The Bible and Gays: Is it a sin to be gay? Did Jesus condemn homosexuality?

“Bible with Awareness (Beibl gydag ymwybyddiaeth)” by Andrew Craig Williams

When readers send me anti-LGBT hate mail, I often refer them to “The Bible and Gays” by Rev. Durrell Watkins, pastor of Sunshine Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

It is one of the all-time best articles on the Bible and homosexuality. Rev. Watkins goes well beyond debunking the anti-gay “clobber” passages to present Christ’s positive message about queer people in a clear, accessible way. I am pleased to share his article here today.

The Bible and Gays

By Rev. Durrell Watkins

There are four questions I am most often asked about spirituality in relation to LBGT people. My ministry is within a church that is rooted both within the Christian tradition and the Gay Rights movement. However, I am a spiritual humanist and a religious pluralist and while I speak from a primarily Christian viewpoint, the message that I try to offer is universal. Here are the questions and my answers.

Is it a sin to be gay?
“Sin” means to miss the mark (an archery metaphor). To “be” anything is a matter of ontology (of “is-ness”). So to discover that one is something and to be honest about it can never be missing the mark. Self-discovery and expressing one’s truth with integrity is hitting the bull’s eye!

Did Jesus condemn homosexuality?
Jesus condemned precious little. One of the few things that he did condemn was the tendency of religious people to participate in condemnation! Jesus seemed to have a great deal of patience with almost everything other than self-righteous people who tried to enforce religious rules in a way to oppress or control others.

Was Jesus ever sympathetic to homosexual persons?
The word “homosexual” would not have been part of Jesus’ vocabulary. However, in the 8th chapter of Matthew’s gospel (and the story is repeated in the 7th chapter of Luke’s gospel) Jesus is said to have healed a centurion’s servant. The original hearers of that story would have assumed that the servant was the centurion’s lover. From what we know of 1st century Roman culture, we know that such relationships were not uncommon. And for a person of such high rank to be so concerned about a servant that he would approach a faith healer of lower status in a desperate attempt to help his servant suggests an intimacy far greater than one would expect between a military officer and his “servant.” How did Jesus respond to the centurion? He praised his faith! His relationship was not condemned or even questioned.

Also, in Matthew 19, Jesus defines “eunuchs” in a much broader sense than we normally hear. He says that, there are those who are castrated, which is the usual definition. But he also says there are 2 other kinds of eunuchs. He says some “choose” to be eunuchs (living a life of celibacy) and that others are “born” eunuchs (people who by nature are sexually different). He also says that not everyone would accept his broad, inclusive, and non-judgmental definition of eunuchs, but he says, “whoever can accept this ought to accept it.”

Jesus was giving an example of sexual diversity -- some are different because they’ve been surgically altered. Others are different because of personal choices to not marry or to remain celibate (e.g. monks and nuns). And still others are different because they are born different, that is, they are innately different. Jesus did not suggest that anything was wrong with any of the eunuchs, and he certainly did not propose an “ex-eunuch” program. Some of us are “different” from the majority, and Jesus seemed to think that was OK and that everyone who can accept such diversity needs to accept it! His teaching reminds us of Isaiah 56 where the prophet places these words in the mouth of God, “The eunuch need not say, ‘I am a dry (barren) tree’…I will give them in my house a monument and name which will be even better than having children; an eternal, imperishable name…For my house shall be called a house of prayer for ALL peoples.” In any case, Jesus never condemned same-sex love or attraction.


But aren’t there bible verses that do condemn homosexuality?
It depends on how you read the bible. The people who wrote the documents that in time became our bible were products of their time and culture. They had specific agendas and were writing to particular communities, usually in response to definite events. None of them had any idea that 21st century Americans would be reading their work. In fact, none of them knew there was a North American continent or that the world wasn’t flat. And so, we do read statements in the bible that support slavery, that assume women are in some way inferior to men, that seem to suggest God takes sides in bloody military conflicts.

Today, we do NOT accept that women are in any way inferior to men.
Today, we believe slavery to be one of the greatest evils of human history.
Today, many of us believe that war is almost never the will of God.

Do we read the bible with an awareness of its historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts? Or do we cling to isolated verses that seem to support one prejudice or the other? How we choose to read the bible will determine if we believe the bible promotes homophobia. And how we choose to read it actually says more about the reader than the text.

Out of the entire bible written by many people covering a period of more than a thousand years, there are only about half a dozen sentences that are routinely used to shame, condemn, harass, or terrorize gay and lesbian people! Each of those rare, isolated passages, when taken in their cultural, historical, linguistic, and literary contexts can be deconstructed in ways that are actually quite liberating for same-gender loving people! Love and even mutual attraction are never condemned in scripture.

The bible is against rape, exploitation, and harming your neighbor (and rightly so!). It is not a collection of books meant to condemn love, mutuality, or any life-affirming situation.

Now, reflect on these passages from the bible that some of us believe accurately sum up the divine message for the human family: “God is love and WHOEVER lives in love lives in God and God lives in them!” – 1 John 4.16; “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Eternal, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.” – Jeremiah 29.11; “By the grace of God I am what I am.” – 1 Corinthians 15.10; “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” – Galatians 5.22-23.

There is no law against love and we are all one. This is the message of the bible. It doesn’t tell us who to hate; it tells us how to love. We can be sure that LBTG people are as capable of living love-filled lives as anyone else
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Rev. Durrell Watkins has been the senior pastor of Sunshine Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale, Florida since 2007. The church is affiliated with Metropolitan Community Churches and the International New Thought Alliance. Watkins has a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This article originally appeared at his blog Kweerspirit.

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A Spanish translation of this article is online at the Santos Queer blog:

La Biblia y las personas gays: ¿Es un pecado ser gay? ¿Condena Jesús la homosexualidad?

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More resources on the Bible and homosexuality:

Metropolitan Community Churches theological resources

“What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality” by Daniel Helminiak

“Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality” by Jack Rogers

The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality by Matthew Vines (with translations in 10 langauges)

Homosexuality and the Bible at GayChurch.org

Gay and Christian (gaysandslaves.com)

“From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ” by Patrick S. Cheng

La Biblia y las personas Gays: ¿Es un pecado ser gay? ¿Condena Jesús? (coming soon at Santos Queer)
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Cheng’s new queer Christ book available today

“From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ” by Patrick Cheng is in stock and ready to ship starting today at Amazon.com.  I highly recommend it.

Patrick S. Cheng

The much-anticipated book proposes seven new models of sin and grace based on LGBT experience. Cheng is a theology professor at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. A gay Asian American, he also earned a law degree from Harvard. His previous book, Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology comes from from the same publisher, Seabury Books.

Throughout church history, LGBT people have been condemned as sinners for their sexual orientation. As a result, many LGBT people are unable to understand the meaning of grace -- the unmerited gift of God’s love. Cheng argues that people need to be set free from the traditional legal model of sin as a violation of divine and natural laws. Instead he presents a Christologial model in which sin and grace are redefined in liberating terms based on queer experience.

In his new book “From Sin to Amazing Grace,” Cheng develops ideas that he presented here at the Jesus in Love Blog in 2010 with his popular series on “Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People.” At that time Cheng presented five models of a queer Christ:
1) Intro and 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 adds two more queer models in his new book:

Self-Loving Christ (sin as shame; grace as pride)
Interconnected Christ (sin as isolation; grace as interdependence)

I agree with Bible professor Tat-siong Benny Liew when he says, “Cheng’s work ranks among the best scholarship of a new generation of theologians.” I can hardly wait to get my hands on “From Sin to Amazing Grace” to be liberated and inspired by the Cheng’s vision.

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Find it on Amazon.com at this link:
“From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ” by Patrick Cheng

Hybrid Christ / Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People

Cover art for “Transfigurations” designed by Mila and Jayna Pavlin (petersontoscano.com)

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

By Patrick S. Cheng, Copyright © 2010

            The fifth and final christological model of sin and grace for LGBT people is the Hybrid Christ.  Hybridity is a concept from postcolonial theory that describes the mixture of two things that leads to the creation of a third “hybrid” thing. 

“Chinese Jesus Mural, Interrupted”
by objectivejay

For example, the experience of being a racial minority or an immigrant within the United States can be described in hybrid terms.  In the case of Asian Americans, we are neither purely “Asian” (because we live in the United States) nor are we purely “American” (because we are of Asian descent).  Rather, we are a third “hybrid” or “in-between” thing, which ultimately challenges the binary and hierarchical nature of the original two categories of “Asian” (outsider) and “American” (insider).

            For me, the Hybrid Christ arises out of the theological understanding that Jesus Christ is simultaneously divine and human in nature.  He is neither purely one nor the other.  In the words of the Athanasian Creed, Jesus Christ is simultaneously both “God and human,” and yet he is “not two, but one Christ.”  As such, he is the ultimate hybrid being.  This hybrid nature is reflected in the double consciousness that is experienced by many racial minorities in the United States such as Asian Americans, African Americans, Latino/as, Native Americans, and others.  In other words, hybridity challenges binary and either/or ways of seeing the world.

            Marcella Althaus-Reid, the late bisexual theologian from the University of Edinburgh, has written about the Hybrid Christ in her book Indecent Theology.  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.[2]

            Thus, a theology of the Hybrid Christ recognizes that Jesus Christ exists simultaneously in both the human and divine worlds.  This can be seen most clearly in the post-resurrection narratives.  As a resurrected person with a human body, Jesus Christ is “in-both” worlds (that is, both human and divine), and yet he is also “in-between” both worlds (that is, neither purely human nor purely divine).  Although this can be a painful experience – metaphorically speaking, Jesus Christ has no place to lay down his head – his hybridity is what ultimately allows him to build a bridge between the human and divine.

Sin as Singularity

            If the Hybrid Christ is defined as the One who is simultaneously both human and divine, then sin -- as what opposes the Hybrid Christ -- is singularity, or the failure to recognize the reality of existing in multiple worlds.  For example, sin is failing to recognize the complex reality of multiple identities within a single person, which in turn silences the experiences of those individuals who exist at the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other categories.  As postcolonial theorists have pointed out, this kind of singularity (for example, defining the “gay” community solely in terms of sexual orientation and not taking into account race) results in the creation of a number of “others” who are never fully part of the larger community and thus feel like perpetual outsiders (for example, LGBT people of color).

            Eric Wat, a Chinese-American gay man, has written about experiencing the sin of singularity in the form of being rejected by both the straight Asian American community as well as the white LGBT community.  Because of the one-dimensional nature of singularity, Wat’s racial identity as an Asian American is erased within the predominantly white LGBT world, whereas his sexual identity as a gay man is erased within predominantly straight Asian American world.  For Wat, LGBT Asian Americans are “nobody’s children,” and they are “forever left in the middle of the road, unacceptable to those at either side of the street.”[3]

Grace as Hybridity

“Jesus of the People”
by Janet McKenzie

By contrast, grace in the context of the Hybrid Christ can be understood as hybridity, or existing in the interstitial or “in-beyond” space between two or more intersecting worlds.  In an essay entitled “Disrupted / Disruptive Moments,” Black lesbian theologian Renée Hill has written about how her theological reflection has been shaped by her existence at the “intersections, in-between places, and borderlands” of her identities of race, gender, and sexual orientation.  Hill’s own experience of this hybridity as an “African American lesbian, Christian, theologian, and worker for justice” has convinced her of the need to create new “multireligious and multidialogical” processes for doing theologies and to embrace “questions, disruptions, and moments of ambiguity and uncertainty.”[4]

            Like Hill, LGBT Asian Americans have written about the grace of hybridity.  For example, Wat writes that, instead of being caught in the middle of the race / sexuality divide, “gay Asian men must find that third side of the street where we can grow, find our voices, learn about ourselves, and educate others about who we are, so that eventually we can join them at both sides of the street.”[5]  Ann Yuri Uyeda, a queer Asian American activist, wrote about her “overwhelming” experiences in being in a room of nearly 200 queer Asian American women for the first time: “[We were] Asian and Pacific Islander.  And queer.  All at once.  And all together.”[6]

In recent years, there have been a growing number of writings by and about LGBT Asians and Asian Americans of faith.  These include theologians who are members of the Emerging Queer API Religion Scholars (EQARS) group at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California[7] – as well as our allies such as Kwok Pui-lan and Tat-siong Benny Liew.[8]  Indeed, the proliferation of such texts can be attributed to the grace of hybridity.

Conclusion

            In this essay, I have argued that LGBT Christians must continue to wrestle deeply with the theological doctrines of sin and grace.  Because LGBT people have been hurt by the traditional legal model of sin and grace, I believe that these doctrines should be rethought in christological terms such as the Erotic Christ, the Out Christ, the Liberator Christ, the Transgressive Christ, and the Hybrid Christ.  It is my hope that a christological model of sin and grace will allow LGBT people of faith to enter into a more meaningful theological dialogue among ourselves as well as with the broader theological community as we enter into the third millennium of the Christian tradition.

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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] Marcella Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender, and Politics

(London: Routledge, 2000), 114-16.

[3] See Eric Wat, “Preserving the Paradox: Stories From a Gay-Loh,” in Russell Leong, Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience (New York: Routledge, 1996), 78.

[4] See Renée Leslie Hill, “Disrupted / Disruptive Movements: Black Theology and Black Power 1969 / 1999,” in Black Faith and Public Talk: Critical Essays on James H. Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power, ed. Dwight N. Hopkins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 138, 147-48.

[5] Wat, “Preserving the Paradox,” 80 (emphasis added).

[6] Ann Yuri Uyeda, “All at Once, All Together: One Asian American Lesbian’s Account of the 1989 Asian Pacific Lesbian Network Retreat,” in The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women, ed. Sharon Lim-Hing (Toronto, Canada: Sister Vision Press, 1994), 121.

[7] These scholars include Mike Campos, Joseph Goh, Elizabeth Leung, Miak Siew, Lai-shan Yip, Hugo Córdova Quero, and myself.  See http://www.clgs.org/emerging-scholars-0.

[8] See Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (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 They Were All Together in One Place?: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism, ed. Randall C. Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 251-88.

Click here to see the whole series “Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People Today.”

Editor’s note from Kittredge Cherry: Two of the images for this post show androgynous Christ figures who blend and transcend gender: the “Transfigurations” cover and “Jesus of the People.” Both have gender hybridity, while “Jesus of the People” also embodies hybrid racial and ethnic identities. The model was an African American woman, and Jesus is shown with an Asian yin-yang symbol and an eagle feather that refers to the Great Spirit in Native American cultures. Artist Janet McKenzie was attacked for blasphemy when Sister Wendy of PBS chose it to represent Christ in the 21st century. I decided to include the photo of the Chinese Jesus Mural because this post addresses Asian American experience in depth.

Transgressive Christ / Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People

The Crucifixion of Christ by Becki Jayne Harrelson

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

By Patrick S. Cheng, Copyright © 2010

            The fourth christological model of sin and grace for LGBT people is the Transgressive Christ.  The Transgressive Christ arises out of the reality that Jesus Christ was crucified by the religious and political authorities of his day for refusing to conform to their standards of behavior.  Indeed, Jesus is constantly seen in the gospels as transgressing the commonly-accepted religious and legal boundaries of his day.  In a world obsessed by purity codes, he touches those who are unclean, including lepers, bleeding women, and the differently abled.  He eats and drinks with outcasts such as tax collectors and sinners.

            Jesus also challenges the religious authorities with respect to their teachings (such as healing on the Sabbath, and the grounds for divorce).  He rejects his biological family, and he is rejected by his hometown.  Many of his parables are about those who are on the margins of society, such as Samaritans.  As such, the Transgressive Christ can be understood as God’s solidarity with the suffering of LGBT people and others who refuse to conform to the rules of the principalities and powers of this world.

            Robert Shore-Goss, the gay theologian and Metropolitan Community Church minister, has written about the Transgressive Christ in his groundbreaking books on LGBT christology, Jesus Acted Up and Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus Acted Up.[2]  In Jesus Acted Up, which was an angry theological response to the silence and inaction of both civil society and the Church with respect to the HIV/AIDS crisis, Shore-Goss argued that Jesus Christ is a model for “transgressive practice” with respect to advocating for sexual justice.

            Specifically, Shore-Goss compared Jesus’ actions in driving out the animal merchants and overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple to the ACT UP/New York protest in St. Patrick’s Cathedral during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in which a protester crumbled up a consecrated host instead of eating it.  For Shore-Goss, both actions “violated sacred space, transgressed sacred ritual, and offended sensibilities.”  Yet, according to Shore-Goss, both acts exhibited a “profound reverence for the sacred based on God’s justice-doing.”[3]  Indeed, in Queering Christ, Shore-Goss argues that the idea of transgression can be seen as a metaphor – if not the metaphor – for  queer theologies today.[4]

Sin as Conformity

            If the Transgressive Christ is understood as the One who is tortured and executed for daring to break society’s rules, then sin – as that which opposes the Transgressive Christ – can be understood as mindless or blind conformity with the rules of the ruling majority.  The sin of conformity is something that occurs within all groups, including the LGBT community.  For example, it is easy for gay men to get caught up in the white, middle-class gay male “scene” in which superficial standards of beauty, body types, and material possessions are the only measure of a person’s worth.

            There is also the destructive behavior of “mainstream” lesbians and gay men who look the other way – or fail to speak up – with respect to the sufferings of other people on the margins (LGBT or otherwise), whether it be issues of racism, social and economic injustice, or hostility towards marginalized elements (such as transgender and bisexual people) within the LGBT community itself.  In fact, the sin of conformity can easily lead to mob violence against an innocent scapegoat or even the genocide of entire groups.  Sadly, just because a group has suffered from discrimination in the past does not mean that it is immune from the sin of conformity, particularly when it tries to distance itself from those who are deemed to be too different, just to “fit in.”

Grace as Deviance

            By contrast, grace in the context of the Transgressive Christ can be understood as deviance, or the willingness to transgress social, legal, and religious boundaries and norms. As in the case of coming out, one’s ability to challenge such boundaries and norms is not something that can be “willed” or “earned,” but is rather a gift of grace from God.  Although there is always the very real risk of crucifixion for challenging societal norms, there is also the promise of resurrection on the other side in terms of being true to one’s own God-given sexual orientation and gender identity.

            The grace of deviance can be seen in various sub-communities within the LGBT community that normally are marginalized, such as the transgender community, the bisexual community, and the leather, fetish, and BDSM community.  These communities are gifts to the wider LGBT community.  For example, Kaui, a transgender woman of Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, and Samoan descent, has described the Mahu (that is, trans people in Hawai’i) as a gift of grace to the world: “We’re actually angels.  We were sent down to earth to soak up all of man’s sins.  I was set up to earth to make people laugh and happy, to give them counseling that they need.”[5]

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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 Goss, Jesus Acted Up; Robert E. Goss, Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus Acted Up (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2002).

[3] Goss, Jesus Acted Up, 149-50.

[4] See Goss, Queering Christ, 223-38.

[5] “Kaui,” in Andrew Matzner, ‘O Au No Keia: Voices From Hawai’i’s Mahu and Transgender Communities (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2001), 112-13.

Come back next week for Part 5: the Hybrid Christ by Patrick S. Cheng.

Click here to see the whole series so far.

Editor’s note from Kittredge Cherry: The image for this post, “The Crucifixion of Christ” by Becki Jayne Harrelson, shows Jesus labeled a “faggot” and executed for daring to break society’s rules. “Look at the word ‘faggot’ on the cross. You could substitute the word ‘nigger,’ ‘Jew boy,’ ‘honkie,’ ‘redneck’ or ‘bitch’—it all means the same. Anytime anyone rises up in condemnation, hatred, or violence against another, Christ is crucified,” Harrelson explains in my book “Art That Dares.”

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.”

Out Christ / Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People

“Sermon on the Mount” (from Ecce Homo) by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin

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

By Patrick S. Cheng, Copyright © 2010

            The second christological model of sin and grace for LGBT people is the Out Christ.  The Out Christ arises out of the reality that God reveals Godself most fully in the person of Jesus Christ.  In other words, God “comes out of the closet” in the person of Jesus Christ; it is only through the incarnation, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we understand the true nature of God (for example, God’s solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed).  Indeed, the notion of the Out Christ as the revelation of God is supported by Jesus Christ’s description in the Fourth Gospel as the logos or Word of God.

            Chris Glaser, the gay theologian and Metropolitan Community Church minister, has written about the Out Christ in his book Coming Out as Sacrament.  In that book, Glaser describes Jesus Christ as nothing less than God’s very own coming out to humanity:  “The story of the New Testament is that God comes out of the closet of heaven and out of the religious system of time to reveal Godself in the person of Jesus the Christ.”[2]

            For Glaser, God reveals God’s solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed of the world in Jesus Christ.  For example, God comes out as an infant who is born in “a strange town and in a land and culture dominated by a foreign power, the Roman Empire.”  God also comes out in solidarity with the oppressed through the ministry of Jesus, who “defends women and eunuchs and those of mixed race (Samaritans) and responds to other races (the Roman centurion, the Syrophoenician woman).”  In the crucifixion, God comes out by extending “an inclusive paradise to a crucified criminal.”  And finally, in the resurrection, God comes out as one who “lives despite human violence, a true survivor of human abuse and victimization.”[3]

Sin as the Closet

            If the Out Christ is understood as the One through whom God most fully reveals Godself to humanity, then sin – as what opposes the Out Christ – can be understood as the closet, or the refusal to reveal oneself fully to one’s families, friends, co-workers,  and other loved ones.  Not only does the closet prevent a person from truly connecting with others, but it has a corrosive effect on the self-esteem and well-being to the extent that she is constantly forced to keep her life a secret to others.

            Many LGBT people have written about experiencing the sin of the closet.  For many LGBT people of color, coming out to families and friends can be a particularly difficult process as a result of condemnation from theologically-conservative churches, cultural expectations of traditional gender roles, and the anxieties of bringing shame to their families and ethnic communities.  Furthermore, LGBT people of color often experience an additional closet – the ethnic closet – in trying to hide or downplay their minority status within the predominantly white LGBT community.

Grace as Coming Out

            By contrast, grace in the context of the Out Christ can be understood as the courage to come out of the closet, or sharing one’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity with others.  For LGBT people, the process of coming out can be understood as grace, or a unmerited gift, on the part of God.  There is no one correct pattern or single path to coming out.  Some people come out very early in life; others wait until much later.  For some people it is a slow and private process.  For others, it is a fast and public announcement.

            Regardless of how one ultimately comes out, the act of coming out reflects the very nature of a God who is also constantly coming out and revealing Godself to us in the Out Christ.  Coming out is a gift that is accompanied by other gifts such as self-love, the love for others, and the overcoming of shame and internalized homophobia.  The grace of coming out is not something that can be “willed” or “earned”; it can only happen as an act of grace from God.

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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] Chris Glaser, Coming Out As Sacrament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 85.

[3] Glaser, Coming Out As Sacrament, 82-84.

Come back next week for Part 3: the Liberator Christ by Patrick S. Cheng.

Click here to see the whole series so far.

Editor’s note from Kittredge Cherry: The photo for this post, “Sermon on the Mount,” was taken in a famous cruising park in Stockholm with LGBT people from local leather clubs as models. “It was fantastic to walk with ‘Jesus’ to the photo spot. People were looking and a little shocked,” recalls photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin in my book “Art That Dares.”