that it had not previously enjoyed prior to the modern period. So today when Christians gather to discuss pressing issues – whether it’s Darwinism or the role of women or human sexuality – sooner or later and often right up front the discussion turns on a central question: Well, what does the Bible say?

This is of course precisely the question that can so often short-circuit the vocations of queer people of faith. So it’s high time we put that question to rest.

It doesn’t matter what issue or topic you might want to address, the answer to the question “what does the Bible say?” is always the same and quite simple: nothing. As biblical scholar Dale Martin has noted, texts don’t actually speak. And he’s not trying to be flippant but really quite serious about this. As he puts it: “Texts don’t mean. People mean with texts.” So the real issue in so many of our debates today is not what the text “says” but what people are saying with those texts and why they read them in a particular way and what kind of assumptions they bring to those texts.

Here then is one of the key differences we might consider between talking about the “Bible” and talking about “Scripture.” Following Dale Martin’s lead here, the word “Bible” refers to a collection of ancient texts collected between the two covers of one book. “Scripture,” on the other hand, refers to the communal process of using those texts in an ongoing theological conversation in which interpretations and insights vary and change over time.

That’s why, in part, Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century could use Scripture in some very different ways than Augustine did in the 5th century without worrying whether he was departing from tradition. In that sense Scripture refers to all of that long and ongoing and evolutionary process of using biblical texts for communal theological reflection.

Speaking from my own Anglican tradition for a moment, the book I’ve been pointing to this evening and holding up is not just the Bible. It is in one volume both the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, with liturgies, prayers and all sorts of communal spiritual practices. Now I suspect the Church Publishing Company put these together for the sake of convenience; in fact, it’s also a profound theological statement – biblical texts are actually meaningless apart from the role they play in communal prayer, conversation and discernment. And these days, that is a very queer insight indeed.

I want to end on that note because the divine vocation to which God is calling us simply cannot be done alone or in isolation. The work of queer home economics must be done together. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul insisted in nearly every one of his letters. There may no longer be Jew or Greek, slave or free or male and female, but there most certainly is a body – he called it the Body of Christ. A body, moreover, that is made up of many diverse members, each and every one of which is essential for the body to thrive.

That Pauline image of the body is of course a very familiar one to many of us. But tonight I invite you to hear the queerness in it. I invite you to find in this image the confidence and energy you need to take up your vocation as God’s queer people in the world. Listen to what Paul wrote in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth:

“The body does not consist of one member but many. … And the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect… For God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member…” (12:14, 22-24).

Just as it was for those first century Corinthian Christians, so also today those who seem to be dispensable are essential; those thought to be without honor have the greater; those deemed without respect are by God called to transform and renew God’s own household.

Let me put this in another way: If we’re looking for queer gifts in our own backyard we don’t have to look any further than this room – you are those gifts; you are the very treasure God the householder is bringing out of the divine treasure chest.

I look forward to seeing how these great gifts – you – will continue to transform the household of God. And I thank you so very much for the kind invitation to be with you this evening.