Motorcycle blessing at 1980s gay leather bar remembered

Jim Mitulski, left, and Kittredge Cherry bless a motorcycle in 1988 (Photo by Mister Marcus)

Motorcycle blessings at a gay leather bar in San Francisco brought together spirituality and LGBT culture in the 1980s.

I was one of the worship leaders at the 1988 “Bike Blessing” at the Eagle Tavern. Recently I dug out photos of the event -- prompted by news that a friend led a “blessing of the bicycles” at his church for AIDS/Lifecycle.

Worship leaders at the Seventh Annual Bike Blessing on July 17, 1988 were all clergy from Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a denomination that ministers in the LGBT community. They included Rev. Jim Sandmire, pastor of Golden Gate MCC and his assistant; Rev. Jim Mitulski, pastor of MCC-SF, and me. At the time I was a student clergy, serving as MCC-SF women’s programming coordinator.

1988 Bike Blessing worship leaders at the Eagle were, from left, Kittredge Cherry, Golden Gate MCC student clergy (or deacon?) Paul Steindal, Jim Mitulski and Jim Sandmire. (Photo by Mister Marcus)

Times have changed in the 27 years since I blessed bikes at the San Francisco Eagle. We were in the midst of the AIDS pandemic then, with a lot of people dying and no cure in sight. We got through it on faith -- a strong faith that we took to the streets and to the people in unusual LGBT events like the Bike Blessing. Now AIDS has effective treatments and to most people today “blessing of the bikes” means the AIDS/Lifecyle fundraiser, which just ended its 14th annual ride last week.

I remember feeling nervous as I arrived and carried my clergy robe on a hanger through the unfamiliar bar crowded with men in black leather. But their warm welcome quickly put me at ease.  I probably shouldn't have been surprised to find out that the leather bar had its own dressing room. “You can put your drag on over here,” one man said as he led me to it.

I was startled to hear my clerical robes referred to as “drag,” but then I realized that the leather community understood the value of dressing for a role. They wore leather drag and I wore clergy drag, but we all felt a need to look to the part.

After a short opening ceremony, we spent most of the time saying personal prayers over individual bikers and their bikes. My prayer partner was my supervising pastor. He began each encounter with a question that I never expected: “What is the name of your bike?”

Sure enough, all the bikes had names. Soon I got the hang of it and joined in asking God’s blessing upon each rider and bike by name, with a special request for safely on the road.

Praying over each individual bike are Jim Mitulski, left, and Kittredge Cherry (Photo by Mister Marcus)

Jim Mitulski, left, and Kittredge Cherry lay hands of blessing on a motorcycle at the Eagle leather bar (Photo by Mister Marcus)

The Bike Blessings at the Eagle were an annual summer event founded in the early 1980s by Harry Harkness, a leatherman and longtime organist at MCC-SF. A full description and liturgy is provided in a chapter by Steve Carson in the book “Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations,” which I edited with Zalmon Sherwood.

Almost 30 years have passed since I first blessed bikes at a leather bar. Harry Harkness died in 2010 at age 85. Marcus Hernandez, who photographed the event as the Bay Area Reporter's longtime leather columnist under the pen name “Mister Marcus,” died in 2009 at age 77. The Eagle closed and reopened, but they don’t seem to sponsor Bike Blessings anymore.

My experience at the 1988 Bike Blessing was expressed well by Steve Carson in “Equal Rites”:

This can be a peculiarly moving event. Bikers form a genuine community in which people know and respect each other…. This group is ignored, misunderstood, or condemned by many religious bodies, yet I have found it to be a deeply spiritual community. Worship leaders will be genuinely welcomed and appreciated, and may find among the leather and the varooms of the motorcycles a spiritual event more real than many they have been in before.

Worship leaders at the 1988 Bike Blessing were, from left, Kittredge Cherry, Jim Mitulski, Golden Gate MCC student clergy (or deacon?) Paul Steindal and Jim Sandmire. (Photo by Mister Marcus)

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

New seminary course covers queer Christ in art

“Queering Christ in Image and Text” will be taught this summer at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

It is probably the first time that an entire seminary course has focused on the queer Christ in visual art.

The intensive course will be taught July 27-31 by Justin Tanis and Jay Emerson Johnson. Early registration is encouraged.

The required textbook for their ground-breaking course is “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More” by Kittredge Cherry.

Tanis is director of PSR’s Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies in Religion and Ministry. His scholarly interests include theology as expressed by LGBT visual artists, which is the basis of his PhD studies at the Graduate Theological Union. He is the author of “Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith.”

Johnson is an Episcopal priest and lecturer in theology and culture at PSR. He coordinates the school’s Certificate of Sexuality and Religion and Certificate of Spirituality and Social Change programs. His mos recent book is “Peculiar Faith: Queer Theology for Christian Witness.”

Here is the official course description:

“Who do you say that I am?” Matthew’s Jesus asked that question of his disciples (Mt 16:15). Many different answers in multiple theological approaches have emerged over the centuries since then. The question itself both expands and deepens when accompanied by visual responses which depict the particularities of Christ’s body, including gender, color, sexuality, culture and more. Artists and authors can expand our sense of connection with Christ and engage critical social and theological issues. This course combines a variety of modern images and texts in an exploration of how “queer” Christ appears outside “standard” representations and how this queerness can inspire and inform movements of liberating social change. Beyond white heterosexual maleness, who do you say Jesus is?

For more info, visit:
http://www.psr.edu/summer-session-2015-courses

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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.

Uganda Martyrs raise questions on homosexuality, religion and LGBT rights

Uganda Martyrs (with Saint Charles Lwanga in the center) by Albert Wider (Wikimedia Commons)

Tough questions about homosexuality, religion and LGBT rights are raised by the Uganda Martyrs whose feast day is June 3.

Forty-five Ugandan male pages refused to have sex with their king after they converted to Christianity -- so he executed them. Many were burned to death on June 3, 1886. These boys and young men were canonized by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, leaving some truths hidden by their halos.


For a new version of this article, click this link to Qspirit.net:
Uganda Martyrs raise questions on religion and LGBTQ rights

Does the experience of the Ugandan martyrs illustrate a gay king being oppressed and demonized by conservative Christians? Or does it exemplify Christians heroically trying to rescue boys from sexual abuse by a pedophile king? Did Christians teach young African men shame about their own same-gender-loving desires? Or did Christians give the pages a way to refuse rape by a ruler with absolute authority? Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between? How can the story be interpreted so that LGBT Ugandans have equal access to justice... and to God?

The Uganda Martyrs are little known in the West, but they are famous in much of Africa. Martyrs Day on June 3 is a national holiday in Uganda. The story is called “African Christianity’s most celebrated martyr-passion narrative” by religion scholar Kenneth Hamilton. They were canonized in 1964 by Pope Paul VI.

The 45 martyrs were executed in 1886, but they are still important now with Uganda at the center of worldwide debate on homosexuality and the recent release of the film “God Loves Uganda.” The award-winning documentary exposes the role of today’s American evangelical missionaries in persecuting LGBT Africans and promoting a harsher law against homosexuality.

Once again LGBT Christians are caught in the middle as conservative Christians and LGBT advocates offer dueling interpretations use the story of the Ugandan martyrs for their own purposes. Perhaps this uncomfortable position gives a perspective that can shed fresh light on the event. The history doesn’t fit neatly into the usual debates about the church versus homosexuality.

The Uganda Martyrs have been used to instill homophobia and, as Pope Pope John Paul II put it, “to draw Uganda and all of Africa to Christ.” The story weaves together homo-hatred, racism, and imperialism that are still affecting the world today. Conservatives play up the sexual angle in salacious detail to win converts, discredit the LGBT-rights movement and promote “chastity.” At the other extreme, LGBT-rights advocates use the story to prove that homosexuality was indigenous to Africa, not a “western import” as the anti-gay faction claims. They tend to ignore the difference between sex and rape, while both sides blur the line between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Ultimately the story leads back to the same questions that people of faith are grappling with all over the world now: How can the church condemn sexual abuse while still affirming the goodness of sexuality, including same-sex relationships? The search for a new LGBT-positive sexual ethics is expressed in books such as “Sex as God Intended” by gay priest and psychotherapist John McNeill and “Sexuality and the Sacred,” edited by James B. Nelson and Sandra P. Longfellow.

Today’s understanding of human psychology shows that rape is violence, not sex, and that pedophilia is not homosexuality, regardless of the gender of the child targeted. Christianity has been used to oppress queer people and colonize native peoples, but sometimes it has also provided an escape from abuse and an alternative to heterosexual marriage.

I watched “God Loves Uganda” for the first time in 2014 when it was broadcast on PBS (and released on DVD). Many others have praised the film, so I will focus here on questions that it raised in my mind.

I agree that American evangelicals are whipping up anti-LGBT sentiments in Uganda now to fuel their own power and egos. I also agree that American LGBT activists should be involved to some extent in Uganda to counteract the hate that is being imported. Thanks in part to the film, Uganda’s new Anti-Homosexuality Act law was eased so that homosexuality is punished by imprisonment, not the death penalty.

But what do Ugandans really want, apart from all this outside influence? Before Europeans brought Christianity and colonialism, what did the people of Uganda think about homosexuality?

It’s hard to say. I did a lot of research, but reliable answers are not easy to find. Sara Weschler offers the insights of a foreigner working in Uganda in her article, “How the West Was Wrong: Misunderstanding Uganda’s Gay Rights Crisis Makes It Worse” at Ttruthdig.com:

“One problem with Western LGBT activism vis-à-vis Uganda is that it is largely carried out by people who know little about the country beyond its stance on sexual orientation.... Gay rights will come to Uganda, but they will come slowly, and they will come only as part of a wider movement toward social justice in the country.”

Like many progressive reports on Uganda and homosexuality, the movie “God Loves Uganda” doesn’t even mention the Uganda Martyrs. It’s easier to omit the inconvenient truth of male-male sexual exploitation in the past. But no history of homosexuality in Uganda is complete without discussing the Ugandan martyrs killed in1886.

Here is a closer look at what happened. The Uganda Martyrs died at a time of tremendous change and culture clash in Uganda. The first Christian missionaries had arrived there only about a decade earlier in 1877. Arabs introduced Islam to Uganda at about the same time. It was still a few years before the British annexed the country in 1884.

King Mwanga II of Bugunda, now part of Uganda, was having sex on demand with the young men (and maybe boys) who served as his pages. He has been called “Africa’s most famous homosexual.” But maybe his sexuality was more complex. He had wives and children, so he might have been bisexual. He has been labeled a pedophile, but he was still a teenager himself. He began to reign at age 16 and was about 18 at the time of the executions. No matter how old the king’s sex partners were, requiring sexual service on pain of death is more like rape than gay sex between consenting adults. The youngest martyr, Saint Kizito, was about fourteen year old.

Saint Kizito, Uganda Martyr (Wikimedia Commons)

The crisis started when the king’s favorite pageboy, Mwafu, joined others in resisting his sexual demands. The royal pages were members of the elite, the noble sons of chiefs, but they ranked low in the king’s court. Some of them converted to Christianity and started denying King Mwanga the usual “pleasure,” so he rounded up the pages and ordered them to choose between him and Christianity. Only three chose the king. The rest of the pages got the death sentence. A large group ended up being marched eight miles and burned to death on Namugongo hill, where a shrine has been built. When all the killing was done, the victims were 23 Anglicans and 22 Catholics, including chief pages Joseph Mukasa (first black Catholic martyr on the African continent) and Charles Lwanga.

“St. Charles Lwanga” by Julile Lonneman (TrinityStores.com)

The earliest accounts report that the king had sex with his male pages, but over the years there has been increasing emphasis on the “sinful demands” and “perversion” of the “debauched” king. Toxic colonial hagiography mixed homophobia with racist fears about the “dark.” uncivilized, heathens of Africa. The dead were quickly nominated as saints, and were canonized as official martyrs in the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches.

A helpful queer analysis of the martyrdom is provided by Kenneth Lewis Hamilton, who wrote about the Uganda Martyrs in several scholarly articles and in his Ph.D. dissertation at Union Institute and University. Hamilton identifies himself as “an Afri-guided, postcolonial, queer, ordained, Catholic missioner.” He writes in an article titled “The Flames of Namugongo: Postcoloniality Meets Queer on African Soil?”:

And so, the establishment of Christianity—particularly Roman Catholic and Anglican Christianity—in Uganda directly coincides with a narrative about transgressive same sex desire. This makes for a provocative beginning for Christian discourse in Eastern Africa; and the subsequent canonization of the martyrs inscribes dark, dangerous desire into the very skin of Christian Uganda. The canonization, indeed, is a preached message; the narrative of the “martyrdom” now becomes part of a canon of new narratives: the ones about sodomy, race, desire and conquest.

The same article concludes:

I want to get more pictures of the martyrs into African chapels and online….I want more pictures of the martyr-boys on our black Catholic walls. These are the bodies and clans that now inhabit the heavens. But they do so like the slaves did: as a subversive presence, smiling in your face, but always ready to revolt and set each other free.

Inspired by these words by Hamilton, I searched the Internet for images of the Ugandan martyrs to accompany this reflection. First I found various icons.  Then I was stunned to discover an actual group photograph of the martyrs themselves, taken about a year before they were killed. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the photo for a long time. And their faces still haunt me.

Some of the future Uganda Martyrs were photographed in 1885, less than a year before they were killed, at Bukumbi Mission in Mwanza (northern Tanganyika). They went there to welcome the new Catholic bishop, Leon Livinhac.

I was doubly surprised that the queer analysis of the Ugandan martyrs in “The Flames of Namugongo” included a prayer from one of my own books, “Equal Rites.”

I wanted to end this reflection with a prayer too. First I looked at the official church prayers dedicated to the Uganda Martyrs, but they focused heavily on Christian faith and even “chastity, purity, and sexual morality.” They didn’t seem suitable for a reflection that seeks to develop a new ethics and spirituality that affirms loving same-sex relationships between consenting adults.

So I bring this to a close with the same prayer that Hamilton quoted from “Equal Rites.” These words were written by Elias (Ibrahim) Farajaje-Jones in his “Invocation of Remembrance, Healing, and Empowerment in a Time of AIDS”:

Yes, we honor you, our sisters and brothers.
Yes, we remember and recognize you have gone before us.
Without you, we would not exist here today.
Through us, you live on from generation to generation, from everlasting to everlasting.
And so we commit ourselves to a spirit of resistance and life.
We raise our light, our lives, our hope, our love, and we say boldly
and without fear, "Never again!" [Equal Rites, page 27]

I give the last word to one of the Uganda Martyrs. These lines are attributed to Bruno Serunkuma, spoken shortly before he was killed:

"A well that has many sources never runs dry. When we are gone, others will come after us."

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To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
Mártires de Uganda plantean preguntas sobre la homosexualidad, la religión y los derechos LGBTI

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Related links, queer interpretations and news:

Report: Anti-LGBT persecution increased under Uganda law (Washington Blade 2016)

“Colonial Legacies, Decolonized Spirits: Balboa, Ugandan Martyrs and AIDS Solidarity Today” by Kenneth Hamilton (Journal of Bisexuality)

“When Sodomy Leads to Martyrdom: Sex, Religion, and Politics in Historical and Contemporary Contexts in Uganda and East Africa” by John Blevins (Journal of Bisexuality)

Uganda Martyrs: Charles Lwanga and Companions (Queering the Church)

The Martyrs of Uganda witness against sexual violence (Daily Episcopalian)


Books:

"Christianity and Controversies over Homosexuality in Contemporary Africa" by Ezra Chitando and Adriaan van Klinken (Editors)

“Heterosexual Africa?: The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS” (book) by Marc Epprecht

“Freedom To Love For ALL: Homosexuality is not Un-African” (book) by Yemisi Ilesanmi

“American Culture Warriors in Africa: A Guide to the Exporters of Homophobia and Sexism” by Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma

“Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities” (book) by Will Roscoe


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Related links, Catholic and standard Christian interpretations:

Uganda Martyrs’ Shrine (official website)

St. Charles Lwanga and Companions (Catholic.org)

The Story of the Ugandan Martyrs (America magazine)

The Uganda Martyrs: Their Countercultural Witness Still Speaks Today (The Word Among Us)

“African Holocaust: The Story of the Uganda Martyrs” (book) by John F. Faupel (Author)


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Related links at Jesus in Love:

David Kato: Ugandan LGBT rights activist (1964-2011)

A saint for kidnapped girls of Nigeria: Josephine Bakhita

Icons of Charles Lwanga and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at TrinityStores.com



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This post is part of the LGBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

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

“Queer Icons” show LGBTQ people of color today in art by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Julissa” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Andrew” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Queer Icons” by Mexican American queer artist Gabriel García Román reveal the holiness of LGBTQ people of color in much the same way that traditional icons open a window to heaven.

“I’d like to think of them as a hybrid between saints and warriors," Roman said in a recent interview with Mic.com. "Saints are usually depicted as martyrs, noble and selfless individuals working for the betterment of the world, but also I wanted to portray them as fearless warriors. They are looking right at you and challenging you."

His subjects are activists and artists who help the community -- presented with haloes, gold accents and vibrant colors and patterns. The queer icons give power to the disempowered, visibility to the invisible. Like traditional icons, they gaze directly into the eyes of viewers, daring them to see what is sacred.

“Jahmal” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

But these are also living, breathing icons who populate contemporary America in its diversity. All are queer people of color, including Latina/o, black, Asian and mixed heritage. Some are immigrants -- naturalized, documented or undocumented. They come from many different places on the gender spectrum.

Traditional Catholic icons were Roman’s first introduction to art when he was growing up. He was especially fascinated by the haloes on the saints who graced the walls of his neighborhood church. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico, Roman was raised Catholic in Chicago and currently lives in New York City.

The Mic.com interview was part of an explosion of Internet attention sparked by his participation in “Manifest Justice,” a major group exhibit in Los Angeles in May. Roman’s images displayed there included “Mitchyll,” whose hooded sweatshirt echoes the hoods of medieval monks -- and the famous hoodie worn by Trayvon Martin, the unarmed African American teen whose 2012 murder led to massive national protests against racism.

“Mitchyll” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

Roman begins the process of creating a Queer Icon by photographing the person. He uses a chine-collé method of silkscreen printing to put layers of colors, patterns and text over each portrait.

In some cases, especially if his subject is a poet, he collaborates with the “icon” by inviting them to background text in their own handwriting on the icon. He describes this as a way to amplify their voices and “give them a canvas to speak about their identity.”

For example, poet Julissa Rodriguez begins, “She used to believe in miracles.” Rodriguez lives in the Bronx, NY, and her family is from the Dominican Republic.

“I have no map or stars to guide me through the night,” writes Emanuel Xavier, a poet and LGBT activist whose background is Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican. The Jesus in Love Blog covered his work in the 2010 article Poet imagines “if Jesus were gay.”

“Emanuel” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Today you were reminded that you are not ‘queer’ enough, not ‘artistic’ enough, not ‘migrant’ enough,” writes Sonia Guiñansaca, a poet and community organizer who was born in Ecuador, raised in Harlem, NY.  She is open about her undocumented status.

“Sonia” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“I just mourned my former self. One thinks about how we are very, very lovely, lonely, grasping at parts of ourselves,” begins Bakar Wilson, a poet who teaches English at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

“Bakar” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

Roman gives credit to a variety of artistic sources for inspiring his Queer Icons, including Renaissance, Flemish and Christian Orthodox portraiture traditions. More contemporary influences include portrait artists such as African American painter Kehinde Wiley, Armenian Canadian photographer Yousef Karsh, and South African photographers Zanele Muholi and Pieter Hugo.

Queer people of color are under-represented in art overall and religious art in particular. Roman’s “Queer Icons’ have similarities with other queer art projects, including the “Saints” series of Tony O’Connell, who captures holy moments in everyday life; the Queer Clergy Trading Cards of Chris Davies, who gives visibility to ordained queer ministers; and Ria Brodell’s “Butch Heroes” series, which puts historical queer women into the format of Catholic holy cards. But Roman may be the first to focus exclusively on queer people of color with Christian iconography.

Roman’s Queer Icons also stand in the tradition of Pop Art master Andy Warhol, another queer silkscreen artist whose portrait style was influenced by the Catholic icons that he saw while growing up in an immigrant family. (In Warhol’s case, it was Byzantine Catholic.) Warhol took the iconic style beyond the church to create colorful silkscreens of pop-culture icons such as Marilyn Monroe. Roman further democratizes the process by making icons out of people who rarely get any attention in either secular or sacred contexts.

A variety of galleries on both coasts have exhibited Roman’s art. He has completed more than 30 images in his ongoing “Queer Icons” series. They are posted on his website gabrielgarciaroman.com. A selection is posted here to inform readers and inspire those who wish to meditate on the unlikely people who embody embody God’s spirit today.

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Credit: All images are from the series “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman, 2011-2015, Photogravure w/ Chine-Colle and silkscreen, 11x14, image size 8x10.

“Kathy” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Abdool” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Sidra” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Hiroshi” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

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Related links:

Influenced by Catholic Upbringing, Artist’s “Queer Icons” Offer Windows to God (New Ways Ministry)

Not Your Mother's Catholic Frescoes: Radiant Portraits Of Queer People Of Color (npr.org)

10 Stunning Images That Shatter Stereotypes About LGBTQ People of Color (mic.com)

One Photographer Is Using Social Media To Celebrate 'Queer Icons' Of Color By Katherine Brooks (Huff Post)

Icons as Religious Art

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Special thanks to the many people who sent me news tips urging me to write this article, including Terry Weldon of Queering the Church, Ann Fontaine of Episcopal Cafe, Chris Davies of Queer Clergy Trading Cards, Jane Redmont and Scott Sella.
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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. It also highlights great queer artists from history, with an emphasis on their spiritual lives.

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

New LGBTQ Christian books: June 2015

New LGBTQ Christian books this month include queer theology and the memoir of a gay Anglican priest.

Theology


“That We Might Become God: The Queerness of Creedal Christianity” by Andy Buechel, with a foreword by Mark D. Jordan.

A theologian reveals how queer Christianity already is. He argues that queer theory fits well with Christian faith, specifically the incarnation of “Christ’s queer body,” the sacraments, and eschatology. Buechel teaches theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati and Jordan is a renowned Harvard professor of Christian thought. His foreword says, “"Andy Buechel's book exerts itself to avoid false certainties, easy algebras, in order to acknowledge the full queerness of Christianity. That effort is one of the queerest things about the book.”


Memoir and biography


“A Disreputable Priest: Being Gay in Anti-Gay Cultures” by Ian Corbett.

A gay Anglican priest gives a personal account of his journey to accept his sexual orientation and minister to LGBT people while serving in Africa, Ireland and among the indigenous tribes of North America. Corbett was sustained by values learned from indigenous peoples about the importance of the land, artistic expression, human relationships and contemplative reflection. In Botswana he established an AIDS hospice and cared for AIDS patients in the slums.



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Related links:

New LGBTQ Christian books: May 2015 (Jesus in Love)

New LGBTQ Christian books: March 2015 (Jesus in Love)

New LGBTQ Christian books: Feb 2015 (Jesus in Love)

Top 25 LGBTQ Christian books of 2014 named (Jesus in Love)

Top 20 Gay Jesus books (from Jesus in Love)

Queer Theology book list (from Patrick Cheng)

Queering the Church book list

Jesus in Love Bookstore (includes LGBT Christian classics)


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