Transgender Jesus play goes global: “The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven” by Jo Clifford

Jo Clifford plays a transgender Christ (photo by Rod Penn)

A controversial play about a transgender Jesus will go on an international tour after recently concluding a successful run in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven” is written and performed by Scottish trans* woman playwright Jo Clifford. In the play Jesus comes back to the present day as a transgender woman, telling Bible stories in new ways and inviting the audience to share an informal communion of bread, wine and blessing.

“I never said beware the homosexual or the transgender or the queer. Because I am one of them,” Jesus says in the play, which stays true to core Christian belief in love and justice for all.



A variety of new videos capture the flavor of the Queen Jesus play. In one of the early scenes Jesus emerges gently from the darkness to light candles, saying,

I am the daughter of God,
And almost certainly the son also.
My mum said,
Let there be light.
And I say:
I am the light.

The Queen Jesus play unleashed a wave of hatred when it was first produced in 2009. More than 300 conservative Christian protesters blocked traffic on opening night in Glasgow, Scotland. The Archbishop of Glasgow called the play “an affront to the Christian faith” and social media comments denounced it as “heresy” and “pure satanism.” The Jesus in Love Blog covered the controversy in the 2009 article “300 protest transsexual Jesus play.”

“I was frightened by the protest and traumatised by the massive online expression of hatred my performance provoked. But it taught me that what I was doing was important. And I’ve had much support from other Christians, and especially from the Unitarians and the United Reformed church,” Clifford said.

Since then the play has been performed in a variety of spaces and places, from a hotel room in Brighton to a beautiful Unitarian church in Edinburgh, and around the world from Eastern Europe to South America.

One of the most moving parts of the play comes when Jesus prays what is traditionally called “the Lord’s Prayer” or “the Our Father” with fresh words and a compelling queer voice, as captured on video:



Our mother who art on earth
Blessed is your name
Your joy be here on earth
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily kisses
Forgive us our stupidity
As we forgive those stupidities done to us.
Lead us not into self-righteousness or rage
And save us from destruction and negativity.
For thine is the queendom
The beauty and the joy
For ever and ever amen.

Critics and fans tend to focus on the revolutionary quality of seeing a transgender Jesus, but it’s also an enlightening surprise to see Jesus as an older person: wrinkled, limping slightly and complaining about “my poor tired body that every day gets closer to death.”

Clifford explains the origins of the play in a chapter in “Out of the Ordinary: Representations of LGBT Lives,” edited by Ian Rivers and Richard Ward.

“My own childhood was marred by an utter lack of positive role models. People such as me were either portrayed as ridiculous -- dames in the English pantomime tradition -- or evil. It seemed important to me to try to investigate the origin of these distressingly negative stereotypes and see if it was possible to replace or at least subvert them.”

Clifford found parallels between suppression of goddess worship in the Old Testament / Hebrew scriptures and suppression of her own female self during adolescence. She explored these ideas in the 2003 play “God’s New Frock,” forerunner of the Queen Jesus play It appears in “The Sexual Theologian: Essays on Sex, God and Politics,” edited by Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood.

She decided to do a sequel based on the New Testament, and it quickly became clear to her that the main character needed to be Jesus. “Portraying Jesus as a transsexual is not nearly as shocking or offensive or outrageous as it may first appear to be. Indeed it belongs very firmly to mainstream Christian tradition. We are taught that Jesus, being the Son of God, took on human form and so engaged fully with human experience… Furthermore, we are taught that Jesus constantly associated with the downtrodden and excluded members of his society,” she wrote in “Out of the Ordinary.”

Clifford discusses the meaning of “The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven” and the reactions to it in a series of video interviews.



Jo (formerly John) Clifford has written about 80 plays. They have been performed all over the world, won various awards and been translated into many languages. Her “Great Expectations” makes her the first openly transgender woman playwright to have had a play on in London’s West End.

Her upcoming performances as Queen Jesus will be more than a theatrical tour. The queenjesusplays.org website describes it as a “pilgrimage of sacred spiritual and LGBT sites both nationally and internationally, forging partnerships with theatres, church groups and communities on the way.”
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Related links:

New play: Transwoman Jesus tells Christmas story

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This post is part of the Queer Christ series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Reimagining God the Father

Did the artist intend to show a gay Father God? God’s halo is a pink triangle, an LGBT symbol, in “Heavenly Father,” a stained glass window at St. Virgil Church, Morris Plains, NJ. Photo by Loci B. Lenar © 2010. 

Reimagining God the Father may lift the spirits of some LGBT people and our allies today (June 19), which happens to be both Father’s Day and Trinity Sunday.

Can God the Father be as gentle and caring as a mother? Is He like a gay father? Do LGBT people have unique ways of redefining fatherhood that can enlighten others? I have no definite answers, but I share the following resources on alternative and even queer ways to re-envision God the Father.

Today, on Father’s Day, I dare to consider the fatherhood of God again -- by reimagining what it means to be God the Father. I seek a Father God who is as warm and nurturing as a mother… or a gay father. Trinity Sunday is also a good time to re-evaluate God the Father because it celebrates the doctrine of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit (or, in inclusive terms, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit.)

Many people, myself included, have turned away from the traditionally masculine Father God who is cold, distant, strict and domineering. The concept of God the Father may be hopelessly poisoned for some people who were abused by fathers or father figures. I honor the need to find other images to build a loving relationship with the divine… and the need to find empowering new models of sacred fatherhood.

I came to spiritual maturity at a time when “God the Father” was a dirty word in my church. We needed liberation from the old male-dominated, top-down religion that oppressed women and LGBT people. We read feminist theologians such as Mary Daly, who wrote in Beyond God the Father, “If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination.”

At my church we took the offensive and cut out the Father God from our Bibles and hymnals. Instead we used “inclusive language.” Male words were replaced with neutral words, so “Father” became “Parent” or “Creator.” Once in a while we allowed “Father” to return, but only if He was balanced by “Mother.”

After more than a decade of inclusive language, I find myself intrigued by God the Father for several reasons. First, the genderless Creator God has begun to seem cold and distant too. Female images of God or Goddess aren’t enough for me. And there are still plenty of flesh-and-blood fathers in need of spiritual role models.

Then there’s Jesus, my inspiration in so many ways. He often spoke of God as his father. When he prayed he called God “Abba,” an intimate, affectionate Aramaic word that is more like “Daddy” than “Father.” His loving father-son connection with God encourages me to look for new ways of understanding God the Father in hopes of deepening my own relationship with God.

Along the way I found the following materials that reimagine God the Father:
Family photos of gay fathers with their children
New Hymn: Warm Father God
Ancient Hymn: Milk of Father God
Native American Father Spirit art
and queer visions from literature, art and theology.

Gay fathers

Gay fathers are on the forefront of redefining fatherhood. I hope that their photos here will inspire people to see God the Father in liberating new ways.

I had a terrible time finding images to illustrate a nurturing God the Father. It proved to me the need to “reimagine” fatherhood itself, regardless of religious beliefs about God the Father. Finally I remembered the family photos of some loving gay fathers who are friends of the Jesus in Love Blog. They are two different a gay couples that adopted children. I contacted them and both families agreed to share their photos here.

A South African family with two dads! Michael Worsnip, left, and Leon Putzier are the fathers of Gabriel, 7, and Joshua, 9. They adopted their sons at the ages of 3 months and 5 months respectively. Michael has posted the story of their adoption on his blog Hell’s Teeth, where he also writes about LGBT religious art and much more.

Father-son bonding with Michael Worsnip, Gabriel and Joshua.

An Iowa family with two dads! Jon Trouten, back center, and his husband Mark Holbrook with their sons D’Angelo and Leslie. They are adoptive parents of one son and legal guardians of the other son. Jon writes about family life at Jon’s Blog. Among my favorite posts are:

Coming out to my son (This will make you laugh.)
Mother’s Day when you have no mother

Hymn: Warm Father God

Gender stereotypes about God are broken in “Bring Many Names,” a hymn by Brian Wren, one of the world’s best known contemporary hymn writers. This verse presents a fresh view of God the Father:

Warm father God, hugging every child,
Feeling all the strains of human living,
Caring and forgiving, till we’re reconciled:
Hail and Hosanna, warm father God!

Bonus: Other verses shatter age and gender stereotypes by singing the praises of “strong mother God” and my personal favorite, “old, aching God.” Click here for all the lyrics. Click here to hear it on video.

“Bring Many Names” appears in many modern hymnals. Wren is the author of “Hymns for Today.”

Hymn: Milk of Father God

God the Father is explicitly male AND female in a second-century hymn. Check out this mind-blowing excerpt from Ode 19 of the Odes to Solomon:

A cup of milk was offered to me,
and I drank it in the sweetness of the Lord’s kindness.
The Son is the cup,
and the Father is He who was milked;
and the Holy Spirit is She who milked him;
Because His breasts were full,
and it was undesirable that His milk should be ineffectually released.
The Holy Spirit opened Her bosom,
and mixed the milk of the two breasts of the Father…
The womb of the Virgin took it,
and she received conception and gave birth.

This appears in The Earliest Christian Hymnbook: The Odes of Solomon, translated by James Charlesworth, or online at this link.

Native American Great Father

The Trinity
by Father John Giuliani

What if God the Father is Native American, Black, Asian or Latino? If the Creator is going to be an old man, I’d rather see him as dark-skinned sometimes.

I especially like the Native American visions of the Creator as the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka, Keeper of the Sky, and so on. Somehow they bring out a wiser, gentler side of the Father.

Father John Giuliani unites indigenous American and Christian imagery in “The Trinity,” shown here by permission The Great Father appears with a full headdress of falcon feathers in a halo of light. His open hands deliver the Son, a Christ figure who is a Sioux warrior. The Holy Spirit hovers between them in the form of a falcon, completing the Trinity. The Father, with his long, white hair flowing, seems androgynous and humble… a much-needed vision for our time.

Giuliani is known for creating Christian icons with Native American symbols, expanding the concept of holiness and honoring Native American Indians as the original spiritual presence on this land. His work is a prophetic sign celebrating the reconciliation of native and Christian peoples. Giuliani is also a Catholic priest and founder of the Benedictine Grange, a contemplative monastic community in Connecticut.

Charles Frizzell is another artist who does Native American spiritual art, including a Father-God figure called “Keeper of the Sky.” Click here and scroll down to see it on his website.

Father as Twin

In my “Jesus in Love” novels, Jesus starts out perceiving God the Father as an old man, but as Jesus ages they become identical. Here is an excerpt from Jesus in Love: At the Cross in which Jesus describes his prayer time in Gethsemane, shortly before his arrest:

“I raised my head and saw my Father sitting on a nearby log. When I was a child I thought He looked ancient and care-worn. He didn’t change, but I did. I had grown to look just like Him. We looked more like twins than a father and son. I went over and knelt at His feet. He steadied me with his kind gaze, then handed me the now-familiar gold cup….”

Queer Trinity?

The Trinity
by Douglas Blanchard

Jesus and God also appear to be the same age in “The Trinity” (at left) from “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” by Douglas Blanchard.  Instead of Father and Son, they seem more like Lover and Beloved, which is another interpretation of the Trinity.  Click here for more about this painting.

The Trinity has inspired queer theologians to question God’s gender. The Holy Spirit is often presented as the female person of the Trinity, so that seems to make God into a transgender, omnigender or genderqueer -- not fitting the standard “male” and “female” duality. The following resources offer more queer theological reflections on the Trinity:

Celebrate the Feast of the (Queer) Holy Trinity at queeringthechurch.com

Gavin D’Costa’s chapter “The Queer Trinity” in Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body

The Queer God by Marcella Althaus-Reid.

The prayer formerly known as
“Our Father”

I close this reflection with a new version of the prayer that’s usually called the “Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father,” based on the first words of the standard translation. In inclusive language, we called it “the prayer that Jesus taught.” This refreshing version was written by Yvonne Aburrow (also known as Yewtree), a friend of the Jesus in Love Blog. She is a Unitarian and a Wiccan who blogs on spirituality at The Dance of the Elements.

O Genderless Engenderer,
Flame of life at the heart of all things,
Holy, holy, holy are your names.
Your republic of informed hearts is always within us and around us.
Your mysterious way unfolds before us
as matter and spirit dance together to create life.
May the finite tell its stories to the infinite
and may the infinite lend its everlasting peace to the finite.
May our hearts be open to forgiveness given and received,
and may we move accurately in harmony with all
and remain present in the now.
The republic of heaven on earth is all and each of us
reverberating with glory and power
in infinite space-time.
Amen.

Advent: From a closet fertilized by hope

“Advent wreath, First Advent Sunday” by Micha L. Rieser

We celebrate the first Sunday of Advent with an excerpt from “Rite for Advent” by Chris Glaser, published in Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations:

One: The closet may be a fertile place:
creativity bursts out of a lonely hell,
and from a closet fertilized with hope,
the spirit leaps from a monastic cell.

Many: Those born in darkness
have seen life.

One: Out of dark soil sprouts new life,
from darkness springs embodied hope.
Both stretch for the illumination
of the cosmic landscape.

Many: Those born in darkness
have seen life.

One: Dear God,

Many: We seek your Word embodied
in life rooted in fertile darkness.
In life stretching for illumination,
we await your transforming Word.

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Chris Glaser is a gay Christian author and activist. He currently pastors at Virginia Highland Church, a progressive Baptist and United Church of Christ congregation in Atlanta.

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(A humorous note from Kittredge: I used a voice recognition program to do this post, reading the prayer aloud from the book and letting the computer convert it into text. It often makes funny mistakes, but this one really made me laugh. I read, “Creativity bursts out of a lonely hell.” The computer typed: “Creativity bursts out of a lonely cow.” LOL! I share this in the joyful spirit of the Advent season. Watch out for lonely cows.)

GLBT author reads new Lord’s Prayer

To see the video, click on the image or click here

I read an excerpt from Jesus in Love: At the Cross in a new video. I chose a short, powerful section based on Christ’s model prayer, often called the “Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father.” In the novel, the prayer becomes a dialogue between Jesus and his beloved disciple John after Jesus’ resurrection, when the risen Christ responds to John’s prayers. The dramatic events of Christ’s Passion happen in the context of a gay love story between Jesus and his disciple John. Jesus in Love: At the Cross covers Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, and Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, ending on Pentecost. Jesus, the narrator, speaks in a contemporary voice as he reveals the erotic, mystical experiences that may have led to the first Easter. I blog at the Jesus in Love Blog and edit the Jesus in Love Newsletter on queer spirituality and the arts. My website, JesusInLove.org, features the growing number of books and art based on the queer Christ.