New Approaches in History and Theology to Same-Sex Love and Desire

Mark D. Chapman, Dominic Janes, Mark D. Chapman, Dominic Janes

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319702100
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319702117
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

This book offers a range of interdisciplinary evaluations of the history of same-sex relationships in the Church as they have been understood in different periods and contexts. The relationships between diverse forms of religious and sexual identities have been widely contested in the media since the rise of the lesbian and gay liberation movement in the 1970s. One of the key images that often appears in public debate is that of 'lesbians and gays in the Church' as a significant 'problem'. Research over the past forty years or so into queer theology and the history of same-sex desire has shown that such issues have played an important role in the story of Christianity over many centuries. The contributors to this volume have all been inspired by the challenges of such revisionist study to explore religion and same-sex desire as a field of opportunity for investigation and debate. They uncover some of the hidden histories of the Church and its theologies: they tell sometimes unexpected stories, many of which invite serious further study. It is quite clear through history that some in the churches have been at the vanguard of legislative and social change. Similarly, some churches have offered safe queer spaces. Overall, these essays offer new interpretations and original research into the history of sexuality that helps inform the contemporary debate in the churches as well as in the academy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Same-Sex Love and Desire—A Time for New Approaches
• 2. Theological Amnesia and Same-Sex Love
• 3. Sexuality as a Guide to Ethics: God and the Variable Body in English Literature
• 4. The Tradition of Homophobia: Responses to Same-Sex Relationships in Serbian Orthodoxy from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day
• 5. Sexual Ethics in the Shadow of Modernism: George Tyrrell, André Raffalovich and the Project that Never Was
• 6. ‘Pope Norman’, Griffin’s Report and Roman Catholic Reactions to Homosexual Law Reform in England and Wales, 1954–1971
• 7. Some Found a Niche: Same-Sex Attracted People in Australian Anglicanism
• 8. ‘The Ecclesiastical Wing of the Lavender Revolution’: Religion and Sexual Identity Organising in the USA, 1946–1976
• 9.  Christ and the Homosexual: An Early Manifesto for an Affirming Christian Ministry to Homosexuals
• 10. ‘Homosexual Practice’ and the Anglican Communion from the 1990s: A Case Study in Theology and Identity
• 11. How Queer Can Christian Marriage Be? Eschatological Imagination and the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions in the American Episcopal Church
• 12. Setting the Table Anew: Queering the Lord’s Supper in Contemporary Art
• 13. The Queerness of Saints: Inflecting Devotion and Same-Sex Desire
• Back Matter