Ep. 59: Queer Jesus w/ Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk

CW: Adult Language.

Christians were never meant to be normal, we've always been "holy troublemakers" who do not accept the world as it is but who insist on the world becoming the way God wants it to be. In the words of our friends at The Center for Prophetic Imagination, “A world where all walls of alienation are torn down as we live justly with one another.” From the very beginning, Jesus called us to be a beloved community of resistance to the brutal normalcy of a world dominated by the powers and principalities of darkness. Often, that darkness comes to us cloaked in the status quo, in the normative ideology of white, cis gender, patriarchal ideology. But racism, transphobia, homophobia, economic injustice, violence, patriarchy, and white supremacy are only normal in a world dominated by oppression. 

In this prophetic episode, we talk with Ashe Van Steenwyk about what it might look like for you and I to "confront not only the institutions and systems and structures that control and constrain our material lives, but also the myths, beliefs, and ideas that shape and bind our imaginations." And what better way to do that than to embody the radical, subversive way of Jesus who came to upend life as we know it.

Some of the questions we seek to answer in this episode include: 

What do we mean when we say Jesus was queer?

How do we discern what is real?

How do we push back against injustice without losing our souls?

How do we not only resist evil, but redeem evil?

What does it look like to carve out new possibilities in a world of forced conformity?

What if everything we call 'normal' is really just evil in disguise?

What if what we believe to be profane is actually holy and what we have been told is orthodoxy is just a set of lies created to keep us in line? 

How do we resist dominance and power? And where have even liberal and progressive Christians been captivated by oppressive systems and structures?

Bio

M. Ashe (she/they) is the co-founder of the Center for Prophetic Imagination. She is a writer, teacher, organizer, and spiritual director. For nearly 15 years, she has sown seeds of subversive spirituality throughout North America. Ashe is the author of That Holy Anarchist, unKingdom, and A Wolf at the Gate. You can find out more about Ashe here. The Center for Prophetic Imagination works to subvert the existing social order through deep discernment culminating with creative action. Check out their online resources and online classes to learn more about what it means to be a holy troublemaker in our world.

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Show notes:

http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/queer-jesus

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This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.