Queer Christianities

Queerness and Christianity, often depicted as mutually exclusive, both challenge received notions of the good and the natural. Nowhere is this challenge more visible than in the identities, faiths, and communities that queer Christians have long been creating. As Christians they have staked a claim for a Christianity that is true to their self-understandings. How do queer-identified persons understand their religious lives? And in what ways do the lived experiences of queer Christians respond to traditions and reshape them in contemporary practice? Queer Christianities integrates the perspectives of queer theory, religious studies, and Christian theology into a lively conversation—both transgressive and traditional—about the fundamental questions surrounding the lives of queer Christians. The volume contributes to the emerging scholarly discussion on queer religious experiences as lived both within communities of Christian confession, as well as outside of these established communities.Organized around traditional Christian states of life—celibacy, matrimony, and what is here provocatively conceptualized as promiscuity—this work reflects the ways in which queer Christians continually reconstruct and multiply the forms these states of life take. Queer Christianities challenges received ideas about sexuality and religion, yet remains true to Christian self-understandings that are open to further enquiry and to further queerness.

Though much of the work has been done on queer theory's application to Christianity, the essays here break new ground in their vernacular approaches and will find readers from undergraduates on up across disciplines from religious studies to sociology., The authors in this volume deepen the study of sexuality in bold, complex, and poignant ways. Queer Christianities celebrates a plurality of queerness within lived Christianities of the past and present and should not be missed by those prepared for an expansive inquiry., Queer Christianitieswill make a fine teaching tool for colleges and seminaries. I can imagine structuring an entire course in religion and sexuality around the themes and problems that the book examines., This is a deeply generative and resonant collection., This rich and diverse collection will add depth and perspective to the sociology of religion.

Kathleen T. Talvacchia is Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs at New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science. Mark Larrimore is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts. Michael F. Pettinger is Assistant Professor in the Literary and Religious Studies programs at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts.