— How queerness changes everything we thought we knew about Christianity by Charlie Bell
More history would help an ambitious project
By Adrian Thatcher
CHARLIE BELL is at his exasperated best when he claims for LGBTIQ people: “We have spent far too long being apologetic, . . . playing with exhausted material and not nearly enough time listening to the reality of queer lives within the church.” Queer people are holy and gifted. The Church needs them badly. It should stop debating whether they might be grudgingly accepted as honorary heterosexuals, and allow queer experiences of God to resonate throughout the Church, bringing renewal to the Church’s understanding of — well, everything: faith, doctrine, ecclesiology, and ethics, especially the doctrine of (heterosexual) marriage.
So far, so good. All this needs to be said. But Christians gay and straight may wonder whether the book gets very far in achieving its aims. The sub-title (. . . everything we thought we knew . . .) signals a vast undertaking. Anglicans have recently neglected the entire topic of doctrinal and moral change and how it comes about. There is little here to address this hiatus. There is much assertion (and repetition) in the book, but little theology or history.
Drawing more on these would provide a firmer place from which Bell’s many just critiques of theological and institutional conservatism in the Church of England could tellingly proceed. Readers may not be surprised, for example, to discover that “radical equality is of God.” But it may be necessary to move beyond assertion to engagement with the history and theology that deny it before moulding both into a more just and compassionate synthesis.
There is a potentially fruitful notion of “Catholic Queering — a commitment to the catholic faith . . . that does not fear for the collapse of that faith if questions are asked of it”. But little more is heard of it. If “queer” stands as a synonym for LGBTIQ, and “queering” Christianity means the activity of reassessing the faith from the many perspectives of queer people, then the enterprise of queering is clear and necessary.
But some of the changes or reorientations that Bell wants, like the primacy of relationship in sexual ethics and marriage (chapter 4), can already be found in (some versions of) the doctrine of the Trinity without queering it at all. If he wants to draw on the labyrinthine and disruptive strands of queer theory and theology, a different book may be needed. Even then, his opponents (everywhere present in the book) are likely to run scared.
Bell is an ally among Christians labouring for a different and inclusive Church in which heterosexual norms do not measure who is to be included. But there may be better ways of arguing for it.
The Vatican will publish a document next week on gender theory and surrogacy that was announced in a bid to respond to opposition from conservatives over Pope Francis’ willingness to bless same-sex unions.
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, will hold his first news conference to present the document “Infinite Dignity, on human dignity,” on April 8, the Vatican announced Tuesday.
Fernández, who is very close to Francis, revealed the declaration was in the works after he came under criticism for the roll-out of a December document from his office authorizing priests to offer non-liturgical blessings to same-sex couples.
Conservative bishops, including entire national bishops conferences in Africa, blasted the document as contrary to biblical teaching about homosexuality and said they wouldn’t implement it.
Fernández, who is from Argentina, has said in various media interviews since then that the new document will offer a strong critique of “immoral tendencies” in society today, including surrogacy, sex changes and gender theory.
While Francis has made a hallmark of his papacy to reach out to LGBTQ+ people, he has also strongly denounced what he calls “gender ideology.” He has in particular railed against what he says is the tendency of Western countries to impose their values about gender and sexuality on the developing world as a condition for economic aid.
Francis has also called for a global ban on surrogacy, saying the practice exploits the economic needs of the surrogate mother and violates the dignity of mother and child.
1 of 8 | Rev. Elaine Saralegui, wearing a rainbow-colored clergy stole and her clerical collar, leads a service at the Metropolitan Community Church, an LGBTQ+ inclusive house of worship, in Matanzas, Cuba, Friday, Feb. 2, 2024. In recent years, the communist-run island barred anti-gay discrimination, and a 2022 government-backed “family law” — approved by popular vote — allowed same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt.
Proudly wearing a rainbow-colored clergy stole and a rainbow flag in her clerical collar, the Rev. Elaine Saralegui welcomed all to her LGBTQ+ inclusive church in the Cuban port city of Matanzas.
“We’re all invited. And no one can exclude us,” Saralegui told same-sex couples who held hands sitting on wooden pews in the Metropolitan Community Church where she had recently married her wife.
These words and this kind of gathering would have been unimaginable before in the largest country in the conservative and mostly Christian Caribbean, where anti-gay hostility is still widespread.
Cuba repressed gay people after its 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro and sent many to labor camps. But in recent years, the communist-run island barred anti-gay discrimination, and a 2022 government-backed “family law” — approved by popular vote — allowed same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt.
Members of Cuba’s LGBTQ+ community say it marked a milestone that has allowed them to embrace their gender identity and worship more freely in a country that for decades after the revolution was officially atheist. Over the past quarter century, it has gradually become more tolerant of religions.
“It’s huge. There aren’t enough words to say what an opportunity it is to achieve the dream of so many,” said Maikol Añorga. He was with his husband, Vladimir Marin, near the altar, where at a Friday service they joined other congregants taking turns to lay offerings of white and pink wildflowers to thank God.
“It’s the opportunity for all people to be present here,” he said, “to gather and participate without regards to their gender, race or religion.”
The Catholic Church, in its doctrine, still rejects same-sex marriage and condemns any sexual relations between gay or lesbian partners as “intrinsically disordered.” Yet Pope Francis has done far more than any previous pope to make the church a more welcoming place for LGBTQ+ people.
In December, the pope formally approved letting Catholic priests bless same-sex couples, a policy shift that aimed at making the church more inclusive while maintaining its strict ban on gay marriage.
The family law in Cuba faced opposition from the country’s Catholic church as well as the growing number of evangelical churches that have mushroomed across the island.
Anti-LGBTQ+ rights demonstrations have faded since 2022. But back then, evangelical pastors spoke out from the pulpit, and handed out Bibles and pamphlets in the streets invoking God’s “original plan” for unions between men and women and calling gay relationships a sin.
Still, the measure was overwhelmingly approved by nearly 67% of voters. It came after a huge government campaign of nationwide informative meetings and extensive state media coverage amid food shortages and blackouts that have prompted thousands to immigrate to the United States during one of one of the worst economic crises to hit Cuba in decades.
At the time, President Miguel Díaz-Canel told Cubans in a video message that he was pleased about the wide support that the measure received despite tough economic challenges. He celebrated, tweeting: “Love is now the law.”
For years, the movement for LGBTQ+ rights has been proudly led by Cuba’s best-known advocate for gay rights: Mariela Castro, daughter of former President Raul Castro and niece of his brother Fidel.
“This just brings happiness. This just makes people feel truly worthy, respected, loved, considered – a true citizen with their rights and duties,” Castro told The Associated Press.
“I think we’ve taken a very valuable step forward.”
Long before same-sex couples were granted the right to marry, Castro was advocating for it, while training police on relations with the LGBTQ+ community and sponsoring symbolical ceremonies where Protestant clergy from the U.S. and Canada blessed unions as part of the annual Pride parade.
“It was a beautiful spiritual experience for me, and I believe for those people as well,” said Castro, who heads Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education and is a member of the National Assembly. “First, our campaign was: ‘Let love be the law.’ Now, love is the law, and we’re going to keep celebrating it.”
In 2010, her uncle, then- retired leader Fidel Castro admitted that he was wrong to discriminate against gay people. Asked about this, she said it helped mark a turning point in public attitude.
“I think he was honest. It was good and healthy for him to say this because it helped the rest who were still clinging to prejudices to understand that this kind of thought can change,” she said.
“Even in a revolutionary leader like him, there were prejudices that evolved, and he was able to understand it and help clear the way for change.”
In the early years after the 1959 revolution, homophobia in Cuba, she said, was no different than in the rest of the world. In the United States, homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder by psychiatric authorities, and gay sex was a crime in most states. Currently, Russia — a major supporter of Fidel Castro when it was the core of the communist Soviet Union — is bucking the worldwide trend of greater LGBTQ+ acceptance with a multi-pronged crackdown on LGBTQ+ activism.
The previous Cuban Family Code, dating back to 1975, stipulated that marriage was between a man and a woman – not between two people – which excluded lifelong partners from inheritance rights.
The new law goes further than marriage equality – which activists tried to include in the Constitution in 2019 without success – or the ability for gay couples to adopt or use surrogates. It also expanded rights for children, the elderly and women.
The first members of Saralegui’s congregation began gathering on a house terrace in Matanzas over a decade ago to sing and pray.
“The sky was our ceiling and when it rained, we’d all pack into a small room,” Saralegui said. In 2015, with support from the U.S.-based LGBTQ+ affirming Metropolitan Community Churches, they converted a house into their church, decked with wooden pews and a stained-glass cross that hangs above the altar. Underneath, a local Tibetan Buddhist group that meets here during the week stores its musical instruments in an example of interfaith partnership.
“This church is a family,” said Saralegui, who has a tattoo of the Jesus fish on one of her forearms and wears a Buddhist bracelet. “It’s a sacred space, not just because there’s a cross or an altar, but because it’s the most sacred space for these people to come to — it’s where they come to have a safe space.”
After receiving Communion, congregant Nico Salazar, 18, said he was glad to have found that safe space here after members of an evangelical church where he grew up attending asked him not to return when he embraced his gender identity.
“It’s the essence of the Bible: God is love, and other churches should emphasize that instead of repressing and harming others with a supposed sin,” said Salazar, who was born a woman and this year started hormone treatment.
“Sin and love are not the same,” said Salazar, who wore an earring in the shape of a cross.
— In a statement, the pastor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan said the church was not aware of Ms. Gentili’s background, or her avowed atheism, when it agreed to host the Thursday service.
Cecilia Gentili, an activist and actress well known for her advocacy on behalf of sex workers, was celebrated at the funeral as “Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores.”
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York condemned the funeral of a transgender community leader that was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Thursday, calling the event an insult to the Catholic faith and saying it was unaware of the identity of the deceased — or her vocal atheism — when it agreed to host the service.
The funeral, which drew well over 1,000 people, celebrated the life of Cecilia Gentili, an activist and actress well known for her advocacy on behalf of sex workers, transgender people and people living with H.I.V. She was also a self-professed atheist, a topic around which she built a one-woman Off Broadway show.
The service on Thursday was an event that most likely had no precedent in Catholic history. The pews were packed with mourners, many of them transgender, who wore daring high-fashion outfits and cheered as eulogists led them in praying for transgender rights and access to gender-affirming health care.
Catholic liberals, including some parishioners at St. Patrick’s, said the church had done a good thing by hosting the funeral of a transgender person. Some conservative Catholics vehemently disagreed.
One eulogy, a video clip of which was widely shared online Friday, remembered Ms. Gentili as “Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores,” to the thunderous cheers of a nearly full cathedral.
Catholic liberals, including some parishioners at St. Patrick’s, said that regardless of how some mourners behaved, the church had done a good thing by hosting the funeral of a transgender person. But the response from conservatives was fiery.
CatholicVote, a conservative group, called the funeral “unbelievable and sick” and said it was “a mockery of the Christian faith.” The Rev. Nicholas Gregoris, a co-founder of the Priestly Society of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, called it “revolting,” a “blasphemous & sacrilegious fiasco” and “a deplorable desecration of America’s most famous Catholic Church.”
On Saturday, the archdiocese released a statement saying it shared the anger of conservative Catholics over what it called “the scandalous behavior” at Ms. Gentili’s funeral. The Rev. Enrique Salvo, the pastor of St. Patrick’s, said the church was not aware of Ms. Gentili’s background or beliefs when it agreed to host the service.
“The cathedral only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral Mass for a Catholic, and had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way,” the pastor said.
In its statement on Saturday, the archdiocese of New York said it shared the anger of conservative Catholics over what it called “the scandalous behavior” at Ms. Gentili’s funeral.
The funeral’s organizer, Ceyenne Doroshow, said on Thursday that Ms. Gentili’s family had kept her background “under wraps” because they feared the archdiocese would not host a funeral for a person it knew was transgender.
Ms. Doroshow said the family wanted Ms. Gentili’s funeral to be at St. Patrick’s because “it is an icon, just like her.”
On Saturday, the Gentili family was incensed by the church’s criticism and accused the archdiocese of “hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred” in a statement.
The family said the L.G.B.T.Q. community would continue to celebrate Ms. Gentili for how she “ministered, mothered and loved all people.”
“Her heart and hands reached those the sanctimonious church continues to belittle, oppress and chastise,” the family said. “The only deception present at St. Patrick’s Cathedral is that it claims to be a welcoming place for all.”
The Gentili family accused the New York archdiocese of “hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred” in a statement on Saturday.
The day before the funeral, the archdiocese described the service as a routine event, even after it was informed by a reporter that Ms. Gentili was a transgender activist.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the archdiocese, Joseph Zwilling, said that “a funeral is one of the corporal works of mercy,” a part of Catholic teaching the church has described as “a model for how we should treat all others, as if they were Christ in disguise.”
But on Saturday, Father Salvo said in the statement that the cathedral had held a special Mass of Reparation to atone for the funeral. Mr. Zwilling said the event happened that day.
“That such a scandal occurred at ‘America’s parish church’ makes it worse,” Father Salvo said, referring to the funeral. “That it took place as Lent was beginning, the annual 40-day struggle with the forces of sin and darkness, is a potent reminder of how much we need the prayer, reparation, repentance, grace and mercy to which this holy season invites us.”
New York City is home to roughly a dozen gay-friendly Catholic parishes that in many ways reflect the church’s softer tone on sexuality under the leadership of Pope Francis. But St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the powerful archdiocese, is not one of them.
Ms. Gentili, who died on Feb. 6 at age 52, had a complex relationship with religion, which she explored last year in her Off Broadway show, “Red Ink.”
After a religious upbringing, Ms. Gentili said in an interview last year, she came to identify as an atheist because she felt rejected by so many Christian denominations as a transgender woman.
“I used to go with my grandmother to the Baptist Church, and they didn’t want me there,” she said, adding: “I used to go to the Catholic Church, too, and both were such traumatic experiences for me as a queer person. So I came to identify as an atheist, but I know that so many trans people have been able to find a relationship with faith in spaces that include them.”
“Who do you say I am?” asks Jesus in Luke’s gospel (9:20). His words imply he’s not interested in doctrine or theology. He wants a personal response, not a repetition of the party line.
Female mystics during the Middle Ages were one group who felt free to come up with their own replies. In Jesus, medieval women found someone who was “neither male nor female” (Gal. 3:28).
And yet, isn’t maleness an aspect of Jesus’ identity that’s self-evident? How can there be any room for ambiguity? Somehow, though, the personhood of Jesus drew a new perspective even in the context of medieval patriarchy. Today, queer theology affirms that those medieval women were absolutely right: There’s a larger, more inclusive answer to the question of Jesus’ gender.
Before we react for or against that statement, let’s be sure we understand how queer theology defines itself. To be “queer,” according to definitions queer scholars use, doesn’t necessarily mean to be homosexual. Tyson Pugh, author of Queering Medieval Genres (Palgrave Macmillan), points out that queerness is not a term related to either hetero- or homosexual relationships but rather a concept that totally disrupts our ideas about sexuality. Queer theology, Pugh says, makes room for people and ideas that may not fit into the binary categories of “straight” and “gay.”
Women mystics during the Middle Ages would have had no problem with this. And they were quite comfortable with a gender-bending Jesus. These women answered Jesus’ question— “Who do you say I am?”—in ways that may seem to verge on blasphemy.
When we look back at the Middle Ages, though, historians remind us we shouldn’t use our 21st-century lens. Sexuality was not defined then the same as it is today. Amy Hollywood, in her book Queer Theology (Blackwell), writes that in the Middle Ages, “men and women tended to be perceived as the ends of the same continuum rather than as diametrically opposed to each other as they are today.” The words homosexuality and heterosexuality didn’t even exist until the late 19th century, and these binary concepts would not have matched up with medieval perspectives.
This is why no one had a problem with women mystics describing their experiences in the language of a modern-day bodice-ripper; piercing, penetrating, ravaging, burning, and ecstasy are all words lifted straight from their writings. St. Teresa of Ávila, the great 16th-century doctor of the church, writes that her mystic encounters with Jesus leave her “all on fire,” moaning from the “exceeding sweetness.”
In the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen equates Jesus with caritas (love, a feminine being). Sometimes Jesus is Hildegard’s male lover wooing her, but more often Hildegard takes the masculine role of a knight pursuing Jesus, her female lover. In the writings of medieval women such as Hildegard, says Hollywood, “gender becomes so radically fluid that it is not clear what kind of sexuality—within the heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy readily available to modern readers—is being . . . employed to evoke the relationship between humans and the divine.”
Hadewijch, a 13th-century mystic, also names Jesus with the feminine word for love. “He who wishes to serve love,” she writes, referring to her own soul in relationship with Jesus, “must surrender himself into her power.” Then, later in the same poem, she refers to herself as a woman wooed by love, slain by “her touch.” In another poem, Hadewijch writes, “You who can conquer all with wonder! Conquer me, so I may conquer you.”
In a similar way, Mechthild of Magdeburg, also in the 13th century, writes these confusing lines, referring to her relationship with Jesus: “He surrenders himself to her, and she surrenders himself to her.” The boundaries between male and female have become permeable, allowing all the variations of human sexuality to meld into a fluid unity.
In her book Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge University Press), historian Grace Jantzen writes that women mystics describe “direct, highly charged, passionate encounters between Christ and the writer. The sexuality is explicit.” These medieval women claimed the eroticism of their own bodies as a form of spiritual power.
Not all medieval mystics thought of Jesus as a lover—but they still engaged in confusing gender bending, where roles shifted, blended, and merged. Margery of Kempe in 14th-century England identifies with Jesus as being like her in his womanhood, but she also says she gives birth to him as his mother. Her contemporary, the woman mystic Julian of Norwich, describes Jesus’ blood on the cross as resembling menstrual blood; Jesus is a woman like herself. She also insists he is the embodiment of all true motherhood, and she refers to him throughout her writing as “our Mother.”
During the Middle Ages, far more women than men were mystics. This may have been because women identified with the physicality of Jesus’ life, for they too suffered and bled, birthed and nourished, and often died in the process. Their bodies, the very part of them men said was corrupt, gave them entryway into spiritual intimacy with Christ. Intense mystical experiences also freed women from the rules and roles the patriarchy imposed. Their mysticism did not lift them into some higher noncorporeal plane but, instead, grounded the spiritual world in their own experiences as women. Mysticism gave women’s voices back to them. On the grounds of this spiritual authority, women could even write books.
Claiming this authority was tricky, though. According to Jean Gerson, a prominent 14th-century philosopher and scholar, “The female sex is forbidden on apostolic authority to teach in public, that is either by word of mouth or writing. . . . All women’s teaching is to be held suspect . . . because they are easily seduced and determined seducers.” But if women mystics spoke with Jesus’ voice, then men could accept their messages as coming straight from God. In that case, women would be like empty straws through which the divine could flow.
“I am a poor little woman,” writes Mechthild, “but I write this book out of God’s heart and mouth.” Hildegard—a polymath author, artist, musician, botanist, astronomer, and physician—refers to herself as “a weak and fragile rib.” Julian of Norwich, whose theology is as brilliant and relevant today as it was in the 14th century, claims she is “ignorant, weak, and frail.” Only by apologizing for themselves, by casting themselves as invisible and unworthy carriers of Christ’s message, could these women be taken seriously (and hopefully avoid the mortal danger of being condemned as heretics).
And yet, despite the need for subterfuge and apology, medieval women proclaimed the holiness of their own bodies. When they looked at Jesus, they saw someone outside the patriarchy, someone who understood them and affirmed them spiritually but also physically. Through Jesus, they claimed their sexuality in a space where no human male could enter. “You are me,” these women said to Jesus, “and I am you. We are one.”
Christ has been defined in many ways over the centuries and around the world—but the real question has always been: What is your relationship with Jesus? If we expand our answers to this question, looking beyond our cultural assumptions, we too, like medieval women, may find entryway into a deeper relationship with Christ.
Then, far more than those medieval women, we have the power to pull our understanding of the incarnation out beyond our own souls, into our society. Our answers to Jesus’ question can stretch beyond gender, beyond race, beyond creed. Relationship with a queer Jesus might even smash the barriers of hate and fear we’ve built between us.
