Conservatives attack our lesbian and gay Nativity scenes today!

Nasty accusations of blasphemy poured in today after some conservative bloggers discovered the gay and lesbian Nativity scenes that I created.

“Love..is NOT the criteria for making a ‘Family’. A REAL Family is a MAN & a WOMAN producing a child or children,” commented one of the naysayers. Others accused me of “vile blasphemy” that is “replusive to true Christians.”

All because I put Mary with Mary and Joseph with Joseph -- like putting two brides or two grooms on top of a wedding cake! I made a video of my alternative manger scenes, asking the question, “What if the child of God was born to a lesbian couple… or a gay couple? Because, after all, LOVE makes a family. Including the Holy Family.”

I created the video way back in 2009, but today it’s hot news on some conservative blogs. They use religious language to justify hate and discrimination against LGBT people, even though Jesus taught love for all.

Here are some highlights -- or low points:

From Apprising Ministries blog:

“Я U READY FOR THE LESBIAN NATIVITY SCENE?

What would lesbians have to do with the manger scene? Sadly, the more you make a study of the godless pro-gay lobby now well within the visible church you quickly find that nothing’s sacred to such as these. … So the time has now arrived to take up your Sword of the Spirit and go out to meet them full on.”

From WorldNetDaily:

“GOD HAS 2 MOMMIES
Jesus, Mary and ... Josephine? It's lesbian Nativity at church
'A slap in the face to the Holy Family and Christians around the world'

“That event inspired Kittredge Cherry, who calls herself a lesbian Christian author and minister from Los Angeles, to pick up the mantle and create in December 2009 her own non-living "gay" Nativities she continues to promote on YouTube.”

Most of the hateful comments were posted at YouTube. Click here to go to the YouTube page where they are posted. Instead of deleting them, I’m leaving them there as evidence.

I’m trying to see it as a badge of honor to be attacked by religious authorities. After all, Jesus was also accused of blasphemy for teaching about God’s love for all.

For more about lesbian and gay Nativity scenes, see my related posts:

Gay and lesbian nativity scenes show love makes a family

Video: Gay and lesbian manger scenes show love makes a family

Gay and lesbian Nativity cards

Update: Click here for our Queer Nativity series, Dec. 2011

Hate crime targets gay and lesbian Nativity scene at Claremont church 

Lesbian Nativity Scene with Dog (Love Makes a Holy Family series) by Kittredge Cherry ©2009

Nursing Madonna honors body, spirit and women

Nursing Madonna: Our Lady of Travels to Life with Reality

Photo by Trudie Barreras

An unusual nursing Madonna statue emphasizes the body-to-body connection between Mary and the baby Jesus.

The nursing Madonna figurine illustrates the flight into Egypt that is remembered this time of year. According to the gospel of Matthew, the Holy Family traveled from Bethlehem to Egypt after an angel warned them that King Herod would try to kill the infant Jesus.

It’s important to honor the breastfeeding Madonna because Christianity has often denied women’s experiences and the human body itself. We return to wholeness and balance by valuing the natural act of nursing as holy and good.

Some people were shocked by the bare breasts of the Madonna when Atlanta writer Trudie Barreras put the statue in a meditation chapel at her church. The pastor regretfully asked her to take it home. For the full story about the statue, see our previous post “Nursing Madonna shocks and inspires.”

In her monologue “Miriam’s Journey,” Barreras does a wonderful job of describing the physical sensations and spiritual musings of Mary as she nursed on donkey back. Here is an excerpt:

We soon became aware
Our little Yeshua needed safety greater than was offered
By our small-town obscurity.

So my brave Joseph took us forth on a retracing of the journey
Followed by our ancestor Joseph as he was led in slavery to Egypt.

That was when reality came crashing in!
I’d thought the way was hard
When first we went to Bethlehem!
Yet now I held the babe within my arms
For every dusty, weary, jolting league.
Mile after mile, day after day,
Nothing to be seen but rocks and thorn-trees
And endless burning desert sands.
The patient donkey plodded on
While Joseph walked the path ahead,
Probing crevices for serpents, scanning horizons for raiders.

I was afraid, yet somehow I saw with doubled vision
As I gazed into that infant face,
For God was here, and we had Abba’s promise
That if we did our part, and followed faithfully,
And did not turn aside from this hard path,
The angels would be there to guide us.
And oh, the blessing of those warm lips upon my breast,
Drawing nourishment and love from my deepest being!
I knew then what I have clung to ever since –
Somehow that vast Omniscient Spirit of the Cosmos,
All Powerful, Eternal, All Supreme,
Has chosen us, weak mortals that we are
To bear Love’s fragile gifts to one another!
We matter! What a miracle, we matter!
What an awesome challenge,
Knowing that if we don’t bear our burdens in obedience
Incredible blessings for humanity are lost.
It was these thoughts that kept me going
Long after weary arms would have let go!

At last that first hard journey ended, but of course
Really our pilgrimage had just begun.

For another excerpt from “Miriam’s Journey,” see our previous post “Eros & Christ: Mary’s Ecstasy in Drama.”

___
Related link:
Our Lady of Milk: 20 Images of Mother Mary Nursing (St. Peter’s List)

Nursing Madonna honors body, spirit and women

Nursing Madonna: Our Lady of Travels to Life with Reality

Photo by Trudie Barreras

An unusual nursing Madonna statue emphasizes the body-to-body connection between Mary and the baby Jesus.

Some people were shocked by the bare breasts of the Madonna when Atlanta writer Trudie Barreras put the statue in a meditation chapel at her church. The pastor regretfully asked her to take it home. For the full story about the statue, see our previous post “Nursing Madonna shocks and inspires.”

It’s important to honor the breastfeeding Madonna because Christianity has often denied women’s experiences and the human body itself. We return to wholeness and balance by valuing the natural act of nursing as holy and good.

The nursing Madonna figurine illustrates the flight into Egypt. According to the gospel of Matthew, the Holy Family traveled from Bethlehem to Egypt after an angel warned them that King Herod would try to kill the infant Jesus.

In her monologue “Miriam’s Journey,” Barreras does a wonderful job of describing the physical sensations and spiritual musings of Mary as she nursed on donkey back. Here is an excerpt:

We soon became aware
Our little Yeshua needed safety greater than was offered
By our small-town obscurity.

So my brave Joseph took us forth on a retracing of the journey
Followed by our ancestor Joseph as he was led in slavery to Egypt.

That was when reality came crashing in!
I’d thought the way was hard
When first we went to Bethlehem!
Yet now I held the babe within my arms
For every dusty, weary, jolting league.
Mile after mile, day after day,
Nothing to be seen but rocks and thorn-trees
And endless burning desert sands.
The patient donkey plodded on
While Joseph walked the path ahead,
Probing crevices for serpents, scanning horizons for raiders.

I was afraid, yet somehow I saw with doubled vision
As I gazed into that infant face,
For God was here, and we had Abba’s promise
That if we did our part, and followed faithfully,
And did not turn aside from this hard path,
The angels would be there to guide us.
And oh, the blessing of those warm lips upon my breast,
Drawing nourishment and love from my deepest being!
I knew then what I have clung to ever since –
Somehow that vast Omniscient Spirit of the Cosmos,
All Powerful, Eternal, All Supreme,
Has chosen us, weak mortals that we are
To bear Love’s fragile gifts to one another!
We matter! What a miracle, we matter!
What an awesome challenge,
Knowing that if we don’t bear our burdens in obedience
Incredible blessings for humanity are lost.
It was these thoughts that kept me going
Long after weary arms would have let go!

At last that first hard journey ended, but of course
Really our pilgrimage had just begun.

For another excerpt from “Miriam’s Journey,” see our previous post “Eros & Christ: Mary’s Ecstasy in Drama.”

Video: Gay and lesbian manger scenes show love makes a family

What if the child of God was born to a lesbian couple… or a gay couple? Because, after all, LOVE makes a family. Including the Holy Family.

I made a video of my new gay and lesbian nativity scenes. One has two Marys at the manger with the baby Jesus, and the other has two Josephs with the Christ child.

I put Mary with Mary and Joseph with Joseph -- like putting two brides or two grooms on top of a wedding cake!

It’s only 26 seconds long, and I believe it follows the spirit of the Christmas story. For more info on why I did it, see my previous post, “Gay and lesbian nativity scenes show love makes a family.”

____
Update on Nov. 26, 2010: The gay and lesbian Nativity scene is available now as a Christmas card at the Jesus in Love Store.

Gay and lesbian nativity scenes show love makes a family

For a new version of this article, click this link to Qspirit.net:
Queer Nativity scenes show love makes a family

Gay and Lesbian Nativity Scene (Love Makes a Holy Family series) by Kittredge Cherry ©2009
More photos below

I created my own gay and lesbian nativity scenes this Christmas season. One has two Marys at the manger with the baby Jesus, and the other has two Josephs with the Christ child.

I put Mary with Mary and Joseph with Joseph -- like putting two brides or two grooms on top of a wedding cake!

Obviously this is not about historical accuracy, but I believe that they are true to the spirit of the Christmas story in the Bible: God’s child conceived in an extraordinary way and born into disreputable circumstances. Love makes a family -- including the Holy Family. Everyone should be able to see themselves in the Christmas story, including the growing number of LGBT parents and their children.I also filmed a video about my gay and lesbian manger scenes and even made them available as Christmas cards.

Go ahead and imagine that Jesus has two mommies. According to the Bible story, Joseph was an adoptive father anyway. The Virgin Mary had Jesus without sex with a man -- much like lesbian mothers who use artificial insemination.

I invite others to make their own queer nativity scenes. It’s not hard. Just get two standard nativity sets, then mix and match. Please email me a photo of your creation and I’ll post it at the Jesus in Love Blog.

I bought identical nativity sets, but I’d love to see couples that come from different sets -- a dark-skinned Mary with a light-skinned Mary, for example.

Actually, rearranging the Holy Family is not as simple as it seems. Be sure to buy a set with freestanding figures. In many cases Mary, Joseph and Jesus are wedded together in one inseparable, three-headed blob. What does that say about our attachment to idealized, sanctified heterosexuality?

I got the idea for queering the crèche last year when I heard that a gay and lesbian Nativity scene was planned for the 2008 “Pink Christmas” festival in Amsterdam. Live actors were supposed to play a pair of Marys and a pair of Josephs. I had my own lesbian Christian spiritual awakening while waiting for the event.

I remembered going to a huge exhibit of Nativity scenes back when I was a young lesbian in seminary. They had hundreds of statues of Mary, Joseph and baby portrayed as every conceivable racial and ethnic identity. Not once did I consider that my own community was missing -- there was no lesbian version with Mary and another woman. Nor was there a gay version with Joseph and another man.

Looking back some 20 years later, it finally occurred to me that LGBT families should be represented in the mix. I had a personal breakthrough as I realized that my mind was still trapped in heterosexual assumptions about the cast of characters at Jesus’ birth.

I imagined that the Amsterdam LGBT community would enact Nativity scenes of loving lesbian and gay families like those that I have known. Scenes of a lesbian Madonna and her female partner with the baby Jesus have been created by artists such as Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin of Sweden and Becki Jayne Harrelson of Atlanta. But this was the first time that I’ve seen a gay Joseph and his male partner with the Christ child.

The Pink Christmas event turned out to be a disappointment to me. It featured a drag queen and a leather daddy who seemed like a parody of themselves, with no loving “family” connection to each other whatsoever. You can see photos and videos of it in my post from last year, “Can you imagine? A gay nativity scene.”

But the Amsterdam event planted the idea in my mind for making the manger scene my own as a lesbian Christian. I feel more connected to God every time I look at the loving lesbian and gay manger scenes in our living room. My partner and I even toyed with the idea of getting two sets of Nativity lawn decorations and turning our yard into a big old queer Christmas display. Maybe next year.

__________
Update: I also hope to do other gay and lesbian Nativity scenes with racial diversity in the future. Until then, enjoy these images from the Queer Nativity project that I sponsored.

_________________________________________

Queer Nativity 1: Manger scene as gay adoption party

“Blaine and Patrick's Adoption Party 1” by Baub Alred

The image highlights the radical nature of Christ’s birth in two ways -- by presenting his parents as an inter-racial couple as well as a same-sex couple.

__________________________________________

Queer Nativity 5: Matthew and Joseph are pregnant

“Matthew and Joseph are Pregnant” by Andrew Craig Williams

Christmas is about a miraculous pregnancy: a baby born to a virgin. If God can do that, then why not make a man pregnant? Andrew Craig Williams envisions a man carrying the Christ child in his womb.
__________________________________________

LGBTQ Nativity 4: Queer Magi visit Mary, Josephine and Jesus

“Queer Nativity” by Anonymous

Three queer Magi bring gifts to Mary, Josephine and baby Jesus in a Nativity scene sculpted by an anonymous artist. Instead of the traditional three kings, these Magi are a drag king, a drag nun and a LGBTQ-rights activist.
__________________________________________

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Update: Conservative bloggers attacked my lesbian and gay Nativity scenes
___
Related links:

Hate crime targets gay and lesbian Nativity scene at Claremont church

Gay Nativity scene in Columbia sparks outrage

Queer Nativity contest (7 artists)

Lesbian Nativity Scene (Love Makes a Holy Family series) by Kittredge Cherry ©2009

Gay Nativity Scene (Love Makes a Holy Family series) by Kittredge Cherry ©2009

Lesbian Nativity with Dog

Gay Nativity with Dog

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This post is part of the Artists series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series profiles artists who use lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spiritual and religious imagery.

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

Can you imagine? A gay Nativity scene

Gay Nativity scene at Pink Christmas in Amsterdam

I got excited when I first heard that a gay and lesbian Nativity scene was planned for the 2008 “Pink Christmas” festival in Amsterdam. Live actors were supposed to play a pair of Marys and a pair of Josephs.

I let my imagination run free envisioning new variations on the familiar manger scene. Love makes a family -- including the Holy Family. Everyone should be able to see themselves in the Christmas story, including gay and lesbian people.

I postponed writing about the gay and lesbian Nativity until it was staged. Now I’m glad that I waited because the reality fell far short of what I expected.

My heart sank when I saw the photos and video of the gay Nativity with two men (NOT two Josephs). They were a stereotypical drag queen and leather daddy. A male entertainer named “Miss Wendy” Mills posed as Mary in a blonde wig and black, high-heeled boots. I have nothing against transvestites and leather folk, but these guys seemed like a parody of themselves, with no loving “family” connection to each other whatsoever. Apparently there was no lesbian version at all.

Naturally I found out about the gay manger scene from news reports on Christian conservatives trying to stop it. Queer Christians almost never make the news unless somebody is opposing us. Conservative Christians complained that the gay manger scene mocked Christianity, but I feel that it makes a mockery of GLBT life.

Oh, well.

Frank van Dalen, head of the ProGay group that organized the festival, said that the queer Nativity was meant to encourage people to think about homosexuality and religion. It did have that effect on me. I had my own lesbian Christian spiritual awakening while I was waiting for the event.

While waiting for the event, I imagined that the Amsterdam GLBT community would enact Nativity scenes that showed loving lesbian and gay families like those that I have known. Scenes of a lesbian Madonna and her female partner with the baby Jesus have been created by artists such as Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin of Sweden and Becki Jayne Harrelson of Atlanta. But this was the first time that I’ve seen a gay Joseph and his male partner with the Christ child.

Why not? According to the Bible story, Joseph was an adoptive father anyway. The Virgin Mary had Jesus without having sex with a man -- much like lesbian mothers who use artificial insemination.

I had a personal breakthrough as I realized that my mind was still trapped in heterosexual assumptions about the cast of characters at Jesus’ birth. I remembered going to a huge exhibit of Nativity scenes when I was a young lesbian in seminary. They had statues of Mary and Joseph with the Christ child portrayed as every conceivable racial and ethnic identity. Not once did I consider that my own community was missing -- there was no lesbian version with Mary and another woman. Nor was there a gay version with Joseph and another man. Only now, some 20 years later, did it occur to me that LGBT families should be represented in the mix.

Inspired by the Amsterdam example, I suddenly realized how easy it would be to make my own lesbian or gay Nativity scene. All I would have to do was buy two standard Nativity scenes, and switch the figures around. It would be easy to put Mary with Mary and Joseph with Joseph -- like putting two brides or two grooms on top of a wedding cake! My partner and I toyed with the idea of getting two sets of Nativity lawn decorations and turning our yard into a queer Christmas display.

However, rearranging the Holy Family is not as easy as it might seem. In many cases Mary, Joseph and Jesus are wedded together in one inseparable, three-headed blob. What does that say about our attachment to idealized, sanctified heterosexuality?

During the recent after-Christmas sales, I ordered two Nativity sets with freestanding figures. Yes, I’m going to do it. You’ll see my reconfigured lesbian and gay Nativity scenes on this blog next Christmas.

Meanwhile, you may watch Amsterdam’s gay Nativity scene captured live on video.



Update Dec. 22, 2010: Gay and lesbian Nativity scenes are available now as Christmas cards at the Jesus in Love Store.

AltXmasArt 11: Radiant Baby

“Radiant Baby” (from Icons series) by Keith Haring, 1990. © Estate of Keith Haring Silkscreen, 21 x 25 inches. www.haring.com

“Radiant Baby” strips the Christmas story down to its core: A child is born. It took a gay artist -- Keith Haring -- to get to the pure essence of Christmas. He paints a generic baby. The child is faceless, without any trappings of race, gender or family of origin. The only thing special about this baby is its radiance. Is “Radiant Baby” the Christ child, or every child? Art historian Natalie E. Phillips makes an excellent case that Haring did indeed consider it an image of Christ. In her essay “The Radiant (Christ) Child,” she writes that Haring’s teenage activity in the Jesus Movement during the 1970s left a lasting impact on him and his art. He created many works that transform Christian images to make more ambiguous statements. The “Radiant Baby” began as a “tag” that Haring left in his early days as a graffiti artist and often used as his signature on later artwork. Haring (1958-1990) first attracted international attention in 1981 for his chalk drawings in the New York subways. He drew simple line figures like “Radiant Baby.” In his brief but intense career, he became one of the best known artists of his generation. Haring died of AIDS-related illnesses at age 31. Christianity teaches that all people are created in the image of God. As Christmas approaches, “Radiant Baby” reminds us that every baby is born radiant. Please come back tomorrow for AltXmasArt 12: “Madonna, Lover, and Son” by Becki Jayne Harrelson. ____ For more on Keith Haring, check out the new biography Keith Haring by Jeffrey Deitch.

AltXmasArt 3: Mother of God: Mother of the Streets

“Mother of God: Mother of the Streets” by Brother Robert Lentz, OFM, copyright 1986. Courtesy of Trinity Stores www.trinitystores.com (800.699.4482)

Solidarity with homeless people is embodied by a black Madonna in “Mother of God: Mother of the Streets” by Brother Robert Lentz. The icon expresses Mary’s message in the Magnificat, the hymn that she sang while carrying God’s child: “My soul magnifies God… He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:46, 52-53). The icon was created by Robert Lentz, a Franciscan brother and world-class iconographer who is famous for his innovative icons. Here he builds on the medieval tradition of the black Madonna to draw attention to the contemporary problem of homelessness. Lentz explains in the text he wrote to accompany the image: “Each year, larger numbers of homeless people live in the streets of modern cities. These people may be jobless workers, battered women, the untreated mentally ill, or simply those too poor to get by. They tend to be ‘invisible’ to the rest of society, but they are a real presence of Christ, the Suffering Servant, in history.” Many of the millions who experience homelessness on U.S. streets are African American, so Lentz apparently found inspiration for his Mother of the Streets in the black Madonna tradition. The mother and child may look like African Americans, but the black Madonna motif dates back before there were any African Americans. Most black Madonnas are medieval or copies of medieval European figures, made between the 11th and 15th centuries. Some have suggested that the black faces were caused by candle soot and discoloration due to aging, but research has shown that some of the black Madonnas were originally made from dark materials. Medieval motives for creating black Madonnas are uknown, but there has been much speculation since the late 20th century that they are related to pre-Christian earth goddesses or rooted in African traditions. Lentz is a world-class iconographer who began creating innovative icons in San Francisco during a period of years away from monastic life. He makes an ancient art form relevant—and sometimes controversial—by applying it to modern “saints” such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California. His grandparents came to America from tsarist Russia. Lentz grew up on stories of saints and labor unions instead of fairy tales. Icons covered the living room walls in his Russian grandmother’s home. When he was old enough, he studied Byzantine iconography. He spent the first eighteen years of his adult life in Orthodox and Roman Catholic monasteries. Lentz left the monastery in 1982 and began painting icons full-time in San Francisco. At first he was shocked to meet openly gay men and lesbian women, feminists, anarchists, undocumented immigrants, and many others unlike the people he knew in cloistered life. Within a few months, he was making icons that expressed the holy passion for justice that he discovered on the streets of San Francisco. Please come back tomorrow for AltXmasArt 4: “Black Madonna - Mitochondrial Eve” by David Hewson _______ Other icons by Robert Lentz appear in “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More” by Kittredge Cherry. The book is filled with color images by 11 contemporary artists. Five artists from AltXmasArt are featured in the book. The artists tell the stories behind their images and a lively introduction puts them into political and historical context, exploring issues of blasphemy and artistic freedom.

Wanted: Art of baby Jesus and animals

Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks

I’ve been searching in vain for an image of the Christ child with animals to show the union of God and nature -- but all I can find are sentimental Christmas-card pictures. Hasn’t anybody created a serious image of the baby Jesus with animals since the famous “Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward Hicks way back in 1834? The movement for GLBT rights is deeply connected to honoring nature and the earth, because homophobia is part of a system of controlling and denying nature, including human nature. I want to include a contemporary artist’s take on the baby Jesus with animals in an alternative Christmas art series that will run here at the Jesus in Love Blog this December. A new post at the Iconia Blog talks about the challenge of preventing Christian art from becoming saccharine and soaked in sentimentalism. Max McLean, president of the Christian arts ministry, Fellowship for the Performing Arts, is quoted in an interview with World magazine. Please contact me if you have any suggestions for images of Jesus with the animals. I do like “Manger Scene with Jesus and Animals” by Karen Soleau, but it’s clip-art, and not in the same league as the other art that is already planned for the series.