Queer Spirituality

Yesterday I dipped into two books, and found ideas that amplified  each other with powerful effect, especially in the current context of advances for marriage equality and the bishops' opposition. "Take Back the Word" (ed Robert Goss) is a compilation of writings on Scripture designed to take us as queer Christians beyond battles with the "texts of terror", to an approach more in keeping with what it should be, a source of inspiration and value in our lives.  "Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body " (ed Gerard Loughlin) is a broader and more ambitious compilation, of writing on a range of dimensions of faith from a queer perspective.

In the introduction to his book, Loughlin reflects on the story of the Wedding Feast at Cana, (John 2: 1 - 11) which we usually think of in terms of the transformation of water into wine. Immediately I thought of this as a wonderful alternative image for Goss's "Take Back the Word". It is one thing for us to move beyond a fear of Scripture to a point where it is the "water" of life: but how can we go beyond even that, to the "wine" of celebration?  This, I thought, is what Elizabeth Stuart does in a short piece "Camping Around the Canon", which (as it happens) she ends with some thoughts on weddings. Stuart's point is that we need to be able to approach Scripture with laughter, which is too often absent from religious practice. After a concise exposition of the historical and theological justification for the approach, she offers just one illustration of what she means,  discussing Ephesians, 5:21-33 ("Wives, submit to your husbands"), which is so often used at weddings, and which for women can so easily become a text of terror. Hearing it read at weddings, she says, left her "churning with anger". But an analysis by Gerard Loughlin changed her reaction from tragic to comic, as the "heteropatriarchal" readings are

-Gerard Loughlin, "Baptismal Fluid", unpublished paper quoted by Stuar

Stuart comments:

I remember a comparable insight and laughter from my own experience. Once on retreat, I found myself reflecting on the familiar image of the Church as the bride of Christ, and realized that as a gay man, I was spared the oddity (for straight men) of imagining myself as "bride", and instead was able to picture myself in my meditation as "groom" of Christ - a meditation that became extremely powerful. Looking  back on it later, I found satisfaction and humour in the realisation that my orientation had given me a unique advantage in my prayer.

This left me with a predisposed receptivity to Loughlin's main ideas concerning the wedding at Cana.  Instead of considering the miracle of transformation, he asks instead, "Who is it that was married?". He answers the question in stages.

First, he points out that the story should be read as a parable, with distinct anticipation of the Last Supper,  Passion and Resurrection. The wedding takes place on "the third day" (anticipating the resurrection) after He has talked with Nathanel (John 1:43 -51), and the transformation of water into wine anticipates the transformation of wine into His blood. In a liturgical setting, the Mass recalls these three days. So, it is a standard idea that symbolically, in the church's recollection of the story, we are all guests at the wedding, where Christ is marrying his Church.   At one level closer to the literal, it is Christ marrying his disciples. Loughlin then goes on to discuss a fascinating more literal idea from the early and medieval church - that it was indeed Christ who was married - to John, the beloved disciple. This idea was articulated in the apocryphal Acts of John, in which it is said that John broke off his betrothals to a woman to "bind himself" to Jesus. This was apparently a common strand in some German medieval thinking, right up until the Reformation, and is visually illustrated in some surviving art.  In a  "Libellus for John the Evangelist", a painting of the wedding feast is said to feature a bearded Christ seated next to a beardless, androgynous John - whom, says Loughlin, he appears about to kiss.  In the "Admont Codex" illustrated manuscript of  St Anselm's "Prayers and Meditations", an illustration in two parts shows John's story. In one, John is seen leaving his female betrothed. In the companion piece, he is lying on the ground with this head on Jesus's breast, while Jesus himself is tenderly caressing his chin.

Is this tradition "true"? We cannot know. Like so much much else in Scripture, it is impossible to get through the mists produced by unfamiliar language, a different literary tradition, and remote historical /cultural context to get close to the literal "truth" behind the text.   No matter. Even without accepting  this idea literally, it is enough for me to know that it was once widely accepted in the mystical tradition, and to incorporate it into my reader response.

It is when Loughlin moves beyond the "meaning" of the text to its multiple ironies that the fun starts. This where, in sympathy with Elizabeth Stuart, I found myself quite literally laughing with Scripture.  For if it is true that the consecration of Eucharistic wine into Christ's bloods is prefigured in the Cana transformation of water into wine, then we can see that in every Mass we are commemorating  Christ's own wedding with His (male) disciples. Every Mass can be seen as a mystical gay wedding.  That Mass is celebrated by a priest who has committed himself to celibacy, and so forswears procreation himself, but is expected to preach against gay marriage or others - because homosexual intercourse, being unable to procreate, is "intrinsically disordered". The priesthood in turn, is run by a a similarly celibate coterie in the Vatican which reproduces itself by recruitment not biological reproduction - and castigates the homosexual community for its own social, not biological reproduction.

-Loughlin, introduction to "Queer Theology"

Goss, Robert (ed): Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible

Loughlin, Gerard (ed): Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body (BBPG)