Queer Christianities is a transdisciplinary collection of essays that transcends the bounds of academic publishing and whose contributors inhabit professional positions in and outside of academia. In this way, Queer Christianities is itself a queer thing to behold. And because of this, it is all the more powerful, more meaningful, and richer than other works similar to it. The editors of this collection have sought to demonstrate how “Queer folk have found Christian traditions not only hospitable to queer lives but in deep ways congruent with them” (1). And they have accomplished this task with this collection of lucid, interesting, engaging, and often times, poignant, essays. The book is separated into four distinct and still imbricated sections: “Celibacies,” “Matrimonies,” “Promiscuities,” and “Forward!” The editors detail their own struggles with naming these sections. Their candid description of these tensions—and others—in the processes of editing and publishing this work, bespeaks the importance and on-going contestations related to Queer Christianities' subject matter. Even the term “queer” is itself a difficult term to pin-down with a definition, as Larrimore suggests in his introduction (3). The sections, however, help to give some structure to the entire volume by naming some common threads that tie the essays in each corresponding section together, with the final section naming the implications of this study and possibilities for further work by scholars and theologians. And it is of course, the pluralization of each of the three leading section headings (like that of “Christianities” in the book's title) that begins to do the work of queering them. Each section is helpfully introduced by delineating some of the connective tissues in the essays that follow. Methodologically, as a transdisciplinary text, this anthology is an excellent resource for students of religious studies, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, and those pursuing theological education alike. The chapters cover a wide range in historical breadth and theological depth—from David Hunter's excellent chapter on the queerness of ancient Christian practices like celibacy, to Teresa Delgado's recognition of an alliance between heterosexual and queer Catholics that leads to “discerning a deeper, truer theology . . . [and shares the goal of] recognizing the generative, creative, and unitive power of sex that is good in its mutuality, natural in its embodied fulfillment, and moral in its reflection of the creative image of a just and loving God” (101)—the diversity of approaches to understanding queerness and Christianity in this work is one of its primary strengths. Queer Christianities includes two “Church Interludes”—penned by Jon M. Walton and Yvette Flunder. Each of these authors writes from their perspectives as participants in (and leaders of) their respective faith traditions. And each of these authors movingly describes the place of queerness in faith communities and the tensions that lie therein. Bishop Flunder's particularly poignant reflection connects the history of Christianity with a history of oppression: “It is impossible to come into the Christian faith through the slave door and not have a skewed view of the relationship with the Creator and a sideways interpretation of virtue” (119). Flunder writes about resistance to what she calls “oppression sickness” and the ways that marginalized and oppressed communities have also found themselves in communion with Christianity not “in spite of who they are, but because of who they are” (123). And it is precisely this idea that the collection of works in this anthology all hinge upon to varying degrees. The relationship with Christianity that contemporary queer folks have crafted for themselves, is reflected in a history that shows that Christianity—even from its earliest iterations—has always been queer. Queer Christianities is a timely text. In the wake of deadly shootings like the recent massacre that took place in a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, students of religion will need to ask important questions about the relationship between Christianity and LGBTQ life. The editors of this volume have artfully and elegantly brought together a collection of important, provoking, and instructive reflections on this question which, in their creative and diverse ways, demonstrate that queerness and Christianity share more affinities than some might imagine.
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