The Bible is Subversive
The main, underlying message of the Bible is in fact subversive, often going against the established order in human society. Scripture is like a crowbar that rips open any structure not based on justice, love and respect for all persons. That is why I find the message contained in Scripture to be delightfully subversive. I would like to share with you a number of biblical narratives and themes that have been a source of inspiration to me, a Catholic priest who also happens to be gay. Will this be an attempt at “queering Scripture”? Perhaps. I’ll let my readers decide that.
-”Bart”, in Narrating Our Exodus
One of my disappointments of the past two years here at the Queer Church over the past two years has been that I have not included nearly enough material on the supportive, Good News of the Bible. When Bart suggested to me recently that he might do something, I eagerly accepted the offer. He was careful to specify that he was not promising to make it a regular series - but I hope he will. Either way, I will be making a determined effort to provide more material of this kind in the future - written either by Bart, or by myself, or both - or reflections on material elsewhere.
Today, I do not intend to go into the Bible content itself, but to reflect on a single phrase from Bart’s opening paragraph, which I quote (in part) above: the very notion of of “queering Scripture”. To many Christians, those who are middle of the road as well as explicitly conservative, even the idea is scandalous, often described as “twisting” the Bible for our own ends. The objections are misguided, and it is that which I want to elaborate on here. It is misguided because the interpretation of Scripture with due regard for our own circumstances is not only appropriate, it is in fact recommended as one of the approaches recommended for our use (together with others) even by the Pontifical Biblical Commission. It is also precisely what has been done in recent centuries by the other side, who have imposed an excessively heteronormative interpretation on familiar Bible passages, “twisting the Bible for their own ends”, especially in the recent battles over family equality.
Rabbinic Tradition and the Pontifical Bible Commission Both Endorse Multiple Contexts
On the day that I read Bart’s draft for his piece , I was reading the opening chapter in “ The Queer Bible Commentary
“, a chapter on Genesis by Michael Carden. This passage by Carden gives a strong counter to any objections to reading Scripture from a queer perspective:
By the practice of midrash, Jewish people have retold and expanded these stories and continue to do so. Consequently, these expansions themselves become part of authoritative scripture. The Rabbinic sages say that everything one finds in scripture, every interpretation, was originally revealed to Moses on Sinai. The meanings of Scripture are infinite – it is through reading, interpretation and midrash that they are uncovered.
Carden does not spell out the implications, but the point is clear. In reflecting on and re-imagining Scripture from an explicitly queer perspective then, we are not corrupting or profaning it- we are adding to it.
The Pontifical Bible Commission does not go as far as the Rabbinic sages in suggesting that all interpretations are valid, but they similarly state that every age must reinterpret the texts for its own circumstances:
“The study of the Bible is, as it were, the soul of theology…. This study is never finished; each age must in its own way newly seek to understand the sacred books.”
They also recognise that responsible biblical interpretation of any given passage or verse must take account of multiple contexts: historical, literary and linguistic - as well as the modern cultural contexts, and the Biblical context of the passage itself. The commission does not refer to gay or lesbian contexts, but they do quite explicitly use the examples of feminist and liberation theology interpretations to illustrate the validity of the method (as long as these are not used exclusively, without also paying attention to the other contexts that we must also consider).
These words of the commission, referring specifically to the methods of liberation theology interpretations, are also applicable to feminist interpretation - and to queer readings:
…starting from its own socio-cultural and political point of view, it practices a reading of the Bible which is oriented to the needs of the people, who seek in the Scriptures nourishment for their faith and their life.
It seeks a reading drawn from the situation of people as it is lived here and now. If a people lives in circumstances of oppression, one must go to the Bible to find there nourishment capable of sustaining the people in its struggles and its hopes.
The validity of extending the method to our own context as queer Christians is obvious.
The Straights Have Unilaterally Imposed Their Heteronormative Interpretations
I want to stress the point that all other contexts must also be considered, because this is ignored by the traditionalists who have imposed their own heterosexist interpretations on Scripture, and unilaterally declared that all others are invalid. Now, I have no inherent objection to personal interpretations from a straight perspective. In the spirit of those Rabbinic sages, I am happy to accept that if such an interpretation works for them, fine. My objection is to those who dogmatically insist that only one interpretation - theirs - can possibly be “true”, and attempt to impose it on all the rest of us. Far too often, these interpretations are unduly selective (totally ignoring the passages that contradict their interpretations), ignore the broader Biblical contexts of their chosen passages, and ignore the historical cultural context which served as a background.
The way in which heteronormative interpretations have distorted the infamous clobber texts is well known. These have taken a handful of verses which say nothing at all about homosexuals or homosexuality as we understand the terms today, and by mistranslation, misinterpretation and misrepresentation have turned them into texts of terror, so that it is widely and completely falsely claimed that Scripture “clearly” condemns homosexuality, while totally ignoring or underplaying comparable verses that are far more clearly critical of heterosexual transgressions. Bill Lindsey has an extended discussion of this up at Bilgrimage. The importance of the topic is clearly evident in the lengthy comment thread it has generated, on just the second day after posting. Instead of dealing directly with the inanities of the misinterpretations of these texts of terror, I would remind my readers of an earlier post. For anybody who seriously tries to argue on biblical grounds that “God hates fags” really ought to take a look at this - it has just as much scriptural validity (click on the image for a clearer view):
But I want to look here at more subtle examples.
First, consider the very familiar passage from Genesis, “male and female he created them”. Right?
Wrong - at least, not at first. Those who latch on to this verse completely ignore the wider context of the passage. Read Genesis again: before creating Adam (the man) and Eve (the woman), God created ‘adam, an androgyne who was generically human and simultaneously both male and female (This is accepted in Jewish interpretations, and is elaborated on by Salzmann and Lawler as well as by Carden). I will have a fuller presentation of this later.
For a specifically Christian example, consider Jesus Christ himself. The Catholic Church loves to promote the Holy Family as a model - but the circumstances of Christ’s conception and birth were completely out of sync with accepted social norms of his day. For a young and unmarried Jewish girl to fall pregnant would have been scandalous: for a young man to then marry such a fallen woman would have been almost more so. Later, in his lifestyle, in the chosen family of his friends, and in this words on family, he quite clearly rejected the centrality of the “traditional” family as so assiduously promoted by the religious conservatives.
In the same way, there are countless other examples where conformist, patriarchal representations of opposite sex couples are freely repeated, while non-conformist relationships, both those which differ from the approved roles within an opposite sex relationship, or even more, same sex relationships, are ignored or at best discounted in their importance. There are also numerous well known and lesser known individuals in the Scriptures with decidedly unconventional characteristics of sexual or gender identity - whose elements of difference are simply omitted in the standard, heteronormative presentations of the Bible stories.
Celebrate the Queer Bible: Take Back the Word
Just as feminist scholars have shown that the male perspective is not the only way to read the Bible. gay and lesbian scholars have been shedding new light on alternative readings of value to gay and lesbian Jews and Christians alike. Robert Goss and his team made a start in bringing these interpretations to a non-specialist audience with “Take Back the Word“, but that publication was limited in scope, to just a relatively few books of the Bible.
Far more ambitious is The Queer Bible Commentary. This is edited by a team of four (Robert Goss is once again one of the team), supported by a wide range of additional writers. Quite remarkably, space is found to cover every book of both the Old (Or First) Testament, and the New (or Second) Testament. In most cases, there is one chapter per book, but in a few cases , a few shorter books with a common feature are grouped together, as with the minor prophets.
When I was fortunate enough to buy my own copy from the Soho Masses’ remarkable bookstall, I was impressed at how comprehensive it is. On starting to read it, I was even more impressed: not only is there one book per chapter, but in some cases, such as Genesis, where I began reading, there is detailed material on each of the major stories, each of which deserve serious attention. To share this with you, I have started to prepare an extended series, not just on “Queering Scripture”, but specifically on “Queering Genesis”. After that, I will turn my attention to the other books.
This will undoubtedly ahve to be a long-term project. Watch this space.
Books:
Bohache, Thomas, Guest, Deryn (et al, eds): The Queer Bible Commentary
Goss, Robert: Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible
Moore, Stephen D: God’s Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Spaces in and Around the Bible
Stone, Kenneth: Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible
Related Posts at QTC
Practicing Safer Texts: The Bible and Sexuality, Homosexuality
Related Articles Elsewhere
The Woman’s Bible Revisited (Women in Theology)
On the Curious Appeal of Anti-Gay Literalism for Some Contemporary Catholics (Bilgrimage)
Who Wins When Bible is Blamed For Gay Bashing? (Mark D. Jordan, at Religion Dispatches)
Well done, Terry. Taking back the Word is a good way of putting it. It’s high time that the Bible, instead of being used against us, is used by us and for our benefit. As has been done in the base communities of Latin America, so can LGBT groups learn how to own the Word, or rather let the Scriptures be a source of inspiration, encouragement and blessing. Such acts (the method of reading and apply the Word to the needs of the group), repeated often enough, have far-reaching implications, even beyond the strictly spiritual sphere. I would also encourage other readers of QTC to come forward with their own commentary on how the Bible has been a source of hope and strength.