Last week, a reader and contributor who is a theology student, Advocatus Diaboli, sent me an email message strongly recommending a book by Dale B Martin, “Sex and the Single Savior
“.
We have been debating homosexuality and scripture for the past few days in one of my classes, and my professor gave me a book that I think that you might find very interesting. It is written by the director of graduate studies at Yale University, and he specializes in New Testament and Christian Origins (and sexuality and gender within those topics). This book is of the highest quality research and credentials available today, and neatly summarizes the latest advancements and knowledge in the field.
I recognized the name “Dale B Martin”, (but not the context), and set about tracking down some reviews, which I found encouraging. When I headed off to London on Wednesday for a meeting, I popped into Foyle’s to see if they had a copy I could dip into, and consider buying. They did not, but I found instead “Unprotected Texts
“, by Jennifer Knust, a book that I had read about last year. I bought Unprotected Texts on the spot, and yesterday, ordered ”Sex and the Single Saviour” from Amazon, which has now arrived.
Independently of this book investigation, there are two other things that have been exercising my mind. Responding to my short post on the California proposition to end use of the death penalty, AD had commented that he was “concerned” with the direction this site is taking, with too much emphasis on American politics, and not enough on the theological issues facing LGBT Catholics/Christians:
While this is not my blog, I would like to see it return to being focused on pastoral, theological, and doctrinal issues about sex and sexuality, and stay away american political issues. I am very much concerned about the trends the this site has been moving towards in the past couple of months.
The observation rather annoyed me: it is after all, my site, and although in general I do try to avoid commenting too much on specifically American issues, I do reserve the right to do so. I also see the site as covering the “intersection” of faith and sexuality - but that also includes some awareness of sexuality, independent of faith - and of faith in a broader context, independent of sexuality. So, at one level I reject the criticism. But at another level, AD is right. In getting caught up in responding to the news cycle, which was never my intention when setting up the site, I have been badly neglecting the development of more serious and enduring resources for queer people of faith - which was.
This was further brought into focus for me over the past fortnight, with the deluge of depressing news from the Catholic Church specifically, on the multiple examples of heretic hunting now under way. If the news cycle were my primary concern, I should have been firing off multiple posts in protest and indignation. Instead, I have found myself largely immobilised, overwhelmed by the scale of the onslaught, while trying to think of sane, constructive ways to respond - and with little else making it to publication.
The resultant soul- searching has led me to the conclusion that I need to modify the way I have been handling the site. News developments are important - but not every important news story needs comment from me, and some will be so widely reported elsewhere that I can ignore them. I need to spend more time reading and sharing, and developing the permanent resource pages for the site (especially on books, and on biblical/theological commentary) and less fussing over ephemeral daily posts, some of which will be soon forgotten.
The detail of how this will play out I have not resolved - and even if I had, it’s not certain that I would have kept to it. (I’m a creature of changeable concerns and obsessions). Still, expect some change of balance and emphasis in the site, as we go ahead, starting with a series of posts on the two books, ”Sex and the Single Saviour” and ”Unprotected Texts” (and other books), and a return to what became interrupted series on the thoughts of Bishop Robinson, James Alison, and James Nickoloff.
Books:
Martin, Dale B: Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation
Knust, Jennifer: Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire
Related articles
- Robinson 1: Hetero/Homo, Catholic Sexual Teaching Stands (Or Falls) Together
- Celebrating Our Relationships
- Sex and Catholics 2: Gender perspectives and Evolution
- Religion And Sex (dgsmith.org)
- Sex Is Never Simple (newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com)
I look forward to reading your thoughts on both these books, including ”Sex and the Single Saviour” as suggested by the commenter Advocatus Diaboli.
I think we have a duty to respond to and comment on issues, such as the US use of the death penalty in several states, even if these are not apparently directly related to LGBT issues, despite Advocatus Diaboli’s concerns. The US bishops conference has taken an unequivocal stand in opposition to the use of the death penalty in line with Catholic social teaching, and you quoted the USCCB statement demonstrating this. We may not know their names but we can be sure that some LGBT Catholics are on death row in the USA. Catholic values are not to collude by our silence with wrong-doing, such as the use of the death penalty. We learnt bitter lessons in Britain from our own use of the death penalty with several serious miscarriages of justice and we read of such cases in the USA. It is the vulnerable and marginalised who disproportionately suffer these injustices, people with poor mental health, learning difficulties, and ethnic minorities poorly served by the justice system.
Your approving comments about the November death penalty ballot in California was entirely supportive of the US and Vatican hierarchy teaching. You also made plain in your opening comments that the Church is solidly for the right to life, and said that this is often misrepresented by some Church critics to be all about abortion. You correctly pointed out that it is not, and that it includes the right to life of convicted prisoners. Commenter Advocatus Diaboli (AD) misrepresents and unfairly criticised you on both those points. AD in his comments comes perilously close to arguing against the Magisterium’s teaching on the death penalty and attempting to justify its use. He also says “the [abolition of the] death penalty is an entirely subordinate issue to abortion”, but that does not mean Catholics should put it aside as a concern simply because abortion continues.
You (and I) are writing here from Britain, and Britain and continental Europe have useful outsider perspectives to offer on events affecting LGBT Catholics and other Christians in the USA. What happens in the USA is often a harbinger of the same things later happening in the UK and Europe, a second reason for our choosing to comment on some of these. Two recent examples are the appearance in the UK of USA style continuous vigils with filming of women attending a BPAS abortion clinic in central London, and the recent attempt by conservative evangelical Anglicans to run anti-gay adverts on London buses, preemptively banned by the London mayor.
If AD had cited other significant examples, apart from the death penalty post, from the last few months of commentary on this blog of US developments that are entirely unrelated to LGBT people and Christianity, he may have shown he was making a fair criticism. He hasn’t given other examples, and it appears you have been made the whipping boy mainly because of his frustration with discussions he objects to on other blogs.
LGBT Catholics and Christians, whether here or in the USA or elsewhere, are much more than their sexuality. LGBT people have a range of political views, include women, migrants, a range of ethnicities, some of us have ill-health and disabilities, live on low incomes or in poverty, and are concerned about the Church’s mishandling of clerical child sexual abuse. The US hierarchy has taken politicised stances on issues in the Catholic social teaching agenda that seem out of step with Church social teaching and the US hierarchy cannot be exempt from constructive criticism on that account. LGBT Catholics and Christians need to hear those facts and that there are other Catholic perspectives.
This blog should not take such a blinkered view as to restrict itself only to those matters directly related to LGBT sexuality and Catholicism. The “issues that LGBTQ Catholics face” are much wider than sexuality and while the predominant focus here will be on sexuality and related concerns, we should serve the interests of the whole person and contribute to raising awareness of the wider social context. LGBT people are among the marginalised and it is natural we should consider people who are excluded in other ways.
In my view, this blog should not pander to suit the views and comfort level of conservative US LGBT Catholics and other Christians. A single ‘American view of religious freedom’ doesn’t exist, because there are a range of American (and other) views about religious freedom. ‘American politics’ is not sacrosanct and immune from criticism internally nor externally. The US Catholic hierarchy already leans heavily in the conservative direction and it and the Vatican use their immense resources to advance those views and these are supported by many conservative-leaning Catholic and Christian blogs.
Advocatus Diaboli has not been slow to challenge views expressed here nor to correct mistakes, and I hope he will continue to keep us on our toes, but equally it does him and others good to have his / their views challenged.
Well said, Chris! My thoughts precisely. I believe I have every right and interest to comment about what’s happening in the US because, unfortunately, the choices made in the US have serious consequences for the rest of the world. If right-wing Christians in the States (that includes the present USCCB and a number of ultra-conservative Catholic groups and organisations) and the Vatican (acting via its proxies in America) have an interest in backing a GOP candidate come November, I for one dread the prospect. In today’s globalised world such a huge player as is the USA has plenty to account for. We need only look back at the last decade to find examples.
My suspicion is that right-wing Catholics find it hard to reconcile their stances on certain issues, particularly when the dichotomy “culture of life/culture of death” is raised. Capital punishment, use of torture, pre-emptive wars, pandering to the super-rich 1% (to name but a few) are issues that concern us if we are to be consistent in our claim to work for a society where human life flourishes. Is the self-proclaimed “leader of the free world” really leading the way on these and other issues?
Thanks Chris, and Bart.
You’re both right, we do need to respond to matters that go beyond the site’s central concern of faith and sexuality, and that includes some matters of American politics. The issue is one of proportionality. Topics that involve core religious belief, the Catholic Church, and sexuality / LGBT equality simultaneously are my greatest concern. Those that involve any two of the three come next, and then those that relate to only one of them, which should get much less attention than the others - but not no attention at all. Then, very occasionally, there may be some isolated topics that I choose to post (such as on my family or home, or on British politics), simply because they interest me.
More important than a balance between the type of subject, is the matter of topicality, against importance. News stories are topical, and sometimes important for a time, before they fade into obscurity. There are other matters, of theology, scripture and church governance on the one hand, and understanding the nature of human sexuality on the other, which may not hit the news pages, but are of fundamental, enduring importance. Chris’s superb series on natural law is one great example.
All I meant yesterday, was that I need to keep a balance. If I allow myself to become simply reactive to the news cycle, I have no time left for more important reading, or writing on more enduring issues that are directly and vitally relevant.