The continuing relevance of “queer” theology for the rest of the field

ABSTRACT

What does it mean to queer theology? How is this task of queering theology relevant to and engaged with mainstream academic theological discourse? What is already queer about theology? What direction should queering theology take in the future? This special issue examines these key questions, among others, which are at the heart of the overall project that has been referred to as “queer theology”. In this introduction to the volume, we outline common strands of thought, and key issues and questions that undergird and interlace the essays in this volume. We also provide a brief history of queer theology, highlighting four themes that we consider essential to the study of queer theology as a whole: (1) the role of witness, (2) the project of disentangling the “real” issues from the incidentals in reactions to a queer presence in the Church, (3) the creative rereading of tradition with an eye toward emancipation and (4) the ways in which queer theology orients the field of theological studies as a whole to what really matters (or ought to matter) for Christians and others seeking to follow the witness of Jesus.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer theology
• normative
• method
• tradition
• witness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Agamben and Theology (T&T Clark, 2011), Between the Canon and the Messiah: The Structure of Faith in Contemporary Continental Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Words Fail: Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation (Fordham University Press, 2016).

Meghan Toomey is a doctoral candidate in Integrated Studies in Ethics and Theology, and graduate assistant in the Bill & Joan Hank for Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago. She is currently completing a dissertation on the politics of referencing Lutheran theologian and twentieth-century martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer among Catholic theologians.

Notes

1 Althaus-Reid and Isherwood, “Thinking Theology,” 304.

2 In addition to Brintnall and Farley, Johnson, Daniels and Justaert all mention apophatic approaches in their essays in this volume.

3 The reference here is to LaCugna, Freeing Theology.

4 The reference made to Althaus-Reid and Isherwood is from “Thinking Theology,” 307.

5 Loughlin, “Introduction,” 7.

6 Ibid.

7 Cornwall, Controversies in Queer Theology, 38.

8 Ibid., 67–8.

9 1 Thessalonians 2:8.

10 Stone previously edited Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible (2002) and authored Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomist History (1996).

11 Chu, Does Jesus Really Love Me? 73.

12 Quoted in Chu, Does Jesus Really Love Me? 282.

13 In Moon’s view, Christians tend to define “as ‘political’ those things that threatened to denaturalize their ideals” (Moon, God, Sex, and Politics, 231) – though what exactly qualifies as “natural” and what does not is not always easy to sort out.

14 Moon, God, Sex, and Politics, 233.

15 Ibid., 240.

16 Ibid., 241.

17 Ibid., 3.

18 See Alison, “On Receiving and Inheritance,” 65–77.

19 See, for example, Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, 183.

20 See, for example, his comment on his own work in Alison, On Being Liked, 101.

21 Lofton, “Everything Queer?”

22 Chu, Does Jesus Really Love Me? 342.

23 Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 168.

24 Ibid., 5.

25 Ibid., 7, 34.

26 Ibid., 18.

27 Ibid., 19.

28 Ibid., 95.

29 Ibid., 64.

30 Ibid., 72.

31 Ibid., 131.

32 Ibid., 179.

33 Farley, Gathering Those Driven Away, 7.

34 The Halberstam quote is from In a Queer Time and Space, 135–6.