What is Queer Ministry?
Rev Jake Tatton, MCC Edinburgh, Scotland
Queer ministry is, of course, nothing but a concept; perhaps no more than an aspiration. Yet, as our Queer communities journey towards God's New Realm, these aspirational concepts must be dwelt upon. This paper will identify definitions of Queer and of ministry. It will then overlay the two, in order to offer a vision of Queer ministry as the activity of integration into wholeness of individuals and community, through transgression and transcendence. This activity seeks to cultivate the establishment of God's New Realm. I will identify this transgressive integration as Queer hospitality ethics; central to our Queer, Christian communities.
What is Queer?
To identify as Queer is to identify as something beyond just lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. It is to perceive one’s own intellectual, emotional, sexual and mental existence through the lens of “Queer values”; an abstract grounded in the liberative struggles of the gay and civil rights movements of the twentieth century. Queer views both gender and sexuality on a spectrum, necessarily fluid as they evolve to encompass ever new interpretations of Self, Other and Community. Queer, therefore, transgresses heteronormative expectations of relationship, to offer a transcendence of Biblical proportions, in its promise of a utopian nirvana, where all may be liberated from the limitations of constructed identities.
Queer can be understood in terms of a repossessed and inclusive acknowledgment of the constructed nature of sexuality that strives to transcend the limits of sexual orientation, and encompass vibrant conceptual spectrums of gender, sexuality and lifestyle. This understanding draws upon the observation and analysis of how those who exist out with the societally privileged institution of heterosexuality have transcended its constraints. This theory can then hold the potential to supersede more traditionally structured theories around gender and sexual orientation, in that it offers an umbrella of inclusivity, including gender, orientation, race and class.
These concepts are foundational to Queer theology, where Christians, aspiring towards God’s New Realm, seek to draw in all those who are oppressed, towards redemption from sin and estrangement, and resurrection into the love of God, as all are reborn into their full humanity. The Church has historically demonstrated a notable chauvinism in its doctrine and legislation, creating a moral hierarchy; rewarding those at the top, and punishing those at the bottom [Rubin 1993: 282]. As a result, the medical and psychiatric approach to sexual variety and expression has become enmeshed within Church doctrine, drawing in and influencing many elements of society, through the media in particular. This chauvinism has resulted in a rationalisation of the “well-being of the sexually privileged and the adversity of the sexual rabble” [Rubin: 280]. In this we can see that part of the mission of Queer ministry must be of liberation from the legacy of the church.
Yet it is not merely homophobia of which we speak. Just as the precepts of Queer theory aspire towards transcendence from narrow classification and the oppression its enforcement has produced, Queer theory strives also to embrace aspects unknown even to many who identify as LGBT. It seeks to ask some of the most challenging questions, particularly in church communities where individuals live in unconventional ways, transgressing many of the conventions the traditional church. These are the questions of the “subject population” discussed in Queer theory - those who transgress relationship expectations, and do not wish to find contentment or confinement within those apparently privileged hierarchical levels offered to those lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people whose familial lifestyles, due to Civil Partnerships and changing societies, have begun to resemble so closely those of their heterosexually identified peers.
What is ministry?
Ministry is a similarly broad concept, covering pastoral care, preaching, prayer, fellowship; the helming and maintaining of the congregational or community ship. Myriad personalities approach this with myriad focuses, drawing upon traditions based upon the teachings of the early church, recorded in the writings of Paul and Pastoral Epistles.
For the purpose of this paper I will consciously and intentionally define ministry primarily as being the work of bringing together the whole individual, within the whole community. When each individual within the community experiences the integration of spiritual, sexual, physical, mental and emotional, intellectual and cognitive health, they become a germinated seed of God's New Realm. Equally, once a community experiences the true integration of each personality, history, culture and perspective within its midst, God's New Realm exists within that place.
Therefore, for this holistic model to be authentic, it must be nurtured by a ministry practicing the same holism. As no one person can or should be expected to excel in all of the specialist practices of speech, group work, visible outreach, prayer, music or catering, holistic ministry must be team ministry. If a pastor is lucky enough to have a large staff, their job is to recruit and support individuals whose leadership skills will evenly cover these crucial aspects of community life, yet also work together well, with comfortable overlap and complementarity. If a pastor is alone in their ordained commission within their community, they must similarly recruit volunteers, ensuring each one is both called to and able to cope with the tasks they are set, offering faithful support, adequate training and supervision and, essentially, flexibility. Ministry is the task of the community, and not the pastor alone. Both pastor and congregation must take responsibility for living out the wisdom of this knowledge, allowing the pastor to take the helm of a well built boat, with high class crew.
Carl Jung, founder of the Analytical Psychology movement, theorised the existence of a “collective unconscious”, containing the “primordial images” of all people's common ancestry. It is responsible for, he claimed; “the spontaneous production of myths, visions, religious ideas, and certain varieties of dream which were common to various cultures and periods of history” [Storr 1975:39]. Jung described how individuals take all those aspects of themselves which appeared to stand against the values of this collective unconscious, and file them away; their “shadow side.” Similarly, in identifying what he called the “personal unconscious”, Jung spoke of “repressed infantile impulses and wishes, subliminal perceptions, and countless forgotten experiences” [Fordham 1966:22] which might, similarly, cause neurosis. The shadow side must then be exposed and integrated into the conscious self, in order for wholeness, and therefore healing, to be experienced.
However, let us show some caution. We must acknowledge that the establishment of God's New Realm, through the working towards wholeness in each person and community, along with the integration of Jesus into each Christian as his body and temple, is an ongoing work. To achieve wholeness will necessitate (on the part of each person, including the pastor) an ongoing commitment to the “struggles of ongoing growth” [Au & Cannon 1995:8], as we work to face those parts of ourselves which scare us the most, and allow them to be integrated into our whole selves. No matter how much work a person puts into achieving this wholeness, they will not be able to do it alone. Wholeness is the promise of a gift from God, which is given through community. The journey itself is part of that promise, leading as it must to an openness to “self transcendence.” [Au & Cannon: 8] This journey keeps the individual constantly at the brink of “something more”; that Passion narrative of life springing from death and of gain through loss.
As Jung said; “The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good; not only the dark, but also the light, not only bestial, semi-human and demonic, but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, 'divine'.” [Au & Cannon: 28] This knowledge, according to Au and Cannon, can offer us the insight that “genuine holiness requires both self-awareness and self-transformation.”[Au & Cannon: 27]
When the body is viewed as a source of sin, set below the mind as a source of spirituality, we become anxious within ourselves [Nelson 1979: 20] We are socialised into this unhealthy binary, disconnecting the various parts of ourselves; learning to “rank” them, in terms of “clean” and “unclean”, holy and base. This is our shadow side looming its troublesome head; taught to us from and early age and compounded by traditional church doctrine. Boundaries become doubtful [Nelson: 20] and a person loses the ability to trust in the integrity of their own body, along with any confidence that that body was created intentionally, in the image of God, as a means of knowing, experiencing and giving and receiving pleasure.
Nelson, author of “Embodiment: Approach to Sexuality and Christrian Theology”, asks what it might mean for us, as “body selves” to “participate in the reality of God” [Nelson: 20]. If we, as Christians, are called upon to be the ongoing incarnation of Jesus, as the body of Christ in our own times, we must both embody his mission and strive towards our own personal embodiments of wholeness. If we are to preach a participation in the reality of God we must preach also the need for integration of our whole selves.
Queer Ministry
For ministry to be Queer, it must integrate transcendence from heteronormative expectation with the integration of the whole self (including the Jesus parts). It must be a transcendent and transgressive aspiration towards the establishment of God's New Realm. Not all who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered identify as Queer. Equally, many who identify primarily as heterosexual in their sexual orientation may simultaneously identify within the parameters of Queer. These are the people to whom Queer ministry is most immediately directed.
In order to establish God's New Realm, we must vision it as balanced, functional and reflective of both God’s creative mastery and the narrative of Jesus. Therefore created variations, in identity, lifestyle and world view, must be both discussed openly and celebrated. No more can we relegate that which unsettles us to the “deviation pile” [Nelson: 158]; liberation cannot be selective, and we must not rest upon our own, personal salvations, continuing rather to reach out to those who still exist at the bottom of the erotic pyramid [Rubin: 280] of contemporary society.
Naming ourselves clearly as Queer ministers enables a confident proclamation of the God who is passionately partial to the poor, who enlists people in justice-doing, and who promises a just society for all. These Divine promises demand that we practice a liberating love. They demand that we, as Queer ministers, shape our lives to God’s justice-doing, taking the battle for truth (specifically but not exclusively over the issue of LGBT politics and rights) from the area of biblical and theological ethics, to the real life practice and struggle for justice. We are called, indeed commissioned, to take as seriously the fight for legislative rights and freedoms, as we do the healing into wholeness of the individual.
The practice of Queer ministry moves us beyond the confines of liberalism, to ground and locate the Divine within the connections between individuals, rather than merely the self. This practice offers to expose sexual oppression and offer potential strategies to deal with it. It also reminds us of the essential nature of our community, and warns us from becoming insular. It is these connections, or the “fusion of horizons” [Gerkin 1997: 111]; those places where humans' stories interact, creating new life and Spirit, in which we may experience God, as we learn to understand each other more deeply and tolerantly.
Queer Ethics of Hospitality
Even some the most evangelical and fundamentalist of Christian scholars have long acknowledged the damage incurred through the connection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people with the story of Sodom. Rather than viewing the narrative as an explanation of God’s punishment for homosexuality, the sin of Sodom is now generally understood to have been a “grave breach of the sacred duty of hospitality” [Wright 1994: 7]. The villagers of Sodom exemplified the most terrible violation of their duties, as hosts, to the traveling angels, in an unforgiving terrain, where the expectation of mutual hospitality towards travellers remains crucial, even today.
Yet, even today, so many Queer folks who come into our churches or, more sadly still, never even make it that far, live in the shadow of that historical distortion. One of our crucial tasks then, as Queer ministers, is to ensure that this distortion is redressed. Not only must our people know that this pivotal story is not speaking in judgement of them, but they must see themselves in the antithesis of its message. If we seek to understand the stories of our people, then we must understand the stories they bring with them. The story of Sodom is ingrained in our community fusion.
The Sodom narrative sought to point, through reaction against its detail, towards the sort of community its readers hoped to embody. We must seek also to establish and live that community ideal. This can be done in part through the recognition of how those who have been excluded or denied hospitality on the basis of their “otherness”, have formed alternative community, out with, or on the fringes of, the Christian mainstream. What hospitality ethics have emerged from these outcast communities, and what comparisons may be drawn to the values so lacking in Sodom? Before long, we shall realise that these same values (those we are calling Queer) can be seen to be lived out in the life of Christ Jesus, and we must then go on to seek out and nurture these Christ-like values within our own Queer communities.
These Queer values of which we speak must be acknowledged as grounded in hospitality - the antithesis of the Sodom example. Just as the initial readers of the story of Sodom would have flourished, as a community, through their reaction against the story [Jordan 1997: 171], the Queer community has flourished (often against all the odds) through our reactions against the grave breach of hospitality we have experienced at the hands of society and the established Church. Just as Nelson suggests, the best response to this has been a continued and determined inquiry, with sharp criticism and thorough rebuttal. Queers have turned the erotic pyramid observed by Rubin upside down, elevating all those relegated to the bottom of the barrel to the top, with the pink and black triangles of gay and lesbian liberation proudly inverting this oppressive geometry. Just like Jesus, the Queer community has offered sanctification and liberation to those on the margins, recognising and celebrating their beauty and worth, just as did Jesus, with the tax collector, prostitute, Gentile and leper.
Queer values and hospitality have consequently been put into practice through activism, in many of the same ways that Jesus' own actions were the practice of his transgressive values and hospitality. Harnessing their anger at the oppression they have faced, Queer folks have exemplified a Christ-like solidarity for social change [Goss 2002: 56].
Therefore, Queer values do not only reverse the poor hospitality narrative of Sodom. They also produce something new from its ashes. Queer power is created through the outliving of sexual choices and experiences, contesting homophobic and heteronormative power relations. It is embodied through the transgression of homophobic and heterosexist social rules, producing its own relationality in the margins, through the bodies, and indeed whole selves, of its members. Therefore, Queer values generate new and liberating forms of relation, with self, with the other, with God and with the world, just as Jesus did.
Hospitality then can be seen to be central to Queer values. Extended families of choice provide ingrained contexts for living and being, deeply effecting perspectives of life and relationship, with newly emerging values. There is, Nancy Wilson, Moderator of the Metropolitan Community Churches, suggests -
“some thing, perhaps, about being “unhinged” from the conventional family constructs that opens up the opportunities, the desire both to deconstruct and to reconstruct this aspect of our lives” [Wilson 2000: 144].
Conclusion
Let us conclude this whirlwind meditation upon Queer ministry, by viewing the ultimate case study of practical theology; Jesus. We have seen that ministry is necessarily lived out through hospitality, in the nurturing of teams and the hospitality to self that must be learned. Wilson reminds us that Jesus’ own heritage was that of desert hospitality. Not only did he exemplify perfect hospitality, he was himself dependent on the hospitality of others, as he moved from town to town. This would have brought with it certain vulnerability, as he would have been dependant on others to provide him with lodgings, food and company. Yet, through this vulnerability and dependency, Jesus offered his whole self, inviting questions, touch, challenge and criticism.
In Jesus was embodied Logos, and meaning, providing embodiment with “definition and vindication” [Nelson: 77]. This is a radical, incarnational embodiment - the humanity of God, as recognised by Barth, is an unexpected scandal. It is whole and embodied - sexual, spiritual, physical and mental, and it declares with clarity the liberation of humanity. Just as did the great Hebrew prophets before him, Jesus decried the injustices of society, including the oppression of women. However, Jesus also used the “semantics of the feminine as well as of the masculine” [Nelson: 98] as he spoke of God and lived out his own life. This is central to the Queer values of the Queer church in that, through striving to inclusify the language and practice of its tradition, it has become an embodied community, de-polarising its approach to the Divine. In much the same way, Queer ministry must practice an incarnational embodiment, in both its practice and in the fusion of narratives it nurtures.
Just as Jesus was rejected by and separated from the Jewish community from which he came, Queers have been rejected and separated from society, family and community. Yet these factors were essential to the emergence of Jesus’ ministry, forcing him to become dependent upon others, and making him so much more accessible to those other marginalised members of his society. Jesus was truly the ultimate example of Queer hospitality, and therefore ministry, as he sent the pitcher carrier to gather the disciples for their Last Supper, as he revealed himself to his disciples, after his resurrection, only after he had broken bread with them, as he offered sustenance before theology, and forgiveness before commission.
Queer ministry then, is to minister as Jesus ministered. It transgresses and transcendends that which keeps us from our creating and loving God. It is holistic as it brings together the whole person, reconnecting into the body of Christ. It is holistic as it works in and through teams. It brings together the stories of all, bringing new Spirit from these fusions. And, finally, it is embodied hospitality, as it welcomes, includes and brings into healing the untouchables, the unclean and the oppressed.
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