calls us to the same.
Precursors Descending
The theological question of the meaning of the individual as context and source in relation to God descends from a long line of non-conformist theologies and thoughts. In the following study, I will not only show that my line of questioning and constructivist queer theology is not new, but also that it aligns with tradition in challenging non-normativity. In other words, I will attempt to illustrate what I understand my intellectual lineage to be in the construction of this project. I will begin in Ecclesiastes and end in modern queer theology and theory.
“I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind» (Eccl 1:12–14). The words of Ecclesiastes describe the existential crisis that plagues the minds of humans who seek meaning in the world and find only wind. In fact, the entire canonical book of Ecclesiastes is filled with individual speculation and striving for meaning. The canonical book of Job is a description of the search for meaning in the midst of suffering in the early Jewish existential tradition. These two books present scriptural examples and descriptions of the constant struggle to know whether or not the individual is able to connect meaning to God, the other, or the self.
Many centuries later, Søren Kierkegaard began to explore the meaning of existence and faith in the midst of futility. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard consistently describes the need for a leap of faith or love to overcome the cyclical nature of existential thinking. Faith becomes the way out, but faith is difficult to come by. The leap takes a concentration on both the inward and the outward.6 In section 125, “The Madman” of The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaims,
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?7
Nietzche’s response to Kierkegaard might have been that the task or leap of faith is impossible in the modern age. For Nietzsche, life itself was the ultimate revelation of the futility of life and that God was indeed dead.8 The juxtaposition and struggle between the inward and desire for the outward, however one describes either construct, is foundational to the thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
The main premise of Martin Buber’s I and Thou is that humans find meaning in relationships. There are two primary categories of relationships: first, our relationships to objects, and second, our relationship to that which is beyond objects. In order to experience God, one must be connected to the immanent and the transcendent. Buber provides much room for a theology that is connected to the individual and that which is beyond the individual.9 Along with Buber, Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time posits that the questioning of the self and the ultimate is at the root of human nature.10 Throughout his works, Jean-Paul Sartre argues that there is no creator, or thou, and “we are condemned to be free.”11 In Being and Nothingness, Sartre argues that being is foundational and nothing else. Buber, Heidegger, and Sartre combine to illustrate the importance of consistently questioning relationships as the essence of being—both the relationship to the self and the relationship or lack thereof to that which is beyond.
Paul Tillich wrote of the courage to be. Being was Tillich’s fundamental theological and philosophical construct. For Tillich, there was something supreme about having the courage to exist: “Being can be described as the power of being which resists non-being.”12 Tillich also described God as the God above God.13 In the theology of Tillich, the being is consistently important, and any experience or connection to a semblance of God happens from the being or the context. In 1961, Gabriel Vahanian published The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era. Vahanian proclaimed that God was dead to the modern secular mind and that God needed to be reimagined or resurrected. Vahanian and the other theologians of the Death of God movement created much theological room for theologians to reimagine God. The Death of God movement and the highly contextual ideas of Paul Tillich combined to inspire the creation of liberation theologies from oppressed and marginalized populations that flowed from context.
In Black Theology and Black Power and A Black Theology of Liberation, James Cone uses his own experiences and the wider experiences of African-Americans to create a theology that posits that God is always most closely described by and connected to the marginalized and the suffering. In these works, Cone pushes the idea that God is black. Later, in God of the Oppressed, Cone argues, “What could Karl Barth possibly mean for black students who had come from the cotton fields of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, seeking to change the structure of their lives in a society that had defined black as non-being?”14 For Cone, previous constructions of theology and God were unable to speak to the needs of African-Americans, so previous theologies that seemed to leave out the black experience needed to be allowed to die in favor of reconstructing something new. In A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, Gustavo Gutiérrez constructs a theology that speaks of God’s dwelling and identification with the poor. The path to the divine liberation of the self comes through the liberation of the poor. Gutiérrez pushes the idea that God is poor. In her Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, Mary Daly uses ideas of a divine feminine to reimagine God. For Daly, to say that God is masculine is blasphemous. Through race, class, and gender, Cone, Gutiérrez, and Daly sought to create a God who truly was incarnate in “the least of these.” In the coming decades, many other theologians followed suit, daring to believe that liberation would be found in naming their people as the contextual center of God.
In 1968, Anglican priest H. W. Montefiore published a controversial essay entitled “Jesus, the Revelation of God.” In this essay, Montefiore argues that Jesus’ celibacy could have been due to homosexual leanings and that this might provide further evidence of Jesus’ consistent identification with the outcasts and the friendless.15 Troy Perry published The Lord Is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay in 1972. This apologetical text describes Perry’s experiences in founding the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches and argues for the full inclusion of the broadly defined gay community. Also in 1972, Howard Wells, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of New York, wrote a provocative essay entitled “Gay God, Gay Theology.” Wells asserts that gay people have a right to God and declares the liberating redeemer to be our “gay God.”16 In 1980, in the seminal Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, John Boswell argues that homophobia was not a part of the early church and that the church should accept gay people for who they are. Montefiore, Perry, Wells, and Boswell all represent the early stages of formulating a queer theology, and those who followed would bring a high level of diversity.
Carter Heyward’s Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God, published in 1989, draws on contextual embodied experience to declare that God not only is present in the romantic relationships of women with each other, but also exists in the very physical sexual acts two women share. In 1990, Robert E. Goss set forth a similar liberation-based theology around gay and lesbian identity in Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto. Though Goss uses queer language in Jesus Acted Up, it would not be until the publication of his Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus Acted Up in 2002 that Goss would fully explore queer theory within queer theology. Marcella Althaus-Reid took queer theology in a more indecent and systematic direction with the publication of her work Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics in 2000. The text discusses masturbation, erotic scents, sexual encounters, and much more with the idea that both God and theology are happening in these moments. Althaus-Reid does much to take queer theology in a broader direction through indecency. Patrick Cheng posits that the objective of queer theology is to challenge binaries and boundaries in his 2011 work, Radical Love. Through the radical love of God, Cheng argues that all boundaries should be dissolved. Cheng’s recent books, From Sin to Amazing Grace: Queering