“Grace is a Bit Queer” by Felicia Follum
grace is a bit queer
the gays get it
the straights don’t deserve it
the bad need it
the good are expected to give it
the poor, the homeless
the helpless, the meek,
the humble
are loved by the laws of grace
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In between all that can and can’t be seen
Where the dirty meets the clean,
somewhere in the dark
somewhere in the dark
Beyond sex and race, beyond time and space
In a state of grace is the spark
Grace is a bit queer, as social justice artist Felicia Follum points out in a new poster. She is among the artists, musicians and thinkers who are shining a queer light on grace -- undeserved help from God.
“The idea for this poster came from my life drawing class. During a critique the class discussed how the model looks like Jesus. It was interesting because the model was a friend who happened to be gay,” says Follum, who often unites art with activism. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming, site of the infamous 1998 gay-bashing murder of Matthew Shepard.
Follum decided to explore the Christian concept of grace and combine it with the Christ-like drawing of her gay friend. “From a Christian perspective, the ‘grace of God’ is a fascinating, strange, and almost incomprehensible. Jesus died on the cross for everyone, including gay people. There is nothing that anyone can do to make God love you less or to make God love you more. That being said, ‘Grace is Queer,’” explains Follum, who earned a bachelor’s degree in art this year from the University of Wyoming.
She purposely muddled the lettering so it would be hard to read. “The text in this poster is jumbled and confusing because that is how grace is in comparison to our culture,” Follum says. “Our culture tells us that if we work hard we will get something better. We can earn anything that we want. Grace is different. We can not earn grace and we can not lose grace. Grace does not make sense and it is not fair.”
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| “James Cone’s Black Jesus” by Felicia Follum |
In his landmark book A Black Theology of Liberation
, Cone wrote, “The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God's own condition.”Cone laid the groundwork for Patrick Cheng and other queer theologians who use his approach to liberate LGBT people and our allies. Cheng, who teaches at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, studied with Cone as his doctoral advisor. Cheng discusses queer grace in depth in his latest book, From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ
.“We, as LGBT people of faith, must address the doctrine of sin -- and its companion doctrine of grace -- head on. We can no longer avoid or ignore the subject,” Cheng writes. “It is time for LGBT people to take back the words ‘sin’ and ‘grace’ in the same way we have taken back the word ‘queer’!” He proposes seven models of grace (and sin) that arise from LGBT experience:
1) Erotic Christ (grace as mutuality)
2) Out Christ (grace as coming out)
3) Liberator Christ (grace as activism)
4) Transgressive Christ (grace as deviance)
5) Self-Loving Christ (grace as pride)
6) Interconnected Christ (grace as interdependence)
7) Hybrid Christ (grace as hybridity)
2) Out Christ (grace as coming out)
3) Liberator Christ (grace as activism)
4) Transgressive Christ (grace as deviance)
5) Self-Loving Christ (grace as pride)
6) Interconnected Christ (grace as interdependence)
7) Hybrid Christ (grace as hybridity)
Long before liberation theology, the idea of grace has always been a bit queer. It comes to mind when people see someone less fortunate and say with grateful compassion, “There but for the grace go I.”
Avant-garde rock singer-songwriter Richard Haxton celebrates grace in his song “The Spark,” which is quoted above. More of his work is available online at Hawkstown.net, a town / solar system built of Haxton’s songs and drawings, music and art.
And the Bible is full of mysterious promises about God’s grace, such as these words from 2 Corinthians 9:8:
“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
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Related links:
20 Inspirational Bible Verses About Grace (whatchristianswanttoknow.com)
Felicia Follum Art
Felicia Follum Art + Design Blog
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comes from from the same publisher, Seabury Books.
,” edited by Marvin M. Ellison and Kelly Brown Douglas.
. Specifically, this takes the form of the Bi/Christ, in which the bisexual Jesus challenges the “heterosexual patterns of thought” of hierarchical and binary categories. Just as the bisexual person challenges the heterosexual binaries of “male/female” and “straight/gay,” the Bi/Christ challenges the either/or way of thinking with respect to theology (for example, by deconstructing “poor” and “rich” as mutually exclusive categories in liberation theology). As such, the Bi/Christ can be understood as an example of the Hybrid Christ.
(New York: Routledge, 1996), 78.
, ed. Dwight N. Hopkins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 138, 147-48. 
, ed. Sharon Lim-Hing (Toronto, Canada: Sister Vision Press, 1994), 121.
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 100-21; Tat-siong Benny Liew, “Queering Closets and Perverting Desires: Cross-Examining John’s Engendering and Transgendering Word Across Different Worlds,” in 
, ed. Randall C. Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 251-88.
and 
.
(Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2001), 112-13.
.”
, Comstock argues that Jesus liberates us from seeing him as a “master.” Rather, Jesus invites us to be his “friend.” Jesus gives us a “nudge to get on without him,” and he urges us to take on the ethical responsibility of loving one another.