The Queer Bible: Beyond family Values

Under the heading, "A Way Back Behind Christian Homophobia", Adam Kotsko writes at the blog "An und fur sich" about a trilogy of books byTed Jennings: Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel, The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives in the New Testament, and the third in the set, Plato or Paul?: The Origins of Western Homophobia:

"The strategy here is clear, aggressive, and absolutely necessary: he absolutely abandons the defensive stance -of “explaining away” the supposedly “obvious” homophobic elements in the Bible that “everyone knows” about and instead presents us with a scriptural account that is deeply homophilic, even to the point of presenting us with a possible male lover for Christ himself."

Setting aside the weapons of hate

Even discounting the possibility that Jesus had a male lover (there are at least two candidates: John, the "apostle Jesus loved", and Lazarus), this is an approach I love. Given the way in which queers have for centuries experienced Scripture as a weapon of hate, it is understandable that after one has overcome a natural antipathy to dealing with Scripture at all, the first enquiry from lesbigay people is to find ways to respond to the infamous clobber texts, to learn to set aside the weapons of hate. This is technically relatively easy - the actual texts are few, out of 30 000 verse in a Bible written against a cultural background where homoeroticism was commonplace, and many scholars have shown how they have either been misinterpreted, or are of limited relevance to modern gay relationships.

More difficult is dealing with the residual emotional baggage: this is where books pointing to positive interpretations of Scripture are so valuable. Again, this should be easy - the fundamental message of the Gospels has nothing to do with hatred against anybody, but stresses love and inclusion for everybody - most especially social outsiders and the otherwise afflicted and oppressed. Still, for people with a homophile orientation, we can go well beyond the simple message of generic inclusion. Writers on Scripture have pointed to specifically queer values in Scripture, while historians have shown that the roots of popular hostility did not lie in Scripture at all: the Church followed popular prejudice, not the other way around.

I do not yet have personal knowledge of Jennings' books (but will explore further). There are other writers though who have covered much the same ground, with whose work I am more familiar.

Setting aside family values

Chris Glaser, in his excellent book, "Coming Out as Sacrament", has a chapter on "Coming out in the Bible", in which he reads several well known Scripture stories, from Adam & Eve in Genesis to Pentecost in Acts, as coming out tales. Among these, he presents the story of Jesus Himself as "Coming out of Family Values". The evidence he produces in support of this argument is that:

"his mother Mary was told that Jesus' own coming out would mean "that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword shall pass through your own soul too (Luke 2:35)";

At twelve years of age, Jesus ignored his family's departure from Jerusalem to sit in the temple, his "Father's house" (Luke 2:49);

He left His family and as far as we know, never married and never "begat" children;

He called his disciples away from their families (9:59:62), told them he had no home (9:57) ,, and claimed that His gospelk would "set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother." (Mathew 10:35-36);

When His family came to see Him, He declared, "Whoever does the will of god is my brother and sister and mother"(Mark 3:35);

Members of the new faith community addressed each other as brother and sister;

Jesus' own family of choice were three unmarried people - Martha, Mary and Lazarus;

In the New Testament, the biological, polygamous, prolifically procreative family of the Old Testament was superseded by the more vital, eternal and extended family of faith, a family to be expanded by evangelism and inclusivity rather than mere procreation;

Jesus had a special word of defence for the eunuch, who was an outcast in Israel because his body was mutilated, but more importantly because he could not procreate. "

I don't know about you, but to me, but none of this, neither Old Testament nor New, sounds particularly like the "traditional family values" that the fundies claim to be protecting because they believe them to be at the heart of Christianity.

Urban gay men as role models

Going beyond queer values in the Gospels to queer lives today, the American theologian Kathy Rudy argues that this Scriptural denial of modern "family values" implies that modern urban gay culture is more in tune with the Gospel message than the biological family which Christ's teaching rejected

"The church needs the model of gay sexual sexual communities because Christians have forgaotten how to think about social and sexual life outside the family".

Writing about Rudy's work, Elisabeth Stuart notes that

"The church has forgotten how to be a community, how to be the body of Christ and perhaps gay men have the grave task of teaching it to be a community wider than a family."

Wow!

How far have we come? Instead of simply sitting back and accepting the knee jerk, unfounded accusations of "Sodomy", we find that there are serious, credible Scripture scholars and theologians who have first, shown that the traditional use of the clobber texts to atack us is at best inappropriate, or possibly totally unfounded; that there are positive role models in Scripture, in both the Old Testmament and the New; that far from encouraging traditional family values, the Gospel message opposes themwith what are quite frankly queer values, and that far from the fundies being in a position to lecture us on how to behave, we should be teaching them a thing or two about the Gospels and how to move beyond an unChristian "Focus on the Family" to a wider "Focus on Community"!

Beyond gender.

Rudy continues, says Stuart, to "construct a sexual ethic which is communal in nature and queer in its politics." Because in recent centuries there has been so much emphasis on first reproduction and then on complementarity as the sole purposes of sex, the result is that "celibacy, singleness and communal life, which have been valued for so long in Christian history, no longer have a place in Christian life."

In a neat inversion of the story of Sodom, "for Rudy the story of Sodom teaches us that what is ultimately pleasing to God about sexuality is the quality of its hospitality. This is not to say that every stranger must be offered sex, but that sex must cultivate an openness and warmth to strangers, it must open our hearts, break down our boundaries, and push us beyond ourselves. Hospitality is procreative, it expands and widens the community. When we open our homes to outsiders, the private space of the home becomes the public space of the Church, and so not only is gender collapsed but so is the dualism between private and public. The cult of domesticity is destroyed and replaced by an ethic which subverts worldy concepts of gender and understands sex in the context of building up the body of Christ."

How far from James Dobson is that?

See also:

The Gospels Queer Values

Books:

Althaus-Reid, Marcella: Indecent Theology

Horner, James: Johnathan Loved David

Glaser,Chris: Coming Out as Sacrament

Moore: God's Beauty Parlour

Rudy, Kathy: Sex and the Church

Stuart, Elisabeth: Gay & Lesbian Theologies

Scripture Booklist

BOSWELL: Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality

COUNTRYMAN: Dirt, Greed and Sex

COULTON: The Bible, The Church and Homosexuality

COLLINS: Sexual Ethics and the New Testament

GOSS & Webb (eds): Take Back The Word

HELMINIAK: What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality

HORNER: Johnathan Loved David

MOORE: God's Beauty Parlour

STONE: Practicing Safer Texts

SPONG: The Sins of Scripture

SCROGGS: The New Testament and Homosexuality

COMSTOCK: Gay Theology Without Apology

Comstock, Gary

Gay Theology Without Apology

Pilgrim Press 1993

183 pages

Theology, Lesbian & Gay Theology, Scripture

Presenting a theology forged out of personal experience, informed and guided by Scripture and tradition, Comstock holds up the contradictions in the Bible and examines the various facets of Jesus--not to condemn inconsistencies, but to draw from them the strengths and beauty they may hold for everyone who claims Christianity as his or her faith
On-line review

COULTON: The Bible, The Church and Homosexuality

Coulton,

The Bible, the Church and Homosexuality

(Darton, Longman, Todd, 2005)

104 Pages

Anglican, Scripture, Theology, lesbian & gay

Strongly Recommended as brief introductory text.

JORDAN, M D (ed): Authorising Marriage?

The opponents of legal recognition for same-sex marriage frequently appeal to a "Judeo-Christian" tradition. But does it make any sense to speak of that tradition as a single teaching on marriage? Are there elements in Jewish and Christian traditions that actually authorize religious and civil recognition of same-sex couples? And are contemporary heterosexual marriages well supported by those traditions? As evidenced by the ten provocative essays assembled and edited by Mark D. Jordan, the answers are not as simple as many would believe. The scholars of Judaism and Christianity gathered here explore the issue through a wide range of biblical, historical, liturgical, and theological evidence. From David's love for Jonathan through the singleness of Jesus and Paul to the all-male heaven of John's Apocalypse, the collection addresses pertinent passages in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament with scholarly precision. It reconsiders whether there are biblical precedents for blessing same-sex unions in Jewish and Christian liturgies. The book concludes by analyzing typical religious arguments against such unions and provides a comprehensive response to claims that the Judeo-Christian tradition prohibits same-sex unions from receiving religious recognition. The essays, most of which are in print here for the first time, are by Saul M. Olyan, Mary Ann Tolbert, Daniel Boyarin, Laurence Paul Hemming, Steven Greenberg, Kathryn Tanner, Susan Frank Parsons, Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., and Mark D. Jordan.

Contents:

Mark D Jordan: Introduction

Saul M Olyan: “Surpassing the Love of Women “ Another look at 2 Samuel 1:26 and the relationship of David and Johnathan

Dale B Martin: Familiar Idolatry and the Christian Case against Marriage.

Mary Ann Tolbert: Marriage and Friendship in the Christian New Testament: Ancient Resources for Contemporary Same-Sex Unions

Daniel Boyarin: Why is Rabbi Yohanin a Woman? or, A Queer Marriage Gone Bad: “Platonic Love” in the Talmud.

Laurence Paul Hemming Can I Really Count on You?

Steven Greenberg

Contemplating a Jewish Ritual of same-sex Union: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Marriage

Mark D Jordan: Arguing Liturgical Genealogies, or, the Ghosts of Weddings Past.

Kathryn Tanner: Hooker and the new Puritans

Susan Frank Parsons: Ad Imaginem Dei: Is There a Moral Here?

Eugene F Rogers JR: Trinity, Marriage and Homosexuality

NISSINEN: Homoeroticism in the Biblical World

Marti Nissinen

Homoeroticism in the Biblical World

Nissinen's award-winning book surveys attitudes in the ancient world toward homoeroticism, that is, erotic same-sex relations. Focusing on the Bible and its cultural environment-Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Israel-Nissinen concisely and readably introduces the relevant sources and their historical contexts in a readable way. Homoeroticism is examined as a part of gender identity, i.e., the interplay of sexual orientation, gender identification, gender roles, and sexual practice. In the patriarchal cultures of the biblical world, Nissinen shows, homoerotic practices were regarded as a role construction between the active and passive partners rather than as expressions of an orientation moderns call "homosexuality." Nissinen shows how this applies to the limited acceptance of homoerotic relationships in Greek and Roman culture, as well as to Israel's and the early church's condemnation of any same-sex erotic activity. For readers interested in the ancient world or contemporary debates, Nissinen's fascinating study shows why the ancient texts - both biblical and nonbiblical - are not appropriate for use as sources of direct analogy or argument in today's discussion.

Reviews:

From "Evangelicals Concerned"

This is the work of an Old Testament scholar at the University of Helsinki. Published by a major Lutheran press, it is comprehensive and succinct in surveying the primary texts on homoeroticism from the world in which the Bible was written. In his Preface, Nissinen says that, as he undertook his research, he “soon had to face the problem that sources that go back two or three millennia do not fit modern categories. Whether the texts I studied were biblical or Jewish, Assyrian, Greek, or Roman, the term ‘homosexuality’ was absent from them and the concept alien.” This early and sustained finding is precisely what those who use the Bible to wage a “culture war” against gay men and lesbians today do not take seriously – if they even understand it at all. (Ironically, lesbigayt apologists who take their own homosexuality back to the Bible make the same mistake.) He argues that any attempt to mechanically apply a few Bible verses on same-sex behavior to the phenomena of contemporary homosexual orientation and peer-relations fails in its hermeneutics. He is convinced – and convincing – that today’s discourse on homosexuality must not confuse modern phenomena with the various forms and perceptions of homoeroticism in the ancient Mediterranean world. Chapter by chapter, Nissinen illustrates the contemporary observation that sexual categories and interpreted sexual experiences are socially constructed and are not the same from culture to culture and from age to age.

.......

Nissinen explains that in Romans 1 and 2, “What matters is the theology of justification by faith, not homoeroticsm as such.  Paul’s rhetorical strategy … seems to be to stimulate his readers’ moral indignation by listing sins traditionally associated with Gentiles, in conventional Jewish wordings – but this is a rhetorical trap: Paul turns the force of his criticism against” self-righteous Jews.  According to Nissinen and other scholars, the meaning of Paul’s terms in I Corinthians 6:9, often automatically applied today to homosexuals, “remains obscure.”  He says: “The modern concept of ‘homosexuality’ should by no means be read into Paul’s text.”   Indeed, he concludes: “No single passage in the Bible actually offers a specifically formulated statement about same-sex eroticism.”

   Thus, with no correspondence between the ancient texts and phenomena and our own responsibilities around contemporary homosexual orientation and behavior, Nissinen calls  his readers to “love [as] the central hermeneutical principle when applying biblical commands, advice, and ideals to the lives of people today.”

STONE: Practicing Safer Texts

Stone, Ken

Practicing Safer Texts: Food, Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective

Continuum International Publishing

185 pages

"This book uses the ubiquitous comparison between food and sex as a framework for examining a number of texts from the Hebrew Bible, as well as later readings of those texts and interpretive issues raised by the texts. A range of biblical texts in which both food and sex appear are analyzed in an interdisciplinary fashion with the help of both traditional tools of biblical scholarship and less traditional tools such as Queer studies and cultural anthropology. By utilizing a reading lens that relates food and sex to one another intentionally, rather than treating them separately, this book will among other things question the tendency of readers of the Bible to overstress the gravity of sexual matters in relation to other matters of potential ethical, theological, exegetical and cultural concern, such as food. At the same time, as the title Practising Safer Texts indicates, the book also proposes a pragmatic approach to biblical interpretation that uses strategies of "safer sex" as a sort of loose model. Such,an approach assesses texts and readings of the Bible not in a universalizing fashion but rather in terms of their likely effects, for good or ill, on particular readers in particular contexts and situations (just as notions of "safer sex" ask us to assess sexual acts not in a moralizing fashion, but, rather, in terms of their likely effects on particular persons)."

VASEY, Michael: Strangers & Friends

A new exploration of homosexuality and the Bible

Hodder & Stoughton, 1995

276 pages

Queer Scripture, History of the Family

Vasey argues from an historical presentation of the sexuality and the family. He points out that far from being the ‘tradtional’ model, the family as idealised by modern Christians, especially the evangelicals, is a relatively modern invention. The gradual development of this model as normative, has largely been responsible for the parallel development of a distinct gay identity, largely in reaction. (The campaign against the ‘homosexual’ is attacking what it has itself created.) Conversely, the early church idealised male friendship and community life, rather than the family as now understood.