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“In the Beginning Was the Word”: Hearing the Rainbow Scriptures

For the Christmas “Mass During the Day”, we heard the opening words John’s Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word:

and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things came to be,
not one thing had its being but through him.
All that came to be had life in him
and that life was the light of men,
a light that shines in the dark,
a light that darkness could not overpower.
The Word was the true light
that enlightens all men;
and he was coming into the world.

For today, the feast of John the Evangelist, let us reflect a little deeper on this, and the importance for LGBT Christians.

We begin with the Word - or should do.

rainbow cloth with bible

The problem, for so many :LGBT Christians, is that based on our experience of so much textual abuse, scripture used as a weapon to support bigotry, discrimination and even direct persecution in the name of religious faith, that we tend to approach the Christian Bible with a great deal of caution, even at times. hostility. But for all people of faith, including those who identify as “queer”, in the beginning, should be the word.


This is particularly appropriate this year, following the release of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel)” in which he repeatedly insists on the importance of evangelisation by all in the church. That most definitely includes queer Christians, alongside all others Above all, the title proclaims unmistakeably his primary point - the Gospels, along with the rest of the scriptures are (or should be) a source of joy, not oppression and exclusion. That too, applies most definitely too queer Christians..

My own journey of engaging with the scriptures as an openly gay man began, as it does with many, with getting to know what Kenneth Sharpe describes as the “Defensive Scriptures” - responses to the small handful of infamous clobber texts that are manipulated, on the basis of mistranslation, misinterpretation, or misapplication, by our enemies to vilify and condemn sexual and gender minorities. Later, I began to explore what Sharpe describes, in a wonderful phrase, as “affirmative scriptures” - those passages of the Bible that speak directly of people in what to modern sensibilities appear to be gay, lesbian, trans, or otherwise outside the sexual mainstream - or of specific inclusion for these minorities. More recently, I began to find that listening to the Sunday Mass readings, almost every one held specific relevance from a queer perspective.

When I began this site five years ago, my second post was “Good News for LGBT Catholics”, drawing attention to the meaning of “Gospel” as “Good News”, From the start, it was my firm intention to devote some of my posts to presenting the Biblical texts as the “good news” that they clearly should be, but have not done so to anything like the degree to which I originally aspired. The trouble with this ambition, was twofold: Where to begin? and what can I, with no particular expertise in bible study or exegesis. possibly contribute?

I have always struggled to bring any kind of proper structure to my own prayer life. In recent months however, I have found an approach that works for me - by paying daily attention to the readings of the day, whether for the Mass or from the Divine Office. Every day, I have been finding in these at least one text with notable insights, lessons of words of consolation for LGBT Christians, some of which I have begun posting here at QTC.

In fact, I’ve been doing more. Behind the scenes, I have developed a subsidiary site, “A Queer Ear for the Rainbow Scriptures“, to present an introduction to the Bible, and other Church documents, from an explicitly LGBT perspective. My intention is to post at least one reading every day, taken from either the Mass, or the Office (which includes for its second reading, a passage not from the Bible, but from the fathers of the Church, or from Vatican II. Where I have time, I will add my own reflection, but where I do not, I will post a selected reading for which in my view, the relevance is fairly self-explanatory. In addition, I will include introductory extracts and links to other sites which deal with similar themes - such as the superb “Bible in Drag”, maintained by David Popham.

At it simplest level, this will function as a resource for a daily LGBT affirmative biblical text, but I want it to be more - developing into a comprehensive guide to the Bible and patristics, for LGBT Christians. To get there, the back pages of the site are arranged in Biblical order, with tags to specific texts, so that it is easy to locate references or commentary on any particular book or biblical division (Genesis, for instance, or Prophetic books, or any of the four Gospels).

Conscious of my own ignorance, my own contributions will be of the nature of personal reflections, not scholarly exegesis - but I will share with you summaries of such exegesis that I come across elsewhere.I am also conscious, having been inspired in part not just by reading the Sunday lessons but by hearing them proclaimed, that we need to hear the words, in addition to seeing them on the page. In that spirit, wherever possible, I will include an audio clip of the biblical text, to accompany the words on the page.

It will take time to develop the site fully into the resource that I want it to be, but I’m pleased with the start I have made. Go across to “A Queer Ear for the Rainbow Scriptures” and see what you think.

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