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.
Contents Part I: Celibacies 11 1. Celibacy Was Queer: Rethinking Early Christianity 13 David G. Hunter 2. "Queerish" Celibacy: Reorienting Marriage 25 in the Ex-Gay Movement Lynne Gerber 3. Celibate Politics: Queering the Limits 37 Anthony M. Petro 4. How Queer Is Celibacy? A Queer Nun's Story 48 Sister Carol Bernice, CHS Church Interlude I: A Congregation Embodies 53 Queer Theology Jon M. Walton Part II: Matrimonies 65 5. Two Medieval Brides of Christ: Complicating 67 Monogamous Marriage William E. Smith III 6. Gay Rites and Religious Rights: New York's First 79 Same-Sex Marriage Controversy Heather R. White 7. Beyond Procreativity: Heterosexuals Queering Marriage 91 Teresa Delgado 8. Disrupting the Normal: Queer Family Life 103 as Sacred Work Jennifer Harvey Church Interlude II: Healing Oppression Sickness 115 Yvette Flunder Part III: Promiscuities 125 9. Double Love: Rediscovering the Queerness 127 of Sin and Grace Michael F. Pettinger 10. Love Your Friends: Learning from the 137 Ethics of Relationships Mary E. Hunt 11. Calvary and the Dungeon: Theologizing BDSM 148 Nicholas Laccetti
