New journal article: Telling Stories About Intersex and Christianity: Saying Too Much or Not Saying Enough?

Although the Intersex, Identity, Disability: Issues for Public Policy, Healthcare and the Church project ended when I left the University of Manchester in August 2013, publications based on this research which were already in the pipeline continue to appear. I have an article in the new (Jan/Feb 2014) issue of Theology, entitled "Telling Stories About Intersex and Christianity: Saying Too Much or Not Saying Enough?"

This is based on a paper which I presented to the Department of Theology and Religious Studies research seminar at the University of Chester last year, and I'm very grateful for the stimulating questions and conversations on that day and since.

Like other recent and forthcoming publications, it draws on interviews with intersex Christians in Britain. In this paper I argue that the stories the Church tells about sexed and gendered bodies continue to elide the experiences of intersex people, thereby telling less than the whole story. As I argue in the conclusion, 

"Saying nothing, especially on a subject about which one feels ill-informed and ill-pronounced to judge, might be a sensible and even positive moral choice. There might be sound reasons not to say too much about intersex. But institutions which do say plenty about sex, gender and sexuality, and publicly endorse only the perspective that human sex is always clear and unambiguous, might be considered disingenuous if they do not also disseminate well-informed engagements with intersex. If a Christian denomination ascribes cosmic and ontological meanings to human sex, it should also take into account that not all human sex fits the typical model." (p. 29)

Cornwall, Susannah, “Telling Stories About Intersex and Christianity: Saying Too Much or Not Saying Enough?”, Theology 117.1 (2014), 24-33.