Queer grace: Beyond sex and race, beyond time and space

“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

-- Felicia Follum

___________________

In between all that can and can’t be seen

Where the dirty meets the clean, 
somewhere in the dark

Beyond sex and race, beyond time and space

In a state of grace is the spark

--Richard Haxton

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.”

“James Cone’s Black Jesus”
by Felicia Follum

Racial justice and African American history are common themes in Follum’s art. She challenges traditional concepts of Jesus based on race as well as sexual orientation. Her work includes not only a gay Jesus, but also a black Jesus. Follum’s black Jesus poster is based on theology of James Cone, the founder of black liberation theology. The poster shows the black face of Jesus is surrounded by the scripture: “As you did unto one of the least of these, you did unto me.”

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)

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

Liberator Christ / Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People

Jesus Rises (from The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision) by F. Douglas Blanchard

“Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People Today,” a liberating five-week series by Rev. Dr. Patrick S. Cheng, continues today with “the Liberator Christ.”

[Update: A new book based on this series, “From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ” by Patrick Cheng, was published in spring 2012.]

Every week Cheng will present one of five models that arise out of the experiences of LGBT people:

1) Erotic Christ (sin as exploitation; grace as mutuality)
2) Out Christ (sin as the closet; grace as coming out)
3) Liberator Christ (sin as apathy; grace as activism)
4) Transgressive Christ (sin as conformity; grace as deviance)
5) Hybrid Christ (sin as singularity; grace as hybridity)

Cheng, theology professor at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, adapted the series for the Jesus in Love Blog based on his essay in the new book “Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection (Second Edition),” edited by Marvin M. Ellison and Kelly Brown Douglas.

Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People Today[1]

Model Three: The Liberator Christ

By Patrick S. Cheng, Copyright © 2010

            The third christological model of sin and grace for LGBT people is the Liberator Christ.  This model is rooted in the liberation theologies of Latin American and Black theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez and James Cone.  In other words, Jesus Christ is understood as the One who frees all those who are enslaved to systematic oppressions, including heterosexism and homophobia.

Indeed, Jesus Christ announces at the beginning of his ministry that his mission is to set the oppressed free.  By reading from the Book of Isaiah, Jesus proclaims that he has been anointed by God to “bring good news to the poor,” to “proclaim release to the captives,” and to “let the oppressed go free.”  The work of the Liberator Christ is reinforced by the parable of sheep and goats in Matthew 25, in which Jesus declares that whoever ministers to those who are hungry, thirsty, outsider, naked, sick, and/or imprisoned has actually ministered to him.

Like the Exodus event in which the ancient Israelites were set free from their bondage to their Egyptians slaveholders, the Christ event liberates LGBT people from the bondage of heterosexism and homophobia.  For example, Robert E. Shore-Goss, a gay former Jesuit priest and current Metropolitan Community Church minister, has written in his book Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto about the importance of deconstructing traditional christologies.  For Shore-Goss, LGBT people are called to move from the erotophobic and sex-negative “Christ the Oppressor” to the LGBT-empowering “Jesus the Liberator.”[2]

Other LGBT theologians, such as Gary David Comstock, also have written about the need to be liberated from traditional notions of a hierarchical Jesus that lords over us.  In his book Gay Theology Without Apology, 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.[3]

Sin as Apathy

            If the Liberator Christ is understood as the One who frees those who are enslaved to systemic oppressions, then sin – defined as that which opposes the Liberator Christ – can be understood as apathy.  That is, sin with respect to the model of the Liberator Christ can be seen as the refusal to work towards the elimination of the systemic oppressions that affect all members of the LGBT community, including those LGBT people who are “least among us,” such as the socio-economically disadvantaged, recent immigrants, and undocumented workers.

Many LGBT people have come out of the closet and succeeded in their work and careers.  Indeed, they end up living a comfortable middle- to upper-class existence in urban gay enclaves such as San Francisco and New York.  However, like the goats in Jesus’ above parable, these individuals are often blinded by the sin of apathy and fail to address issues of economic injustice, racism, sexism, and ablelism, both inside and outside of the LGBT community.  Despite the fact that these individuals have benefitted greatly from the liberation work of past LGBT activists (e.g., our courageous transgender ancestors at the Stonewall Riots), many of these “A-Gays” do very little – if anything – towards the further liberation of all who suffer from systemic oppressions.

Grace as Activism

            By contrast, grace in the context of the Liberator Christ can be understood as activism, or the willingness to challenge the powers and principalities that result in systemic oppressions.  That is, grace can be understood as a willingness to challenge not only traditional LGBT issues, but also many other issues that result in social and economic injustices.

For example, the grace of activism can be seen in the grass-roots work of many LGBT communities of color that acknowledge the interconnected nature of systemic oppressions.  For example, the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), the national coalition of queer Asian organizations, is committed not only to addressing traditional LGBT issues of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, but NQAPIA also addresses issues of racism and classism within the LGBT community as well as immigration reform.  The grace of activism is a gift from God that recognizes that we are all interconnected within the Body of Christ and that we cannot say to another that “I have no need of you.”

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[1] Copyright © 2010 by Patrick S. Cheng.  All rights reserved.  The Rev. Dr. Patrick S. Cheng is the Assistant Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  This essay is adapted from his article, “Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People Today,” in the second edition of Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection, edited by Marvin M. Ellison and Kelly Brown Douglas.  For more information about Patrick, please see his website at http://www.patrickcheng.net. 

[2] See Robert Goss, Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 61-85.

[3] See Gary David Comstock, Gay Theology Without Apology (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1993), 91-103.

Come back next week for Part 4: the Transgressive Christ by Patrick S. Cheng.

Click here to see the whole series so far.

Editor’s notes from Kittredge Cherry: The Liberator Christ is Patrick Cheng’s newest model - so new that it does not appear in his published essay in “Sexuality and the Sacred.” He developed the model after submitting his manuscript for publication there. I am honored that he chose to introduce the Liberator Christ through the Jesus in Love Blog.

The image for this post, “Jesus Rises” shows Jesus setting prisoners free on Easter morning. It comes from “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” by F. Douglas Blanchard, which presents Jesus as a contemporary gay man. “Jesus Rises” and other selections from the Gay Passion series appear in my book “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More.”