Queer Theology

Have you ever wondered how Queer Theology started? In today’s episode, we walk down memory lane as we answer a question from Brandon. We take you on a journey on how it all began, what was the main objective when we created Queer Theology. We queer Psalm 23 which is a bonus text. It’s also very meaningful for us because this is the first text that we covered as the first episode of Queer Theology podcast. Moreover, this text is a listener’s request from Morgan, and also a lectionary text for the week. Stay tuned and enjoy today’s podcast. In this episode, we talk about: shout out to Amy who joined 2 months ago [5:10] a listener question from Brandon about how Fr. Shay and Brian started Queer Theology [5:35] how the name Queer Theology and its work started out [7:00] our goals and how they came to be [8:50] “Queer Theology is good news for straight cisgender folks as well.” [11:35] we queer a bonus text — a listener requested text [14:00] US feels like a dark valley [16:33] A caution against reading this text as “we’re saved, but screw everyone else” [18:40] food for thought: this passage is not for everyone all the time [20:00] grace and forgiveness [21:34] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com  Link(s) mentioned in this episode: Introducing Queer Theology’s Weekly Bible Podcast – Psalm 23 Queer the Bible Waitlist: queertheology.com/queerbible Can Straight Peole Queer Theology? QueerTheology.com/community Psalm 23 A psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd.     I lack nothing. He lets me rest in grassy meadows;     he leads me to restful waters;     he keeps me alive. He guides me in proper paths     for the sake of his good name.   Even when I walk through the darkest valley,     I fear no danger because you are with me. Your rod and your staff—     they protect me.   You set a table for me     right in front of my enemies. You bathe my head in oil;     my cup is so full it spills over! Yes, goodness and faithful love     will pursue me all the days of my life,     and I will live in the Lord’s house     as long as I live. Photo by Michael Mouritz The post Walking Through the Dark Valley – Psalm 23 appeared first on Queer Theology.

In today’s episode, we answer a question from Forest on how to handle and cope with Christian friends who are not accepting of your queerness. Forest also asks: “How do I refute their claims that homosexuality is a sin?” We also queered a text from Exodus 17:1-7 where we hear a relatable story of people being afraid to face changes, of people being scared of facing growth and the pain that comes along with it. Listen on and we hope you’ll enjoy today’s show. Episode TranscriptBrian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast! Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. FS: Hello, hello. Welcome back to the Queer Theology podcast. This is the podcast for Sunday, March 15th, 2020 and we are super excited to be back with you again. So Brian, what is new in your world? B: I am serving botched carpenter realness these days. So my good friend who I used to be boyfriends with, who I no longer boyfriends with, and we don’t have a good word for it because we still love each other dearly, Matt. He is an amazing metal worker. He makes artisanal, brass lighting and also, home textures like knobs, hooks, and apron holders. They’re beautiful. He’s got his own study and he sells some staff on Etsy: mattalfordstudios.com. He made my cross and triangle necklace for me. But so he is making me some lamps to go next to my bed that are wood, metal, and rope. That just looks really cool. So yesterday we went to Home Depot to pick out the wood that we’re gonna make the stuff out of. Then cut it up and sand it. I wanna help him but he’s not letting me help him much because he’s afraid I’m gonna mess things up. So I’m providing moral support while he is making this beautiful lamp. So I’m just really excited about it and it feels cool to have — to me it’s gonna be functional, and look pretty, and also be meaningful to me. So that’s sort of been my crafty Nick Offerman weekend. What about you Shay? FS: Yeah, it’s a big submission season for playwriting. I just ended up opening two shows for Uprising Theatre Company. Well, one show for Uprising – a beautiful new piece called “Doctor Voynich and Her Children” by Leanna Keyes and then opened up a show that I was assistant director on at Mix Blood Theatre. It was a trans and queer pop-rock musical, super fun. So now that both of those shows are open and running, I can focus a little bit on my own writing again which feels really good. And it’s submission season which means putting your work out there to a million different places, so you can get told “no” a million different times. So that hopefully, you can get one or two “yeses” in the mix. So I’m doing a lot of that. I also just finished reading a trilogy of books that I wanna shoutout. It’s called The Truly Devious series it’s by Maureen Johnson. It’s a young adult trilogy of novels. And it’s a great, fun, mystery story. But what I love about the series is the most casually inclusive series I think I’ve ever read of different body types, different abilities, and a non-binary character, and queerness, and the main character has panic attacks. It’s all presented so matter-of-factly and doesn’t feel like inclusion for inclusion’s sake. It very much feels like, yeah! This is the world we live in. Some people use canes to walk, and some people use they, them pronouns. It’s not a thing. It’s just presented in the book. So I love this series. The whole series is out now which is great because I did not realize it was a series when I started reading it. And book 1 ends on a cliffhanger and I was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I had to wait a year for the next book and it sucked! Anyway, the whole series is out now, Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson. Get it. Love it. It’s super fun. B: That sounds so awesome. And also Maureen Johnson makes me think of rent.  Before we dive in, this is just a friendly reminder that this podcast is made possible by over 125 supporters on Patreon. FS: Our patrons not only help to keep this show on the air but also support all of the free resources we create over at QueerTheology.com. Articles, videos, PDF guides, courses, and all sorts of stuff. So thank you to all of our Patreon supporters. B: And in keeping with our tradition, we have another Patreon supporter shout out this week. This week our shout out goes out to Emily England who has been a supporter for a couple of months and is also a close friend of Shay’s! Thank you so much, Emily! It’s great to see our name on there. You rock! FS: If you enjoy this show and want to support it, you can that for as little as $2 per month at patreon.com/queertheology. You can learn more about why we need your support and check out the perks, at patreon.com/queertheology. Okay, on to the show! B: Our question today comes from Forest who asked: “How do you cope with your Christian friends not accepting who you are? And how can I refute their claims that homosexuality is a sin?”  Shay, what do you say to that? FS: This is a really tough question because I think there are two different things happening here, right? There’s this question about how can I convince my Christian friends that their views about homosexuality are wrong? So I’m gonna tackle that one first and say, honestly you can’t. If your Christian friends are not in a space where they’re willing to be challenged on their theological beliefs, having that conversation over and over again is actually not gonna be helpful to them or to you. I’ve talked about this before on this podcast about going into the Rob Bell communication workshop. One of the things that people had asked Rob was “How do you convince people who think you’re wrong?” And he’s like, “You don’t. I don’t spend or waste time on them.” I think that’s an important thing to remember. That it’s not our job to convince people, it’s not our responsibility. That work can also really be toxic for us to be stuck in. So my first answer is unhook from that work and stop trying to do that work.  But the coping piece is different. These are people that you care about and that you presumably want to stay in some kind of relationship with. I think that you need to figure out for yourself where your boundaries are around that thing. How close can you actually be with these people if they don’t accept all of who you are? Can you maybe go out to dinner with them and talk about things you all agree with. But if you’re gonna talk about relationships that’s off the table, right? Figuring out for yourself what some of your boundaries are to protect your own heart and soul, I think, is really important when interacting with people who don’t accept all of who you are. Brian, what about you? B: I was gonna say something similar and that the answer to one is, I don’t know. It’s gonna be really hard to cope if you’re constantly trying to convince them that it’s okay to be LGBTQ. Everything that Shay just said about sometimes you have to walk away when you can’t convince people, it’s not our job. We’ve talked about that twice on the podcast: Jesus in two different places or two different gospels in Mark 6 and in Luke 10. Instructing his disciples to go and spread the gospel but then if the people there aren’t willing to hear the news and are closed down to it, then they’re just gonna leave and shake the dust off your sandals as you leave. Figuring that out is so important that some people wanna engage, wanna learn, and wanna grow, and we should absolutely be investing our time and energy in those relationships. And some people are closed down, they don’t care, or they’re asking questions but it’s not in good faith. It’s to trick you or to wear you down. It’s our job to suss out that difference. All the time that we spend running in circles with people who have no interest in actually learning or hearing, is time that we can’t be spending either with people who do genuinely want to learn and grow, or with people who nourish, and feed us, and support us. So that we can grow. So that we can be better equipped to move out into the world. We’ll put links to both of those in the show notes for this episode at QueerTheology.com/320, but figuring out those boundaries is the work. We also have a little mini-series on self-care and figuring out boundaries around people who are unaffirming. So we will put a link to that in the show notes of this episode, again QueerTheology.com/320 or you can pop right to that series at QueerTheology.com/selfcare.  FS: Just a reminder that if you’ve got a question for the podcast, we would love to tackle it. You can send it to connect@queertheology.com. You can either send it as just an email with the question in there. Or if you want to record your question on an audio recorder, you can do it on your phone, you can send us your audio clip and we will put into future podcasts. If you need or want to remain anonymous with your question, just let us know that when you send the email. B: Okay! Let’s open up our Bibles and queer this text. Today we’re taking a look at Exodus 17:1-7. I will read it to you now from the Common English Bible. The whole Israelite community broke camp and set out from the Sin desert to continue their journey, as the Lord commanded. They set up their camp at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people argued with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why are you arguing with me? Why are you testing the Lord?” But the people were very thirsty for water there, and they complained to Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What should I do with this people? They are getting ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of Israel’s elders with you. Take in your hand the shepherd’s rod that you used to strike the Nile River, and go. I’ll be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Hit the rock. Water will come out of it, and the people will be able to drink.” Moses did so while Israel’s elders watched. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites argued with and tested the Lord, asking, “Is the Lord really with us or not?” Okay, Shay. There’s some stuff in here that I think is really interesting. What do you make of this text and how does queerness inform it? FS: I love this text! I mean I love how snarky and crabby Moses is, pretty much all the time. I especially love this text because here we have, the people of Israel have just spent generations in slavery. Legit slavery. They have been freed and in their very first bits of freedom they are pissy and cranky because it’s hard. From the outside, I’m “What the hell? How can you not understand that you are free now! This is better than what you had just left.” And also, I see some of myself and the queer community in this text as well. We talked a lot in the Faithful Sexuality Course of: it can be really difficult to change, and grow, and confront stuff about yourself that you don’t like. But also grow into a new way of being – that can be a painful process. It can feel the stuckness that you were in is better than the pain of the growth that you are experiencing. So that strikes me about this passage: that this is part of the human condition, is that we would rather stay stuck and miserable, and be familiar with our stuckness and miserableness than we would go through the work and pain of actually growing and getting to the promised land. So that’s the first thing that comes up for me in this text, and sitting with that in myself, and also making that observation about community as well. What about you? B: So I studied Religion in college and in one of the first classes that I took, we looked at the Exodus. My professor was a Rabbi and he said to us something very in passing – about how the Exodus didn’t historically happen. And there was no archaeological evidence to support it, and there was no other corroborating census or historical records. It just – never say never, but almost certainly didn’t historically happen. And I had my mind blown! I was like, “What are you talking about? That’s not true!” His point was it might not be historically true, but there is still truth to this text. I remember being, “You’re a rabbi, you’re supposed to believe this even more. What do you mean?” It blew my mind – stick with me for a second, that I think that I come back to that often and I think it’s important to remember here that there’s one way to read this text: which I think you can get some value out of. By reading it as if it happened or as if you’re a character in the story. To say, “What might I learn from this text as it happened?” Then there’s another way that you can approach it to try and get some more information out of it. To say, “If this is a story, why does this story matter? Why did this community tell this story, and how did this story end up in the Bible? And what then does that tell us about ourselves? And about God?” And sometimes, the answer is the exact same thing, as if it was historically accurate. Sometimes it just sheds new light on this. One of the things that sticks out to me that there is this – when I’m approaching from that second angle, there is this unmistakable truth that God cares about our physical well-being. That God cares about the here and now. And earlier in Exodus, God led Israel out of slavery. And here God is like, you need water… we’re gonna get you some water. The here and the now matters and God is in the business of taking care of our needs. There is something there about Moses’ snarky about this, and they decided to call it this place, but there is something of asking, “Is the Lord really with us or not?” In this text, the Lord’s answer to that question was: “Here’s water. Yes, I am.” So I think that later in a Christian scripture, Jesus talks about – and I always say this, judging the tree by its fruit. That the proof is in the pudding. So as we’re in various communities, it also relates to folks who are in conservative Christian or un-affirming communities. And our question from earlier today, it’s worth asking, “Is the Lord really with us?” What do we see that testifies to sort of the work of God in our communities? Yeah, so I kinda dig that. FS: As we’re getting ready to do a course on queering a Bible, we’ve got a fun five-day challenge coming up. It’s gonna be a really cool interactive photo challenge on Instagram. All of the details are gonna be at QueerTheology.com/challenge. So you can head on over there, find out more about what it is and how to participate. But basically, you’re gonna take a photo each day for five days as part of this challenge. We’re gonna join together as a big community to do this. So it’s gonna be a whole lot of fun. So go to QueerTheology.com/challenge and sign up for that, and get more details in your inbox. B: Looking forward to going through that, and hanging with you on Instagram, and we will see you next week. [outro music plays] B: The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at QueerTheology.com which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.  FS: To dive into more of the action, visit us at QueerTheology.com. You can also connect with us online: on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and Instagram. B: We’ll see you next week. Download the transcript (PDF) In this episode, we talk about: Brian’s handmade lamp made by a special friend [0:41] Fr. Shay’s theater shows and that submission season is coming up [2:17] Truly Devious Series by Maureen Johnson – book recommendation [3:02] shout out to Emily England who is a friend of Fr. Shay and has been a supporter for months now [4:57] a listener question from Forest on handling non-accepting, Christian friends [5:34] you can’t convince people who think you are wrong – stop trying to do that work [6:05] figure out your boundaries when you are around these people [7:14] invest your time and energy in the right relationships [8:45] how being stuck is more favorable than accepting the pains of growth [13:17] God cares about us – even our physical well being [16:13] Instagram photo challenge [17:42] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com  Link(s) mentioned in this episode: Shake It Off – Luke 10:1-11 Shake It Off, Shake It Off – Mark 6:1-13 QueerTheology.com/selfcare Queering the Bible waitlist: queertheology.com/queerbible QueerTheology.com/challenge Exodus 17:1-7 The whole Israelite community broke camp and set out from the Sin desert to continue their journey, as the Lord commanded. They set up their camp at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people argued with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink. Moses said to them, “Why are you arguing with me? Why are you testing the Lord?” But the people were very thirsty for water there, and they complained to Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What should I do with this people? They are getting ready to stone me.” The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of Israel’s elders with you. Take in your hand the shepherd’s rod that you used to strike the Nile River, and go. I’ll be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Hit the rock. Water will come out of it, and the people will be able to drink.” Moses did so while Israel’s elders watched. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites argued with and tested the Lord, asking, “Is the Lord really with us or not?” Photo by John Salvino The post Safe in Stuckness – Exodus 17:1-7 appeared first on Queer Theology.

Today, we talk about a question from a listener who wished to remain anonymous. We answer the question about being a closeted person while being part of a conservative denomination, and wanting to speak the truth without endangering himself, and without accidentally outing himself. We also take a look at Matthew 17:1-9 which we’ve already covered some years ago. Our stand about this passage is still the same: we still believe that this was Jesus’ coming out. In this text, Jesus has shown us his human side which is very relatable especially for queer folks. So take a listen and see how we queered this text! In this episode, we talk about: Fr. Shay’s fire experience and survivor’s guilt [0:40] Brian’s support for Peter who is running the LA marathon [1:40] a shout out to Akeem J. Brown who is relatively a new member of Queer Theology [4:42] a listener question about speaking to a conservative denomination without outing himself (closeted member) [5:12] prioritize your safety — especially if you are a minor or a kid [6:33] the downfall of being in a conservative community [7:53] “What is keeping me in this community?” [9:25] we queered this text from Matthew 17:1-9 [12:46] a queer lens can help us see a text in a new light [14:47] how this text is Jesus’ coming out [16:01] Jesus’ human moment [17:25] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com  Link(s) mentioned in this episode: Queer Theology Podcast #317 – https://www.queertheology.com/317 Queer Theology Podcast #311 – https://www.queertheology.com/311 Queer Theology’s Youtube Channel: queertheology.com/youtube Queering the Bible waitlist: queertheology.com/queerbible Matthew 17:1-9 Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them to the top of a very high mountain. He was transformed in front of them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Jesus. Peter reacted to all of this by saying to Jesus, “Lord, it’s good that we’re here. If you want, I’ll make three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, look, a bright cloud overshadowed them. A voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!” Hearing this, the disciples fell on their faces, filled with awe. But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”  When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Don’t tell anybody about the vision until the Human One is raised from the dead.” Photo by Andres F. Uran The post When Jesus Came Out – Matthew 17:1-9 appeared first on Queer Theology.

In today’s episode, we answer a question from Jesse who asked us what kind of historical context do we need to look into in order for us to appreciate the message that the Bible authors are trying to communicate? We also queered Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 which is basically about the original sin: God’s warning, the snake’s temptation, and the woman giving in to the temptation. But in queering this text, we are reminded that there is nothing shameful about our bodies. The man and woman clothing themselves have nothing to do with shame, but it was because of their newfound knowledge and understanding of the world. Episode TranscriptBrian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast! Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. FS: Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to the Queer Theology podcast. This is the podcast for Sunday, March 1st and we are super excited to be back with you again. But before we dive in Brian, I would love to hear what’s going on in your world. B: Oh! It is the “thick of winter” and I don’t mean to brag, I know you hate this, but it is so nice here in Los Angeles, but more specifically, I’ve been reflecting on my own mental health journey. Some of you may recall I get really bad seasonal affective disorder in the winter, or at least I used to in New York City. I’ve noticed this winter, a few times where I’ve been what I would describe as depressed, and I’m… Oh, being in warm weather doesn’t magically solve my depression, but I can feel like… Oh, this is what used to happen in New York and then this would set me into a spiral that would knock me on my ass for a month, or two. And now, it knocks me on my ass for a day or two. So that has been like nice to know that this thing that I was able to do — move, which not everyone can do has been helpful for my mental health. Also, a reminder that there’s not any one magic solution that – just moving is not going to fix, I’m still prone to depression and I still need to talk about my feelings, and do other types of self-care practices, and I have on my list to try and find a specialist that I can afford with my crappy health insurance. Because I know even though it’s better than it was before, I know that it could still be better. It’s always a process which sometimes I just wanna have arrived, and be “fixed” and it’ll all just be easy, but it’s nice to be easier. I’m also looking into a psychiatrist to get back on some medication that I used to be on that I had a store of that I’m now on and so yeah.  The health insurance industry in America is just bananas. I posted about this on our Instagram stories about medication both as a sacrament, and also LGBTQ healthcare as a Christian issue. The world is a mess and I wish healthcare was easier, but I am thankful for the ways in which I’ve been able to improve over the past year. So that’s what I’m doing on these days. What about you? FS: Yeah, so I have just started assistant directing a musical, of all things here in Minneapolis, which is wild! It’s very much not my typical wheel house, I don’t really do musicals. But this is a really interesting and fascinating piece about what it means to be trans, what it means to be an Asian-American person, what it means to be finding your identity. So it’s a really beautiful piece. I’m excited to be a part of it. It’s opening in March here. So it’s gonna be fun. It’s nice to be in a different role in a theater production. Usually, I’m either a writer or just producing work. So this gets me to be in the mix with the actors a little bit. So it’s been a fun adventure so far. I’m glad that I get the opportunity to do that. It’s at a theater that I’ve been working with in Minneapolis as their trans-advisory council liaison. Which is just a fancy word for getting a bunch of trans people together to help them think through the ways that they are welcoming trans artists and trans patrons into their space? And really taking a look at, what is your paperwork look like? What is your building look like? Are you actually extending the welcome that you say you are extending? Which feels very much like the work we do at Queer Theology at churches, right? Saying where are your bathrooms? Are they accessible to trans people? And do you ever have trans people speak at your church? And if so, when? Do you only bring them out on Trans Day of Remembrance? Right? All of those different things. It’s been fun to do that in a different context. In a context that I also love: I love the church, I love the theater, and I want both of those communities to be better about actually living out what they say they feel about trans folks.  B: Before we dive in, just a friendly reminder that this podcast is brought to you by our supporters over on Patreon which are now just over 140. So thank you to everyone over there. FS: Our patrons not only help to keep this show on the air but also support all of the many, many free resources we create over at QueerTheology.com. Stuff like: articles, videos, PDF guides, and all sorts of things that we keep rolling out more of. So thank you to all of our Patreon supporters. B: This week, we want to give a shout out to Jessica Luna. Jessica, thank you so so much for your support. Every single dollar counts and it means the world to have you part of this little family with us. FS: If you enjoy this show and want to support it, you can that for as little as $2 per month at patreon.com/queertheology. You can learn more about why we need your support and check out all of the perks, at patreon.com/queertheology. B: Okay, let’s get on to the show! FS: So this week we’ve got a listener question, oh it’s a good one, so here we go. What kind of historical context would be required to truly appreciate what the writers of the Bible were trying to communicate? And this question comes from Jesse. B: That is a great question, Jesse and I think it’s so important that you’re asking it. So many people gloss right over context, or if they’re asking about context: think that that means a few sentences before and a few sentences after whatever verse you’re looking at. I think that the answer is: all of the contexts, and would also that there’s one amount of context that will give you all of the answers that you have to arrive to. It’s not black or white, on or off. It’s like, the more that you know, the deeper you can understand it, and the more nuance you can bring to the text. It’s like peeling back an onion: there’s layers, and layers, and layers. And also, just at a top-level context about the way that the Bible is written that oftentimes scripture is intended to mean multiple different things to the same person, or different things to different audiences, or different things to different times and places. Even if you know all of the possible historical context and all of the exact translations — it happened 2000 to 5000 to 10000 years ago it’s not possible to know all of it. But even if it were possible, it’s not like you would arrive at the one definitive meaning of the text. The multiplicity of meanings is often baked into the text. Also, historical context is an important key component to it. There’s also literary context and religious context as well, all factor into understanding the Bible. I studied Religion in undergrad and I’m still, 15 years later, learning more. Shay, what would you add to this, Mr. Seminarian graduate and ordained priest? FS: Yeah. All of what you said Brian is absolutely true. For me, I think it sometimes can be helpful to figure out what section of the Bible are you most jazzed about diving into? Because I think, like you said Brian, this idea of historical context right? Even just the events of the Bible spanned like years, and years, and years, and years. So like we’re talking about a lot of different historical contexts. So there’s a part of me that’s, okay let’s just narrow it down. Which section do you want to look at? I have found that one of the things that were super helpful for me in starting with historical context is really just starting with Rome. Rome and the Gospels, and figuring out how to place the Gospels in a Roman context. That wet my whistle for the whole thing and got me really jazzed about it. So then it inspired me to keep on doing that study. So that’s always a great place to start and feels like a helpful place to start. I also think that overarching in all of Scripture, there’s two really main pieces: that’s exile and empire. If you can start to dive in about what Scripture text were written in the midst of exile and what might that mean. And which text were written in the midst of empire and what might that mean. That’s also a great place to start.  We have an entire course on this that we did last fall. It was called How to Read the Bible and basically looked at all of the different kinds of context. And we are gonna do that course again, so if you are interested in finding out when we’re gonna do that course again, and getting on the waitlist. You can go to QueerTheology.com/courses and find out more about that. I would suggest checking out — a great place to start is one of the books by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, they have a book on The First Christmas, The Last Week — so that’s like The Passion, and also The First Paul. Those are really great accessible books for folks who wanna know a little bit more about where to start reading context. B: And we will put the exact names, and titles, and spellings, and links to where you can find them to the show notes of this episode which you can find at QueerTheology.com/318.  FS: Throughout the week we’re diving deeper into questions like these and more, everything from coming out, families, dating, reading the Bible, creativity, all sorts of this stuff inside of Sanctuary Collective. We would love to have you be a part of an international community of LGBTQ Christians and straight, cisgender supporters. You can find out more about that community and join at QueerTheology.com/community. B: Ok, let’s open up our Bibles and queer this text! FS: This week we are taking a look at Genesis 2:15-17 and 3:1-7, it’s one of those wonky split passages again. I’m gonna go ahead and read it for us as we get started. This is from the Common English Bible. The Lord God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it. The Lord God commanded the human, “Eat your fill from all of the garden’s trees; but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because on the day you eat from it, you will die!” The snake was the most intelligent of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say that you shouldn’t eat from any tree in the garden?” The woman said to the snake, “We may eat the fruit of the garden’s trees but not the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. God said, ‘Don’t eat from it, and don’t touch it, or you will die.’” The snake said to the woman, “You won’t die! God knows that on the day you eat from it, you will see clearly and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The woman saw that the tree was beautiful with delicious food and that the tree would provide wisdom, so she took some of its fruit and ate it, and also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then they both saw clearly and knew that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made garments for themselves. B: I am so excited. We just talked about this text! It’s been a minute. So this text is a foundational text of the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, of religious studies. Everyone — if you studied religion in any sort of way: casually, at church, in seminary, for a degree. You’re gonna talk about this. So there’s a few things going on here and this pairs so well with the question we got this week about context. There are just so many different contexts that you can look at this from to illuminate new meaning. That just feels especially important because the creation story in Christianity we call this part of it “The Fall” is so well known that people have ideas about this story that are based on what they’ve been told about this story, and not necessarily what’s actually in the story itself. And so I think going back to it and reading it with fresh eyes is super important. And super illuminating.  A few things that pop out to me is that nowhere in the text does it actually say that the snake is the devil, it just calls it the snake. The snake was not wrong. God was not necessarily right in this text: God said, “Don’t eat from it or don’t touch it or you will die.” And they ate, and they did not in fact die. People said that well, they died later. Also, like nowhere in the text does it say that before they ate they were immortal. And that because of this they were gonna die a whole lifetime later, right? There’s just not actually present. So I think if you didn’t have all of this baggage or preconceived notion about what this text says before you approached it, I think I will read this and be like: “Oh well, they didn’t die. And in fact, they learned something about themselves that they didn’t know before: that they were naked.” And so the snake was not necessarily wrong. And that is a progression in the Hebrew Bible. That the way that humans understood God shifted overtime.    And also, that because of literary criticism which we mentioned earlier. Different communities were writing about God in different ways. Like Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 were actually most certainly, different sources that were combined. Over the course of history, God goes from this anthropomorphized type person who says things that are not always don’t immediately happen that sometimes at one point doesn’t know where someone is, walks around to eventually becoming this sort of more out there, in the sky type person. More of a spirit. We began to use different languages and different metaphors for how we understand God and how we relate to God. So that’s just something to note and to pull at that and say, well what is this version of God have to teach us? What did that God mean to this community? What might we learn from that text? How do we, when we pair this story with other stories of God, that are also in the Bible? What is that evolving or multi-faceted view of God has to teach us? I think that’s my initial thought. What about you Shay? FS: Yeah. I think that this passage is so intriguing. Because it feels almost impossible to read it without the baggage. I think that’s one of the things I struggle even now. I was reading this and I’m remembering right being taught that Adam and Eve, which they’re not even named in this passage either, so we’re making the assumption that that’s who we’re talking about. That one of the things that came along with their nakedness was them being ashamed. But I’m reading this again and it doesn’t say that. It just says that they knew that they were naked and so they then made garments for themselves. We can maybe extrapolate that it was because of that noticing that they felt uncomfortable or shame or whatever that’s why they wanted clothing. But again, we’re kinda bringing that to the text and I think that all of the angst around human bodies and human sexuality that the evangelical church, in particular, has placed upon scripture is like part of what I’m reading into this text because of my own history and baggage. I think that you’re take on it of like they learned something new about themselves actually feels much more healthy and holistic of like, this isn’t necessarily a moment of shame or “sin”. But it is a message and a moment of self-agency, where the humans are making decisions for themselves, and they’re noticing new things about themselves, and they’re taking care of themselves in a different way. We can think of maybe the shift of babies who will run around naked at any given moment, to being able to take care of themselves, and dress themselves, right? So could this be instead of a text about the fall of humanity, instead be a text about humanity coming into its own? Like learning more about what it means to be human and how they’re gonna interact with the diety that has placed them in this space. B: Yeah, and one of the things that we talked about when I was studying this text in school was looking at it from — we looked at this story of Adam and Eve, and the garden creation from the Hebrew Bible, from the Christian Bible perspective, and the Quran’s perspective. To see what are the similarities and how are they different. In the Christian scriptures, they also talk about this story and the Christian scriptures talk about this same story in a different way than the Hebrew Bible talks about it. I think that noticing that is important and it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Christian version is the right way and that they’re correcting the Hebrew Bible. It also doesn’t mean that because the Christian Bible is different than this one, that the Hebrew Bible is the right one. It’s just like these are how different communities, at different times were making sense of this story. To your point of how you were shifting the way you think about this in the Christian scripture, it’s definitely framed as a fall. But what we talked about in school is that this is — in the Hebrew scripture it’s a lateral move. They move out, sideways from the garden, not down. That’s a value-neutral journey that they’re taking out. They certainly do leave the garden and can’t re-enter the garden as a result of this action, but that’s not necessarily, here at least, a bad thing. It is perhaps, like you were saying, a place for growth, and transformation, and a new way of relating to ourselves and to God. It’s telling the story of what’s happening.  FS: We dive into text like this a lot at QueerTheology.com and we’re about to get ready to launch a course on Queering a Bible. This text in particular or the text from Genesis are often wielded against queer and trans folks. The whole one-man-one-woman, Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, all of those things. So we think it can be helpful to continue to dive deep into these texts. We are diving into more work around queering the Bible all the time over at QueerTheology.com. And we’ve got lots of new articles that are gonna be coming out soon. So if you’re not on our mailing list, make sure you go over to QueerTheology.com and jump on the mailing list so that you can get all of those resources as they come out. We think it’s really important to continue to do this work, especially when texts like this one or the ones from early in Genesis are so often used against queer folks. You know, all of those Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, one-man-one-woman text. So diving into that and doing that work of what does it mean to queer scripture, I think is really important, and life-giving, and healthy for queer and trans-Christians to do. So again, go over to QueerTheology.com, jump on our mailing list, I will be sending out some new resources soon and we would love to have you get those. [outro music plays] B: The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at QueerTheology.com which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.  FS: To dive into more of the action, visit us at QueerTheology.com. You can also connect with us online: on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and Instagram. B: We’ll see you next week. Download the transcript (PDF) Today, we talk about: Brian’s mental health journey reflection [0:54] Fr. Shay’s new role as an assistant director for a musical [3:17] a quick shout out to one of our Patreon supporter Jessica Luna [5:45] a listener question about the kind of historical context is needed to fully understand the message of the Bible [6:17] invitation to join a beautiful online community [11:12] our queer take on Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 [11:50] some clarifications about this particular story of the creation and the fall [13:31] looking at the text in a fresh lens: there is no shame in their nakedness [17:40] similarities and differences in different Bible versions [19:40] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com  Link(s) mentioned in this episode: The First Christmas by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan The Last Week by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan The First Paul by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 The Lord God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it. The Lord God commanded the human, “Eat your fill from all of the garden’s trees; but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because on the day you eat from it, you will die!” The snake was the most intelligent of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say that you shouldn’t eat from any tree in the garden?” The woman said to the snake, “We may eat the fruit of the garden’s trees but not the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. God said, ‘Don’t eat from it, and don’t touch it, or you will die.’” The snake said to the woman, “You won’t die! God knows that on the day you eat from it, you will see clearly and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The woman saw that the tree was beautiful with delicious food and that the tree would provide wisdom, so she took some of its fruit and ate it, and also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then they both saw clearly and knew that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made garments for themselves. Photo by Gage Walker The post Knowledge Not Shame – Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 appeared first on Queer Theology.

In today’s episode, we answer a question from our listener – Charlie, who asked how to live as a gay person and still be Christian? How do you live your life as a queer person without having to constantly rationalize your life against the Bible and what it says about gay folks? We also take a look at a Bible passage that we haven’t covered before. We’re very excited to queer this text from 2 Peter 1:16-21. We are reminded by this passage that we are ALL called to do this ministry. That while the physical form of Jesus is gone, the work and movement remain. And it is our responsibility to continue to do the work. Episode TranscriptBrian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast! Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. Hello, hello, hello and welcome back. Today is Sunday, February 23rd, 2020 the year just will not quit. Welcome back to the Queer Theology podcast we’re so glad to have you here. Shay, how are you doin? FS: I’m good! I’m really good. You know, truckin’ along with the winter and all of that kind of stuff, but… B: Familiar! FS: Yes! Something I’ve been, I’m obsessed with this new band called Bonny Light Horseman. It’s Anaïs Mitchell who is the writer of Hadestown, joined with a couple of other folk musicians to re envision really, really old traditional songs… B: Cool! FS: …re-invent and re-record them. I started listening to their album, it came out right before I made my trip to L.A. so I was listening to on the plane. And it is just gorgeous. In a couple places they mash-up a couple of traditional songs and it weaves around — I’m obsessed with it. If you like Anaïs Mitchell, you’ll love this album. If you’re just interested in folk music, it’s high quality. So I’m jazzed about having some new music. I find that that gets me through the winter. [laughter] Having new things to listen to and inspire me is really helpful, so that’s been something that’s been good in my life lately. What about you? B: Oh my goodness! I recently went to this thing called Beyoncé Mass which one of my friends from college developed with this seminary professor and some other students from one of their seminary classes. It’s a womanist worship service, how black women find their voice, represent the image of God, and create spaces for liberation. It was possibly the most profound experience I’ve ever had in my entire life. They used all music by Beyoncé or Destiny Child or soundtrack as worship music. And a lot of Beyoncé’s music is very spiritual and talks about the image of the IM and the spirit. It was incredible. So the combination of beautiful music, just phenomenally performed by this amazing band, and choir, and quintet of singers, and the visuals, and they served communion and the sermon about community, and dreams, and vision was phenomenal. It was just like so incredible, and jazzed, and I wept a number of times and my boyfriend, who grew up Christian but no longer goes to church turned to me afterward and was like, “If church was always like this, sign me back up!” It was just really, really cool and I am honored to have gotten to go and be a part of it. It was really cool to be able to meet some of the folks that started it, and had a vision for this, and called this forth to live out of an idea. It started at the church that my friend was an intern in San Francisco, but has since gone to churches and colleges around the country, and wants to live in Portugal. So I don’t know if they have any more scheduled anywhere else, but if you’re interested you can go to BeyoncéMass.com to see some pics and learn some more, but it’s just a really, really, really, really cool. I can’t stop thinking about it. FS: It makes me think that one of the gifts of queerness, and transness, and also coming out of the evangelical church has been finding spirit and spirituality in unexpected places, and in places that aren’t necessarily considered “religious”. Right? I found myself being really moved by listening to this Anaïs Mitchell album, and there are a couple like Biblical references in the album but it’s definitely not a religious album, right? And Beyoncé wouldn’t necessarily be considered a religious artist and yet, there are so many amazing spaces to find God and spirit in the work of art. And it’s really freeing to be able to find that outside of the spaces that we’re told that we can find it.  B: Yeah. And I think that being LGBTQ is not the same thing as being black or Latino, and being a gay man is not the same thing as being a woman. And also, I as a white male bisexual person can see the ways in which I find God in my queerness, and then I know in myself that straight cis-folks have something to learn about God from my queer experience. It’s then an invitation for me to say, well what, I can only see part of the picture of God from my vantage point. Not in a voyeuristic way, but in a true beloved community way. How can I go into places where I’m invited and through a genuine relationship with friends see God from other perspectives and learn from that? It’s not about — when I went to this Beyoncé Mass I was honored to have been invited and to be a part of this. It wasn’t about me saying, “Oh, this is the same thing as being queer.” but rather it was, “Oh, this is what this community is doing with their experience and their understanding of God and how cool is that.” Sometimes there are parallels and sometimes it’s totally different and I think the beauty of anything that breaks the mold of white cis-gender, heterosexual, American patriarchy is a way to question it all and for those of us who are men, or for those of us who are cis-gender, or for those of us who are white, or for those of us who are able-bodied. The ways in which we experience marginalization are an invitation to also reflect on the ways in which we are powerful and privileged. To then work in solidarity in other communities. I think that my queerness calls me to that in the same way that my Christianity does. I’m so thankful for that and I think that my understanding of my queerness is also enriched by the queerness of women, or of black folks, or immigrants. That we all need each other to illuminate God, our community, and even our selves.  FS: Before we dive in, this podcast is brought to you by over 125 supporters on Patreon. B: Our patrons not only help to keep this show on the air but also support all the free resources we create over at QueerTheology.com. Articles, videos, PDF guides, and so much more. So thank you to all of our Patreon supporters. FS: This week, we want to give a shout out to Rev. Jonathan Vanderbeck  who has been a patron for about three months now! So thank you so much, Rev. Jonathan, we’re really grateful for you! B: Thank you. If you enjoy this show and want to support it, you can do that for as little as $2 per month at patreon.com/queertheology. You can learn more why we need your support and check out the perks, there’s a few different levels and fun little things at patreon.com/queertheology. FS: We also just want to give a shoutout, we are in the middle of our course on Faithful Sexuality, but we’ve got another course coming up on Queering the Bible. We’re super excited about that. I just want to let you know that you can jump on the waitlist for that if you are interested in doing the work, finding out how we do the workaround queering scripture and looking at it through a queer lens. We would love to have you, so can jump on the waitlist for that.  B: You can find that waitlist at queertheology.com/queerbible. FS: OK. On to the show! This week we’ve got a reader question from Charlie who is asking a question that I think a lot, a lot, a lot of people are asking. So I’m gonna go ahead and read this email from Charlie. How can one be gay and still be Christain? I know there is much literature out there in regards to another view/vision of what the bible says about being gay. It says what it says. How can one (me) live as a gay man and not feel like I am rationalizing away what the bible says? Just how do I reconcile this? Am I wrong? B: Oooh! I feel this in the depths of my soul. I both remember this question so vividly, and clearly, and emotionally, and it was one that I wrestled with for years, and years. I still struggled after I came out. I can really remember that, and also, sometimes now I’m so confident of the goodness of the LGBTQ live, loves and bodies that I’m like, “What do you mean?” It’s just so evident. But I think the starting point is that you can know that gay Christians exist because gay Christians exist! You already exist. Perhaps the question of what do you do with that? Is it right? Shameful? Sick? There’s perhaps a question to be had there but I think starting with the reality that you exist, and a child of God, and created by God is point one. That is a lot of work. Just you existing. And this question you asked about rationalizing away the teaching of the scripture or teachings about homosexuality or whatever, and I can also hear myself asking that I can hear pastors, and Sunday school teachers accusing me and other people of doing that. But I wanna flip that on its head and say, to deny the goodness of LGBTQ people is to rationalize away that which God has made. God made you. YOU ARE QUEER. No fire and brimstone sermon or twisted teaching on the clobber passages can rationalize away what God has made. If we start there with our existence and start there with being the image of God, that there’s something powerful that transcends any argument. Which there are many valid, solid, theological arguments to be made, but I think before you even start looking at those or trying to tackle those, remembering that you exist is an important place to start. What would you add Shay? FS: I mean that’s a great answer and is much better, and more articulate than what I was going to say. I think for me, I am really struck by a couple of things in this question. One of the things is when Charlie says, “I know that there are other visions of what the Bible says about being gay, but it says what it says.” And I think the reality is that it’s just not true. That this idea that the Bible is clear on, frankly just about anything, is just not accurate. I think figuring out your anxiety or anyone’s anxiety around what the Bible says has to start with starting to unravel what the Bible is. And how it’s read, and how it can be understood. We have just a ton of resources on the website about that. We tackle even just like, how do I know it’s okay to be gay? You can find all of that at QueerTheology.com there’s a button right on the homepage around that. But I think, and part of that is what helps you get out of this trap of feeling like you’re rationalizing because once you realize how many different ways there are to read scripture, and not just how many ways argumentative ways that there are to read scripture. But how many really faithful ways to read scripture? It allows you to unhook from this sense of I have to find the one right way to read this passage, and get out of this, I think Brian early on you called it the hamster wheel right?  B: Yeah. FS: To get off of that hamster wheel so that you don’t feel like you’re just running in circles and that you’re rationalizing away something that’s really important. And then again, I think back to Brian’s quote of like you exist, you are valid and worthy, and that alone is proof that gay and Christian can co-exist. I think too, it can be helpful and it was helpful for me when I was just coming out, to look at the lives of other queer Christians who have been out for a long time. Who were settled in both their sexuality and their spirituality, and watch how they navigated these things. That gave me a ton of comfort to see that there are ways to be absolutely faithful, and a faithful follower of Jesus and also hold the goodness of your sexuality and gender identity. Those two things don’t have to be opposed to one another. B: Yeah. It reminds me of in Matthew 7 Jesus tells us that we can sort of judge the truth of a gospel message by looking at the fruits of that message. I think that the fruits of these LGBTQ Christians who have been out and settling their faith testify to its rightness. We will put some links to the various articles, videos, and this 7-part email series on Is it OK to be LGBTQ in the show notes for this episode which you can find at queertheology.com/317. And if you are looking for even more support that is a great way to use Sanctuary Collective. There are folks in all points of the journey: folks that are wrestling with these same questions. Also the folks that Shay was referring to who have been out for a long time and are further along in their journey, and are no longer asking “Is it ok?” but are exploring the ways in which queerness and Christianity enrich one another. So you’ll find role models along the way. So you can tap into that at queertheology.com/community. FS: Ok, let’s open up our Bibles and queer this text! This week’s lectionary text is from 2 Peter which is one we haven’t done before.  B: We have not! FS: Which is super exciting. Been doing this for 300 and however many episodes, it’s like whoo… a brand new one. B: A brand new text! Whooo… FS: So this is from 2 Peter 1:16-21, I’m gonna go ahead and read it for us, it’s pretty short, this is from the Common English Bible. We didn’t repeat crafty myths when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Quite the contrary, we witnessed his majesty with our own eyes. He received honor and glory from God the Father when a voice came to him from the magnificent glory, saying, “This is my dearly loved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain. In addition, we have a most reliable prophetic word, and you would do well to pay attention to it, just as you would to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Most important, you must know that no prophecy of scripture represents the prophet’s own understanding of things, because no prophecy ever came by human will. Instead, men and women led by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. B: Okay, so bear with me for just a second. So a few years ago I was walking down the street in Queens in New York City with my boyfriend, Peter and he just started giggling and smiling. I turned to him and said, “What?” or asked what? He said, “I’m just thankful to be alive at the same time as memes.” [laughter] And he just loves internet memes. Specifically the GIF kinds or the text-on-pictures kind. And can just crack himself into a stupor. Sometimes looking at memes or just sometimes remembering a meme that he saw earlier, he’s just really obsessed with memes. But the memes are called memes because before they met this graphic on the internet, a meme is a cultural idea and so, I’m seeing in this text a Chrisitan meme if you will that, “This is my dearly loved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” is a meme that it appears in different gospels. In Matthew twice: once at Jesus’ baptism and again at Jesus’ transfiguration. And throughout the Bible, we find these nuggets of sayings that had been distilled down. Sometimes we here at Queer Theology will say, LBGTQ people have more to offer the world and the church than always defending ourselves against what we are not. Or that queer lives, loves, and bodies are holy. There are things that they can come down to that. Or short and digestible and meaning, and it’s not something that we invented in 2019 or 2020. People – humans have been doing this for a while. So I just wanted to note that that fun little nugget about memes and there’s something there about Jesus there.  And then, shifting – I just love the way that his passage starts, “We didn’t repeat crafty myths when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” the passage goes on that it’s not about making a theological case or having the right written arguments about Jesus or reflecting back earlier to this question about how you can know is it okay to be LGBT? About the rightness of LGBT. It goes on to say that, “Quite the contrary, we witnessed his majesty with our own eyes.” So how can you witness the power of the gospel and the power the queer lives in your own life? We’ve said before that if the gospels mean good news and if the gospel is not good news for queer, and trans, and other marginalized folks then it’s not good news. It’s not the gospel. It’s not from God. And that is a message that is repeated over and over again in scripture and has been foundational in the Christian church throughout the millennia. We talked about this earlier, in Matthew 7, judging a tree by its fruits, but there’s this idea that we see a lot that about witnessing the majesty, about seeing the fruits of the spirits, about putting faith into action, and it’s not about saying the right prayer or having the exact same debate team argument. Shay, what would you add to that? FS: There’s something in this passage that all of these pieces about prophecy and about witnessing the majesty of Jesus with their own eyes. There’s something in here that’s speaking to me about intuition. It feels really tangential which is why I’m hesitating saying it because there’s part of this passage right? That’s like, prophets aren’t speaking for themselves. There’s speaking lead by the spirit of God. So when I was at this Rob Bell workshop, he would call people out and be like, “Where are you stuck?” and talk them through what they were experiencing. And in 8 out of 10 of these encounters, two things would happen: one, it was very clear that the person already knew what was wrong, and how to fix it, but just needed to be given space and time to articulate that. Then the other piece is that so many of them had already taken steps to build whatever future that they had been dreaming about without having been able to articulate that future. So there was someone who already started giving away a bunch of their stuff, and in the moment realized, “Oh, I think I need to downsize into a smaller place so that I can pursue my calling.” And it was this moment of you knew and you’ve already been walking that path. So there’s something about that in here. Part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and what it means to come to terms without queer and transness is to trust the voices inside of us, that are saying, “This is the right thing to do.” Part of that is we’ve witnessed the majesty, we know what it is. We just need to own it and do it. And we need to internalize this message of “This is my dearly loved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” Right? I think that that’s something that Jesus hears at his baptism, but I don’t think that it was specific to Jesus, right? It was a moment where God was saying: pay attention. You’re gonna do something great. I’ve got you. So just do this thing that you already made the choice to be baptized so now go and do the work. You know what the next right step is. So I think that there’s something in that for us to pay attention to and sometimes we get wrapped in a passage like this and it’s like: “Well, it’s about Jesus and it’s about the apostles. It’s not about us.” But it is. It’s about us, too and about those particular things. So there’s something cool in there for me.  B: Yeah I think this last sentence of this particular passage underlines that. That instead, men and women led by the Holy Spirit spoke from God that, the person of Jesus is now gone and in His place, that work and that movement continues through the leadings of the Holy Spirit, but lived out, and acted out, and embodied, and spread through us, and through you. Through you! You are part of this movement. And as you were saying Shay, that we got to learn to trust ourselves and our callings. FS: Again, we will put some links to some of the stuff that we’ve referenced, some of the articles and videos in the show notes. If you wanna do more of this diving into the Bible and finding queerness in it, queerness and transness because it is all through the Bible… B: All up in it! FS: We would love to have you in the Queering the Bible Course that’s gonna open in a couple of months. But you can join the waitlist now. You’ll be one of the first people to find out when registration and gets some teasers maybe, along the way. So queertheology.com/queerbible is the place to sign up for that waitlist. B: And we will see you next week. [outro music plays] B: The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at QueerTheology.com which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.  FS: To dive into more of the action, visit us at QueerTheology.com. You can also connect with us online: on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and Instagram. B: We’ll see you next week.   Download the transcript (PDF) In this episode we talk about: the new band that Fr. Shay is obsessed with [00:50] Brian’s experience at Beyoncé Mass [1:50] how finding Spirit and Spirituality in random places is a gift for queer folks [4:00] Faithful Sexuality course update AND Queering the Bible waitlist [8:00] a listener question about how to be gay and Christian at the same time [8:40] “To deny the goodness of LGBTQ people is to ‘rationalize away’ that which God has made…” [10:55] the inaccuracy of the idea that the Bible is clear about anything [12:10] our queer take on 2 Peter 1:16-21 [15:50] how this text looks like a Christian meme [18:00] unpacking how this passage screams “intuition” [21:00] though Jesus is gone – the work that needs to be done remains [23:47] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com  Link(s) mentioned in this episode: Is it OK to be LGBTQ & Christian? QueerTheology.com/community queertheology.com/queerbible 2 Peter 1:16-21 We didn’t repeat crafty myths when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Quite the contrary, we witnessed his majesty with our own eyes. He received honor and glory from God the Father when a voice came to him from the magnificent glory, saying, “This is my dearly loved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain. In addition, we have a most reliable prophetic word, and you would do well to pay attention to it, just as you would to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Most important, you must know that no prophecy of scripture represents the prophet’s own understanding of things, because no prophecy ever came by human will. Instead, men and women led by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Photo by Chetan Menaria The post Crafty Myths and Inner Wisdom – 2 Peter 1:16-21 appeared first on Queer Theology.

In this episode of the podcast, we respond to a listener question from Fee in Berlin who asked how LGBTQ Christians who have come to the faith later in life can be sensitive to the trauma that LGBTQ folks who grew up within Christianity carry.  We also take a look at Matthew 5:21-37 — a passage about murder, adultery, what happens in our heart, who is responsible, and how to respond. It might be 2,000 years old but it is particularly relevant to our present time and place. Here’s how… In this episode we cover: updates on the Faithful Sexuality course, our new website, and Shay’s recent Rob Bell workshop [00:50] listener question from Fee on LGBTQ Christian trauma [05:15]   our queer take on Matthew 5:21-37 [11:52] “There is so much in here it could be at least 3 podcast episodes … and a doctoral dissertation” [13:55] ways this passage is often misunderstood [15:14] how Jesus turns the table on the dominant patriarchy of the day [16:29] what this passage has to say about modern purity culture, rape culture, and the male gaze [16:55] how this passage was used against LGBTQ people [17:50] what “hell” means in this context [18:20] defining lust: what it is and what it isn’t  [19:00] a reminder that it’s ok to be attracted to someone, to have sexual desires, and to have a fantasy life (and one important thing to remember there) [20:00] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com  Matthew 5:21-37 “You have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago, Don’t commit murder, and all who commit murder will be in danger of judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of judgment. If they say to their brother or sister, ‘You idiot,’ they will be in danger of being condemned by the governing council. And if they say, ‘You fool,’ they will be in danger of fiery hell. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go. First make things right with your brother or sister and then come back and offer your gift. Be sure to make friends quickly with your opponents while you are with them on the way to court. Otherwise, they will haul you before the judge, the judge will turn you over to the officer of the court, and you will be thrown into prison. I say to you in all seriousness that you won’t get out of there until you’ve paid the very last penny. “You have heard that it was said, Don’t commit adultery. But I say to you that every man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart. And if your right eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off and throw it away. It’s better that you lose a part of your body than that your whole body go into hell. “It was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a divorce certificate.’ But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife except for sexual unfaithfulness forces her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. “Again you have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago: Don’t make a false solemn pledge, but you should follow through on what you have pledged to the Lord. But I say to you that you must not pledge at all. You must not pledge by heaven, because it’s God’s throne. You must not pledge by the earth, because it’s God’s footstool. You must not pledge by Jerusalem, because it’s the city of the great king. And you must not pledge by your head, because you can’t turn one hair white or black. Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Anything more than this comes from the evil one. Photo by Lucas Ludwig The post Jesus & the Male Gaze – Matthew 5:21-37 appeared first on Queer Theology.

This episode is special because we talk to Sarah, one of our Sanctuary Collective members. We talk about what it was like for her growing up with regard to sex and relationships. We also queer a text that Sarah picked from the Bible!  In this week’s text, we take a look at a word from 1 Corinthians. We talk about how the text is beautifully used to describe a kind of love that goes beyond sexual orientation and religious affiliation. Join us as we queer this week’s text! Episode Transcript Brian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast! Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. FS: Hello, hello! Welcome back to the Queer Theology podcast. We are excited to be back with you today. We’ve got a really special podcast coming up today, so we’re stoked about that. But first, Brian, what’s been going on in your world and life? B: I just went to Disneyland. My good friend, whom we dated for many years and now we’re just friends – whatever just friends is. He is a Disney nerd and we have annual passes to Disneyland because it’s only $20 a month that you go once. So there’s a new Star Wars ride that just opened, so me, and Matt, and our friend Molly all went down to Anaheim. We got up at the crack of dawn because the way that they do it is that you have to be in the park at the time that it officially opens, at 8:00 AM. Then everyone frantically goes on the app on their phone to try and get a boarding group, and then that’s the digital queue for the ride. So I woke up at 5:00 AM and Matt picked me up at 6:00 AM and we drove to Anaheim and we got in the park with 10 minutes to spare. And then it’s just how fast is your cellphone and how fast are your fingers. So we got on the ride, we didn’t end up getting on until 4:00 PM, we just did all the stuff in the park and we went to the new cantina there. I got this drink that had this foam that made my mouth numb, which was wild. Then the ride was the most amazing ride I’ve ever been in my entire life. I won’t give any spoilers because it’s just incredible. It was so cool! Then we went immediately home and I fell asleep. What about you Shay? FS: Yeah, I feel like in Minnesota, the winter — it’s hibernation mode and so I’m taking a lot of time to read books and write some things and relax. I’ve been reading this memoir about Sister Rosetta Tharpe who is this phenomenal and pretty unknown – she was a gospel singer. Started out as a gospel singer from the Pentecostal tradition, but did some cross-over work with blues. She played the electric guitar, she’s really phenomenal, and really was a groundbreaker. Some people call her the founder of rock ‘n roll. She was doing it before anyone else. It turns out that she had relationships with both men and women throughout her life. It’s been really fascinating to learn more about her, learn more about this unknown person who should be really well known. Who is just a phenomenal musician. There’s a great video on YouTube of her playing on a train platform, playing her electric guitar and singing with a group choir backing her. From the early ’60s, late ’50s that’s just wild! B: That’s bonkers! FS: Go check out. I think it’s the song, Up Above My Head. She’s just phenomenal, so I’ve been enjoying that and looking forward to reading some more books and chilling. Oh and I just joined the YMCA, so I’m super excited to start going and swimming. ‘Coz I got to do some swimming while I was out in LA with Brian and I just loved it. So I was like, “Oh! I’m gonna do this. I think this will be good self-care in Minnesota in winter, to get in a pool and swim.” B: So today we have a special guest on our podcast, Sarah who was a member of Sanctuary Collective and first came into our orbit through Christianity and Polyamory course last year. Not dissimilar from the Faithful Sexuality course that we’re getting ready to do now, but also not quite the same but lots of overlaps. So we have an interview with her coming up, but before we dive in just a reminder that this podcast is brought to you by over 125 supporters on Patreon. FS: If you enjoy this show and want to support it, you can do that for as little as $2/month at patreon.com/queertheology. Learn more about why we need your support and check out the perks at patreon.com/queertheology. Okay, on to the show! B: Hey there, Sarah thank you so much for joining us today! Sarah: No problem! I’m happy to be here. B: So can you just tell us a little bit about your faith journey in, and not your whole life story, but what brought you to this point where you are today? S: Sure, so I grew up in a relatively conservative Southern church in the Disciples of Christ umbrella in West Virginia. I was never really satisfied with the conservative theology of it was taught to me. It was a lot of just: this is what the Bible says, so this is what we believe; questions are okay as long as they’re the right kind of questions. So then when I went to college, I still was in West Virginia I moved from South to North, and I started taking religious studies courses because it allowed me to ask questions I’d never been allowed to ask before. That just bloomed into this love of literary, criticism of the Bible, as well as questioning my faith and how those two can tie together instead of push against each other. So then when I got out of college and out of my post-graduate work, I did a religious internship in Ohio, moved to Ohio, and then I was looking to do church work. I was interested in going to seminary, which I just started. In my looking for resources for a class that I was doing on sex, and gender, and the Bible. I stumbled upon Queer Theology, the website, and it was just right before the class was gearing up. So I just happened to hit it at the perfect moment, I think. B: How awesome! S: Yeah. B: I can relate to lots of parts of that story, so can you share a little bit about how your faith, and your sexuality, and your sex life where interacting or not interacting? S: I realized that I was not straight when I went away to college and found out that… I had friends. I was describing my relationship with other women from high school to college friends. They were like, “Sarah, that’s really gay.” I was, “No, no, no. We were just really good friends.” They were like, “Okay! I’m gonna trust your experience, but just know that a lot of that sounds really gay.” Then I was like, “Oh wait. Maybe I am a queer woman.” Then I explored that in college and because I had such a strong Christian faith, I was, “Well, if I’m queer and I’m a good Christian. And this is what I believe about the Bible. There’s no reason that those can’t exist at the same time.” Then as I started to research, I realized there was a huge debate going on about sexuality and religion that I just completely glossed over because until you are exposed to a new aspect of identity sometimes it’s really easy to do that. Especially if the culture you grew up in isn’t talking about these issues. So then I definitely was, “Okay, my view of the Bible has always been based on this idea that the ultimate challenge is loving everyone regardless of what they do in their spare time.” So yes I’m a queer woman, but I’m also a Christian. I’m gonna love myself and other queer people the same way because everyone has human value and deserves love. So to me it wasn’t necessarily reconciling those two ideas, that was just very inherent to me. It was more: how do I find the language in the Bible to support my idea? And how do I interpret scripture to get that? FS: I love what you said about your realization that if you were queer and a good Christian then those two things must be okay. Because I think so many of us have this opposite: we take in everyone else’s ideas first instead of starting with ourselves and saying, “I believe these two things.” I love the fact that you have the confidence in yourself to just be, “Yeah. This is who I am and so these things can’t be opposed.” That’s really beautiful. S: Aw! Thank you! B: You mentioned wanting to find ways that you’re like queerness and sexuality could complement your Christian faith. But what was the challenges of having not yet found that? Or sort of the impetuous for wanting to go deeper beyond just it’s okay. S: As far as who I am as a person, I am a seminarian right now, but my primary career is actually teaching high school Science. So I’m a scientist first, teacher second, and seminarian third. I had already done a lot of work to try and reconcile the ideas that science and religion could co-exist peacefully, but I knew that a lot of times the argument against science was that there was so much in the Bible that didn’t line up with it. So when I started to do my work on my sexuality and presenting it from a Biblical standpoint, I knew that I was going to have to find ways that the passages in the Bible and my sexuality intersected in order to prove that point to people. Just because I already had to do that with being a woman, and a scientist, and also religious. So I think that that’s kind of — I had laid the groundwork doing other, not proving work but just validation work in the past to build on there. Then it’s just grown because, and you guys know this, but as you get older and as you started to dive into these issues you discover more about yourself. And I realized that not only was I a pansexual woman, but I was also polyamorous. How does that interact with church life? I’ve also realized that I’m demi-romantic and how do I find a healthy, faithful basis for that kind of relationship with the world and the Bible. Yeah! B: You then got connected with us and we first met you through the Christianity and Polyamory course which is not the same thing as this Faithful Sexuality course that’s coming up, but I think there will be a lot of similar themes like working through negative cultural messages and really just messages and finding ourselves in Scripture. So can you share a bit about what the process of going through that was, and what that unlocked for you? S: Yeah. So I signed up for that class ‘coz I was very, very new to the idea of Christian Polyamory. I’m in my third polyamorous relationship as we stand, and when I started that course, I was just out of the very first one that I had ever been in. And so I was just seeking knowledge and community that would tie to Christian Polyamory. Like I said, I just happened upon the class and I’m so glad I did just because the community that I found that there have been people that had done it before, people that were trying for the first time, people that had really succeeded and struggled with it, all of those perspectives were just phenomenal. But then there was the extra course work. I’m excited about this new course on the sexuality portion just because we talk about sexual ethics in the Polyamory course and that just blew me away. I’d never had to layout in words what my sexual ethic was, and that helped me realize that the relationship that I had been in had not been the healthiest polyamorous relationship, but it taught me so much about what I wanted going forward. And taught me how to communicate boundaries. Now as a pastor, in the between, between that class and now, I’ve come out to my church as both pansexual, polyamorous. It’s given me the language to help me put up boundaries between what questions they can ask, and what they can’t, and what I’m comfortable with. I don’t know. Just having the resources and language provided as well as that community that I can turn to if I needed to resource mind was just a phenomenal thing. FS: That’s awesome! I would love to hear if you don’t mind sharing how it’s been coming out to your church? How’s the reaction been? S: Well, okay I did mention that I’m in Ohio which is not necessarily the most socially-accepting state… [laughter] B: It’s not San Francisco. S: So I think that more than anything, people just were overwhelmed by curiosity and they forget that there are questions that you wouldn’t ask your pastor. I had someone ask me the other day if I had sex of all of my partners at once? I had to have a genuine conversation with them about would you ask a straight, male co-pastor this? Or would that be a question you would not ask? That was a realization for them. It was scary at first, the first time I mentioned it was in a bulletin insert. Just about my history, what was bringing me to ministry at this church, and then it’s just been a bunch of small followup conversations from that. People are ready for it. Our church, in particular, is going through what the disciples call an open and affirming process. Which is basically just this affirmation that LGBTQ folks are not only welcomed in the church but would be included and offered leadership positions. Anyway, so me coming out as a pastor was both just because I want to be comfortable where I’m being a pastor, but also as a way — not to test the waters necessarily, but get the church ready to be, “Ah, yes. These people exist and they’re here already.” It’s been fun and just kind of keeps me on my toes. I haven’t had any horribly negative reactions yet which has been a blessing. FS: Cool! Thanks for sharing that. S: Yeah, thank you. B: Before you signed up for the course, were you nervous about anything in terms of participating in it? If so, what was that? S: I had a lot of nerves regarding talking to other people about Christian polyamory. Every Christian space I’ve ever been in has been relatively lukewarm to people that are queer in general. And I wasn’t worried about that at the website called Queer Theology [cross talk] B: For sure! S: But even when you start to get towards what a lot of people would consider the fringes, polyamory is what I think on the fringe as far as queer group goes. A lot of people are still judgmental about it, and you have a lot of internalized judgment when it comes to it. I’ve encountered that a lot in other Christian spaces. So I was nervous about entering this community and perhaps having to defend myself or my experience. In that space, I was still in that, “What if I’m not actually polyamorous since my first relationship failed?” And I think that a lot of people probably come to that space from that perspective of: “What if I’m not XYZ enough to be a part of your group?” That was just the very opposite of what I experienced. The first week I was so nervous, but by week four I was so sad that it was almost over. There would be group calls again later, but that it wouldn’t just be this weekly thing in my life. I think the nerves will resolve themselves, but most nervous going through is acceptance in a space, especially Christian spaces are hard for LGBTQ people. B: Yeah, it’s been a beautiful community. We’ve got folks that are polyamorous like you and I, monogamous, celibate, vanilla, a-sexual, demi-sexual, binary, trans, non-binary, the whole… it’s a beautiful tossed salad of identities. I think what’s beautiful is being able to share the ways in which I’ve found God through my experience with these identities, but also being able to then encounter the divine in other people whose identities and experiences are different than mine. I don’t have to judge them because someone is demi-sexual, or someone is a-sexual, or someone is celibate, and I’m slutting polyamorous. There’s stuff to celebrate in all of our identities and it’s not about prescribing one way that you have to be queer and Christian, asexual and Christian, but it celebrates the diversity of ways to be faithfully sexual. FS: I think so often in Christian communities, there’s this idea that there’s one way to be faithful and Christian. What I love about being in community at Queer Theology is the way that we’re creating space for people to figure out what it means for them to be faithful. That that can look really different from person to person. I think it’s a beautiful way to say like our spirituality can, and should, and does inform our sexuality and also that that doesn’t have to look just one way. B: Yeah. And that might change over time. FS: Absolutely! B: So what would you say was the highlight for you from your time in the course or one of your most memorable things that we did, or that you learned? S: I don’t know. There was so many gems from that course that I took away, at the same time, I was also planning that sex and gender in the Bible. Life-study is what we call them. They’re basically just applied Bible studies. I just remember when we were talking at my church about, if communities, the ones that you were describing could exist and be like, “Yes! They do and I’m not going to oust this whole people, but I’m a part of one of those communities where there is this open exception and there’s this fluidity to it, that’s not stifling your theological growth, but bolstering it in a way that’s going to be healthy that you don’t see often in church communities. I wasn’t really struggling. I know a lot of people struggle with, I mentioned this before, but this idea that you can’t be Christian and poly. That was another one of those. Well, I’m poly and I’m a Christian so that’s gotta be wrong. B: Dumb and done. S: Yeah. But it was just really validating to hear the breath of experienced people had. So people that have been practicing polyamory for their whole lives up to this point versus people that were already married and exploring polyamory for the first time together. Just hearing my struggles echoed in other people and their solutions to it, helped me be more confident in both my thelogical background and in my own sexuality. So I really think that in classes like this, you learn skills to do that introspective work that will help you in your day to day life. As well as just the community aspect of it too. B: Cool! Well, thank you for chatting with us a little bit about Christianity, polyamory, and sexuality. You’re gonna stick around for the second half of this podcast and we’re gonna queer the Bible together. S: Excellent! I’m so excited! B: Okay, let’s open up our Bibles and queer this text. Today we are going to take a look at 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. This is a passage that Sarah picked. Sarah, in one quick sentence, can you tell us why you chose this passage? S: There’s just so much love and equality in it, that I love it. FS: Awesome! So I’m gonna go ahead and read it for us. This is from the Common English Bible. Again this is 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth. Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things. Love never fails. As for prophecies, they will be brought to an end. As for tongues, they will stop. As for knowledge, it will be brought to an end. So Sarah, reading this, what comes up for you as we read this and what is this passage inspire in you? S: I have always loved this passage because at least if you’re taking the text literally if you are just reading it off the page it never specifies what type of love that it’s talking about. So it applies to any type of love in your life. So when I think about it, even if I’m not in a romantic relationship this love is going to apply with how I interact with my best friends, when I interact with my church family, when I interact with even my students to some extent. It’s just this idea that whether you’re prophesying if you’re trying to predict the future, that is not always going to be solid ground. Knowledge won’t always serve you, but you’re always gonna have this idea that love will carry on and that’s what you’re going to be remembered for. It’s kind of like a legacy. So this not only builds how you should interact with the entire world regardless of this hierarchy of love that we’ve established. But it also just talks about how that’s the most important thing. B: I think because this passage is often used in wedding ceremonies, I can’t help but think of it in that context. So it’s almost… it’s sometimes used as a formula for love between two people who like each other, and love each other, and how you should express that love. But what’s coming up for me today is perhaps because this is the Queer Theology podcast and we’re queering theology, but I’m thinking about the ways in which sometimes people try to use love against queer people, against us to say “I love you and that’s why I’m kicking you out of the house.” or “I love you and that’s why you have to go to conversion therapy.” or “I love you and that’s why I won’t come to your wedding.” More specifically, my partner’s family and I had a strained relationship, and they’ve said a number of times, “But we love you, we love you, we love you.” I’m always like, “Okay, well like is it, are you patient and kind? Are you not jealous, and are you not arrogant, and are you not rude?” You keep saying love, but it doesn’t feel like love to me. I don’t see that love and so I’m into this idea that these are all the things that love is not. Sometimes saying what love isn’t is just as important as defining what love is. FS: Something that jumped out to me in this passage is, like you Brian I’ve often heard this at weddings and it’s usually to me, feels kind of this sense of well, just love people and everything’s gonna be okay. It becomes this glossy thing, but the verse that jumped out to me is that “…it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth.” That’s not a love that glosses over oppression, it’s not a love that says we’ll just all hold hands and everything’s gonna be fine, let’s not talk about this hard things, it just that love is in the midst of revealing truth and that might not be happy. That might be really uncomfortable and painful, but that’s the point. And so that jumped out at me, this is a passage with more teeth than I think we often give it credit for. B: Yeah, for sure. To bring back to this Faithful Sexuality course that we’re in the midst of registration for, that it’s not about anything goes. Well, if you’re sex-positive or if you’re a queer Christian or if you’re a progressive Christian. There is no God and anything goes. No! We have ethics, and morals, and divine centering. It’s maybe not the oppressive brand of Christianity that we’ve been told that it’s supposed to be. Anything else coming up for you Sarah? S: I also love the “Love does not delight in injustice but rejoices with the truth.” because I’ve always told people — I’ve had a lot of friends that have had to use, I don’t want to use “tough love” because that’s used against a lot of people, it’s a form of abuse or whatever. So that’s not the words I want to use, but friends that have had to be like “Sarah. Let’s talk about boundaries. Let’s talk about ways that we can love each other in a way that is sustainable for both of us.” And I think that those are honestly more important of a conversation. A lot of times than this fluffy idea of, “Oh! I love everybody and I just want everybody to get along.” ‘Coz a lot of time, love is the work that you put in to keep it going. You know? You can love someone that you meet. You should still show that love to people, but a lot of the work of long-term friendships, long-term relationships, long-term connections is the work that you put in to keep it going. And a lot of times, that’s just sitting down and being, “I’m hurting and perhaps this is what’s causing it, but like we need to address it.” Then if you get into systemic issues, like Shay was saying, I think that’s beautiful, too. This idea that love is action. Love isn’t silence. Love is action. And moving in a direction towards justice. FS: Yeah, so just a quick reminder that our Faithful Sexuality course, the registration is open for that. It’s gonna be closing in a week or so, so make sure that you jump on that if you are interested. B: Queertheology.com/faithfulsexuality is where you can learn more and sign up! [outro music plays] B: The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at QueerTheology.com which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters. FS: To dive into more of the action, visit us at QueerTheology.com. You can also connect with us online: on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and Instagram. B: We’ll see you next week. Download the transcript (PDF) In this episode, we: We talk to Sarah about her faith and sexuality, as well as her queer journey [starting at 4:47] Sarah also shares the highlight of her experience with the Christianity and Polyamory Course [starting at 19:10] We offer a queer reading of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and Sarah explains to us why she loves this text. We explore how “love” can be applied with anybody (and everybody) regardless of relationship, faith, and sex [starting 21:40] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com (more deets in the ep) Links Mentioned in this episode: queertheology.com/faithfulsexuality 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth. Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things.   Love never fails. As for prophecies, they will be brought to an end. As for tongues, they will stop. As for knowledge, it will be brought to an end. Photo by Kristina Litvjak The post Sex & Love with Sarah – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 appeared first on Queer Theology.

In this week’s text, we look at a word from the prophet Micah! It’s a favorite passage of ours and we can’t wait to unpack it and see what new things we can illuminate by bringing our queerness to bear on the text! Episode TranscriptBrian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast! Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns  B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. B: Hello, hello, hello. Today is Sunday, February 2nd, 2020. It’s episode 314 of the Queer Theology podcast. Oh my gosh, years keep flying by. Welcome back.  Shay, what are folks need to know this week? FS: Yeah, so just a quick reminder that our Faithful Sexuality course, the registration is open for that. It’s gonna be closing in a week or so, so make sure that you jump on that if you are interested. And as we’ve said before, if you have any questions about the course, if you are discerning whether or not it’s a right fit for you or not, you can feel free to send us an email connect@queertheology.com or reach out in our DMs on any of the social media.  We’re happy to discern with you and see if it might be a right fit. We only want people in the course that are super jazzed about being there and think that it’s going to be a good fit. If you’ve been thinking about it or just not sure, wanna talk more about it, reach out to us. B: I can’t believe this is our 3rd week talking about this course on the podcast and I am just now realizing that I have not yet said: “Slide into our DMs” [laughter]. So slide into those DMs and we would love to chat more with you about it. And if you are ready to dive in, QueerTheology.com/faithfulsexuality is where you can learn more and sign up.  Bada bing bada boom!  Before we dive in, just a reminder as always, that this podcast is brought to you by over 125 supporters on Patreon. FS: Our Patreons not only help to keep this show on the air but also support all of the free resources that we’re creating and have created over at QueerTheology.com. That stuff like articles, videos, PDF guides, every time we jump on Facebook live, all that is paid for by our Patreon supporters.  So thank you, thank you, thank you to all of the people that have supported us on Patreon. B: So this week we want to give a shout out to Beatrice and Indigo, who we first met at a Queer Theology meetup here in Southern California and in addition to being supporters of us on Patreon, Indigo was also featured on the podcast at the end of last year. So thank you Beatrice and Indigo. FS: If you enjoy this show and want to support it, you can do that for as little as $2/month at patreon.com/queertheology. You can also learn more about why we’re asking for your support in the first place. You can check out. We’ve got some perks over at patreon.com/queertheology. B: This week’s question had a lot of backstory and so we’re going to distill it down and summarize it. It works out nicely because we’ve got a variation of this question a number of times over the years. It’s basically this: So I’ve found Queer Theology and been exploring the intersections of queerness, and Christianity, and liberation theology. My mind is blown open and this is also awesome, and I want more. I want to dive deeper. And so, should I go to seminary to learn more, and pursue this, and be able to share that with others? So Shay, as our resident seminary graduate, [laughter] if folks are jazzed about theology and finding a new fire maybe coming from a different version of Christianity that wasn’t as inspiring or realizing in a sort of scales falling off out of your eyes – Paul style. [laughter] The goodness of the queer gospel is seminary, the right next step, or what should folks be considering?  FS: Yeah! So I have a lot of opinions and feelings about the seminary question, so let me preface this by saying: I think seminary is fantastic. It can be a really incredible experience. The wisdom that I received in seminary, the community of friends that I made there, was literally life-changing. Also, at that same token, the debt that I incurred at seminary is life-changing, and has altered the course of my life, and has severely limited what I’m able to do. I graduated from seminary with probably $100,000 in debt, which is astronomical. B: Mind-blowing! FS: And also, I will never pay that back with a church job, right? The economic reality is such that churches don’t often have a lot of money to pay people. So I always offer that as a disclaimer upfront that I think that the idea that seminary is the only place that you can go to learn some of this stuff is not true. The reality that for someone like me, I felt called to ministry, I knew that as a queer and trans person that getting a job at a church, getting respect at all, as a queer and trans minister was going to be really difficult. So I went to a seminary that had name recognition because I knew that I needed a degree from that seminary in order to open doors. And indeed it has open doors and created some moderate opportunities. Opportunities that as a queer and trans person I would not have had otherwise.  And so that’s a long way of saying, I don’t know if seminary is right for you. I think that for some people, depending on the work that you’re called to do. If you feel called to be an ordained minister, in a denominational church. You will probably have to go to seminary. That’s the reality.  The good thing is that some seminaries are starting to realize that the student loan debt that they’re placing upon their graduates is not justice based. So lots of seminaries are starting to offer free seminary education which is amazing. There are other scholarships. I would say if you can go to seminary without incurring any debt at all, and that’s what you want to do, awesome! Go for it! And also, this idea that you have to go to seminary in order to learn things just isn’t true. But you do have to potentially have to work harder outside of seminary to learn the things that you might want to learn. So the discernment question is tricky. Though I do think that being in community with people who can help you discern what you’re called to do is a great first step. So my first recommendation always to folks is what community are you part of? Whether that’s a church community, whether that’s an online community, who are you walking with that can help you discern these things? And there’s both a sense of internal calling that folks have, but also, is anyone actually asking you to lead? Because seminary is really a degree that’s meant for leaders. It’s a degree that’s, a master divinity is really designed to be an active and ministry leadership degree. If all you want is the course work, I think there are other ways to go about that. B: Yeah. So if you are looking for a first step to either start learning more about than you currently have before taking a plunge into seminary. Or you’re looking for a community to sort of walk alongside you as you figure out if seminary is right for you. Sanctuary Collective might be a good spot for you. It’s both those things. It’s full of resources to help you take your queer and liberation theology knowledge deeper to learn, explore, and grow. Also, it’s chock-full of 100/150 LGBTQ Christians and straight cis-gender supporters from around the world that were wrestling with this question. I know that over the years that we’ve had Sanctuary Collective, a few people have started at seminary, have decided to not go to seminary at all, have pursued spiritual direction, spiritual direction and coach training and certification. So there’s a lot of avenues for you and the folks in that community, including Shay and I, are happy to walk alongside of you and that process. I think one of the reasons why we created QueerTheology.com in general, and Sanctuary Collective in particular was to take all of the really dry academic stuff that is often inaccessible and make it more relevant, more resonant, and more accessible for folks. And so Sanctuary Collective is one of the places that you can start getting a taste of that. Of course, if Sanctuary Collective isn’t right for you, there’s also a ton of free resources all over our website and social media so you can begin that process as well. If you’re interested in learning more about Sanctuary Collective, go to QueerTheology.com/community and check that out. Okay, so let us open up our Bibles and queer this text. FS: This week we are taking a look at Micah, which is a fan favorite [laughter]. Both a fan favorite and a Brian and Shay favorite. So I’m gonna go ahead and read it for us. This is Micah 6:1-8. This is from the Common English Bible. Hear what the Lord is saying: Arise, lay out the lawsuit before the mountains; let the hills hear your voice! Hear, mountains, the lawsuit of the Lord! Hear, eternal foundations of the earth! The Lord has a lawsuit against his people; with Israel he will argue. “My people, what did I ever do to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me! I brought you up out of the land of Egypt; I redeemed you from the house of slavery. I sent Moses, Aaron, and Miriam before you. My people, remember what Moab’s King Balak had planned, and how Balaam, Beor’s son, answered him! Remember everything from Shittim to Gilgal, that you might learn to recognize the righteous acts of the Lord!” What does the Lord require? With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil? Should I give my oldest child for my crime; the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit? He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God. B: Hm, hm, hm, hm! I just love it. FS: Yes, it’s very beautiful.  B: So I’m just about this particular passage for two, maybe three reasons. So first up, is I like the prophets. I feel like a broken record here just saying that it has been, reading the Bible again with fresh eyes has been so insightful to me and a reminder that justice is at the heart of our faith. It’s not a secondary thing. This is another reminder, it’s all over the Bible, every week we are talking about it. Justice is key and so, just like the prophets in particular where they put it so both plainly, put a point on it, and also poetically. It’s just, “Oh yes!” It’s just clear. You don’t have to dig deep or understand historical context to get it, it’s just do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.  The first half of this, or the middle section, it’s starting to get a little nuance or nerdy or historical. There are just words, and places, and people that we might not immediately know. And it reminds me of the process of going through the How to Read the Bible course, journey into the Bible. One of the prompts you had was to read through it and ask all the questions that come up for you. Then start trying to answer them. So this text that at first brush, I’m just “Yeah, justice! That’s what I take from this. Just justice. Go justice!” There’s also I think, if you wanted to, you could clearly sit and spend time with this passage for weeks or months, and really dive into who are these people, who’s Moses, who’s Aaron, who’s Miriam, who’s Beor’s son. What is this slavery that they were redeemed from. There’s a really rich and vibrant, perhaps complex back story. That is informing this poetic, prophetic statement towards the end of this passage. And so it’s sort of a yes and of. Sometimes you get this nice little meme-able nuggets. But also, that comes from a place of wrestling and struggling, and informed by so much more.  What about you, Shay? FS: Yeah, I mean I love this passage mostly because of its simplicity. Right? You get this long, winded, kind of litany. It’s almost like this litany that we could repeat today: What have you been told? Don’t have sex before marriage. Don’t be gay. Go to church every Sunday. Give 10% of your money. Right? All of these things where God gives us this litany of – these are all the things that have been told you to do in order to be faithful. Then, God ends it with, “No actually I asked you to do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly, and that’s it. So get on that.” [laughter] I think that to me it’s a good redirect, it’s a good recentering when I get all up in my head about like, “Oh I need to be doing X,Y, and Z. And I should be figuring out A,B, and C. I should do this, and this, and this.” And then it’s like, “Oh no, okay. What does it look like right now, in this moment, to love justice? What does it look like right now to be merciful? What does it look like right now to walk humbly?” I think that that can be a good recentering. You know we talked a couple of weeks ago, Zoe’s question about being on this hamster wheel of anxiety and I think this verse and passage could also be a great response to that. Like, sit yourself down, take some deep breaths, answer these three questions.  For me, part of the journey of being human and following in the way of Jesus, all of these things, is often asking myself, “What’s the next correct step?” I don’t have to figure out what does justice look like for the rest of my life? It’s like what does justice look like in the next hour? What can I do? What do I do? Where is injustice showing up in my life right now? Where is a lack of mercy showing up? That’s why I love this passage because of that reorientation, and the fact that it gets us off of that treadmill. B: Also, can I just take a little moment for a personal nugget? That one of Shay and I’s best friends is named Micah, and Micah is the person who introduced us to each other. We met through Micah many, many years ago. This passage has a special place in my heart because of him and how he connected us together. And also, if you’ve ever wondered where the name Sanctuary Collective comes from, it comes from this project that Micah and I did. Oh god! I’m so old at this point, it was probably 10 years ago.  FS: More than that, I think. B: So Micah had been queer at a Christian college at Eastern University and felt isolated, and alone, and unsupported. And so he wanted to change that for queer folks at Christian colleges who were coming behind him. So we started this project – this year-long project to support young adults that were organizing for LGBTQ activism in Christian communities. And assembled this amazing team of mentors and supporters, and also, a prayer team. Brought 12-20 people to New York city for weekend-long training, and sent them back into their communities with their mentors. It’s a really cool thing that we called Sanctuary Collective. Then retired that name for a number of years and when we were starting and a community for QueerTheology.com it was so clear that this thing that Micah had started with me is years ago, needed to be resurrected as it were. Then the name was just so apparent and so really cool to see Sanctuary Collective living on as our humble attempt to do justice and love mercy into the world. So that’s a cool little personal aside. Don’t forget that our Faithful Sexuality Course registration is open right now. You can learn more and join up at QueerTheology.com/community and yep, that is all for now and we will see you next week. [outro music plays] B: The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at QueerTheology.com which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.  FS: To dive into more of the action, visit us at QueerTheology.com. You can also connect with us online: on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and Instagram. B: We’ll see you next week. Download the transcript (PDF) In this episode, we: Registration is open for the Faithful Sexuality course! [And Brian finally gets to say “Slide into our DMs]  [starting at 0:46] We shout out our Patron Beatrice and Indigo and talk about the power of Patreon [starting at 1:58] We answer a listener question about how you decide whether or not seminary is the right next move.  [starting at 3:17] We offer a queer reading of Micah 6:1-8. We explore what God asks of us (and give a little insight into where the name of our online community “Sanctuary Collective” comes from).  [starting at 9:55] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com (more deets in the ep) Links Mentioned in this episode: QueerTheology.com/faithfulsexuality QueerTheology.com/community Divine in the Differences, feat Indigo Rose Micah 6:1-8 God’s dispute with Israel Hear what the Lord is saying: Arise, lay out the lawsuit before the mountains; let the hills hear your voice! Hear, mountains, the lawsuit of the Lord! Hear, eternal foundations of the earth! The Lord has a lawsuit against his people; with Israel he will argue. “My people, what did I ever do to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me! I brought you up out of the land of Egypt; I redeemed you from the house of slavery. I sent Moses, Aaron, and Miriam before you. My people, remember what Moab’s King Balak had planned, and how Balaam, Beor’s son, answered him! Remember everything from Shittim to Gilgal, that you might learn to recognize the righteous acts of the Lord!” What does the Lord require? With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil? Should I give my oldest child for my crime; the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit? He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God. Photo by Ben White The post What Does God Require? – Micah 6:1-8 appeared first on Queer Theology.

In this week’s text, we look at Paul’s words to the church in Corinth where he stresses unity. Is unity helpful or harmful? How does Paul understand his own role in the early Christian movement? What does it mean for people to work in solidarity with one another while also holding people to a higher standard?  Episode Transcript Brian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast! Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. FS: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Queer Theology podcast. It is Sunday, January 26 and we are excited to be back with you for a second version of our new, and revamped, and longer podcast, and so… Together: Buckle in! B: I can’t believe it’s already the end of January. The time is flying. FS: I know! It’s wild! It’s wild! So what’s new in your world, Brian? B: It’s still trucking along in trying to figure out my life-career, making all the money work. [laughs] So thank you to everyone who supports Queer Theology making it a little less stressful. The website is ready which is wild to me! It’s been a long time coming and I don’t know now if we’re going to find glitches, so if you find glitches on the website please very gingerly let me know about them. There’s almost seven years of QueerTheology.com now. We’ve started with a one-page website. We were like, let’s just see what happens and we just keep adding more and more as ya’ll keep wanting more and more from us. So trying to make sense of seven years of content in a way that is useful to you and gets everything there but is not overwhelming and that nothing got lost in translation has been a challenge. So many spreadsheets , and spreadsheets, and spreadsheets trying to keep track of everything. So if you spot any glitches, let me know. That’s me. What about you Shay? You’re getting ready to come to me! FS: Yeah! I’m super excited! I signed up for this 2-day workshop it’s called Something To Say and Rob Bell basically walks through a 2-day communications workshop on how to communicate better. It’s capped at 30 people, so I’m super excited to just be in a really intimate space of other creatives and communicators, and hopefully, learn some tips. I’ve long admired Rob Bell as a public speaker, the fact that he can give a 2-hour or more talk that involves science and deep theology, and never once look at notes is just… it’s just mind-blowing to me. I aspired to that level of ease with both message, and also content, and being. So I don’t think he is going to fix my life in the next two days, but I’m certainly hopeful that he will give a push in the right direction. I guess I just find him really inspiring the way that he has reinvented his life and his ministry, and his career a couple of times over. I’m just excited to be in the same room as him and kinda soak up that energy for a couple of days. Also, to not be in the tundra of Minnesota for a week and I think I’ll probably be the only person in LA in a tank top and swimming trunks. Everyone else will be in their jackets, but I’ll be like “Not Minnesota”. So I’m pretty stoked about that. B: I’m excited for you to bring some of that learning and energy to the work that we’re doing here and just continue taking Queer Theology up it up to the next level. Making it more and more useful and engaging for folks. One of the things we set out to do all those years ago was to engage the head and the heart of theology. It has to be a sound faith, but it also has to be a meaningful faith. That’s what we’re trying to do and I’m excited to see what comes out of your time with Rob Bell. FS: Yeah, and you’ve been working on a course for everyone too, yeah? B: I sure have! It is coming so soon. We’re doing a Faithful Sexuality course. I think we’re going to open up registration later this week if you hop on the waitlist, you can get early registration and maybe a discount or bonus. You can go to QueerTheology.com/faithfulsexuality. It’s like a few things. So it’s a one-part “Is it Ok to have sex?”, “What types of sex are okay to have?” We don’t want to spend too much time on that because there’s much more interesting questions when it comes to faith and sex. But we know that is a pressing question for lots of people, so there will be some info on that in there. But if you’ve already got that figured out and you’re like, “I’m good! I’m having the sex, I’m ready to roar!” Don’t worry that’s just the beginning of it. And then we’re gonna dive into what does our faith have to say about our sexuality? How does our sexuality inform our faith? How do we figure out and articulate into a sexual ethic that isn’t just: sex is bad, don’t have it until you get married and then it’s good, but only if you’re straight. I think that queer people figuring out a sexual ethic can be a really helpful and healthy thing, so we’re gonna do that. Then we’re just going to look at the ways in which scripture is a little sexy. Both the parts of the Bible that talk about sex, but also the ways in which we use metaphor or imagery or allegory, and the ways in which sex have been a part of that; both in scripture and in art, and theology throughout the ages. There’s some juicy stuff in there and the way we talk about God and community and sex and I think that it’s just going to be really fun to explore that. I know for everyone in the whole world that there’s so many negative cultural messages about sex and about our body. That is especially true for Christians and it’s especially true for queer people. Really making space to reclaim our sexuality as this good, holy, and sacred thing. That’s also fun and playful, and I’m just really excited to dive into it with the community that we’ve got. So keep on the lookout for that and if you’re interested in this QueerTheology.com/faithfulsexuality is where you can hop on the waitlist or if you’re listening to this next week or in two weeks and registration is already open, that will set up a redirect that takes you to the registration page so that you can dive in. And if you have any questions about the course or about sex, send us an email at connect@queertheology.com or send us a DM on any social media and we’ll talk through and help you figure out if this is right for you or what your options are. Yep, so that’s the course that’s coming and I’m just jazzed about it. FS: Yeah! It’s gonna be awesome. Alright! Before we dive in, this podcast is brought to you by over 125 supporters on Patreon. B: Our Patreons not only keep this show on the air but also support all of the free resources that we create over at QueerTheology.com. It’s articles, videos, and PDF guides, and all that jazz. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much to all of our Patreon supporters. FS: And today, we wanna give a shout out to one of our new Patreons, Jamie who just joined this past month. Thank you so much Jamie we’re super excited to have you as part of this community and to have you supporting this work. B: Thank you! So if you out there enjoy this show and you want to support it, you can do that for as little as $2/month over at Patreon.com/QueerTheology. You can learn more about why we need this support, what it goes to and you can check out some of the perks that are available at the various levels again at Patreon.com/QueerTheology. FS: Okay! On to the show! We are gonna dive in with a listener question. Just a reminder that if you want your question to be featured on the podcast, you can send us an email at connect@queertheology.com. You can send us an audio file and we’ll feature your audio, or you can just send us in a regular email. We would love to feature your question and so today’s question comes from Zoe. Zoe writes, “I still worry sometimes. Am I wrong? Is this kind of social justice the wrong kind? Even if I am the most justice-advocating, kindest person alive, being queer and defending queer people, am I going to be condemned for being those things once I die? Am I doing mental gymnastics in apologetics, and how will I defend myself if apologetics won’t work? Do you have any tips for quelling these anxieties?” B: Ohh! I just want to first say that I feel this question on a gut and soul level. I’d like to think that I’ve put this question to rest many, many years ago. Also, I remember living in that fear and uncertainty. Just so vividly and viscerally. Just first off, I want to say to you Zoe and to anyone else who is listening and having similar questions: I feel you, and I’ve been there, and you are not alone. You’re not the first person and you won’t be the last, unfortunately, to have these worries and we’re here with you. FS: I think this is probably or some variation on this question, is probably the questions that we get the most often at Queer Theology of people wondering: How do I deal with this anxiety? How do I know if I’m right or wrong? So yes, I too feel this deeply and also you’re definitely not alone. We get this question at least once a week and have for over seven years. This is the work. Right? This is the work. B: So Christianity is often framed in the public discourse as this personal relationship with Jesus, going to church, believing a handful of things about God or Jesus or Bible or the world. So in that model of Christianity, justice becomes this thing that is secondary to Christianity. Or perhaps a distraction to Christianity. If there’s one thing that this Bible podcast shows, looking at the Bible, the actual Bible for almost seven years now, is that justice is not secondary to or in competition to Christianity but it is at the heart the faith story in both the Hebrew and Christian Bible. Then there are like some Christians where they are “Well yeah, justice for some people but not our people.” is a good thing. I think, hopefully, that this podcast shows that we’re all wrapped up in this together. This specifically this question about worrying about what’s going to happen after you die. We have an article on the website that is it all about getting into heaven and we will put a link in the show notes to that article about the question, what happens after you die? Is Christianity about just getting into heaven? You can get the show notes for this episode at QueerTheology.com/313. Shay, what else would you add? FS: What you said about justice is huge. I think there’s also this idea, this pray a prayer and you’re good to go. That’s not actually in scripture, so the justice work is more integral to what it means to be a Christian than praying that prayer. I also think that some of this idea of what can you say to me that will make this anxiety go away, is the uncomfortable truth that there is nothing that we can say that will make that anxiety go away. Part of what it means to deprogram yourself from a really toxic or traumatic first encounter with Christianity is number one, it takes time. It takes time to do that work and to do the unpacking work. I think you and I both know that sometimes those doubts still come up and even though you’ve done the work and you’ve been in therapy for forever and you don’t believe in that God anymore. Those messages die hard and that’s part of recovering from trauma is that those messages don’t ever go away. But I do think that there is this sense that it does get easier after time and the more work that you do to unpack and to learn a different kind of faith. The less loud those voices get. I just want to share this quote that’s been super comforting to me, it’s by Marcus Borg who’s this great, popular theologian, and he has this quote about the afterlife that I think is really beautiful. He says, “So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like?” And his response is “I don’t have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.” And I revisit that quote a lot and hang on to it. Both because to me, it sums up so perfectly this idea that if I can trust in God and that God is good, then I don’t actually have to worry about getting it right and having it be a 100% right all the time. I don’t have to worry that I’m going to be smoked or struck done by a vengeful God after I die because I believe that God is loving and that the rest will sort itself out. I offer up that quote up to you, this idea “I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.” B: Yeah. I think it can be tempting to take, well it’s not about saying this prayer and getting into heaven and that justice is at the heart of our faith. Translate that into, then I have to do the right things and that then, nervousness and anxiety about, am I doing the right things? Am I enough? Is my justice enough? Can replace that old question of am I still saved? You are already enough and you are good and whole, just as you are. If you want a little bit guidance, Shay wrote this amazing quick start guide for finding your faith that walks you through the process of deconstructing and reconstructing which you can get at queertheology.com/guide for free. FS: Yeah! If questions like this are meaningful to you, if they feel helpful, we dive deeper into stuff like this all of the time in Sanctuary Collective. Sanctuary Collective is Queer Theology’s online community. It’s the place where Brian and I spend the bulk of our time hanging out with people. It’s a space for questions, for diving deeper into scripture, for getting support on everything from coming out, dating, mental health stuff, dealing with being trans, and also celebrating our wins together. Celebrating good dates, and new babies, and just fun that we have throughout the week. It’s a really beautiful community. If you would like to join this international community of folks, you can do that at QueerTheology.com/community we would love to see you inside Sanctuary Collective. It’s a really special place and we would love to have you be a part of it. B: Okay, so let’s open up our Bibles and queer the text. FS: This week we are taking a look at 1Corinthians 1:10-18. I’m going to read it because, well it is a passage… B: It sure is. FS: This is from the Common English Bible Now I encourage you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: Agree with each other and don’t be divided into rival groups. Instead, be restored with the same mind and the same purpose. My brothers and sisters, Chloe’s people gave me some information about you, that you’re fighting with each other. What I mean is this: that each one of you says, “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Cephas,” “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in Paul’s name? Thank God that I didn’t baptize any of you, except Crispus and Gaius, so that nobody can say that you were baptized in my name! Oh, I baptized the house of Stephanas too. Otherwise, I don’t know if I baptized anyone else. Christ didn’t send me to baptize but to preach the good news. And Christ didn’t send me to preach the good news with clever words so that Christ’s cross won’t be emptied of its meaning. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed. But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved. B: I’m here for this text. First is, oh Paul! Always. I got whiplashed from the thoughts that I was having as we were reading this text. So the first thought that jumped out at me was, ohh not this! I can hear the ways in which this passage is used to silence queer people, women, folks of color. To just say, no you have to be unified and basically just be quiet and let us continue to beat up on you, but act like we’re all big, happy, unified family. There’s a way that this is used to silence differences in descent, and that always comes at the cost of marginalized folks. First I was eww no, and then, I very quickly was, oh but there is something there and it made me think of the ways in which sometimes the various parts of the LGBT community sometimes try to fracture apart. I’m thinking mostly of white cis gays and lesbians who want to say, let’s get this marriage important to me or the military is important to me. And we can jettison trans folks and maybe come back for you later, but actually, probably not. And bi people complicate the message around you can’t choose so we’re gonna ignore them. I see the various ways in which pride and ego, and identity play out in fracturing the LGBT community and that breaks my heart. So there’s a part of me that does long for this unified community, and can we come together and really take care of ourselves and support each other. And also thinking back to the time when this was written where the early followers of Jesus were a minority, and living under Rome, and occupation. Not the state-sponsored religion and very different than American and Western Christianity today. So the ways in which queer folks sometimes need unity to survive and these Christians folks also might have been — perhaps a strategic element of we need to not be divided because we are still vulnerable. That is very different than the powerful institutional church saying, be quiet and be absorbed into the board that is American Christianity. What about you Shay, what is coming up for you with this text? FS: First of all, this text makes me laugh because you can tell that Paul is writing the stream of consciousness letter, I didn’t baptized any of you. Except for those two people, but nobody else. Ooh, and that whole household, but I don’t remember if I did anyone else. Right? It’s again, to me, this indication of the fact that Paul didn’t intend for his letters to become scriptures, right? Again this is clear to me that had Paul’s intention been to set down something that would be handed down for centuries and would be considered on par with the Hebrew scriptures, this is not what he would’ve written. And he then says, “Christ didn’t send me to preach the good news with clever words.” So he doesn’t have this sense of himself as being the arbiter of what it means to follow Jesus. In fact, instead, he is trying to continually re-orient this new community back to what did Christ say? What did Jesus say? It’s unfortunate that often in American Christianity in particular, the emphasis has been on Paul’s words and work. When Paul was really trying to orient everyone back to Jesus. So I think that it’s an important corrective especially because this final verse, “the message of the cross is foolishness to those are being destroyed, but it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved.” I remember that verse being used all the time growing up. It was the sense of we understand Jesus because we are saved. And people are bashing Christianity because they are being destroyed. It was this mental gymnastics of will you reject it so, therefore, it’s foolishness to you and not the other way around. I think it’s important to remember that that’s not what Paul is trying to say. But also I think your point to this idea of a minority or marginalized group needing to be united. I think about its political season in the United States, it’s always political season in the United States, but the conversations that happen on the left around, “No. I’m a Bernie Bro”, “No. I want Elizabeth Warren.”, “No. I want Marianne Williamson”. The four people that say they want Marianne Williamson. [laughs] There’s a sense of, “No. Only my guy or gal.” Then there’s these other folks that are saying, this insistence on ideological purity is why we ended up with the President that we have now. I think that there is a both-and. There is a responsibility of voting as harm reduction and figuring out what is the next right step. While also saying we need to hold people to a higher standard. So I think there is a both-and here of we can say no that this isn’t good enough. The ideal needs to be this and also what’s the thing that we can do right now that we can try to hopefully avert World War III. Those are both-and. I think that that is a fine line to walk. It’s a really tricky balance. It’s something that we need to be careful with because I think it quickly slides into what you were saying about, nope we’ll come back to you because we can get this passed without trans people. So let’s do it. We have to really be cognizant of the decisions that we are making, of the choices that we are making, of where we’re gonna say “Nope. You know what, if we can’t get it with everyone, we’re not gonna do it at all.” The moment where it says, “Nope if we don’t get this we’re really screwed, so we gotta do it.” I don’t have good and clear answers there, but it feels to me that this passage is calling us to grapple with all of that. B: Yeah. Definitely important thoughts to reckon with and figure out what each of our appropriate way forward is. Just a final reminder, if you’re interested in our course on healthy and faithful sexuality, figuring out sexual ethics, finding ways in which your faith compliments your sex life, and your sexuality compliments your faith. Go to QueerTheology.com/faithfulsexuality to hop on the waitlist or depending on when your listening to this to sign up for the course. If you have any questions about what comes with it, what we’re gonna cover, if it’s the right fit for you, we would love to talk through that with you. Find us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and send us a DM and we’ll talk it through. We only want you to be a part of this course if it makes sense for you. So bring any questions that you’ve got to us we’re here to work it out with you. Again that’s QueerTheology.com/faithfulsexuality. I’m really excited about this course on exploring the inner sections of sex, and sexuality, and bodies, and the divine. It’s gonna be juicy. So that’s all I got for now. FS: And again, if you’ve got a question for us for the podcast send an email to connect@queertheology.com. We would love to feature your question next time. Thanks so much for being here and we will see you next week. [outro music plays] B: The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at QueerTheology.com which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters. FS: To dive into more of the action, visit us at QueerTheology.com. You can also connect with us online: on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and Instagram. B: We’ll see you next week. Download the transcript (PDF) In this episode, we: Chat about what’s happening in our personal lives and what’s new with Queer Theology [starting at 0:55] We shout out our Patron Jaime and talk about the power of Patreon [starting at 7:17] We answer a listener question about the anxiety about being a “social justice Christian” or being wrong for being an LGBTQ Christian [starting at 8:22] We offer a queer reading of 1 Corinthians 1:10-18. Is unity helpful or harmful? [starting at 17:20] If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com (more deets in the ep) Links Mentioned in this episode: queertheology.com/faithfulsexuality Is it all about getting into heaven? 1Corinthians 1:10-18 Now I encourage you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: Agree with each other and don’t be divided into rival groups. Instead, be restored with the same mind and the same purpose. My brothers and sisters, Chloe’s people gave me some information about you, that you’re fighting with each other. What I mean is this: that each one of you says, “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Cephas,” “I belong to Christ.” Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in Paul’s name? Thank God that I didn’t baptize any of you, except Crispus and Gaius, so that nobody can say that you were baptized in my name! Oh, I baptized the house of Stephanas too. Otherwise, I don’t know if I baptized anyone else. Christ didn’t send me to baptize but to preach the good news. And Christ didn’t send me to preach the good news with clever words so that Christ’s cross won’t be emptied of its meaning. Photo by Tim Marshall The post Unity In All? – 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 appeared first on Queer Theology.

In this week’s Gospel we explore Jesus’ invitation to “come and see” and how that might resonate with queer communities. In this week’s episode, we unveil our new, longer format podcast! You get more about what we’re up to, hear a listener question, and of course we queer a text!  In this episode, we: Talk about the new website and what’s coming up with Queer Theology [starting at 0:35] Talk about what’s going on in our personal lives [starting at 2:22] Answer a reader question about books for young people wanting to know more about sexual identity [starting at 6:19] Share about the online community and things that are coming up next [starting at 11:12] Queer the Gospel of John and talk about the good news of queer community [starting at 12:13]   If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology If you’d like to be featured in future episodes, email your question or Bible passage suggestion to connect@queertheology.com (more deets in the ep)   Links Mentioned in this episode: Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth The God Box by Alex Sanchez Pride: Celebrating Diversity and Community by Robin Stevenson Lumberjanes comic series by Noelle Stevenson, et al. When Kids Ask Hard Questions: Faith-Filled Responses for Tough Topics by Bromleigh McCleneghan and Karen Ware Jackson Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle   Other Podcast Mentioned in this episode: Parenting Forward by Cindy Wang Brandt Episode Transcript Brian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast! Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns  B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. B: Hello, hello, hello! Today is Sunday, January 19, 2020, and today is also the first episode of our newly reformatted Queer Theology podcast.  FS: Yay!!! So exciting! B: So bear with us as we might hit some road bumps, speed bumps along the way as we dive into this new format, but we’re excited to expand the podcast a little bit, feature some more of you, have extended episodes. So remember, if you would like to be featured on the podcast if you have a question, a topic, a Bible passage that you want us to talk about, email us at connect@queertheology.com. We also have a new website coming up very soon thanks to all of the supporters on Patreon. Shay, what are your thoughts on this new website? FS: I am so excited. What we’ve been hearing for quite a long time is that people have had trouble finding things on the website or they’ve been looking for specific resources, and you and I knew that we had created them, but even we couldn’t always find them. So we’re super excited to roll out this new website and it’s really designed to help walk folks through, meet with folks wherever they are on their journey and kind of walk them through the next steps. So there is a really slick homepage that you can kinda select, here’s where I’m at, I’m looking for affirmation. Or I know that it’s okay to be gay, but I wanna figure out how my sexuality, my spirituality interact. Or I’m a religious leader and I need some resources to do that work better. So super excited about that, it’s gonna be really exciting for people. It’s gonna be exciting for us to be able to point you to new stuff and everything’s gonna be right there. It’s gonna be great! B: Yeah! I’m excited as well. And also, how’s your January going so far? FS: It’s fine. [laughs] It is very cold in Minnesota and Brian you’ve been sending me screenshots of the weather in LA which is not helping. And so that’s making me a little crabby… B: Okay, I’m gonna stop doing that. FS: Yeah. It’s January Minnesota so things are… yeah, it’s winter. B: I’m trying to get you excited for your trip to LA. FS: Yes! I am heading to LA at the end of the month to attend a 2-day Communication Workshop with Rob Bell which I am super, super, super excited about. And I am excited about the New Year, just getting used to a new schedule and trying to accomplish some new goals and so I’m a little bit overwhelmed at this point. But it also is getting exciting. How about you? B: Yeah. And we’re gonna have a Facebook live on the 29th while Shay is in town to celebrate the new website. So keep your eyes and ears peeled for more of that. So yeah, my January is going well. It’s sunny and lovely here in Los Angeles. Today it’s only going to be in the mid 60s and so I’m wearing a sweatshirt because it’s a little chilly [laughs].  FS: -1. It is -1. B: I literally can’t even imagine that so cold. But my unemployment is running out next month and so it’s a little nervous making, so I’m super thankful for all the folks that have supported us on Patreon and the ones who are yet to come who are going to support us on Patreon in the future, name that and claim that. Really being unemployed and Queer Theology being now my only job, every single dollar makes a difference so thank you to all of that. And I got a little late of a start, I felt like to the New Year. I like to do an annual review, and set some goals, and make some plans at the end of December, but I was traveling to visit family and friends on the East Coast. So I’ve kinda been doing that, still at that process has spilled over into the New Year. But I’m feeling really good about journaling, and getting back into running, and Matt and I went to the pool a few days ago and went swimming for the first time – which was really cool. So, just new adventures. I’m really excited about this Faithful Sexuality course that we’ve got coming up. I’ve started working behind the scenes. So it’s a really exciting January – February. It’s cold and more cold where you are than where I am, but it’s cold and dark and winter, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, but some cool stuff is coming along so I’m pretty excited about that.  FS: Yeah. It’s gonna be a really good first quarter of 2020. It’s exciting. B: So before we dive in, this podcast is brought to you by over 125 supporters on Patreon. FS: Our Patreons not only help to keep the show on the air, but also support all the free resources we create at QueerTheology.com: articles, videos, PDF guides, and more. So thank you, thank you, thank you to all our Patreon supporters. B: And this week, we want to give a shout out to Bex who was one of our supporters of our Patreon. And they’ve been a supporter for two months now. So thank you Bex, we really appreciate your support. As I said, literally every dollar makes a difference. FS: If you enjoy this podcast and want to support it, you can do that for as little as $2/month at Patreon.com/queertheology. Learn more about why we need your support and check out all of the perks at Patreon.com/queertheology. B: Ok. And so, let’s get on with the show. This week we have a question from Jennifer, and Jennifer asks: “My daughter is turning 12. Very mature for her age. She has recently expressed an interest in the LGBT community, she is also at the same time, questioning her faith. 12 is such an uncertain age and she likes to read. So my question is: could you recommend any age-appropriate books that she may enjoy and may discover who she is?”  Shay what would you recommend in this situation? FS: Yeah. So 12 is tricky right? Because I think that you could potentially read middle-grade books or even books aimed at younger kids or you could be reading some young adult novels. So sometimes it depends on your reading level and maturity level. So some books that I have really loved that I think are great, and that are more on the LGBTQ side, I really love The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth. It’s a really beautiful book. It might be challenging for a 12-year-old: it’s a little bit of a tough read, but… B: It’s heavy. FS: Yeah. But it’s so beautiful and so well done. And this book is a little bit older and I haven’t read it in a while, so I’m not entirely sure how it holds up, but The God Box by Alex Sanchez is another young adult novel. That’s about coming to terms with your sexuality and your faith all at the same time. I remember really liking that one when I was grappling with my own sexuality and faith. It’s aimed for young adults. And then doing some Googling, there’s a book called Pride: Celebrating Diversity & Community by Robin Stevenson. This is a non-fiction book that’s aimed at middle-grade folks and so I think that would be a great look at just the diversity and community. And there are lots and lots and lots of people who have been reading and loving the comic or graphic novel series Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson. It’s been on my list for a long time, but I hear people raving about this series and little kids are reading it, older folks are reading it. So that’s a great book. It’s gonna be really fun and will be good for all reading levels.  B: Another book recommendation that I have is Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle. It’s set in a school context and the protagonist is a young character and it’s queer, and about other kid stuff as well. I work with Tim a few years ago on some LGBT issues in education work. He has since gone on to writer-broadway musical and has a cocktail book for adults. And he’s just a marvelous person. And so Better Nate Than Ever is a good read. I also just want to acknowledge that this is such a lovely question to hear from a parent. Wanting to be proactive in cultivating this sensitive exploration of queerness when it comes to your kid. So many queer kids or questioning kids with an interest in the LGBT community have had parents shut that down or read books about how they can fix it. So it’s heartwarming to hear.  I also wanna offer some resources for you, Jennifer, for parents out there. There’s a podcast called Parenting Forward by Cindy Wang Brandt who I met last year at the UCF conference. We were both in the podcast stage there. She’s so smart and thoughtful and it’s all about progressive, faithful parenting. So the whole podcast might be helpful, but this specifically I’m thinking of a recent episode that was specifically about talking to your child about doubt and questions. The episode that I’m thinking of, I’ll put a link in the show notes to this episode which you can get at queertheology.com/312, but that episode is aimed more towards a younger kid, but this is an advice that transcends age, how to address kids when they come with questioning their faith. Then a book for you, they might check out is called When Kids Ask Hard Questions: Faith-filled Responses for Tough Topics by Bromleigh McCleneghan and Karen Ware Jackson. We will put links to all of these books in the show notes for this episode, so you can go find them and buy them or get the full title so you can check it out from your local library at queertheology.com/312. FS: And just a reminder that if you’ve got a question that you want us to tackle on the podcast, you can send us an email at connect@queertheology.com. You can send an audio file if you want us to feature the audio of your question, that would be really fun. Or you can also send it just in a regular email format. We would love to answer your questions on the air, so please submit those at connect@queertheology.com. B: Throughout the week we dive into questions just like this and many more inside of Sanctuary Collective which is QueerTheology’s online community and resource library. We talk about parenting, we talk about dating, we talk about creativity. There’s actually a book club inside of there so very topical for this discussion this week. We talk about doubt, and queering our faith, and what our faith says about our sexual or gender. It’s just really awesome and I’ve met some amazing friends, and we hear from folks that they’ve really learned and grown, and so if that’s something that interests you. The podcast is whetting your whistle and you want some more, head on over to queertheology.com/community to learn more about Sanctuary Collective and join up! FS: Alright! Now we’re gonna head into our lectionary reading for January 19, 2020. We’re super excited to continue to tackle theology and the Bible. So let’s open up our Bibles and queer this text. B: This week we’re going to be looking at John 1:29-42. I will read it to you now from the Common English Bible. The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one about whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is really greater than me because he existed before me.’ Even I didn’t recognize him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be made known to Israel.” John testified, “I saw the Spirit coming down from heaven like a dove, and it rested on him. Even I didn’t recognize him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit coming down and resting is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and testified that this one is God’s Son.” The next day John was standing again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus walking along he said, “Look! The Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard what he said, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he asked, “What are you looking for?” They said, “Rabbi (which is translated Teacher), where are you staying?” He replied, “Come and see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two disciples who heard what John said and followed Jesus was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Christ). He led him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter). Okay, Shay. What do we do with this text? And in what ways is it maybe a little queer? FS: Yes, it’s kind of a quirky little story and I think you and I both know this that we talk a lot about how the gospel narratives don’t always match up. And I think that this is really a clear one. Right? Not only is the baptism narrative that we get in John very different than the one that we get in Matthew, which we talked about actually just last week. But it’s also this beginning of Jesus’ ministry is really different right? Like in Luke, Jesus gets baptized and He goes into the desert for 40 days. And so in this text, we have Jesus gets baptized and then the very next day he’s hanging out with his disciplines. He already has disciples and lunches in. So that’s super weird. So I don’t know, do you have other thoughts about this inability to match the text? B: Yeah! I think that that’s so important because for so many people it’s ingrained that the Bible is literal. If you’re not reading it literally, you are doing something wrong. Or it’s a lesser way of reading the Bible or sort of an imitation version of Christianity. That’s just not the case. As you were saying, we just last week looked at Matthew’s version of this story which if you want to go back and listen to, you can listen to queertheology.com/311, but I think more to the point is that these differences are a reminder that the Bible isn’t even asking us to take it literally. That John was written a long time after Matthew, the author of John may or may not have seen Matthew or known that it existed. But John is so different than Matthew, Mark, and Luke that the author is not even trying to make it line up. And then the people who compiled the Bible obviously looked at John and Matthew, and were like yup, these two are both valuable and put them in the Bible and called them Canon, and could have said: if we were trying to discern a literal history when compiling a Bible, folks might have said well we have to figure out which one of these are “real”. And instead, the people who compiled the Bible looked at all four of the gospels and said, all four of these are real and true in some way. And because they contradict themselves like matters of history. They’re clearly not real and true and sort of like history textbooks sort of way. And so just like remembering that. Then those differences can then lead to really important questions like, “What is this text trying to tell us?” In the places that they are different, “What did those differences mean? Why do they matter? What can we learn from those differences?” And I think that is, perhaps a more time than we have in this one episode to explore, but there is some juice there. And we talk a little bit about that in our How to Read the Bible Course, which if you didn’t take, you can get on the waitlist at queertheology.com/courses. But looking at how it all comes together and what we know and what we don’t know is just part of the process of taking apart Scripture and finding meaning. What else is coming up in this passage for you Shay?  FS: I was really intrigued by this section where the people, Jesus notices that these people are following him around and they ask Him: “Where are you staying?” And His response is “Come and see.” So they go and they see where he’s staying and they remain with him and then some of them just never leave. I just think there’s something really beautiful, both about that response of “Come and see”. And you and I talk a lot about how the goodness of Queer Theology and the goodness of queer and trans Christians is a gift to the church in the world, and that we don’t necessarily need to be fighting to stay in the church. Instead, we often say to people “Come and see.” That’s happening out here. That’s happening amongst our communities. That’s happening in our clubs, and in our homes, and all of that. There’s something to me that when cis-gender and straight allies do that work of coming and seeing – that it’s actually really beautiful and that they get something out of it, and that they can then choose to stay and be a part of it. That’s where the goodness is. It’s not like these disciples said to Jesus, “Why don’t you come back to the temple and to the structures and try to get them to change?” It’s, “No. We’re gonna do this new thing over here, so why don’t you come with us?”   B: Yes!   FS: That’s really powerful to me.   B: It also reminds me of stories that I’ve heard from people and/or representatives in plays or movies about big urban cities that became queer enclaves in the 60s’, 70s’, and 80s’. And waves of new queer people coming into the city and trying to find their way in the era before smartphones, and the internet, and Yelp. Just sort of being taken in and “come follow me and I’ll show you to this club or you can crash in this apartment.” This is so silly but in the Downtown Abey movie which it takes place in 1940, maybe, the character Tomas – spoiler alert, is gay and he gets taken into this warehouse/club in the 1940s’ and there’s this British man in British, fancy attire but being queer together. This idea of “come and see”, this beauty and divinity of both queerness and faith – I love. It reminds me in ways in which I met some of my friends. I’m thinking of a friend in particular, Leo who we just met at a diner and came home with us, and stayed on our couch and ended up living with us for quite a long time. Became one of my best friends. I think that queer people can really resonate with this idea of becoming fast friends with strangers and then coming into homes and creating family. Something magical happening there that is lovely and can change the world. I love this little queer nugget in the weird, weird gospel of John.    [both laughs]   FS: We hope that you’ve enjoyed this new and longer podcast. Just a reminder that we’re gonna put a bunch of links in the show notes, so you can see those at queertheology.com/312. We’ll put the links to the books, to the entire podcasts that we mentioned. Just as a reminder if work like this matters to you, if you wanna support this we would love for you to become a Patreon. You can go to Patreon.com/queertheology and join for as little as $2/month and help keep this podcast expanding and on the air.  B: Thank you and we’ll see you next week.  [outro music plays] B: The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at QueerTheology.com which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.  FS: To dive into more of the action, visit us at QueerTheology.com. You can also connect with us online: on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, and Instagram. B: We’ll see you next week.   The post The Gospel of Queer Community – John 1:29-42 appeared first on Queer Theology.