Session 5A: Queer Theologizing

Session 5A: Queer Theologizing

with Dr. Dianne L. Neu, Drv. Dr. Pamela Lightsey, Rev. Dr. Neil Cazares-Thomas, Matthew Vines, Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson, Morris Floyd

The members of this group share their perspectives on queer theologizing over the years. We take note of some of the early seminal thinkers, comment on the queering of the Bible and its relationship to such reflection by and in other communities, discuss recapturing faith as a way of life, and consider the application of queer theology to social justice activism in our particular contexts. Other topics include theologizing in action through worship and ritual and exploring how to decolonize and detoxify queer theologizing beyond what may be validated in the academy or among “progressives.”

Session 5A Queer Theologizing RTSA 2017

Morris Floyd Good afternoon, everyone. At the risk of interrupting what I know are fascinating conversations, I will begin the programmed conversation for today. My name is Morris Floyd. I agreed to serve as the moderator for this group, which is about Queer Theologizing. I'll introduce the people going from my right. You have your program books. So you know, you can look up their more information about us if you want to. Nancy Wilson and Matthew Vines. And Neal, I forgot to ask how to pronounce your next name, Casares and Pamela Lightsey and Diann Neu. And we agreed that we would start with our conversation by having each of us take a few minutes to react to the question of "what has been the most significant influence or one of the most significant influences in your theology, theologizing over time" and kind of move through the conversation based on that, trying to give a sense of of the of the history and the thinking of this group of people. And perhaps we somewhat represent the movement over a number of over a number of decades. Welcome to you all. Thanks for being here. I'm instructed to say the session is being videotaped, and if it's not, it's the audio tape.

Unidentified I don't see him. Is there a camera there? Yes.

Morris Floyd Well, I hope they'll edit this part out. The session is being videotaped and eventually will be available on the LGBT Religious Archive Network. We hope that this conversation will include all of us because we think there's probably we all have some important insights. And so we'll save some time at the end to make sure that we have more interaction. And I'm going to encourage interaction among the group as we go forward. So Matthew has agreed to start us out with the conversation. And we'll I'm going to we just think that our conversation will move organically. I'll be prodding if necessary. And I also have some index cards to hold up in the event somebody is going on too long.

Matthew Vines Well, hello. Thank you so much, everybody, for being here. It is a real honor for me to be here, and I don't feel like I should be doing first since I put in fewer years and do this by virtue of being part of the youth contingent than anyone else here. But that would only make it more appropriate for me to start with something when we've been discussing this conversation over email. One particular thing that I wanted to talk about was to make sure that we paid homage to our forebears who helped to pioneer this conversation at the theological level in the academy, helped to make this a conversation that anybody who disagreed even needed to respond to and helped to create space for so many of us so that when people like me, who aren't even born at the time, that they were doing this work come along, I could then realized that I was gay at age 19, having grown up in a conservative evangelical church in Kansas. And even though that was still a very daunting thing to face, it was a possible thing to face in a way that it would not have been a generation earlier. And it was possible for me to even attempt, even though I was not successful. It was possible for me to attempt to come out and stay in my community to have dinners and conversations and certainly things with so many of my friends and mentors growing up. And I think-- and again, there's still a long way to go in some of the communities--But the fact that people like me are even able to attempt to have conversations in more conservative and evangelical communities. Today is a testament to people who 30, 40 plus years ago were facing vastly more hostile climates and were dedicated their lives to open up this conversation. I would say the main person, the person who I feel kind of the most of a connection to personally is John Boswell, which it looks like most people are familiar with. But I do feel like most people my age and most LGBTQ Christians my age are not familiar with it all, which I think is a real shame, because not only was he an exceedingly brilliant man, but he showed such tremendous courage in... He was a professor at Yale when at age 33, he published his seminal work, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality. But from our standpoint today, writing the topic, writing about that at Yale doesn't sound that difficult. And yet, actually, in that context, for the years he was doing that research in the late 1960s from when he was just early 20s to 1980, he was he faced incredible headwinds of hostility and prejudice. There were not the same liberal meccas that were much more welcoming spaces. And... Just to the extent to which he laid down a gauntlet for other people to feel forced to respond, whether they wanted to or not, that he created space for this conversation, there's a lot that has happened since. But I think that he played an absolutely vital role in creating the space that so many of us have lived into to this day. And he's not alone in that. But I think he has a special place in that. And I've always just felt particularly indebted to him. So I just wanted to start with that. And we love you, John Boswell. wish you were here.

Morris Floyd I wonder if others had thoughts about a national theological thinking...

Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson I think to understand our context, we have to think of everything from the social gospel movement of the late 19th century, Walter Rauschenbusch, and then understand the civil theologians of the civil rights movement in the 60s and Martin Luther King. But then eventually, James Cone, liberation theology that that liberation theology that was happening in Latin America influencing women's theology became feminist theology. That was the crucible, I think, in which anything like queer theology couldn't be if it were not for that. And I even throw in the antiwar movement. I think those those things were all just huge influences. And I think it's also important, though, academically, that people like John Boswell and Virginia Mollenkott and Tom Horner and others were not theologians, persay. They were not in a theological... They were not teaching in seminaries or they were from other disciplines, English, history, psychology and other things, because it wasn't safe to be a scholar. And in the you know, in the Guild of Scripture scholarship were in the or theology in seminaries in the US or other places. So the first people doing really good theological work were theologians, but not that wasn't their primary discipline. And so I think that's important to know. And I would also say just that. I think for me, queer theology was born in having to preach every Sunday from the time I was 22 in NMCC congregation where there were very few books and you were borrowing from other people and disciplines and bringing people.

Rev. Dr. Neil Cazares-Thomas So I tend to agree with you, Nancy. I and to preach every week for a queer context was certainly informative and mentors that that became theologians. Certainly. I wrote my dissertation for my doctoral study in 2008 out of San Francisco, and I read my title as Queer Theology: An Introduction and the committee rejecting it because they said there was no such thing as queer theology. So even as late as 2008, people were still struggling with the notion that queer theology was I could understand queer theory, but had no understanding of what queer theology was. But I also want to raise up late Mathias Reid, who is an inspiration and in the context of queer theology to say Tickle, Phyllis Tickle, thank you for this article. Two incredible women who I think deserve a lot of credit for where we are as a movement in that sphere. So I bring our names into this realm.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey For me, I want to bring in womanist theologians, and I want to bring in womanist theologians who weren't thought of as scholars, but were sort of scholars in their own right and are scholars in their own right, something you Renee Hill, Irene Monroe who really push the systems for inclusion. I'm also thinking of a black feminist, Audre Lorde. I'm thinking also of the vast numbers of scholars who were in the closet but who were yet doing the work and making inroads for us very quietly. So often we forget about scholars who were in the closet but were doing the work to pave the way for us. And there they are, just unnamed and I just want to bring them into the room. Also, one other person. Pauli Murray.

Dr. Diann L. Neu Oh, I get the short end. Oh, no, it grows. Thank you. I'm going to bring in my colleagues, at GTU, where I studied my theology. As I said at the Dignity dinner last night, I was a young Catholic nun all dressed up for ordination. And I arrived at the GTU, the Jesuit school theology in 1977 after the Episcopal women were ordained in '74 and I met Dignity. I met lesbian and gay people and came out to myself and realized I was in love with my first-grade teacher, right? So it wasn't that it wasn't there. It was that was the opportunity for me. We created in the 70s, I think, the roots of queer theology because we had to challenge our professors on everything. I mean, I love how we connect our movement with all the movements gone before us. They didn't know about feminist theology. They were teaching us liberation theology. I mean, these are Jesuits, right? And the professors at the GTU my colleagues here that I was a student with Mary Hunt, Deb Heavey, Celeste Mary, Jane Spahr, as I can go on and on and on. We looked at one another after the panel, the feminists trans panel, and said, wow, we got something. And I'm giving that back because I think as a community together in our theological places, we are creating whatever the next is, whatever the hope is, we can't do it alone. And we stand on the shoulders of all these people, but we are the ones.

Morris Floyd So this helps to explain why we titled this group Queer Theologizing. Right, because we agreed that in a way, it's a continuous process that we're doing both individually and in the larger communities that we're part of it is that we don't we're not there yet, probably in terms of queering of theology. And I'm learning to use that word this week, actually. It's a new one for me. And it strikes me that that is kind of the next question is, given that we have sort of two I'm going to say table's not pillar's because pillars seem dangerous to me to try to stand on-- two tables that were standing on. One you might call the traditional Christianity, since we have grown up to some degree out of out of that. And another table that we're now standing on also, which is of the process of trying to queer where we started. And for example, Nancy, when you think about taking the Bible and queering it and turning it into preaching, how do you do it?

Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson And I think my I think a lot about that process, because it has led me to write the book Our Tribe, and in about 1995 and my premise was there that most of what in the early days we dealt with in terms of scripture was here on the clobber passages, the passages that have been used to batter us. And so what is our best defense? And much became written and has been written about that. But at a certain point in my preaching, I realized that that what I was really doing in mining and looking is taking scripture not literally but seriously and and having still having that orientation that that and finding that. I was said there's always new stuff in the Bible. It was never there before. I absolutely convinced it was never there before. And finding using the scholarly tools, using hints and from different places that are. But were there actually people recognizably what we would refer to as LGBT or gender nonconforming or queer in some way? And were those people in the Bible? And I think that, you know, like John Boswell, who said there must be marriage ceremonies for LGBT people and he found them at the Vatican library because in a sense, I think he believed that they were there and. They were the same thing was finding as you preach these stories and you begin to see your own experience reflected in that story and saying to our congregations, if we can't see our own story in the Bible, then who is it scripture for? You know, how does it even matter to us if these stories are not also about us and if we are not there in that story in some way? And so it's how the stories I think, to keep from being bored may be to part way of saying, you know, how do we find the story in a new way and see, you know, ask yourselves what of this character? What if I'm seeing this character, you know, through a heterosexual lens? And what if I shifted my lens and began to open up and then to find all this richness? You know, I've had no idea how many eunuchs there were in the Bible until I began to do that research because not many people have done that research because why would they care? And then to find what the roles of eunuchs really were will begin to say, oh, my gosh, there's a whole world here, a subtext, a hidden text that needs to be teased out and brought to the fore. And you know, you know well. And that we have every right and every responsibility to do that work, to make it come alive and to see ourselves in those texts and to take the risk of doing that and that the Bible is not fragile and it will not die if I do that or even if I'm wrong about how I interpret something. So I think for me, it was having the courage to engage and free myself from, you know, whatever lenses through which I had looked at these stories and my own experience and day-to-day coming out working with community taught me to see the Bible totally differently.

Morris Floyd Someone mentioned in the group that I was in this morning the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and how when you stop to think about it, this is actually a Black queen. You know, and how just that the use of that image begins to enliven the story in a way and embody the story in a way that it certainly wasn't before, particularly if you hadn't investigated what eunuchs really were all about. Pamela, I'm sure you have something to add to this.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey Well, I don't know about the eunuch, but I just feel I've been wrestling with this idea of traditional Christianity as one of the tables. And in you know, in my context, Black people have been queering the Bible for a long time, and that is out of necessity. So I've been asking myself about it. I make myself a note to just say a word about what do I think about the term "queering". So in many ways, for me, when I think about queering something, I'm thinking about being transgressive with this kind of radical sensibility about the biblical text and about Christian theology, which is part and parcel of who I am as a Black woman in America, and the sense that the that I bring a hermeneutic of suspicion, not necessarily by choice, but in order to survive as a Black person, in order to thrive as a Black queer lesbian in America. And so queering, for me seems quite a natural kind of adventure for me as a theologian. Now it is you know, the term is certain, means different things work for different people. But for me, it continues to be a way for me to to to articulate my sensibilities about who I am, about who the community that I am accountable for is. And to insist that that that who we are is not an anathema or is not something that's sort of in vogue, but that we are, that we exist, and we continue to exist. And I just say this. I do want to honor the presence and spirit of Naomi Washington-Leapheart, who is ill and can't be with us here. I'm sure if she was here, she would speak about the necessity for Black women to utilize queer theology, to articulate their experience in the world and to also demand say... Yes, I'll stop right there.

Rev. Dr. Neil Cazares-Thomas But for me, this whole notion of queering is also about reclaiming and reclaiming sacred texts because this traditional table that we continue to to lift up, I think actually gives power to to a group of people who have converted and brought about what I would call in the United States of America, specifically a political Christianity has actually nothing to do with the values of Jesus. And that has been sold to us as traditional Christianity. And we give power to that over and over again. When I would say that even when we call ourselves progressive Christians, that somehow we're less than Christian whenever we put another word in front of it. And so I've been recently reclaiming myself as an evangelical fundamentalist. I'm fundamental that Jesus loves every person just as they are. And I'm going to be evangelical about it because I'm not going to allow them to steal my language and to yield that language because I think it is the compelling gospel. So for me, it's about reclaiming and naming what is perverted about Christianity in America today. And this whole sense of queering is about taking it back. It's about reclaiming it. It's about seeing the many, many voices that have been left off the table and to see them. And I'm always fascinated. Monday is a way, but sometimes I just go back and listen to straight people preaching, especially from the evangelical Christian wrong. And I love to go back and to sometimes even the same text that I just preached on Sunday. And just like I did reading the same Bible. Where did you get that or how did you see that? And it's always fascinating to me to see where this political move of evangelical Christianity that's less than 100 years old in America has perverted this sense of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Even to call Jesus, Jesus is a perversion of an anti-Semitic move away from Judaism and to separate us out as one predominant culture. And that has to be dealt with in this whole queering of scripture.

Morris Floyd Just to pass this on to Diann, thinking about all of this, queering, how how do we reflect that, enable that, embody that in liturgy and ritual and turning it into an active theology and not just sitting around listening in the pews or in the classroom?

Dr. Diann L. Neu Thanks, Morris. My good theological liturgical training says liturgy worship rituals where people meet theology, where they meet spirituality. That's where it happens. So like it or not, I think those of us who create the worship services have to bring all of our understanding of a queer theology right there. In my early days of teaching liturgy classes, I used to talk about inclusive casts who are the people that are visible at these services. I used to talk about inclusive language, what's the language. Somebody raised that today in the feminism trans workshop or conversation or whatever we're calling these sessions. We're still there, but we're there in a whole new way. How is language of our community reflected in the worship services that we do, not only male, female, trans, LGBTQIA whatever the next round is, but what about God? How are we talking about the holy? I don't even use God-language anymore, the divine, of many names. And what is an inclusive script? When I was working on the ritual this morning, I must say in my 20s I was the go-to person for anything scripture. When I went to seminary, I became allergic to scripture and we used to say on the front of the Bible, this is bad for every woman's health. Now I know I'm sitting among scholars here, so and preachers, but I would say for us as a queer community, this could be bad for our health, too. So this morning I brought the ritual with me because I wanted just I knew I was sitting in the midst of those of us who value scripture at some level. And I thought, OK, so what's the scripture? That's the rolling the stone away. And I went to all four of the gospel writers. I usually go to John and John didn't do it for me. Then I went to all this inclusive scripture books and finally came up with-- and this is what we used for Matthew-- "After the Sabbath as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary of Magdala came with Mary to inspect the tomb. Suddenly, there was a severe earthquake and an angel of God descended from heaven, rolled back the stone, and sat on it." Now, in my youth, I used to call that a feminist twist. Now, I would call it a queer twist. What's the twist that's going to wake us up? Well, here are two women coming together. OK, that's fine. That could go on. An angel of God. Who is that angel? This is All Saints Day. So this is a great one for angels, right? Rollback the stone. And we named all kinds of stones of injustice and sat on it. Now, Candy read this for us? We were all standing as she read the Gospel of the Day. And at the very end when she said and sat on it, I said, Let's all sit down. What did we do? And then put the stones of injustices into the basin and eventually poured water on it. I say that it's so simple on the one hand as I'm talking about it, but there's such power. If we break open all of the symbols and all of the readings and it's also who's reading, are we going to raise up, whose names are we going to raise? And we have that power as liturgist. Grab it. It's where queer theology happens.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey Can I just add this has to do with my being in the classroom teaching queer theology. I'm not clear that we all in the room understand what we mean by queer. And I'm of the mindset that some people may have come to try to figure out what the term even means and how it's being used today. I remember when I was up my own self trying to figure out my identity, the term "queer" seems so ambiguous and over the years I've just settled on not using queer by itself for the sake of my community, but say queer lesbian because it is if it helps me to be clear with my community that I am speaking in terms of non gender conformity. So, you know, that's one sensibility. But there are not..there are any number of meanings when we speak about "queer," and I'm wondering if we may need to have some time to interrogate the very term itself. So, you know, and this is that I think that's what's so for some. So I speak about ambiguity. The term is ambiguous. It has a very I mean, the history of the term "queer" is a painful history for some people because that term is used very much like the term "nigger" is used. And I don't use the "N word" because I want people to feel the impact of that word. But just like "nigger" has been kind of brought back in among African-American people and used within the community in a way that is less pejorative. So also the term "queer" and it is a reclaiming of a word that was used to hurt, that was spoken, that was articulated to hurt people, a particular generation. The term also has a political sense for some people, rather than saying gay is an umbrella term. And I think the challenge with the umbrella term is also the erasure of that. The term can't imply the erasure of lesbian women because the term is very often seen as more related to gay men than women. So from a from a sensitivity to intersectionality and intersectionality that is concerned not just with how we all are united or how we all come together, but intersectionality, if we're truly talking about it, considers the ways in which persons are erased and seeks to always bring, seeks to always consider those persons who are made invisible by the very discriminations themselves. So I've got it started. I'm a leave it to the rest of my colleagues to carry it on, but I just thought that would be important for us.

Rev. Dr. Neil Cazares-Thomas So queer for me is, you know, it's original for me was around odd, peculiar, different. And so when I used queer theology in my thesis, I. Determined that queer and queer theology for me was anyone who would stand against dominant culture, which made the table really big and coming out of an understanding of queer theology, bridging from Black theology, liberation theology, feminist theology, gay theology, all of all of those that were single minded and single issues and had a particular hope for an outcome that didn't necessarily fulfill all of its dreams and purposes, that queer theology had the opportunity to bring that table together. And more so when I when I used the word "queer" from the pulpit. I always say that for me, queer means anyone who stands against dominant culture. And I'll be honest in our culture and my culture, I believe that there are so many straight people who are far queerer, than queers in today's world, and glad to have them in not standing against dominant culture of white male to point to children. Conservative, Christian, evangelical [unidentified] with the damage.

Matthew Vines That raises a...I have a question for you, Neil. Based on what you have shared, so are you are you comfortable with a straight cis, people identifying as queer?

Rev. Dr. Neil Cazares-Thomas Yes.

Matthew Vines OK, because for some reason I'm not. Something about it feels appropriative. Um, and I feel like I'm not interested in going on police and people's identities. I don't know exactly what the boundaries are. But my thought is that if you are not subject to any form of systemic discrimination or marginalization on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, then you might be many wonderful things, but I am not sure how that's queer in a way that doesn't make queer so expansive as to be less meaningful. Right. So that's right. That's kind of my concern, hesitation about that.

Rev. Dr. Neil Cazares-Thomas And I get that. I think, you know, I think the word "queer" is problematic and continues to be because it's not it's not a word we've defined extensively. What I would say is that I think that from a theology point of view that we perhaps are moving to a theology of radical inclusion rather than using the word queer. But I've met, I know many, many straight folk who I would not have any problem calling queer, who in relationships that are very, very different than the heteronormative and who do face discrimination and who do face some of the similar issues that other folks have faced. And so I don't think it's just something that's around gender or gender identity or sexual orientation. It's bigger than that.

Audience member To the extent that what do we get in that exchange? I think it has a challenge that I'm a challenge around theology here. To what extent are we talking about an ontological queerness? That is, which I think is philosophically there is a lot of language, but theologically, I am not sure that there is. I mean, we all have a hermeneutic and we can we can we preach it and we draw people in. But I guess the question I have when you all are having an exchange, to what extent are we do we have a question about ontological queerness? What did it mean to be queer as a theological construct? The reason I ask the question also because I think one of the things I'm challenged with is when you read womanist theology, womanism has been very powerful in broadening the human scale such that we're talking about theodicy. We're talking about justice, reproductive, economic justice. How do we...because if that's the language we're having, I think then we we may be limiting ourselves. To what extent we limiting ourselves we're not talking about a broader thing or is this morning about the AIDS thing I thought about to what extent are we talking theologically about theodicy, queer people or gay people suffering? How are we hermeneutically we're good at this, but I'm not sure we're having those larger discussion.

Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson So I feel like I'm somewhere in between here and a little bit, which is, I do think part of the critique that queerness is...Or where we were breaking the rules and the dominant culture and transgressing at least the entry point is about sex and sexual identity and gender identity, and so that in that sense, you don't want to erase that and the power of that because there's so many temptations to do that. So and I think it is a word of defiance around gender role and patriarchy that is just said this is the only way to be human is to be in this form and to say absolutely not and to claim that freedom, to queer it, and to say with my body, with my sexuality, with my gender. And so I think somewhere in between there... And there is a point about it's... There is a fluidity in this. And as generations, that all the time, all my life and ministry in MCC, there have been people who live... There are vast configurations of how people live sexually and in their gender fluidity and identity. So I think it's we can't also not de-complicated. it is complicated. But I think we we lose something if we don't say that there's a sexual outlaw piece of this that got us into this in the first place, that sense of breaking the power that those rules and those limitations.

Morris Floyd I wanted to, I want to, I guess, I support the notion of specificity. When I first started to think of the word "queer." I have given all of these painful associations, the one that I chose to associate was unique, different. And I'm going to tell a short story about how this to me is kind of became a practical sort of thing in our work in the church. Years ago, well, I'm a United Methodist by background, and we have something called Annual Conference every year, God help us. And and so one of my coworkers in the struggle, an intimate friend and I were sharing a motel room together at Annual Conference. And my mother's pastor had said that he would like to come and visit with us and meet us and made an appointment to to meet us at the motel. He showed up about an hour and a half later than we were expecting. So we had sort of decided he wasn't going to come. And we're getting ready for bed, motel room with just one bed. And Lyle was almost completely undressed and lying on top of the bed, and I was slightly more dressed because I was not quite so comfortable with my body, maybe Lyle was. But so Byron arrived and knocked on the door, and unthinkingly, I just went to the door and opened it. And I believe that that did more for Byron as an ally. Then anything I could have said, and I know that he repeated that story to my mother, who a few years later said, "well, you know, one of these days sex is going to become much less important to you." And I was 35 at the time. I said, "oh, mother, I certainly hope not." So I think there is this danger not only of disappearing of a particular group, let's say like Black lesbians, but also just disappearing a fundamental element of who we are that we are to begin with, as you say, defined by what we do sexually and with whom we do it for better or worse. And I've thought for a long time it was about time that I'm going on and on. But I'll just say that one of the things one of the. Things that I've that I've noticed as I watch mostly now from a distance, watched the evolution of things in our communities, particularly as they relate to what's going on in the churches, is the sense that we are maybe being too polite about this, that we are maybe too nice in that respect. Somebody said maybe. Yeah. So that's that's a thought on that.

Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson And just to say, you know, I fought for marriage equality and, you know, benefit from it. But I know that part of what marriage equality does or did to us is it's the hook of a middle class identity. And so that so that is very hard for us to talk about the fact that when those of us who are legally married are not necessarily monogamous or don't have the same sense of what it is to what our marriage covenant is, number one. And do we have more of a sense of the compulsory marriage? Is that part of what we're saying and how are we buying into all that? It's it's very hard at the very top, I think that this tremendous sexual diversity and richness, I think it's no secret in one sense that that gets challenged by or we get tempted and sent into silence into that kind of you know, that people may make assumptions about us or what we do or we are. And I think that's that's problematic for us in terms of, I think, our queer identity.

Rev. Dr. Neil Cazares-Thomas I was going to say. So I arrived in Dallas two weeks prior to the Supreme Court decision. I knew nobody really in Dallas or the landscape. And the day of the announcement, I got a phone call from WFAA, Channel eight, saying we'd like a representative from the church to come and do a live interview with Dr. Robert Jeffress, who's the senior minister of First Baptist Dallas and who now is the one of the chief architects of much of the religious crap that's coming out of the White House right now. And I because I didn't know who he was. And so I said, yes, sure, I'll be there in 10 years. So as I'm leaving the office, the communications director of the church said, you know who Jeffress. And I said, no, let me brief you on the way. So we get down there. Um, I could say a lot about Dr. Jefferss he's the only man I knew who can lisp on a "f" and I met him as he was coming out of the restroom after quipping his hair and making sure it was sprayed beautifully so that it didn't move on camera. And so in our conversation, he said that he believes in biblical marriage. I was like, well, thank you for opening that door. So I managed to have a conversation with him that actually I believe in biblical marriage to. And let's go back to biblical marriage then, shall we? I mean, for me, that really is about this queering text. It's about really helping people to understand that this dominant understanding of what we assume scripture to say without ever reading it humanistically, what it really say. And so for me to be able to say to Robert Jeffress and what you've just go red, I don't know, in fury or embarrassment, that I would absolutely support biblical marriage from a queer perspective.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey So I think where we are here is in terms of problematizing the term itself is the challenge we have between normativity, essentialism, and social constructions. OK, so at the very top, someone on the panel mentioned LGBTQI, whatever, whatever, OK. And that said a mouthful, and I've heard this before. And what it suggests to me always is our concern about being able to articulate our self identity with some specificity without yet again adding another or creating another social construct. Because at some point in time, here's a few's a fear. At some point in time, you the more we attempt to speak of ourselves with a particular specificity, that leans toward essentialism. OK, there we run the risk of actually making ourselves invisible. So is the steady delusion of who we are. I think that's that's what I'm hearing in this conversation. And I think we actually think we need to have more conversations about that within the LGBT community. And these are conversations that are being had about the very, how valoid a term "queer" is in light of all the things we are beginning to think about with regards to sexual self identity. And I think that's what we're bumping into here today.

Dr. Diann L. Neu I think you raised some really important issues, Pamela, and what I hear in what you just said is how can the container be big enough that no one becomes invisible? And I think with each addition of another letter, perhaps someone is not visible at the table. I mean, I think when we talked about lesbian and gay and then it kind of morphed into gay then lesbians, were saying more women, where are the women? And then when we talk about I'm going to I'm I feel like I'm going on an edge here. But when we talk about mujerista, womanist, feminist, well, where is everybody in this space? And then when we talk about trans, trans, how trans, who and where is everybody in this space queer, does that mean it's space for all of us, or does that mean that some people are still invisible and pushed to the margins? That's the challenge. And I keep going on. That's the challenge that I hear in this conversation about what is queer. It's really how are we all seen?

Morris Floyd Now, if the group is willing, I want to would like to suggest some conversation here about God. As they say, whatever that may mean to you, because I can't we can't be sure that we can agree on that any more than we do agree about "queer" the I come at this from the perspective of having worked for more years than I want to admit sometimes on trying to move a particular denomination, particularly immoveable denomination, as it happens, on the issue of including-- of understanding us. And I'm trying to be as inclusive as possible as I can about that, understanding us as a part of the church, as a part of God's people who are no less or more worthy. This is a denomination that says on the one hand that we are entitled to the ministry and guidance of the church and on the other hand, that we are incompatible with Christian teaching. So it's a political piece of work in a way. And my work has often been trying to offer a theological rationale for that inclusion, sometimes in earlier days. From what I now see as this really naive, as you mentioned, Nancy, finding exceptions or the different understandings of what the Bible says about same-sex love and to to now beginning to think about what same-sex love, in a way, says about says about Christianity in that in that dialog. So I want to raise the question about whether or not we queer Christians, to use that word, who believe that we were created of God with all of that means, and as that sometimes said, that God doesn't make any mistakes. Can we actually be in the same churches? Do we actually believe in the same God as that portion of the other side of the discussion, who as a fundamental matter of faith, cannot accept that notion? Now, I think people are against us being in the church openly for a lot of reasons. But I convinced more and more, particularly after the United Methodist General Conference last year, that there's a sizable portion who believe in their heart of hearts that they have been created, that we have not been created in a godly way like they were. It is a heterosexist supremacy idea. I just wonder how can we even want to be, let alone claim to be in the same faith community with those people?

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey Well, I think part of MCC strategy in the early days was to, in one sense, try this experiment on our own and find out in some ways what and then be empowered to have to, in a sense, create our own experiment in in faith-building faith community. And so it's a different at the same time, we're part of a culture that claims the same term that we're you know, it's not like we're not part of that Christian expression or identity. So I think it continues to be that's a deep existential question for us of what part do you say? It's not about logic. It's not about so many other things. It's about conversion. People really coming to understand and embrace the humanity and to understand that expression of humanity, to be diverse at its core, and that anything other than that, in some ways there's that just terrible rift that, and I've seen it be healed in individuals and in communities. But you can see. And how much the political. Usefulness of that ideology keeps it continuing to do its damage.

Matthew Vines OK, so many thoughts. One thought I have is that if Christianity had started in America in 1609 or that I don't think I could be a Christian because Christianity came to this land as the good news of genocide and white supremacy and enslavement. And in that sense is what it takes for me, I guess, is just recognizing going back to the scriptures, going back especially to the New Testament, to the Gospels, to the teachings of Jesus, and not that Christianity has ever been perfect. Not that pre-Constantine. It was this pure, glorious thing that had there was not complicit in any oppression and in any way. But I do think that seeing especially the teachings of Jesus, those are something that I want to live my life by. Jesus is somebody who I want to be like. And I feel like his teachings around how we're supposed to treat other people in particular are the most demanding and compelling that I've really come across in any kind of ethical system. What's so unfortunate is that the church has really done a pretty, pretty sad job of living that out. But for me, because I feel like what is there at the core with Jesus in particular is good and is something that makes is something that the world needs. That's why I want to be a Christian. That's why I still believe in God. That's why I want to be part of the church, not because I think the church, certainly not the American white church, deserves us or deserves it, because if we were looking at from that framework, they probably don't. But because I. Yeah, I guess I just that's the nice thing for me. Even when I can get pretty disillusioned. And about the state of things, looking at white American Christianity, today is one of the most depressing things you can do on a daily basis. I still just know, you know what? Christianity has been around for 2000 years and some of these folks, trying to use gentle language here. Some of these people, some of these charlatans have been using it in the name of their own oppression and power for quite some time. And yet they are not its founders. They are not ultimately what Christianity started from or what it's about. And so that's why I guess I'm not wanting to just leave it with them.

Rev. Dr. Neil Cazares-Thomas I agree with you, Matthew. I think we live in exciting times. We just celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and it's still happening. And if you look back through history about every 500 years, the church reforms. And so we're out of that reformation. But I think that we actually have an opportunity to to recreate it. One of the great things about Christianity is dying in America and the way of Jesus is finding its birth. And that's what keeps me hopeful. As I watch people leave organized religion in their droves, they are coming back to a sense of what does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus? What does it mean to reject dogma, but still hold on to faith? What does it mean to have been kicked out of the church? Not necessarily because you identify as LGBT these days, but you get kicked out for any reason that they decide they can. But people who look to the lives of LGBT people who have done the hard work of deconstructing and reconstructing scripture, and I'm finding evangelicals in almost every day who are saying, hey, how did you reconcile those clubber passages and still remain faithful? And how can I reconcile the scriptures that were used against me and still remain faithful? And so I'm I couldn't be more excited about where we are today because I'm finding people who are wanting to live by the values of Jesus and not by the dogmas of any particular church. And to me, that is that is the reformation that we are living in. And we should be excited about it and we should be living it. And that's what keeps me falling in love with Jesus day in and day out, over and over and over again.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey So, big sigh. I think about if I only had to worry about God language in the Christian church, you know, maybe my my work would be easier, but it has been my work to work through the racism in the LGBTQ community with persons who call themselves Christians. That is the most painful for me. So when we came to Ferguson in August 2014, I came with some people who are communications persons with Reconciling Ministries Network. And prior to that time, we had a lot of conversation about anti-racism with that organization. It was that we had hard conversations and we came down when I came down to Ferguson, was supportive in my work with reconciling by Reconciling Ministries Network. It was it was very painful to look at the videos that our man was putting up on their Facebook site and reading the comments from white gay men, asking the question and white folk asking the question, why would RMN be in Ferguson? What had they to do? What was there? How is that any of our business to be in Ferguson? So I don't I you know, there are a lot of gods that I'd take issue with. And I'm not I'm certainly not of the mind that any of us in the LGBTQ community who claim to be Christians worship the same God.

Dr. Diann L. Neu There's so many ways to enter this, I work ecumenically and interfaith and I just.. God of many names Is my ground of being, if you will. And I think we have to get to that if in this country where we are so politically divided, we're going to cross any divides because this government is just annihilating group after group after group. And if we who come from the faith traditions we say we come from, can't offer something that's going to bridge that nobody is. I don't think that's one response to the god-stuff. My other response is I don't put myself any more in places that are abusive or violent, and that goes for liturgy and ritual. I don't have to go to church every Sunday. I don't want to I want an experience like we had today, this morning that's going to take. For months, I want to hold on to that, I don't want that interrupted by a worship service where I'm going to be insulted by the God who's raised up, are angry at the language that's used. I'm I think we all need to be beyond that or challenge it. I mean, maybe that's the gift of being a Catholic woman standing at the back and protesting over and over again in my seminary days. And it worked. The St. Louis Jesuits do inclusive language. I was amazed. I was the lead singer with them. I challenged Dan Schutte and Rock O'Connor every time when their language was not inclusive. Some of the women at Harvard talk about throwing M&Ms to their professors when they got it right. We can do things like that. We've done things like that.

Audience member Was it like I think it is an issue of hermeneutics and I really agree with the proposition that Maurice is stating about the issue of do we worship the same God? And I I think where I'm at this point is to realize that there's a certain amount of schizophrenia language wise within Christianity. Christians can hover around the risen Christ and that can become an amorphous sort of call to almost anything as opposed to like the Albert Schweitzer in Search for the Historical Jesus. What did Jesus actually do? Who did, whom did he encounter? What was he doing with this thing called the Kingdom of God? And when I start putting and considering those things, it seems to me I'm at a place now as I keep mutating, mobilizing my thoughts is to say that those who are homophobic and racist, misogynistic, etc. are people that are anti-Jesus. They may see themselves as Christian, but in terms of actual human hermeneutics that they're working out of how they define what they're about in their approach, they give is an amorphous sort of Jesus can do anything, whatever or whatever. But he didn't do everything. He did some very specific things, which is to include people and to stop people who try to zoom other people. In the sight of God, we're all equal. And he really, really, really pushed that point. And so I'm at the point saying, I guess along the lines that Morris is talking about, and the invitation he gives us all to think about is to say that we need to really confront that and call it for what it is, which is really people who are with the side of Jesus and those who are outside the side of Jesus. Now, how does that deal with the issue of queer? I guess the the whole issue of how do we deal with a heteronormative society so that anybody that finds themselves outside of that is somebody that sidelines themselves on the side of Jesus because hetero normative realities or as I understand it, does not allow variation. We must all follow the patriarchy. And as I said in one of my groups, what does that have to do? It has to do with seven seconds of male orgasm, seven, seven seconds, seven seconds. As a physician, I know physiology. OK, it's seven seconds. OK, seven seconds. And around that, you know, look at Helen of Troy and the issues there with Agamemnon and all of that and the creation of wars over that seven seconds. Fast forward to all the things that motivate who is zooming whom for, what, seven seconds are left out. And I'm just saying, I know that's a bit of a diversion, but it's still, I think, hits to the central core that

Morris Floyd I was just thinking. We should mention that Rick is a medical doctor, among other claims to think so. He's speaking in very precise clinical terms, which may not be exactly the way we experience it.

Audience Member # 2 It's something that needs to be said. And this is what I'm pushing. It is something if I been you talking about essentialism is our queerness. These are clear, is dependent upon heterosexism. We do. We spend our time. We have the challenge of what you're saying. I don't disagree with it, but how much of our identity, in the theological truth we're trying to get out is us being apologetics for our existence as opposed to claiming ourselves.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey I would say the heteronormativity....

Audience Member # 2 That's what it that's what I'm wrestling with here. And what's next...

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey I think that heteronormativity cannot exist without the complexity, the full complexity of human sexuality.

Audience member #3 I am not an academic and I tend to think in concrete terms because that's the way I can make sense of things and I'm really thinking about the whole use of the word "queer" and how it's either inclusive or exclusive or both. And I had an experience last week of being with United Methodist and I was with Queer Clergy Caucus. That was just started recently. And I'm not a clergy person. And one of the things that they were talking about was that when they named themselves the Queer Clergy Caucus, there were many clergy in the middle part of the country who didn't feel like they could participate because they didn't, they couldn't claim the name queer. And I don't know those folks. I haven't had conversations with them. I'm not sure what all is involved there. But this is a struggle that this new organization is having is like how to name themselves and how to be inclusive. And and I looked at their leadership list. They have 24 people in their leadership and not one of them... no there was one from the Midwest. The rest of them are bicoastal. And so that I think that's a conversation that it's it's good to be having. And somehow it needs to get out into the churches. And also, I wanted to say, just from my own perspective, my local congregation, the liturgy that happens there is really inclusive. The words are God of many names. And and I am grateful for that. And I think as a white person, I can't say that racism exists out there. It exists in me. It exists in us. And I think we just have to keep working at all of these things. And I, I get nervous when I feel like we're labeling other and claiming something that maybe we can't really totally claim either.

Audience Member #4 I think for me, this is hard to speak around all of these folks who know all of these things and have been all of these places. I want to honor the people in the room. I'm a queer Christian. And when I say that, the way I've talked about it in the past in some ways is about the makes and models we bring into this traffic circle with no signs. But I think I've moved a little bit beyond that because I'm thinking about being a queer Christian and the space of reclaiming this word and thinking about the early Christians and the cross who wanted to have a cross be that which they're associated with. In those weeks, months, even years that the tool of death was that. When did that moment happen where they said, this is not my shame. This is not my death. This is who I am. And I think about this often. What does that mean? And I think about we're in the middle of a cultural revolution. And that's the cultural norm that's talking about the essentialism that saying I am not a single thing and not a single essentialist piece, a multiplicity of many, there's many parts of the beautiful diversity that I carry inside of me and I bring everywhere I go. And I'm not going to check one part of the door to be part of the other. And so on my queerness and in my Christianity, I don't want to be summarized to one piece. I want to be all in all spaces and in all ways. And yes, this is about my sexuality because otherwise I could still be in the evangelical Pentecostal church and I could still be present. But no, I'm not because this is about some particularity. So I don't want that erased. I want the multiplicity of it to be there. And I think that's the struggle and that's the challenge. But I wear it as I wear a cross as a Christian would in honor of how we've been. Wonderfully, fearfully, made.

Audience Member #6 Yeah, I, too, am certainly not a theologian. I do feel like there are times when I get completely overwhelmed with, you know, the UMC church now and there's not a MCC in Nashville. And it's a huge church. And they sing whatever that hymn is with "the crimson flood that washes us white as snow . And I just thought, oh, my God, like, how is that possible? And the pastor stood up at the end and said I just was listening to the words to that song that hymn and realizing we can't sing it again. And just as my heart was beginning to settle down, he said The Crimson Tide. We're not singing that in Nashville. Apparently that's some sports reference Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was about football. So obviously had the conversation with him. I was quite accustomed to my conversations at church, but I also don't want to lose that. Yes, sometimes it is just one damn person at a time. But I love our community. I love the body hospitality that Nancy talks about that we have in the queer community. I love that there's any of these guys that I can curl right up in bed with and be just fine and and be loved on and accepted and warmed and I love that I see people changing all the time. I just feel that the Reformation Project and I had a young woman who brought her parents to the elevated conversation in Orlando, who said, I'm so glad you're going to be there, because my parents went to that. And it's the first time that they realized that it was an actual discussion, not a "you there. Let us in." Whatever were you in the mouth until you love us, whatever, you know, that it was actually a conversation. And she said, my dad especially is just involved. And I did a seminar there with the dad who got involved writing me eight years ago about how I was leading his queer daughter astray and was there to present with me because he's made the whole turn. And I sang at his daughter's wedding. You went and his daughter is now and counselor to LGBTQ at-risk youth. And so the circles do close and the seeds do sprout. And I just don't want to lose that in the middle of the horror of having my church sing that song. I don't want to lose that. There are good things happening in that we do have an effect and the ripples are going out and that there's a lot of those seeds will fall on dry land, but a lot of them will take it. And I don't want to lose them.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey So I've been listening and this is why I'm a womanist, OK? Because of some of the conversation, so I don't I think there is a way in which we can hang on to some of the common denominators of life that are healthy and life giving and that every person in the web of humanity will experience, catching a cold, and and hopefully being cared for by someone or some of the some of the common denominators. But at the same time. Demanding the particularity of our experience and demanding that the particularities of our experience and our context are not just on. By persons who demand power and control, so I think this is why I'm a womanist because we understand Western theology. We we've had to digest that. We've had to become experts in it. We've had to sit in classrooms with professors who told us that was it. That was the gold standard and nothing else existed. And yet at the same time, we understood that with all of their brilliance, they were totally ignorant. Yes. When it came to the particularity of our community and other communities. And so I think this for me helps me to think about being a queer lesbian, embracing... Not that I am saying that I demand the erasure of the hetero, the heterosexual community. It is that I demand to be able to exist and to be loved and to be recognized even as I recognize and love others. So I just I think it can be done. But unfortunately, because of the will to power and I'm Michel Foucault here because of the will to power, you kind of always have to tell people, look at you, not today, not today. You won't. Today, ou will not do this. And unfortunately, in our nation, as it stands right now, we've got to we've got to really stand up and say, no, not today. Not today, you won't.

Audience Member #7 And I wanted to thank you for bringing up Foucault because I wanted to say that for me, as I study queer theology, some of the best theology comes from non Christians and non-religious folks. I'm thinking of who Foucault, Butler, Halberstam, Munõz, [unidentifiable]. All these people who have who are challenging us to think outside these theological languages and have actually enriched my own theological languages. And I also want to lift up like Marcella Althaus-Reid, who has challenges to think about that queer theology is embodied theology and sexual and it's relational. And I love that, she says, you know, queer theology is doing theology with underwear. So and you know, and I think that it's when I'm in LGBTQ circles, especially religious ones and specifically Christian ones, we forget or we normalize sexuality to this homonormative/ hetero normative context. And some of my best friends who are more Christian than I am, who aren't Christian, are my friends who are puffs, drag queens, leather daddies hanging out at the bars without windows. And they're doing theology more than I am doing theology in the classroom. And they are teaching me how to be embodied and in flesh and to enjoy my body. Because for so long, Christianity has denied that, that the body is important, that is incarnate, and that is who God is. God is embodied.

Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey Pulse nightclub.

Audience Member I think it should be called Paulinity instead of Christianity, because the hatred of the body, the fear of the body, I think First Corinthians seven does it all by itself. it more than carries half of the weight that sexuality and desire and in it's all problematic and scary and should be put away. So I think the greatest thing to happen to me in my seminary education is when I finally came to the conclusion that Paul did not die on the cross. Jesus did.

Morris Floyd I think we're going to hear and remember that we are very close to the scheduled end of our time, and so I would just offer thanks to all of you for participating with us and to my colleagues here in this conversation group for the wonderful thoughts.