Robert Shore-Goss and Jesus ACTED UP: An Introduction

The year 1993 brought us, from The United Church of Christ's The Pilgrim Press, J. Michael Clark's Beyond Our Ghettos: Gay Theology in an Ecological Perspective and Gary Comstock's Gay Theology without Apology; and, from HarperSanFrancisco, Bob Goss's Jesus ACTED UP: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto — among other significant writings in what was then only beginning to take full shape as “queer theology.” In 1994, the Gay Men's Issues in Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion sponsored a panel on the three books in which the authors discussed their diverse approaches. Twenty years later, the Gay Men and Religion Group (the same group with a revised name) chose Goss’ work as the subject of an anniversary panel. This issue contains versions of the presentations at that engaging and celebratory panel held in a windowless convention center meeting room on a lovely Monday afternoon on the 24th of November 2014 in San Diego. I had the honor of pulling the panel together, presiding over the session, and, now, am serving as guest editor as Theology and Sexuality brings those papers to publication and to a wider audience.

The Reverend Doctor Robert Shore-Goss was educated and ordained by the Society of Jesus. As a Jesuit priest, he is steeped in the spirituality of St. Ignatius and the theology of the broad tradition of Roman Catholic Christianity. As he notes in his “An Author's Response” below, in that context, he came to grips with his homosexuality and began to read his queer self into scripture and theology. While finding it impossible to remain a part of the Society of Jesus, he went on to advanced study in religion, earning the ThD in Comparative Religion from Harvard University while specializing in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Christian Theology.

In the midst of this came HIV/AIDS and the illness of his lover among many friends and the trauma of many deaths and, in his phrasing, the “homophobia and AIDSphobia” of so-called good Christians and the larger institutional church. If “Silence = Death,” Bob, through his studies, his care-giving, and his activism with ACT UP, became convinced that “Action = Life.” This is the crucible out of which emerged Jesus ACTED UP: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto. As a call to action and a pastoral re-imagination of church as well as a critical and constructive theology, Jesus ACTED UP became, to borrow Mark Jordan's phrase from his piece below, “a founding text in what we have come to call ‘queer theology’.”

Subsequently, Bob served on the faculty of Webster University for 10 years but the controversy stirred by Jesus ACTED UP made gaining tenure impossible. He found himself returning to the role of pastor, this time in the tradition of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC). He serves still at MCC in the Valley, which has now become affiliated with United Church of Christ as well and so is known as MCC United Church of Christ in the Valley in North Hollywood, California. As a final note about Bob, I have left the name of this author, pastor, and activist in its many historical forms in the essays below — Robert Shore-Goss, Bob Goss, and any other Goss you encounter below is all the same person, I am glad to assure you.

To provoke discussion of this seminal work of queer theology, GMAR invited four scholar/activists to reread and respond to Jesus ACTED UP. I provide a brief word about each presentation here in the order in which I have placed them below. I note they spoke in a different order in November 2014 and Shore-Goss responds to them in yet a third ordering. Patrick Cheng leads off, focusing on the importance of Jesus ACTED UP and its author in his journey as priest, scholar, and activist, and, wondering aloud whether the book remains relevant 20 years later, responds that indeed it does — pastorally, in relation to the academy, and in promoting a self-critical openness to new voices among scholars. Mary Hunt reassesses the book (she supplied a blurb for the back cover 20 years ago) in its historical context, outlines the larger project of the “queerification” of Christianity of which it is apart, and looks ahead to issues such as the intersectionality of oppressions that we must embrace going forward. Jay Michaelson focuses on the question of the relationship between activism and scholarship that is radical — politically and/or theoretically — and the more pragmatic activism that has won political and legal victory by assuring the “movable middle” that expanding equal rights to marriage and other protections to LGBTQIA folks is not a fundamental threat to social stability or communal values. Mark Jordan asks: if Jesus ACTED UP is a manifesto, what does Shore-Goss's theology add to that genre and, then, what might this text indicate about the future of “queer theology”? His answer identifies four functions of queer theology: to deepen analysis of oppression, to contribute to re-education, to invoke divine power, and to (in)fuse protest with sacrament; he concludes by leaning into the poetic. Finally, Shore-Goss responds to each paper, weaving together memories of trauma and rage of the late 1980s and early 1990s in which the book took shape with glimpses of his continuing work, in particular in relation to care for earth and the ending of violence at our southern border against those who risk everything to make a new life among us.

Enjoy. Remember. Celebrate. Imagine. And, of course, keep ACTing Up!

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott Haldeman

Scott Haldeman is Associate Professor of Worship at Chicago Theological Seminary. He helped put together the panel at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion devoted to the 20th anniversary of Bob Goss’ Jesus Acted Up in his role as co-chair of the Gay Men and Religion Group.