Susannah Cornwall

Contextual Bible Study: Characteristics and Challenges

2012-01-10T10:24:00.000Z

I have a short piece in the new issue of Modern Believing: The Journal of Theological Liberalism (53.1, pp. 14-22), entitled "Contextual Bible Study: Characteristics and Challenges". This is based on the keynote lecture I gave at the Modern Church conference in July 2011. It gives a background to Contextual Bible Study methodology as laid out by John Riches and Gerald West, and draws on examples from my own 2010 research project "Readings from the Road" (which are set out more fully in the paper I co-wrote with David Nixon and which appeared in Expository Times 123.1, pp. 12-19, "Readings from the Road: Contextual Bible Study with a Group of Homeless and Vulnerably-Housed People").

Intersex, Identity and Disability: Call for Research Participants

2011-12-12T13:42:00.000Z

I'm now beginning the next phase of my research project with the Lincoln Theological Institute, entitled Intersex, Identity and Disability: Issues for Public Policy, Healthcare and the Church.

In this phase of the project, I'll be carrying out original research into the interactions between intersex and faith identity. I'm currently seeking participants who would be willing to take part in this research, either by being interviewed or by filling in a questionnaire. The data I collect will be used in work which helps to increase awareness of the existence of intersex conditions and their implications for Christian theology. For example, anonymized quotations may be used in book chapters and journal articles for academic, church and general audiences, and communicated to people working in policy for the Christian denominations. The findings may also be used in training resources for healthcare chaplains who minister to intersex people and to the families of children born with intersex conditions/DSDs.

If you're someone who identifies as intersex and Christian (whether or not you currently belong to a church), are aged 18 or over, and live in Britain - or if you know someone else who fits these criteria and might be interested in taking part - please do visit the project website to find out more.

Controversies in Queer Theology now viewable on Google Books

2011-12-01T10:18:00.001Z

Controversies in Queer Theology can now be previewed on Google Books!

Intersex, Identity and Disability: Issues for Public Policy, Healthcare and the Church

2011-11-08T15:38:00.003Z

It's now six weeks since I began my new post with the Lincoln Theological Institute in the Department of Religions and Theology at the University of Manchester. For the next three years, I'll be conducting research into the relationships between intersex conditions (which some people prefer to call DSDs) and faith identity, with specific reference to people in Britain who identify as both intersex and Christian. Very soon I'll be putting out a call for interviewees and other research participants, but for now, news and information about the project (entitled Intersex, Identity and Disability: Issues for Public Policy, Healthcare and the Church) can be found at http://religionandcivilsociety.com/intersex-identity-disability/

You might also be interested to know that Controversies in Queer Theology is now available on Kindle - cheaper even than the paperback price, though possibly less good for reading in the bath.

Readings from the Road: Contextual Bible Study with a Group of Homeless and Vulnerably-Housed People

2011-09-02T12:46:00.004+01:00

David Nixon and I have a paper in the new issue of The Expository Times (123, 12-19). It's entitled "Readings from the Road: Contextual Bible Study with a Group of Homeless and Vulnerably-Housed People", and is the firstfruits of the British Academy Small Research Grant I held in the summer of 2010. I recently presented a version of this paper at the Modern Church conference, "'Can These Bones Live?' Reading the Bible Today", which tied in with the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible.

Here's the abstract:
"Readings from the Road, a British Academy-funded small research project, investigated the use of Contextual Bible Study (CBS) with a group of homeless and vulnerably-housed people at a soup kitchen in South-West England. The transient nature of the homeless community presented particular challenges in using this method, but the non-directive and democratic nature of CBS proved valuable. The authors discuss three themes arising from the study sessions: home and place, judgment and stigmatization, and the figure of Jesus. Participants’ linking of biblical themes with their own experiences and broader social events are explored. The authors note that consciously privileging the experience and knowledge of those whose narratives or reading sites are silenced or devalued by mainstream religious traditions is not unequivocally positive, but that the homeless participants’ liminal, insider-outsider relationship to the rest of society is a significant factor in their ability to query and subvert established discourses, providing flashes of imagery which might be deemed prophetic."

It was great to work with David on this, especially given the experience he was able to bring from the interviews with homeless people he conducted for his PhD thesis - and I'm delighted that he's currently undertaking further work on homelessness and theology.

Trans/Formations reviewed in Studies in Christian Ethics

2011-09-02T12:32:00.001+01:00

Trans/Formations, the edited collection on transgender and theology in which I have a chapter, has been reviewed in Studies in Christian Ethics 24 (2011): 382 by Emily Pennington of the University of Chester. She says,

"Cornwall’s piece is appropriately placed at the start as she perceptively recognises many shared issues. Foremost among these is that of ambiguity and the ways in which it has often been seen as something to be feared and corrected as opposed to appreciated. It is the unknowing that is synonymous with ambiguity that leads Cornwall to her affirmation of apophasis as a means of understanding both God and self as it highlights and emphasises the ‘profoundly ineffable and indescribable nature of the manner in which human sex, gender and sexuality fit together, just as negative theologies have emphasized the unknowability of God’ (p. 17). Cornwall proposes the harmonising of apophasis and kataphasis (p. 20) in a way that is later substantiated by Buchanan’s articulation of her experience of seeking to understand her own gender identity. Buchanan explains that ‘I believe that, in order to know what you are, you must also know what you are not’ (p. 45). These theoretical and experiential perspectives inform one another and the reader with equal success."

Pennington criticizes my suggestion that gender is penultimate, since she fears that it is dismissive of the need of transpeople for stable identities. I'd want to counter that here, as elsewhere (for example, in my essay "The Kenosis of Unambiguous Sex in the Body of Christ", and in longer form in Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ), I'm in no way suggesting that transgender or intersex people's gender is somehow more hazy, less precious, or more easily given up than that of anyone else. In fact, I'm precisely arguing - as Iain Morland so persuasively does - that those of us whose gender and/or sex is not considered ambiguous or particularly contestable must be more willing to give up the benefits of "passing". Importantly, I agree with Elizabeth Stuart (also in Trans/Formations) that the end of gender is an eschatological end - but I also strongly want to affirm a model of eschatology which is, in part, a realized one. It's in living as if the world for which we hope is already instantiated that we help to bring it about - whilst simultaneously acknowledging the "not-yet-ness" of this new way.

Review of Controversies in Queer Theology in the Church Times

2011-08-31T15:56:00.002+01:00

Controversies in Queer Theology is reviewed in this week's Church Times by John Saxbee, the former Bishop of Lincoln and, until earlier this year, the president of Modern Church (formerly the Modern Churchpeople's Union).

Saxbee kindly describes the book as "a sympathetic critique" which "will be of real service to those motivated to find out more". I'm delighted that he's really caught hold of what I was trying to do in the book, as exemplified by this comment:

"Should queer people remain Christians? All may; some should; none must, but Christianity will be the poorer if they don't." (Church Times 7745, 26 August 2011, p. 22)

Controversies in Queer Theology is now published

2011-06-06T09:49:00.002+01:00

My second book, Controversies in Queer Theology, has just been published by SCM Press in the Controversies in Contextual Theology series (which also included Trans/Formations, the edited volume on transgender in which I had a chapter, and Through Us, With Us, In Us, the volume on relational theology to which I also contributed). This new book is an overview of some of the contentious questions surrounding queer theology: where does the term "queer" come from? Why use a term which has often been used as an insult in the past - and how and why have some people "reclaimed" queer as a positive term? To what extent does "queer" equal "lesbian and gay"?

Some of you will remember that I recently gave a paper at the Department of Theology and Religion Graduate Research Seminar in Exeter, entitled "Queer Theology, Hybridity and Race: Is Queer Theology Inherently White and Western?" This was based on a chapter in the new book, and examines whether or not "queer" terminology helps to overcome any of the "colonial" tendencies that some people saw in LGBT discourse in past decades.

Other questions I address in the book include: Is the Bible queer? Is the Christian theological tradition queer? Should queer people remain affiliated to the Christian tradition despite the fact that it has often been so unwelcoming to those whose sexuality is non-heterosexual? Is it meaningful to talk about "queer people" at all, given that many critics have questioned the usefulness of identity-based political groupings, and the fact that those who draw on queer critical theory often suggest that "queer" is not an identity at all, but rather a critique of identity per se?

I hope the book will be useful for those already familiar with queer theology, in terms of problematizing some of its tenets and highlighting the fact that it is not a homogenous or univocal phenomenon. However, I hope it will also be accessible for students and others who are less conversant with queer theory or the area in general, since I've tried to contextualize current debates in queer theology within a historical framework and have not assumed too much pre-existing knowledge.

I look forward to hearing what you make of it!

Two new must-read books on theology and sexuality

2011-03-21T16:16:00.002Z

I just wanted to give a shout-out to two important new books which everyone interested in the area of theology and sexuality should strongly consider checking out (and not just because they reference my work!)

The first is the forthcoming book with Blackwell by my friend, and erstwhile supervisor, Adrian Thatcher, entitled God, Sex and Gender: An Introduction. This is due for release in April but a limited preview is already viewable at Amazon.com. This book will be especially valuable for use by undergraduate students of theology, philosophy and religious studies, but Adrian has aimed to make it accessible and readable for those who have less familiarity with theological terminology too. He summarizes the aims of the book like this:

"1. To introduce students and general readers to the exhilaration of thinking theologically about sex, sexuality, sexual relationships, and gender roles.
2. To introduce students and general readers to a comprehensive and consistent theological understanding of sexuality and gender, which is broad, contemporary, undogmatic, questioning, inclusive, and relevant to readers' interests, needs, and experience.
3. To offer to university and college lecturers a comprehensive core text that will provide them with an indispensable basis for undergraduate and postgraduate courses and modules in and around the topics of Theology, Sexuality, and Gender."

The book is split into five parts: the first explores the ways in which sex, sexuality and gender have been understood in biblical and contemporary contexts. The second analyzes desire and marriage in theological perspective. Part 3 addresses gender - both the gender of God in the theological tradition, and the implications for the significance of how we understand human gender too (and I'm delighted that, right from the start of the book, Adrian has given space to considering how intersex and transgender fit in here, since this is still so rare in theological treatments of the area). Part 4 provides a useful overview of theological responses to homosexuality, both in terms of textual analysis, and in terms of tradition, reason and natural law. The final part covers issues such as virginity and celibacy, contraception, and sex before marriage (in a reprisal of Adrian's fascinating work on the theme of betrothal, which I've found really helpful in my own work in terms of a theologically imaginative basis for broadening our understanding of "marriage").

All in all, the book will be a rich resource for those studying and teaching sex, gender and sexuality in theological perspective. Adrian's conversational style, with questions addressed directly to the reader, makes this book a valuable prompt for rethinking what sexuality means both for individuals and communities of faith.

The second book to which I want to point, which is already receiving rave reviews, is Patrick S. Cheng's Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology. This is already published in the US edition and will be available in Britain in the next month or two.

Unfortunately, Patrick's book is appearing too late for me to have referenced it in my own forthcoming book, Controversies in Queer Theology, which has been with my publisher for several months now (though I was glad to draw extensively on earlier work of Patrick's, and was grateful to receive his comments on one draft chapter in particular). The fact that the two books are coming out in such quick succession means, I hope, that people will read them together and comment on how they compare and contrast (especially given the contrast between us as authors - Patrick identifies as a queer theologian and a gay man, as well as a Queer Asian Pacific American, is an ordained minister of the Metropolitan Community Church, and works at a theological seminary in the USA; I am a straight white lay woman who works in a secular Department of Theology and Religion at a British university. I don't call myself a queer theologian per se, because I suspect people would feel I were annexing their experience if I did - although other people have applied the term to me).

The book is deeply Trinitarian, examining queer theology first in general terms, and then, in subsequent sections, through the lens of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit in turn. Patrick suggests that, far from being something alien or peripheral to the Christian tradition, queer theology echoes something profound that is right at theology's centre: love as the separation of boundaries, both those between human beings, and those between human beings and God. Patrick's use of the trope of love is so important here, since it's something that often gets missed out of discussions of queer theology and queer Christianity (which, sadly, have often been about anger, violence, exclusion and hurt).

Those who know anything at all about queer theology will realize that it is a vast field containing layers and layers of theory, complexity and apparent contradiction (hence my new book). Patrick notes,

"To date there have not been many easily accessible introductions or surveys of the field for individuals who are not familiar with queer theory, on the one hand, or the traditional doctrines of queer theology, on the other. This book seeks to fill that gap in the discourse. It also provides study questions and suggested resources for further study at the end of each main section, which makes it ideal for self-study, for religious studies, theology, and queer studies classes, or for adult education in parishes and congregations."

Patrick's book provides a useful overview of other work in queer theology and in earlier lesbian and gay theology, which makes it a valuable starting point for those new to the field - but it is also far more than a literature review. It's a theologically robust and creative treatment of an area which is still coming into flower, and whose fully-developed fruits are still yet to appear.

I hope both these books will become widely-read and widely-used. They both testify to the creative and exciting field that is the study of theology and sexuality, and make clear that sex and religion, far from being hidden away as taboo topics of conversation, should both be understood as sites of generative and nascent expansions of how we understand ourselves - and are even more exciting (and sometimes volatile) when mixed.

Seminar and book launch on 23rd February

2011-02-05T12:37:00.003Z

On Wednesday 23rd February at 2pm I'll be giving a paper entitled "Queer Theology, Hybridity and 'Race': Is Queer Theology Inherently White and Western?" at the SWMTC Library, Amory Building, University of Exeter. This draws together material from my forthcoming book, Controversies in Queer Theology, part of SCM's Controversies in Contextual Theology series, with some material on postcolonial theology on which I've been working more recently.

Immediately following this seminar, I'll be launching my first book, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology. I'm delighted to say that Professor Adrian Thatcher will say a few words about the book and its contribution to the theology and sexuality debate. Copies of the book will be available to buy at a special price of £12.00 (normal price £16.99). Please do leave a comment if you're intending to come along and need directions to the venue.

Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: "like" it on Facebook!

2011-01-24T14:27:00.000Z

Psssst! You can now "like" Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology on Facebook. Look out for discussion and debate of the book, and reviews as they appear in due course.

Ratum et Consummatum: Refiguring Non-Penetrative Sexual Activity Theologically, in Light of Intersex Conditions

2010-12-28T12:18:00.003Z

I have an article in the new issue of Theology and Sexuality, 16.1. This essay, entitled “Ratum et Consummatum: Refiguring Non-Penetrative Sexual Activity Theologically, in Light of Intersex Conditions”, is a version of a paper I gave to the Divinity Research Seminar at the University of Glasgow in November 2009, and I’m grateful to everyone who contributed questions and comments on that occasion, as well as to Julie Clague and Vicky Gunn for making it possible for me to travel to Glasgow in the first place.

This article is an offshoot from my book on intersex, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology, which was published last month. In the new paper, I draw on theologies surrounding intersex to begin a consideration of their implication for broader theological understandings of virginity and consummation (an area I’d like to explore in a lot more detail in the future).

In the paper, I argue that the existence of people whose genital anatomies don’t allow them to engage in what’s often called “traditional” or “normal” sexual activity (that is, penetration of a vagina by a penis, probably followed by male ejaculation) necessitates a re-thinking of this whole area, since it puts paid to the notion that only this kind of sex is cosmically-significant “real” or “full” sex. This is important in two respects: first, because it helps to break down the notion that penetrative heterosexual sex is more authentic or legitimate than other kinds of sex, including homosexual sex; and second, because intersex has been grossly neglected in theological thought, and this undermines the full personhood and goodness of bodies with atypical genital anatomies (or unusual genital-chromosomal configurations) and the relational sexual activity in which they might engage.

In the paper, I argue that Roman Catholic Canon Law in particular repeats unhelpful associations between penetrative heterosexual intercourse, and fullness of relationship via consummation. In Canon Law, in order for a relationship to have been consummated, at least one-third of the length of the male partner’s erect penis must have penetrated the female partner’s vagina, and male ejaculation of semen must have taken place inside the vagina. (An event of penetration by between one-third and one-half of the length of the penis is known as copula dimidiata, and is deemed to constitute only an imperfect instance of consummation.) Logically, however, this means that an identical act performed between two different couples might be valid in one case and not the other because of variations in the male partner’s penile length. Oddly enough, if semen is ejaculated just outside the entrance to the vagina (an event known in Canon Law as copula appositiva) and a child is conceived and born as a result, this is not enough to constitute having consummated the relationship. I show that this kind of thought makes little to no sense in light of intersex, but also that theologians have not been alone in privileging only certain kinds of genital anatomy and certain kinds of sexual activity. The obsession with exact lengths, depths and measurements is eerily echoed in the scale cited by Sharon Preves and other scholars of intersex, whereby a clitoris must be smaller than 0.9cm and a penis larger than 2.4cm to be considered acceptably-sized at birth. Importantly, some women with intersex may have very short vaginas which do not allow penetration by as much as even one-third of the shaft of an erect penis – but, I suggest, this does not mean that the sexual relationships in which they might engage are any less legitimate, unitive or cosmically-significant than more theologically-sanctioned forms.

Indeed, I argue:

What this presents is surely an opportunity for fulfilment in relationship to be understood more broadly. As [Michael G.] Lawler notes, consummation might be understood as coming about only gradually, as a couple’s love deepens and becomes more perfect, and that sex will occur within this perfecting. Although, as he notes, it is far harder to know the exact time at which this has taken place than to know when penetrative sex has first taken place (Lawler 2002: 82), it seems to me that this broader understanding is far more helpful as a means of gauging the goodness of sexual relationships. In this account, love expressed in sexual intimacy might not be limited solely to marriage relationships, and nor will penetrative vaginal sex with male ejaculation inside the vagina be considered a radical disjunction from what has gone before. Some people may still want to argue that marriage enhances this love-bond, but it cannot be said to constitute it.

Heteronormative theologies which sanction only heterosexual eroticism, then, exclude not just homosexual eroticism but also eroticism which is other, which falls outside signification. Anti-hegemonic theologies must seriously question this, and must query the right of those in positions of privilege to delimit what kinds of sexual expression (in practice, normally those which coincide with married procreation) are acceptable and worth celebrating. [Adrian] Thatcher and others have convincingly shown that “consummation” of a relationship might be said to occur gradually as couples “grow towards one another” (Thatcher 2002: 235), rather than at a first act of penetration … However, as we have established, the very language of consummation may be deemed problematic. It is essential that heteronormative theologies face up to the part they have had in reinforcing a culture where only certain kinds of genitalia and only certain kinds of sexual acts are considered legitimate or “real.” Otherwise the experience of intersexed people will continue to be diminished and devalued, and theology will fail adequately to query and oppose the unnecessary genital cosmetic surgery which still takes place …

For sex to be covenantal does not necessarily mean that it can only take place in a marriage, that it can only take place between people of different sexes, that it must involve penetration of a vagina by a penis followed by male ejaculation, or even that it must only take place with one partner. The fact that both the Catholic and Anglican Churches have recognized a distinction between consummation and procreation is positive, but this must be taken further. A once-and-for-all association between penetration, ejaculation and consummation is a too legalistic and too masculinist basis for understanding sex. An over-emphasis on penetrative vaginal sex as real, binding and sacramental devalues the sexual intimacy and experience of those who cannot or will not have sex in this way. Acknowledgement of this fact is crucial particularly in light of intersex … Such a shift in focus will … necessitate Church authorities being willing to give up some of the power they have lately clung on to, their power to delineate which bodies and bodily activities are and are not legitimate, and which kinds of bodies/activities should or should not be endorsed in Church teaching. This includes the power to decree which forms of sexual activity do or do not have particular kinds of cosmic significance, and which do or do not demarcate the moment at which a given stage of relationship has been reached. I have said elsewhere, after Iain Morland, that kenosis requires non-intersexed people to cede their binary identities and concomitant privilege, rather than “saving” those considered marginal in their sexed or gendered identi- ties by assimilating them into expected, “decent” categories (Cornwall 2008: 189). I now suggest that Church authorities must similarly empty themselves of the power to exclude particular bodies and acts from cosmic-sexual signification, in order to come to a mutually fragile but more honest place of God-seeking.

Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ is Published and Available!

2010-12-05T20:04:00.009Z

At long last, I'm pleased to announce the publication of my book, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology. This book, which is a shorter and updated version of my 2007 PhD thesis, is an examination of the existence and treatment of physical intersex conditions in theological perspective. I discuss existing theological engagements with intersex, from authors including Karen Lebacqz, Heather Looy and Hessel Bouma III, J. David Hester, Patricia Beattie Jung, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Sally Gross, and John Hare, and build on them to begin to show the ways in which intersex impacts on Christian theology.

Here's the blurb, to give you a taster:

"Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ provides the first full-length examination of the theological implications of physical intersex conditions and their medical treatment. Mainstream Christian theology has valued the integrity of the body and the goodness of God reflected in creation, but has also set much store by the 'complementarity' of 'normal' male and female physiology. However, a deconstruction or querying of male and female as essential or all-embracing human categories changes conceptions of legitimate bodiliness and of what it means for human sex to reflect God. Theologies which value incarnation and bodiliness must speak with stigmatized or marginal bodies too: the Body of Christ is comprised of human members, and each member changes the Body's definition of itself. Accepting the non-pathology of intersexed and otherwise atypical bodies necessitates a re-examination of discourses about sex, marriage, sexuality, perfection, healing and the resurrection body. Informed by existing theologies from three marginal areas (transsexualism, disability and queer theology), this beginning of a theology from intersex demonstrates the necessity of resisting erotic domination in defining bodies. It provides a robustly theological perspective on a topic which has become increasingly examined within sociological and critical discourse."

The book is available for purchase from Amazon and other good online retailers, or directly from Equinox, my UK publisher. US publication is scheduled for 2011.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me through the long journey of researching, writing, revising and waiting for this book - and to all those whose stories inspired me to write it on the first place.

Intersex, Identity and Misconception

2010-09-09T16:30:00.004+01:00

Through Us, With Us, In Us: Relational Theologies in the Twenty-First Century, in which I have an essay, was recently reviewed in the Church Times by Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee, the Bishop of Lincoln. Dr Saxbee said of my essay,

"Susannah Cornwall follows this [Carter Heyward's opening chapter] with a powerful personal testimony to both the traumas of intersexuality and the way this led to a new understanding of God, because if the intersexual person is made in the image of God, then God is intersexual as well — and lesbian, gay, transgendered, and straight."

I'm interested by Dr Saxbee's reference to my "powerful personal testimony". I wonder whether he believes that I myself have an intersex condition, or am claiming an intersexed identity in what I write. Here's an excerpt from near the beginning of my essay, which might be said to be my contextualization of what follows:

"I have been particularly keen to explore the theological and Christological implications of the existence and treatment of physical intersex conditions, as in my forthcoming book, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology (Cornwall, forthcoming 2010). Approximately 1 in 2,500 individuals is born with a biological intersex condition which, in some cases, manifests in ambiguous genitalia. Other individuals may have unremarkable male-related or female-related genitalia, but the chromosomes or internal organs usually associated with the “opposite” sex. Children born with ambiguous genitalia, particularly before the mid-1990s when the intersex activism movement began to challenge the early surgery paradigm, often had “excessive” or “inadequate” genitalia surgically altered soon after birth or through childhood and into adolescence. This sometimes involved, for example, removing the penis of an XY child and assigning a feminine gender of rearing (see e.g. Preves 2003; Dreger 1999; Kessler 1998; Karkazis 2008). Many intersexed individuals identify unproblematically as the gender in which they were raised, but others – including some who underwent surgery to normalize their genitals since the 1960s when this became commonplace – identify themselves differently. Intersex activist Thea Hillman notes that the nebulous “intersex community” is far from homogenous:

“What many of us have in common are repeated genital displays, often from a young age. Many of us have had medical treatments done to us without our consent to make our sex anatomy conform to someone else’s standards. Many of us suffer from intense shame due to treatments that sought to fix or hide our bodies. And many of us have experienced none of the above.” (Hillman 2008: 149)

Some intersexed individuals report facing exclusion or suspicion from their church communities, which they attribute to a lack of understanding about their conditions (Curry 2006; Gross 1999: 70; Gross speaking in van Huyssteen 2003), stemming from assumptions that intersex equals homosexuality or a propensity for paedophilia."

In fact, the only direct personal identification I offer early in the essay is that I am a white feminist theologian. Later on, I discuss Iain Morland's suggestion that non-intersexed people should consider “a deliberate repudiation of male and female identities” because of the concomitant oppression of non-males-and-females bound up in these identities and in sex descriptivism itself. I note that my journey of working through what Morland’s imperative to cede unremarkably-sexed privilege would mean for me, a heterosexual female who also identifies as broadly feminine, is still in process. I remark that it does not cost me much to take small steps such as refusing to disclose my gender on application forms and documents where, as almost always, it is not relevant; it might cost me a great deal more to stop wearing make-up or recognizably feminine clothing. I happen to have a markedly feminine given name; I enjoy publishing under it, but coupled with other aspects of my identity perhaps it is too conveniently “sexed”. In these outer things inhere more than I usually care to admit of my confidence, self-projection as capable and adult, and personal and professional personae.

It is possible that I am misunderstanding John Saxbee, and that he is simply noting that my piece is "personal" (which, of course, it is), without assuming that I am writing as an intersexed person. However, his use of the phrase "personal testimony" leads me to suspect that he thinks I am, in fact, an intersexed individual.

This is not the only time such assumptions have been made. A blog write-up of my talk on intersex at the Greenbelt Festival in 2009 said that I had spoken "on being intersexed". A commenter added, "An intersex person at Greenbelt? Did I have it wrong when I considered it more of a conservative Christian fest? It sounds like fun though!" There were indeed plenty of intersexed people at Greenbelt 2009, some of whom came to the talk and were kind enough to contribute questions, comments and observations. I, however, am not intersexed myself, and have never claimed to be.

After the blog post in question appeared, I thought long and hard about whether or not I should clear up the misconception. (In the event, the blog's privacy settings did not allow me to do so, so the comments still exist out there in web-land, unremarked upon by me.) If I jumped in and said "Oh, no, I don't have an intersex condition", would that be construed as my seeking to distance myself from something I deemed bad or undesirable? Or would it, conversely, simply have made clear that I speak and write about intersex as something of an outsider, so that my words should not be taken as representative of some kind of intersex consensus? But then, would that not be just as much the case if I did have an intersex condition, since my experience and testimony would still be specific to me, and not unproblematically universalizable?

In my forthcoming book, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology, I seek to be very explicit about my own relationship to the issues about which I write:

"Representing intersexed individuals, and working toward a theology from intersex/DSD, is problematic if done, as here, by a non-intersexed person. However, this does not mean that thinking with intersex/DSD as a non-intersexed person is entirely inappropriate. In fact, whilst it would be reprehensible to colonize the standpoint of an intersexed person as my own, it is crucial that those who are not intersexed consider and participate in discourse about it along with those who are. To say that only someone from a particular group can speak about or reflect on that group risks ghettoizing particular issues, so that they are always pushed to the edges, left as minority concerns rather than those which conceivably impact upon and implicate everyone. This point is made convincingly by Alice Dreger, a non-intersexed activist for intersex/DSD issues, who has written of her opposition to the notion that identity politics can only be done by individuals who claim the specific, given identity (Dreger 2006b). It is crucial, as far as possible, to reflect on intersexed people’s own reflections and testimonies concerning their lives and experiences; but my own reflection on intersex/DSD also necessitates a self-critical evaluation of my assumptions and the ways in which my background affects the manner in which I view it. The existence of intersexed people can help to query the perceived norms of physiology and gender which seem to undergird much mainstream theology (not just that concerned with “sex” issues), but I should be asking them on my own behalf. They should prompt me to re-examine my own assumptions and situation as a non-intersexed person. In her study of Christian feminism among black and white women, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite remarks,

“Gustavo Gutiérrez once said that he is suspicious of anyone who is not in the liberation struggle for themselves. I am not in this exploration of the difference race makes for black women; nor am I in it on behalf of black women. I want to know for myself what is being hidden and carried along unexamined in the class and race solidarity of white women.” (Thistlethwaite 1990: 46)

My non-intersexed experiences are mine to own in a way that those of people with intersex/DSD conditions are not."

I think it's worth quoting Dreger's blog post, since it was so useful in helping me think through my own relationship to intersex experience and testimony. Dreger, who has written about the historical and contemporary existence and treatment of a variety of "atypical" bodily states, including intersex and conjoined twins, says,

"I don’t really care if people mistakenly think I am intersex, or lesbian, or was born conjoined (except that then they are attributing experiences to me that I don’t have). What I mind is the p.c. attitude that no one but those who have an identity should study, speak, or care about that identity. This kind of attitude has led to an annoying situation where people who don’t have the identity think they shouldn’t care about it. It’s not their issue. Well, as I’ve been telling my students for years, maybe if they make it their issue, things will get better a lot quicker."

As I suggested above, one of my concerns during my past and ongoing research on issues like intersex, transgender, disability and queer theology has been that I not be seen to misrepresent people. I now try to make it very clear that I am (as far as I know) a white, heterosexual, female, non-intersexed married woman. There are undoubtedly times when I unwittingly exoticize, fetishize or misrepresent those about whom I write and speak, however much I endeavour not to. I am conscious that there are many respects in which my bodily, intellectual, class and other privileges mean that I can access academic arenas and the world of "respectable" publishing in a way which many people cannot. It is therefore, I believe, my responsibility not to speak for other people but with them.

However, like Dreger, I believe that this does not mean that only someone who inhabits a particular identity can speak or write about it. It is for this reason that I hope I have misunderstood Dr Saxbee and the aforementioned blog writer, and that they do not in fact assume that the only reason someone would think intersex was important, noteworthy or significant was because they were themselves intersexed.

I'm facing similar tensions at the moment in my British Academy-funded project, Readings from the Road, in which I've been facilitating Contextual Bible Study sessions with a group of homeless and vulnerably-housed people in a city in the South-West of England. My co-researcher and I have discussed at length the conflict we feel about the fact that the words and experiences of the homeless participants are going to help the two of us advance our careers, since they'll be used in published academic papers and will score highly in terms of the knowledge "dissemination" which it's becoming increasingly important to show you're doing. Does that mean we shouldn't use them? We don't think so, but it's made us very mindful of ensuring we're as transparent as possible with both our research participants and the eventual readers of our papers about who "owns" the material and what that means for how it should be read and used.

As I'll be saying in my new book, Controversies in Queer Theology,

"If there are moments when I have unwittingly misunderstood or misrepresented an argument or a motivation, then I can only apologize and hope that those I have wronged, or their advocates, will do me the privilege of letting me know so that this conversation might be a multivocal and ongoing one. There is another important reason for letting the voices of those who have worked on questions of queer theology over the last few decades speak for themselves ... The chapters below will show that there is much debate over the extent to which a heterosexual person can be considered queer, or can speak about queer theologians. Some people believe that a heterosexual can only ever be an ally to queer people rather than claiming queerness themselves; others say that queering is about a rejection of more than heteronormativity, and that it is the responsibility and task of heterosexual married people just as much as others to queer discourses of regulatory race, class, gender and sexuality. I do not claim a right to speak on behalf of others: rather, I seek to speak with them, reflecting on how queer theology implicates and interrogates all Christians. Nonetheless, I am aware that the society in which I live grants me certain privileges not afforded to those whose gender, sexuality and “race” are often deemed non-normative or non-ideal. It is not my intention to patronize, misrepresent or equivocate about anyone else. "

The issues surrounding identity and ownership are manifold and spiralling, and what I continue to seek to do is to keep channels of communication open.

That's what the comments function is for, folks...

Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots: Essays in Honour of Marcella Althaus-Reid

2010-08-25T10:01:00.005+01:00

Many of you will know that Marcella Althaus-Reid, the author of Indecent Theology and The Queer God, two seminal works in postcolonial queer liberation theology, died in February 2009 after a long illness. I first heard of Marcella's work when she visited Exeter in 2004 to give her Bishop John Prideaux lectures on the theme, "What's Love Got To Do With It? Reflections on Liberation Theology, Sexuality and Poverty. From the Margins of the Margins: The Return of the Excluded God." Yes, she really did cover all that, drawing on graffiti, art, music, iconography and more, always with a concern for (as she phrased it) "the hearts at the bottom of the heap". This motif became very important to me in formulating my own PhD thesis on theology and intersex, and also my broader subsequent interests in theology and sexuality, theology and disability, transgender, liberation theology, queer theology and postcolonial theology. Marcella was the external examiner for my PhD in 2007 and it was a privilege to be able to talk to her about my own work and hers.

Lisa Isherwood and Mark D. Jordan have now brought out a new edited volume in memory of Marcella, entitled Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots, and have collected essays by scholars focusing on different aspects and themes of Marcella's work, both those which were already well-known and those which Marcella might, perhaps, have explored more fully had her career not been curtailed. I was delighted to be asked to contribute to this book, and to have my essay included alongside those of people whose work I admire as much as that of Marcella: Kwok Pui-lan, Bob Shore-Goss, Mayra Rivera Rivera, Elizabeth Stuart, Graham Ward and Rosemary Radford Ruether, to name just a few.

My essay in this volume focuses on the image of the queer God in Marcella's theology, and is entitled "Stranger in Our Midst: The Becoming of the Queer God in the Theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid". As part of this piece, I draw out links between Marcella's queer God and queer-processive images of the divine in work by four other theologians, Carter Heyward, Nancy Eiesland, Grace M. Jantzen and Elizabeth Stuart. In the excerpt below I focus on affinities between Eiesland's disabled God and Althaus-Reid's queer God, suggesting that both images point to a God who is less self-sufficient and aseitic than the philosophical perfections would often have had us believe (though not, perhaps, so absent from the mainstream theological tradition as Marcella's own work sometimes implied):

Eiesland’s Disabled God imagery speaks of touching otherness, of intimate encounter with bodily taboos. Althaus-Reid’s God of the margins does likewise: the differences to which Althaus-Reid appeals are not so much the congenital physical ones, but the ones which come with being marked out because of what one does with one’s body. Moreover, both God-figures need others: Eiesland speaks of a Disabled God who “embodies practical interdependence, not simply willing to be interrelated from a position of power, but depending on it from a position of need” (Eiesland 1994: 103). She continues,

“To posit a Jesus Christ who needs care and mutuality as essential to human-divine survival ... debunks the myth of individualism and hierarchical orders, in which transcendence means breaking free of encumbrances and needing nobody and constitutes the divine as somebody in relation to other bodies.” (Eiesland 1994: 103)

Eiesland’s Disabled Christ relies on human interaction and human activity to carry on remaking and disseminating him – to re-member him, to put him back together, in Eucharist and in loving, mutual service. Likewise, Althaus-Reid’s Queer God needs humanity: the boundaries between redeemer and redeemed are blurred (Althaus-Reid 2003: 138). Indeed, perhaps God’s often-closeted status – tied up and squashed into small, respectable spaces – means that God really is not at liberty to remake the Body of Christ independently, thus requiring human members and co-constituents to take this initiative.
“God cannot be Queered”, warns Althaus-Reid, “unless theologians have the courage to come out from their … closets” (Althaus-Reid 2000: 88). Here Althaus-Reid’s work owes a particular debt to Heyward, in whose conception God simply cannot exist independently of human relationship. Heyward says, “Without our crying, our yearning, our raging, there is no God. For in the beginning is the relation, and in the relation is the power that creates the world through us, and with us, and by us, you and I, you and we, and none of us alone” (Heyward 1982: 172). God is, then, a stranger in our midst; but there is also an important sense in which God becomes stranger – that is, stranger and stranger than before – via the queer, transgressive human lives and stories which contribute to God’s continued coming-into-being. Just as the obscured face of Serrano’s Piss Christ might be an invitation for the viewer to respond, to participate in the completion of the image (Pattenden in Stapleton 2009), so the instability and recalcitrance of Althaus-Reid’s Queer God induces a continuousness of journey and process for those who walk with this deity. And this happens in all the little deaths and resurrections which testify to the unfinished nature of the way – which reject the finality of a static and explicable cross, “an attempt to kill once and for all the multiple resurrections of a queer Jesus … so that no queer God would do what queer Gods do” (Althaus-Reid 2006: 525).
So God is becoming in this way; but we must also ask what is “becoming” to this God. What behaviour and belief is it that suits a queer God and is thus necessary, ethical activity for queer people? Claudia Schippert and others have reflected on the fact that queer theology might have to be somehow ethically “empty”, since rejecting grand narratives of normativity might necessitate rejecting norms altogether, even “good” ones (Schippert 1999, 2006). Queer theology would therefore be unable to be directive or prescriptive about what constitutes ethically sound actions. But Schippert concludes that norms do not inevitably solidify into normativities, so a queer ethics with “multiple starting points and alliances of contradictory norms” (Schippert 2006: 172) is perhaps still possible. It is exactly in and through the uncertainty and provisionality that praxis occurs. This is also what Althaus-Reid realizes when, with Isherwood, she affirms that the theology of the Queer God “pertains to the exploitation but also to the solidarity and cooperation of people at the margins of society and theology. Therefore, it is not correct to say that Queer Theology lacks agency. Queer Theology is an agent for transformation” (Althaus-Reid and Isherwood 2007: 308). What is “becoming” to a Queer God is queer activity which values people above profits and relationship above legalistic rightness. God becomes stranger as God becomes estranged from divisive capitalist structures. There is an ambivalence in Althaus-Reid about the extent to which this might mean jettisoning the “T-theology” tradition which has distorted the message that a queer God is fundamentally a God of justice and on the side of the poor: Althaus-Reid does not always recognize the counter-streams present even in the main body of the tradition, or the fact that theological univocity is alien even to its own genealogy. However, what is certain is that Althaus-Reid’s queer God is not an overbearing parent who punishes children for rules they were not even fully aware they had broken. In the queer God, humans take on responsibility for what they are to do and what they are to be – for the ways in which they are to live out this God’s story, not sanitized or removed from their own everyday stories as lived out in a natal, dying, embodied, sexual, dirty, broken and beautiful world.

The full list of contributors is as follows: Robert Shore-Goss; Mary E. Hunt; Kwok Pui-lan; Kathleen M. Sands; Emilie M. Townes; Lisa Isherwood; Mayra Rivera Rivera; Susannah Cornwall; Elizabeth Stuart; Alistair Kee; Lea D. Brown; Jay Emerson Johnson; Graham Ward; Mark D. Jordan; Natalie K. Watson; Ivan Petrella; Hugo Cordova Quero; Mario I. Aguilar; Andre S. Musskopf; Nancy Cardoso Pereira; Claudio Carvalhaes; and Rosemary Radford Ruether.

No one will ever be able to come close to filling Marcella's shoes, but I hope she would have considered the book a fitting tribute to her - and it is an excellent resource on queer theology in its own right.

Wild Rice and Queer Dissent: Wrestling with God in Genesis 32:22-32

2010-08-19T11:30:00.003+01:00

I have a paper in the new 2010 volume of the Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research. This is a (slightly) expanded version of the paper I presented a year ago at the ESWTR conference at the University of Winchester, and is entitled "Wild Rice and Queer Dissent: Wrestling With God in Genesis 32:22-32". Here's a snippet:

Wild rice grows naturally on water in the north-eastern United States and southern Canada, and is considered a sacred food by the Ojibway or Chippewa people. The first French settlers in the area called the grain la zizanie, from the Greek plural zizánia – also the name given it by Linnaeus. Gathered from where it grows naturally on water the grain is an important source of protein, vitamins and minerals. However, the same term is also used for the biblical “tares” in Matthew 13. The logic of the parable suggests that to sow tares in a cultivated area is to sow the seeds of havoc, since once rooted it runs amok, is impossible to remove, and sucks the nutrients from any crops whose area it invades. It is for this reason that tá zizánia in the Matthean parable denotes “the children of the evil one” who must be allowed to grow alongside the elect for now but will, at the end of the age, be “gathered up and burned with fire” (Matthew 13:38, 40). In French, semer la zizanie, “to sow wild rice”, is to sow discord and stir up trouble. La zizanie now has colloquially, by association, the somewhat violent connotations of ill-feeling, feud, rivalry, discord, clash.

Although many feminist and queer theologians have rightly rejected violence and hierarchy as desirable patterns to be repeated in our own theologies, there is also a sense in which something approximating the tenacity embodied in la zizanie is a valuable quality for those who stand in tension with the accepted norms and paradigms of the mainstream. There is indubitably something wild about it, like the strains of wild rice, riz sauvage, which bear its name. But it can also, more promisingly, be translated tension or dissent. The very violent tale of Jacob wrestling the stranger at Peniel in Genesis 32 may seem an odd and problematic tale to those who repudiate combative or aggressive modes of discourse as ideal. We might say that the God of this tale is a dark God: some critics believe that the story has its origins in earlier traditions of night attacks by river-demons. However, I suggest that the ambiguities in the tale – and the ambiguities and differences in its interpretation by commentators – mean that there are strands to be reclaimed and celebrated here, even as queer theology ambivalently interacts with all those in whose presence it has found itself, or has been made, strange. I engage here with a range of commentaries on the Genesis 32 passage and suggest that it is in their disagreement and variety that they are complementary and demonstrate the unfinished, provisional, conversational nature of interpretation. This, I suggest, is ideologically important for recognizing the unfinished and provisional nature of queer theologies which appeal to a queer God.

One of the wonderful things about the ESWTR is that both its conferences and its journal are trilingual. Conference presentations are given in either English, German or Spanish, and are simultaneously translated into the other languages. Delegates are provided with headsets which can be tuned into the listener's preferred language, so everyone can follow along. Questions posed to speakers after their papers are also translated - which means questioners who are passionately opposed to or inflamed by what they have heard sometimes need to temper the full thrust of their rebuttal in order that the translators can keep up! Sadly my own linguistic skills are not all they should be, but for the benefit of those who prefer to think in German or Spanish, here are the abstracts for my paper in each language:

Im Französischen bedeutet semer la zizanie „wilden Reis säen“, d.h. Zwietracht säen, Unruhe hervorrufen. Viele feministische und queere TheologInnen haben Gewalt und Hierarchie als erstrebenswerte Modelle, die in unseren eigenen Theologien wiederholt wurden, verworfen. Doch etwas von der Hartnäckigkeit, Spannung und dem Dissens, die in dem Begriff zizanie enthalten sind, stellen eine wertvolle Eigenschaft für diejenigen dar, die in einem Spannungsverhältnis zu den akzeptierten Normen und Paradigmen des Mainstreams stehen. Die Ambiguität in dem Bericht vom Kampf Jakobs mit einer geheimnisvollen Gestalt in Pnuël – sowie die Mehrdeutigkeiten und Differenzen in den unterschiedlichen Interpretationen – spiegeln die Art und Weise wider, in der eine queere Theologie mit all denen umgeht, in deren Gegenwart sie sich fremd gefühlt hat oder von denen sie entfremdet worden ist. Der Beitrag setzt sich mit einer Reihe von Auslegungen von Genesis 32 auseinander und vertritt die Auffassung, dass diese sich gerade in ihrer Uneindeutigkeit und Vielfalt ergänzen und den unvollendeten, provisorischen und dialogischen Charakter der Interpretation deutlich machen. Es wird gezeigt, dass das wichtig ist, um den unvollendeten und provisorischen Charakter queerer Theologien im Blick auf einen queeren Gott anzuerkennen. Die Undefinierbarkeit der Identität des Gegners von Jakob dient zum Nachdenken über das Wesen einer queeren Opposition zu einer monolithischen Verbreitung der christlichen Tradition. Der Beitrag schließt mit der Aussage ab, dass queere Theologien sich weigern, ein Nein als eine Antwort hin zu nehmen und Abstand zu nehmen von einem Dialog mit Gott und der Tradition. Das Ringen ist nicht beendet, doch gleicht es weitgehend einer Begegnung – von Angesicht zu Angesicht – mit Gott.

Semer la zizanie quiere decir en francés “sembrar arroz silvestre”, esto es, sembrar cizaña, producir discordia. Muchos/as teólogos/as feministas y queer rechazan la violencia y la jerarquía como modelos a seguir que han existido en nuestras propias teologías. Sin embargo, lo que el concepto de cizaña tiene de tenacidad, tensión y disensión representa una característica muy valiosa para aquellos/as que sienten la dicotomía que existe entre las normas aceptadas y los paradigmas del mainstream. La ambigüedad que encontramos en la lucha de Jacob con esa figura misteriosa en Peniel – al igual que las ambigüedades y diferencias de las varias interpretaciones que existen – refleja cómo la teología queer tiene una interacción ambivalente con aquellos/as en cuya presencia se sentía extraña o que la alienaban. En este artículo se analizan varias interpretaciones de Génesis 32, llegando a la conclusión que en tanto ambiguas y variadas se complementan, poniendo de manifiesto el carácter inconcluso, provisional y dialógico de la interpretación. Queda demostrado que ello es importante para reconocer el carácter inconcluso y provisional de las teologías queer y un Dios queer. El hecho de no poder definir quién es el adversario de Jacob nos obliga a reflexionar quién es la oposición queer frente a la expansión monolítica de la tradición cristiana. En el artículo se postula finalmente que las teologías queer se niegan a aceptar el no como una respuesta y a alejarse de un diálogo con Dios y la tradición. La lucha no ha terminado; sin embargo se asemeja a un encuentro – cara a cara – con Dios.

Critical Intersex - preview available on Google Books

2010-07-20T13:45:00.000+01:00

If, like me, you enjoy previewing content on Google Books before committing your hard-won/earned/stolen pennies (or pestering your library) to buy a copy, you may like to know that Critical Intersex is now available to view there. You can view 18 out of the 28 pages of my chapter, “Theologies of Resistance: Intersex, Disability and Queering the ‘Real World’” - which isn't bad going, and if you are tantalized by the hidden content, I would not object to your a) buying a copy, b) asking me to tell you what I said in the missing bits, or c) engaging in a "Choose Your Own Adventure"-style game of devising several possible endings.

(Spoiler: nobody dies.)

Article in new edition of Third Way magazine

2010-05-20T13:11:00.013+01:00

I have an article in the new (June 2010) edition of Third Way, the magazine of Christian comment on culture. It's entitled "Between the Lines" and is about the implications of intersex conditions for thinking Christians. Those with a subscription to Third Way can read it online here; or, if you want to buy a year's subscription to the magazine (which I would thoroughly recommend, as it is full of many marvellous things - including, this month, an interview with Paulo Coelho, and a column by the lovely Sarah Dean with whom I briefly shared a stage at Greenbelt), click here.

Credit for the great illustration, which appears in a bigger form in the magazine, must go to Brent Clark of Surface Studio.

I should also let you know that publication of my book, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology, has unfortunately been delayed and is now scheduled for September. It can still be pre-ordered from Amazon or direct from Equinox but there will be a bit of an interval - apologies to those who are waiting already.

What Religion or Reason Could Drive a Man to Forsake His Lover? Relational Theology, Co-Creativity and the Intersexed Body of Christ

2010-05-08T11:18:00.007+01:00

I have a chapter in the newest volume in the SCM Press series Controversies in Contextual Theology. This collection, edited by Lisa Isherwood and Elaine Bellchambers, is entitled Through Us, With Us, In Us: Relational Theologies in the Twenty-First Century, and my essay is called "What Religion or Reason Could Drive a Man to Forsake His Lover?" Relational Theology, Co-Creativity and the Intersexed Body of Christ" (p.33-51).

I draw on Carter Heyward's assertion that "there can be no religion or doctrine; no ethic or moral suasion; no racial, sexual, class or ethnic pride; no technological feat; no ends or means; nothing in heaven and earth - not even a deity - that is any more valuable, any more important, any better than human love for humanity" (The Redemption of God, p. 181). As far as Heyward is concerned, it is in and through the ways in which humans love one another that God continues to be created.

I suggest in the paper that Christian over-emphasis on a particular kind of deity, and specifically a particular kind of deity-become-human in Christ, is part of what has driven men, women and others to "forsake" their fellow human beings. Those, in particular, whose sexed and gendered identities have been deemed deviant, difficult or recalcitrant by a largely heteronormative church, have been further excluded by imagery whereby a male body, that of Christ, is made unproblematically to stand for all humans. In fact, to say that we as humans co-make and co-create Christ – through what Heyward and others have called “godding” – means something even more devastating for any of our sexed images of Christ’s body in particular.

Humanity in Christ exists as far more than gender-coded jigsaw pieces. Humans are not rendered complete via so-called gender complementarity. The Body of Christ is intersexed, because its members (that is, its constituents) include intersexed bodies. The Body as a whole, like some of the individual bodies within it, is ambiguous, recalcitrant, not neatly or unproblematically gendered or sexed. But we have summarily failed to explore what this really means both for the Christ we remember and re-member in worship and liturgy – for “more creative epistemologies of the divine and a sense of twisted transcendence” (Althaus-Reid 2003: 50) – and for the wider human body we make and constitute beyond church walls.

Crucially, and revolutionarily, Heyward argues that there is nothing in heaven or earth – not even a deity – that is more valuable, important, or better than human love for humans, since it is in human love that we meet and make the God who is love. In fact, she says, “Our love of humanity is our love of God; and our love of God is our love of humanity. Simply that” (Heyward 1984: 184). There is therefore an imperative here to explore images of Christ’s body – and their implications for our own self-understanding – which admit of the uncomfortable truths inhering in human bodies.

Every time our liturgies and practices fail to acknowledge the diversity and multiplicity of the Body of Christ, they also fail to acknowledge the Christness, the messianic capacity, of everyone whose body is less able or white or unambiguously male than the images of Jesus we are used to. It has almost invariably been a male body of Christ that has been figured as a site of salvation, and this tacitly devalues all bodies which do not reflect Jesus’ maleness. Female sexuality, non-maleness, and all modes of bodily excess or ambiguity are often diminished, and the bodies in which they exist are often not deemed suitable to minister to the rest of the community. It is in this way that our small, narrow religion and reason drives us to forsake our lovers, the other humans in whose reciprocal love we should be “godding”.

(Fans of 80s synthpop will notice that I borrowed part of the title from Erasure's song "A Little Respect" - since I've always been drawn to the lines about doctrine and dogma being less important than love, and about the advantages of making love not war, and all the other things you would expect from a hippie lefty Green like me.)

Other contributors to the volume, and the titles of their pieces, are as follows:

Carter Heyward, "Breaking Points: Shaping a Relational Theology" (9-32)

Ursula King, "Pneumatophores for Nurturing a Different Kind of Love" (52-70)

Beverley Clack, "Knowing Thyself: Psychoanalysis and Feminist Philosophy of Religion" (71-86)

Mary Grey, "Sustaining Hope when Relationality Fails: Reflecting on Palestine - a Case Study" (87-106)

Catherine Keller, "Tangles of Unknowing: Cosmology, Christianity and Climate" (109-120)

Lisa Isherwood, "Wanderings in the Cosmic Garden" (121-136)

Diarmuid O'Murchu, "How to Relate in a Quantum Universe" (137-152)

June Boyce-Tillman, "Even the Stones Cry Out: Music, Theology and the Earth" (153-178)

Maaike de Haardt, "Monotheism as a Threat to Relationality?" (181-196)

Jenny Daggers, "Transcendence and the Refiguring of God as Male, the Absolute Same" (197-211)

Natalie K. Watson, "The Place Where Love is Possible: A Feminist Relational Attempt to Rethink the Cross" (212-229)

Mary Condren, "Relational Theology in the Work of the Artist, Psychoanalyst and Theorist Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger" (230-263)

Sex and Uncertainty, remixed

2010-05-01T17:42:00.002+01:00

My first book, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology (Equinox, 2010), is now available to pre-order on Amazon or direct from Equinox. Megan Clay's cover piece is entitled Endless Possibilities, and I love the way the abstract shapes echo the vast spectrum of morphological and emotional ontology which the book attempts to explore.

Reprint of one of my essays in Christianity (Library of Essays on Sexuality and Religion)

2010-03-23T20:39:00.005Z

My essay "'State of Mind' versus 'Concrete Set of Facts': The Contrasting of Transgender and Intersex in Church Documents on Sexuality", originally published in Theology & Sexuality in 2009, will be reprinted in the forthcoming edited volume Christianity, part of Ashgate's Library of Essays on Sexuality and Religion series edited by Stephen Hunt of UWE. Publication is due for November 2010 so I expect I'll post about it again nearer the time.

It looks like a great collection and an excellent resource for teaching on Christianity and sexuality, covering topics as diverse as celibacy, sacraments, assisted reproduction, subliminal eroticism in charismatic worship (I wonder if the classic song "Jesus take me as I am, I can come no other way" will be referenced?!), intersex and transgender, and the social control of women's bodies in Mennonite communities! It includes reprints of well-known texts such as Rowan Williams' essay "The Body's Grace", as well as recent work by my esteemed friends Siân Taylder and David Nixon.

Queer Theologie: Sporen van een Vreemde God (Queer Theology: Traces of a Strange God)

2010-02-10T15:31:00.003Z

I have a piece in the new edition of the Dutch feminist theology journal FIER (Feministisch Inspirerend Eigenzinnig Religieus) entitled "Queer Theologie: Sporen van een Vreemde God" ("Queer Theology: Traces of a Strange God") (13.1, Jan/Feb 2010, p.24-25). Sadly my talents don't extend to writing Dutch - the article was kindly translated by Adriaan van Klinken.

Interestingly, I gather that "queer" as a term does not exist in Dutch or in German, and although "queer theology" is discussed in those languages, the term is "borrowed" from the English. This is particularly significant when considering the often-debated question of whether queer theory's (and, by association, queer theology's) genealogy is inevitably rooted in a history of abjection or of an "insult turned". The "new" use of queer in Dutch and German doesn't have a built-in sense of "crossing" or being "athwart" or "against", so far as I understand. Can any native speakers weigh in?

Ekklesia report on Anglican Mainstream sexuality conference

2010-02-01T16:06:00.006Z

I was quoted in a report by staff writers at Ekklesia, the religion and society think-tank, in response to comments made at last week's Anglican Mainstream conference in London.

A number of Christian campaigners have provoked controversy by encouraging churches to help people to “overcome” their attraction to members of their own sex. They have been criticised by other Christian groups and human rights activists.

The campaigners developed their approach at a conference in London yesterday (21 January), entitled What can I possibly say? – Pastoral responses to today’s sexual confusion. It was organised by Anglican Mainstream with the support of other groups such as Christian Concern For Our Nation (CCFON).

Speakers at the event included a number of people who define themselves as “ex-gay”, such as Phelim McIntyre, who says that he is now “happily heterosexual” ...

When questioned about intersex people (those whose sex is ambiguous at birth), McIntyre said that intersex was a “very unique situation” that was “actually quite rare”.

His approach was criticised by a theologian, Dr Susannah Cornwall of Exeter University, author of a forthcoming book on Christian responses to intersex issues. She said that intersex is “roughly as common” as Down’s syndrome or cystic fibrosis.

“The significance of intersex goes far beyond its statistical frequency, since it forces us to re-examine the whole notion of a binary sex system,” said Cornwall, “It is simply not possible to say with any certainty where the line between maleness and femaleness lies.”

Express and Echo comment piece on intersex and Christianity

2010-01-20T12:56:00.011Z

I have a short comment piece about intersex, Christianity and the case of Caster Semenya in this Saturday's Express and Echo, the local daily newspaper for Exeter and East Devon. You can read it online here. They describe me as a theologist... I guess they haven't heard of "theologians".

I notice that one commenter has taken issue with the 1 in 2,500 estimate as a prevalence for intersex. Certainly the figure is hotly debated, especially given that there's no consensus on what should actually be counted as an intersex condition/DSD. Anne Fausto-Sterling, like my Australian commenter, believes the figure is much higher. However, it's important to note that intersex is not somehow "more important" the more prevalent it is; its significance even as a minority state of affairs goes far beyond the number of people directly concerned, since intersex forces each and every one of us to re-examine the notions of sex, gender, embodiment, and - as Alice Dreger says - what makes us assume that it's only intersexed bodies that are "questionable".

Trans/formations

2009-11-05T17:36:00.015Z

I'm happy to announce the publication of Trans/formations, a major new volume in SCM's Controversies in Contextual Theology series edited by Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood. It was one of the last projects on which Marcella worked before she died in February 2009, and I hope she would have been pleased by its broad and imaginative outworking. Fittingly, the collection itself transcends genres, including personal testimonies, liturgy (designed for the Trangender Day of Remembrance by Malcolm Himschoot), and a one-person play by Jo(hn) Clifford, as well as more classically academic theological accounts.

My own essay is entitled “Apophasis and Ambiguity: The ‘Unknowingness’ of Transgender”, and critiques the notion that transgender people should have to take on the role of queering binary gender roles more than non-trans people do (since trans is often accused or reinscribing narrowly dualistic norms). I argue that homonormativity might be just as damaging as heteronormativity if imposed on transgender people, and that whilst it might be appealing to hold to an eschatological vision where gender has disappeared, our interim realm still seems to require it. Transgender people are therefore just as entitled to "gender safety" as anyone else is during these between-times. I use the notion of apophasis (and its utilization by Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria and Pseudo-Dionysius) to demonstrate that, just as it is not possible to know what God is but only what God is not, so it might be possible only to know what transgender is not.

An excerpt from my essay:

"Much of the value of apophasis for reading transgender, then, may lie simply in its capacity to endorse multiplicity even where this is discomfiting. For those who have rejected a narrative rooted in binary gender, the desire of some transgendered people to “pass” can be disquieting. It may seem utterly antithetical that one should endorse the “heteronormative” expressions of gender so desired by some transgendered people whilst simultaneously suggesting that it would be better if a binary-gendered system did not exist – and that there may be a hope for a future where such a system in fact no longer holds reign. But there is many a precedent for querying an ideology from the “inside” in order to bring about its downfall more effectively. In Alan Paton’s short story “Debbie Go Home”, set in 1950s South Africa under apartheid, the local Mothers’ Club organizes a Debutantes’ Ball where young black girls will be received by the white Administrator and his wife.

Jim de Villiers’ teenaged daughter Janie has been invited and her mother wants her to go, but de Villiers and his militant student son, Johnny, are not in favour. In fact, Johnny and his friends are planning to picket the ball. However, Mrs de Villiers persuades Johnny that Janie should be allowed to go to the ball even though Johnny will be protesting there – in order that she might have just “one night, in a nice dress and the coloured lights … And for one night the young men will be wearing gloves, and bowing to her as gentlemanly as you like, not pawing at her in some dark yard” (Paton 1961: 16). It is de Villiers who has to give permission for Janie to go, however, and anxious not to upset his mother any more, and in an apparently radical turnaround, it is eventually Johnny who makes the bargain with his father, agreeing to help him write a speech to give at a union meeting only on condition that Janie be allowed to attend the ball.

“‘All right, she can go,’ [de Villiers] said, ‘on one condition. Tell me how you justify it.’
‘Rock-bottom necessity,’ said Johnny. ‘If I boycott American food, and I’m dying of hunger, and everywhere around me is American food, then I eat American food.’
‘You eat American food so you can go on boycotting it,’ said de Villiers.”
(Paton 1961: 21)

One eats American food so one can go on boycotting it; perhaps it is sometimes also appropriate that one echo “heterosexual” patterns in order to carry on critiquing them. And in the meantime, in the “passing”, one might be treated with more respect and dignity than those who differ in more actively oppositional ways. However, it is also important to acknowledge that such safety may be only temporary – may be only “one night” of dresses and dancing and lights – and that it may be only a preliminary step on the way to more drastic change in social and political systems. But given that apophasis fundamentally gives space to not know, to have not reached our “destination”, this allows us to tread a path where such diversity and “at-once-ness” – such apparent contradiction – does not immediately have to be resolved. Apophasis reinforces the provisionality of all human gender constructs, shedding light on an aspect of the Christian tradition which can be read as profoundly valuing process over telos, journey over arrival." (pp.35-37)

Other contributors to this collection include Hannah Buchanan, Krzysztof Bujnowski, Marie Cartier, Jo(hn) Clifford, Malcolm Himschoot, BK Hipsher, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Lewis Reay, Elizabeth Stuart and Siân Taylder. It's an honour to be among this company of both established and up-and-coming scholars, many of whom speak from a place of embodied trans experience which I don't share myself, but which the Church needs to hear about. Go and buy the book!

One Glasgow lecture upcoming

2009-11-03T15:43:00.004Z

For those of you north of the border, I'll be giving a public lecture at the University of Glasgow on Monday 16th November from 3-5pm. This will take place in the Boyd Orr Building, LR A. The title is 'Blurred Bodies?’ Comparing theological responses to Intersex and Transgender. This lecture is funded by One Glasgow, who promote and celebrate equality and diversity within the university and the broader community, and I'll be exploring the ways in which queer and faith interact. See you there!

Interview on BBC Radio Devon

2009-10-24T11:34:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I recorded an interview with Pippa Quelch, which will be broadcast on BBC Radio Devon's religion and ethics programme tomorrow morning, Sunday 25th October, sometime between 6.30 and 8.30am. We chatted about intersex and Christianity, the reasons why some Christians are uncomfortable with variant sex and gender, and why Christianity as a faith needs to take bodies and bodily experience seriously.

Since I suspect you don't want to wake up that early on a Sunday (unless you are the meditating type) you'll be able to listen after the fact at the BBC Radio Devon Listen Again page.

On the offchance you have small children or are for some other reason awake at that hour, BBC Radio Devon can be found at 103.4FM, 94.8FM, 95.8FM, 96FM, 104.3FM & DAB, or online here.

Comment piece in today's Church Times

2009-09-18T10:07:00.007+01:00

I have a comment piece on page 13 of today's Church Times (issue 7644), entitled "Running to Catch up with Intersex", about the way the media have handled the case of Caster Semenya. I look briefly at the woeful lack of understanding displayed in the choice of terminology used by the BBC and others, and then give a short overview of a couple of the big questions intersex raises for theological ethics in particular.

The article can also be read online here (now available to read without a subscription!).

Critical Intersex

2009-09-11T11:09:00.013+01:00

What should be waiting for me when I got home but an exciting parcel containing my shiny new copy of the long-awaited and hot-off-the-press volume Critical Intersex, edited by the wonderful Morgan Holmes? It's an absolutely beautiful book and this little thumbnail doesn't really do justice to the stunning cover photograph by Katja Hofmann. The official publication date is 28th October but you can pre-order it from Amazon or direct from Ashgate (who currently have the edge on price!)

My essay in this volume is called "Theologies of Resistance: Intersex/DSD, Disability and Queering the 'Real World'." It was a privilege to be able to contribute a theological piece to this important new multidisciplinary collection and I am oddly pleased that mine is the final essay in the volume.

Incidentally, if you're someone who knows anything about this, you may be wondering why a new book would choose to use the term "intersex" rather than "DSD" (disorder of sex development) in light of recent and ongoing debates about terminology. Indeed, several of the essays discuss the controversy at length, but I think Morgan herself sums up really well and concisely why this terminology was appropriate for the book:

"Why bring together a group of essays from an international group of scholars to examine the issue of intersex precisely when 'DSD' is being promoted as the most appropriate way to refer to and to think about what has been medically identified as 'intersex' throughout much of the twentieth century ..? Does the titling of this collection not belie a lack of awareness on the part of the editor that 'intersex' is no longer the appropriate term through which to apprehend and understand the identification of bodies that are neither discretely male nor discretely female? Is the collection not terribly out of date even before arriving on the shelves, and perhaps radically off the plot as well?

In response to these troubling worries, this collection asserts that we (whether we are scholars, intersexed persons, activists or some combination of these three) are not yet done with 'intersex', even as we seek to turn a critical gaze on 'intersex'. The implicit imperative in the title of this collection is that it is too soon to accept the language of disorder wholesale and that, in fact, a critical value remains in the use, deployment, recognition and interrogation of 'intersex'. What is critical about intersex? What does it mean to think about intersex critically? ...

This collection understands that 'intersex' is not one but many sites of contested being, temporally sutured to biomedical, political and social imperatives in play in each moment. 'Intersex' then, is hailed by specific and competing interests, and is a sign constantly under erasure, whose significance always carries the trace of an agenda from somewhere else."

(Holmes, M.Morgan [2009a], "Introduction: Straddling Past, Present and Future", in Holmes, M. Morgan [ed.] [2009b], Critical Intersex, Farnham: Ashgate, 1-12, citing p. 1-2)

In any case, it was brought home to me today that, as reported in The Guardian, the South African athlete Caster Semenya may have been shown by tests to be a hermaphrodite. I think it's easy for those of us working in this discipline to forget, even as we wrangle over "intersex" v. "DSD", that much of the rest of society is still clinging to that archaic and inaccurate designation which we thought was long gone and buried. It seems that reports of "hermaphroditism"'s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Audio recordings of my Greenbelt talk available now!

2009-09-02T08:56:00.009+01:00

The paper I gave at Greenbelt, "What are Intersex Conditions and What Does the Church Say?", was recorded and is now available for purchase through the Greenbelt online store.

It costs £4.50 for a CD recording, or £3.00 for an MP3 if you're one of these modern people. Check out all the exciting sessions by other people too!

It was a great session and, although being scheduled to speak at the same time as Bishop Gene Robinson was frustrating (for both of us, I like to think ;) ), plenty of people came to listen and discuss the topic. Thank you if you were one of them!

(Picture credit - Tom Wateracre)

Greenbelt Session, 31/08/2009

2009-08-11T10:11:00.003+01:00

An update to the previous post: my Greenbelt slot on Intersex and the Church will be on Bank Holiday Monday, 31st August, at 11.15am in a tent venue called Bethlehem. Weekend and day tickets are available from the Greenbelt website (see links below or to the right). It's a 500-capacity venue so come and help fill it up!

Forthcoming Talks

2009-06-22T14:11:00.020+01:00

Just to alert you to three upcoming talks I'll be giving:

In August I am an invited speaker on the Queer Theology panel at the conference of the European Society of Women in Theological Research in Winchester. The theme of the conference is "Wrestling with God" and I'll be using queer theological methods to reflect on the story of Jacob wrestling a mysterious adversary at Peniel in Genesis 32.

Later that same month I'll be speaking at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham. My title for this session is "'No Longer Male and Female'? Intersex Conditions and Theology Beyond Gender", and I'll be exploring how local church congregations can be more welcoming to people with intersex conditions and variant gender identities. Greenbelt is always an excellent experience and an inspiring gathering of people of faith who are concerned with peacemaking, social justice and living lightly on the earth. Tickets are available here.

Then, on 14th October, I will be giving the St Michael's Lecture at St Michael and All Angels, Mount Dinham, Exeter. Again, this will address intersex in the local church context.

I am currently hard at work on an exciting new project... Details to come in a later post!

Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology

2009-06-09T15:57:00.006+01:00

I'm excited to report that my first book, Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ: Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology will be published by Equinox in 2010, in the series Gender, Theology and Spirituality (edited by Lisa Isherwood and the late Marcella Althaus-Reid). You can check on its status, see the chapter headings and pre-order a copy here.

The book explores the theological implications of physical intersex conditions and their medical treatment. I argue that Christian theology has valued the integrity of the body and the goodness of God reflected in creation, but has also set much store by the “complementarity” of “normal” male and female physiology. However, a deconstruction or querying of male and female as essential or all-embracing human categories changes conceptions of legitimate bodiliness and of what it means for human sex to reflect God. Theologies which value incarnation and bodiliness must speak with stigmatized or marginal bodies too: the Body of Christ is comprised of human members, and each member changes the Body’s definition of itself as well as being defined by it. Accepting the non-pathology of intersexed and otherwise atypical bodies necessitates a re-examination of discourses about sex, marriage, sexuality, perfection, healing and the resurrection body. Informed by existing theologies from three marginal areas (transsexualism, disability and queer theology), this beginning of a theology from intersex demonstrates the necessity of resisting erotic domination in defining bodies. The ongoing erasure of intersexed bodies and experiences demands theological responses motivated not by fear but by a desire to expand the ways in which human lives and bodies tell stories.

Ambiguous Bodies, Ambiguous Readings: Reflections on James M. Murphy’s ‘Christine on the Cross'

2009-06-09T15:42:00.013+01:00

I'm happy to say that Bound and Unbound: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Genders and Sexualities (Davy et al [eds.] 2008) will soon be available as an e-version from MyILibrary. My essay in this volume is entitled “Ambiguous Bodies, Ambiguous Readings: Reflections on James M. Murphy’s ‘Christine on the Cross’”. Meanwhile, you can buy a hard copy, or view a sample PDF including the contents page, here.

Abstract

Christas, representations of female figures crucified in place of Christ, have been criticized for changing and de-historicizing Christ, and re-inscribing narratives of suffering and victimhood onto female bodies. One Christa sculpture, Christine on the Cross, is used to explore the ambiguities and indeterminacies around such figures. There is ambiguity over whether this depiction of a tortured female body is one of solidarity with suffering or mere voyeurism. The fact that the sculptor is a male adds to the indeterminacy. The contestation of boundaries in the sculpture opens a space of exploration for querying readings of other bodies. A project of liberation from the abjection and rejection of authentic bodiliness must also address norms of violence and control not inhering entirely in sex and gender norms. Limiting readings of Christ/a figures as “legitimate” representations of Christ does violence to them, delimiting and narrowing their meanings as sites of diversity and multiple meaning. If violence against bodies includes limiting what bodies may legitimately “mean”, then conceptions painting female bodies as legitimate only if they are “sexy”, or bodies as legitimate only if they are able or unambiguously sexed, are violent ones. This violence is done to the bodies of subjects and viewers limited by narrow constructions of “sexiness”, as in magazines aimed at the young male market, such as Zoo and Nuts. A notion of sexual freedom assuming the primacy of competition or violence will always be inadequate within non-violent theological frameworks which also question other potent, top-down, all-encompassing hegemonies.

Recent papers in Theology & Sexuality

2009-06-09T15:15:00.012+01:00

The journal Theology and Sexuality has now moved to the website of its new publisher, Equinox. You can use this link to go there and read two of my recent papers.

“‘State of Mind’ versus ‘Concrete Set of Facts’: The Contrasting of Transgender and Intersex in Church Documents on Sexuality”, Theology & Sexuality 15.1 (2009), 7-28

Abstract

Intersex in Church documents has, thus far, been given very little coverage in its own right. However, it is sometimes presented as a foil to transgender; a ‘natural’ if unfortunate state in contrast to resolutely ‘non-biological’ state of transgender. This serves to stigmatize transgender, and fails to understand the extent to which intersex disrupts binary, dualistic notions of sex and gender in their entirety. Utilizing opposites such as biological/non-biological is not, in fact, the most useful way to represent the relationship between intersex and transgender. Rather, it must be acknowledged that both conditions profoundly undermine the givenness of certainty and either/or tropes as ‘goods’ when it comes to sex identity at all. The paper gives a brief summary of some occurrences of the unproblematized contrasting of intersex and transgender in some Church documents, and suggests that they are being contrasted in the wrong ways.

“The Kenosis of Unambiguous Sex in the Body of Christ: Intersex, Theology, and Existing ‘for the Other’”, Theology & Sexuality 14.2 (January 2008), 181-200

Abstract

Intersex conditions might be more usefully explored in light of theologies from impairment rather than those from sexuality. The areas of concurrence between intersex conditions and disability feed into theologies which fully respect and take into account such bodily states. Hegemonies of ‘goodness’ and ‘normality’ which lead to the marginalization of intersexed and impaired bodies are grounded in theological beliefs which fail adequately to ‘queer’ oppressive socio-cultural discourses. The disability theology of John M. Hull is used to argue that the ‘ideologies of dominance’ which assume the ‘sighted world’ to be the only ‘real world’ are also evident in assumptions that the binary-sexed world is the only real world; and that it is appropriate for theologians to query and subvert such assumptions. Kenotic behaviour in the realm of gender identity might involve the ceding of sexed signification by those who are not intersexed, rather than the assimilation or unchosen ‘correction’ of those who are.