Showing papers in "Theology and Sexuality in 2012"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors expand the notion of queer Christian theologizing by examining both the Muslim and Christian contexts in Malaysia, and pose the question of how queer theological instruments can challenge antagonistic attitudes towards mak nyahs.
Abstract: Many Malaysian mak nyahs, or male-to-female transsexuals, undergo tremendous discrimination and persecution in variousaspectsoftheirlives.Thisisdue to their liminal identities and their involvement in sex work in Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country that actively engages in moral policing. In this essay, I expand the notion of queer Christian theologizing by examining both the Muslim and Christian contexts in Malaysia, and pose the question of how queer theological instruments can challenge antagonistic attitudes towards mak nyahs. I discuss alternative theological models of Mary and mak nyahs by privileging the work of Marcella Althaus-Reid, as well as using findings from face-to-face, in-depth interviews with mak nyahs, and scriptural imageries in Quran 3: 42, 47; 19: 16–22/Luke 1: 26–38 in which Mary acquiesces to a divine invitation. In so doing, I strive to engage in a concomitant theological imagining of Mary and mak nyahs in hopes of providing an alternative and constructive perspective on mak nyahs.
10 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the seemingly discordant elements of evangelical purity culture and found that the contemporary purity culture is as equally informed by a new paradigm spirituality as it is by a religion of fear and the remnants of cold war fundamentalism, and that the discordance makes sense only when the contemporary purification culture is placed within a broader historical trajectory that marks its genesis in the fundamentalist resurgence of the 1940s, not the 1970s when new paradigm churches first emerged.
Abstract: Most observers of the evangelical purity culture situate it within a form of contemporary evangelicalism that prioritizes personal spiritual growth and self-fulfillment. As a result, portrayals of the movement emphasize the therapeutic individualism and optimism of new paradigm spirituality. But the new paradigm does not help us explain the language of spiritual warfare and what Jason Bivins calls a religion of fear within purity rhetoric. Evangelical purity culture is as equally informed by a religion of accommodation and new paradigm spirituality as it is by a religion of fear and the remnants of cold war fundamentalism. This discordance makes sense only when the contemporary purity culture is placed within a broader historical trajectory that marks its genesis in the fundamentalist resurgence of the 1940s, not the 1970s when new paradigm churches first emerged. By examining the seemingly discordant elements of evangelical purity culture, historians are able to recognize the theological and hist...
9 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative study of the rituals employed by both groups, which were and are constructed in order to prescribe a way to gradually undermine the normative process of gendering, is presented.
Abstract: While it may seem at first that a vast chasm separates ancient gnostics, those “heretical” early Christians active in the Greco-Roman world of the first centuries CE, and modern queer BDSM practitioners, one should note that what these two groups have in common is crucial: both believe gender to be oppressive and both act upon this belief in strikingly similar ways. This article presents a comparative study of the rituals employed by both groups, which were and are constructed in order to prescribe a way to gradually undermine the normative process of gendering. The comparison focuses on three interrelated issues: the motivation in each case to take part in the ritual, the transcendence towards which each ritual aspires, and the positioning of the subject performing the ritual in relation to the ritual objectives and efficaciousness. This comparison is meant to shed more light on these two extremely complex phenomena.
9 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined how multiple axes of difference (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality) operate in the religious/spiritual lives of western convert LGBTQI Buddhists, and found that distinct populations of LGBTQI practitioners utilize the non-essentialist philosophy of Buddhism, showing how it can operate both conservatively as a way to reinforce heteronormativity and subversively as a challenge heteronormalativity.
Abstract: This article examines how multiple axes of difference — race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality — operate in the religious/spiritual lives of western convert LGBTQI Buddhists. Through an ethnographic study of a diverse LGBTQI Buddhist group in Oakland, California, it will reflect on emerging differences between western convert Buddhist LGBTQI practitioners. In particular, it examines how distinct populations of LGBTQI practitioners utilize the non-essentialist philosophy of Buddhism, showing how it can operate both conservatively as a way to reinforce heteronormativity and subversively as a way to challenge heteronormativity.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the significance of the body in theological and ethical reflection in an attempt to distill an embodied theological ethic of human sexuality that can level a critique against the sinful social realities of heterosexism and sexism.
Abstract: An embodied theological ethic of human sexuality must engage two specific tasks: (1) articulate a theological explanation of the body that can frame critical reflection on the right ordering of relationships at the macro, social-relational level and (2) celebrate the erotic as an essential, creative contour of human sexual experience at the micro, interpersonal level. This essay is divided into two sections. In the first section, I explore the significance of the body in theological and ethical reflection in an attempt to distill an embodied theological ethic of human sexuality that can level a critique against the sinful social realities of heterosexism and sexism. In the second part, I develop the ethic further so as to carry moral weight within sexual practices. I celebrate the erotic as the creative dimension of human sexuality that encompasses desire and pleasure. I reflect on desire and pleasure individually in light of embodied experience and ground each within an ethic of mutuality to ensu...
6 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore those conditions which are elided in order to sustain the binary through analyses of cases from across Christian history, and they are able to see places where monogamy and polygamy blur and create what they call polygamous monogamy.
Abstract: Monogamy and polygamy are often considered to be a binary pair. Yet this binary is only possible under very particular conditions. This essay explores those conditions which are elided in order to sustain the binary through analyses of cases from across Christian history. In doing so, we are able to see places were monogamy and polygamy blur and create what I term polygamous monogamy. In particular I pay attention to the way time — which is impacted by other elements from Christianity such as divorce, remarriage, and the afterlife — factors into numbering marriages.
4 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the sacrament of baptism enables and supports re-envisioning kinship in a ecclesiological, as opposed to reproductive, framework, with attendant ethical and political implications.
Abstract: This article offers a critique of contemporary Christianity’s emphasis on family and gestures towards possible alternative visions. Juxtaposing early Christian narratives of kinship with Judith Butler’s analysis of the story of Antigone, this article argues that the sacrament of baptism enables and supports re-envisioning kinship in a ecclesiological, as opposed to reproductive, framework. This essay suggests that an ecclesiological and a poststructuralist account of kinship are mutually generative, with attendant ethical and political implications.
4 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the relationship between religious orientation and attitudes towards two contentious issues about human sexuality in the Church of England, by studying the broad range of people found attending an Anglican cathedral carol service.
Abstract: The aim of the present study is to examine the relationship between religious orientation and attitudes towards two contentious issues about human sexuality in the Church of England, by studying the broad range of people found attending an Anglican cathedral carol service. A sample of 381 individuals who attended a carol service at Worcester cathedral in December 2009 thoroughly completed the New Indices of Religious Orientation (NIRO). The scales were found to be reliable for the sample. The same participants responded to two statements relating to their attitudes towards gay marriage and the appointment of homosexual men as bishops. Both men and older people are found to report higher levels of negative attitudes towards both issues. Strong positive correlations are found between intrinsic religious orientation and negative attitudes towards gay marriage and gay bishops; these remain after controlling for age and sex. After further controlling for intrinsic and extrinsic orientation, it is found...
3 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose three readings of Kabbalistic text and symbolism that are of use to a reflective queer theology and discuss the role of yichud, unification, particularly when male mystics take the role as the feminin...
Abstract: In the last few decades, Kabbalah has enjoyed an unlikely resurgence, both in popular culture and among feminist and queer theologians interested in alternatives to traditional Western religious discourse. Yet theosophical Kabbalah is also an outrageously heteronormative discourse. Is it possible to attempt queer readings of Kabbalistic text and symbolism that are of use to a reflective queer theology? This essay proposes three such readings, focusing on some Kabbalistic constructions of gender dimorphism. First, the essay notes the constructed nature of gender in Kabbalistic text, in which males may have predominantly feminine genders, all people have both genders within them, and the ideal is not a butch masculine and femme feminine, but a combination of them. To illustrate this point, the essay reads the Kabbalistic understanding of the binding of Isaac in the context of S/M. Second, the essay discusses the role of yichud, unification, particularly when male mystics take the role of the feminin...
2 citations
TL;DR: Negotiating the Interfaith Marriage Bed: Religious Difference and Sexual Intimacies explores depictions of sex lives of interfaith marriage in television, cinema, and advice manuals from the 1970s through the 1990s, as rates of Christian/Jewish marriage dramatically increased as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: “Negotiating the Interfaith Marriage Bed: Religious Difference and Sexual Intimacies” explores depictions of sex lives of interfaith marriage in television, cinema, and advice manuals from the 1970s through the 1990s, as rates of Christian/Jewish marriage dramatically increased It delineates the narratives that interfaith couples had to navigate in their sexual lives, contrasting the popular discourse that presented sex as the solution to the tensions of interfaith marriage with the challenges presented in advice manuals on interfaith marriage In doing so, the article demonstrates the competing constructions of sexuality, as natural, religiously proscribed, and ethnically inflected, and articulates the ways in which those narratives locate conversations about heterosexual interfaith relationships and marital sexual practice firmly in the realm of the individual subject, even when accounting for more communally oriented understandings of sex
2 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the intimate relation between writing and desire in Karmen MacKendrick's work and used this relation to connect the work to work from Georges Bataille and Leo Bersani.
Abstract: This essay explores the intimate relation between writing and desire in Karmen MacKendrick’s work. It uses this relation to connect MacKendrick’s work to work from Georges Bataille and Leo Bersani.
TL;DR: In this paper, a brief engagement explores MacKendrick's logic of seduction in relation to panentheist and pantheist theologies of Cusa and Bruno, ultimately suggesting that "immanence" only collapses the distance of desire if creation is understood to be finite and self-identical.
Abstract: This response to Karmen MacKendrick’s work follows the thematic trail of desire through Divine Enticement (2012), seeking to clarify the relationship in MacKendrick’s work between God and creation. While MacKendrick expresses an initial desire for an "immanent divine," especially in relation to the work of St. Augustine, she later feels more drawn to "a world that in its beauty calls out the name of its creator" than to a world "in which the creator is simply present." This brief engagement explores MacKendrick’s logic of seduction in relation to the panentheist and pantheist theologies of Cusa and Bruno, ultimately suggesting that "immanence" only collapses the distance of desire if creation is understood to be finite and self-identical.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw on the work of Karmen MacKendrick and several early Christian theologians to argue for a Christian "morphological imaginary" (Judith Butler) characterized by remarkable fluidity of embodiment.
Abstract: This essay draws on the work of Karmen MacKendrick and several early Christian theologians to argue for a Christian “morphological imaginary” (Judith Butler) characterized by remarkable fluidity of embodiment. It does so by tracing the “mimetic circuitry” (Jean-Luc Nancy) of the traditions of virgin birth, side wound, and transfiguration, bringing several patristic-era meditations on these themes into further conversation with MacKendrick’s work.