Last Sunday we began a series on queer theology and the church (info for the series here and video of this session here). The following is my introduction to the series.

Sunday October 30

The question of LGTBQ+ inclusion in the church and society has become increasingly strange for me the more I think about it. On one level, yes, absolutely yes. The church should always be at the work of finding ways to include people in forms of care, dignity and support. We still see active and militant opposition to queer individuals and groups in society and the church.

But inclusion in itself is rarely further examined and sometimes may not even be the best thing but for different reasons then the church has historically thought.

The question of inclusion assumes an existing space to be included into. We can think about inclusion in relation to a house or even this church building. There are still walls and still doors that lock. This in itself is not bad, I don’t think we can or should escape having boundaries, care and safety always require some sort of boundaries.

The question of inclusion has tended to focus on whether someone is worthy to come into the house while neglecting to ask whether the house is worthy to receive guests. Rarely if ever are the house rules interrogated as thoroughly as the potential guest under question.

Did women fight to be included inside the workforce so that we could have more female billionaires and extend more precarious and poorly paid work to both men and women?

By including female pronouns for God did we also dismantle the supremacist and domineering aspects of patriarchal theology?

By working to include more black and Indigenous police officers did we address the systemic racism that fills prisons with black and indigenous inmates?

And by making efforts to include LGTBQ+ individuals in church and society have we also addressed dysfunctional ideals of marriage, gendered expectations of our bodies, dress and actions in public and workplaces, laws and policies that favour particular forms of family, do we offer clear supports for those who suffered these prejudices?

The work of inclusion has brought many meaningful and at times life-saving changes to society. But much of the work exploring and exposing the house rules remains.

On the question of inclusion we are typically presented with what I think can be fairly called the liberal or the conservative option.
The conservative response is to assert that in society and families there are particular roles that can be defined by gender and that gender or orientation itself is in some ways natural, proper or superior whether that is appealed to by science (evolution often plays into these conversations) or ordained by God.

The liberal response will be to say that we can indeed place two brides or two grooms on top of the cake! But so help me there will be cake, and a wedding … and grandkids!! Many liberal forms of inclusion are simply willing include more or different individuals into existing structures of family and gendered expectations.

Without examining the house rules we risk including folks into an unhealthy or even harmful environment.

The yes to inclusion often neglects the reality that you may now have to live in a space
where you feel pressure to conform to a new set of norms,
where you become afraid to welcome certain other people because now you don’t want to rock the boat
where you learn to aspire to the expectations that led you to leave or be kicked out in the first place.
As Jules Gleeson and Elle O’Rourke put it in their introduction to Transgender Marxism the liberal bargain for inclusion often only applies to a select group within transgender expressions; those willing or able to play by the house rules.

While working for inclusion remains an important and ongoing task one thing to hold in front of us as we begin this series is whether the church is able to consider that perhaps its calling, if it has one at all here, is actually to step outside of its house and its rules and simply pay attention to the joys and struggles, the intimacies and abuses around us and within us.

I’m not sure we should start with the assumption we are a great sanctuary of healing and liberation without first practicing mutuality in learning about and from those who have suffered under our house rules; or practicing humility in acknowledging when we hear good news, the gospel, from places neglected or rejected by the church.

Perhaps we will learn that some outside the church long to be included and blessed in the traditional forms of marriage through gender transition or same-sex relationships while others inside the church feel called to explore intimacies and commitment outside the present house rules of the church because the Gospel challenges and questions an unhealthy elevation of the nuclear family.

Like many important expressions queerness is a contested term with varying definitions. Some see in it particular political or social implications while others want to reserve it for specifically sexual expressions but in most cases to be queer is to be willing or be forced to exist outside the house rules, rules that have denied something necessary to being human.

Marcella Althaus-Reid, offers a helpful definition of ‘queer’. She writes,

“Queer is not oddity. Queer is the very essence of a denied reality . . . [W]e speak of ‘Queering’ . . . as a process of coming back to the authentic, everyday life experiences described as odd by [what we might call here the ‘house rules].”

To be queer is not to be weird (though it may be that to!) but to be cast as weird in a way that is meant to deny something crucial about us.

If inclusion is to be just and liberating it must reveal the house rules (whether of the church, family or society) for an honest reckoning. The Bible and the gospel are filled with images of such reckoning and this series is an attempt to take steps in that direction.