Month: January 2023

Can a Person be Queer, Christian, and Baptist?

A heteronormative, Baptist theology promotes the idea that people in the queer community are perverse, contaminated, and too countercultural to be worthy of the love of God. When one holds this idea, one assumes to be a Christian, one must overcome the perception of being perverse, contaminated, and countercultural, by changing oneself to be considered acceptable to receive the love […]

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Queering King David

  In the narratives in 1 and 2 Samuel, King David had relationships with many women, including six wives and a number of concubines. Only one of David’s wives, Michael, professed her love for him, but the text does not indicate that her feelings were reciprocated (1 Sam. 18:20). 1 Samuel 25 describes David’s wives as possessions rather than lovers […]

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The Nature of Unnatural Sex: Romans 1:26b-27

Frequently, non-affirming Christians quote Rom. 1:26b-27 to condemn the LGBTQI+ communities. The NRSV translates this passage: “Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for […]

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Is It Clobbering Time? The Ambiguity of Lev. 18:22

In the debates about the current splintering of the United Methodist Church (UMC), Methodists consider many factors, centering on the issue of the ordination of queer clergy and same-sex marriage. During these debates, ironically the actual Bible passages that most explicitly mention same-sex acts (the so-called “clobber passages”) and their interpretations are rarely even mentioned. In the hegemonic, “orthodox,” or […]

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On the Intersection of Womanist Queer Theory + the Imago Dei + Kendrick Lamar

In the sultry sounds of Kendrick Lamar’s newest album, ‘Mr. Morale and Big Steppers,’ Lamar takes listeners through a highly spiritual and seemingly religious set of 18 songs. They depict deep understanding of self through therapy, discovery, education, and the social drought of the Covid-19 pandemic. Lamar’s “Auntie’s Diaries,” begins with the voiceover: “This is how we conceptualize human beings.” […]

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