Divinity schools across the country are pushing the concept of a “queer Jesus” and trying to incorporate homosexuality and transgenderism into theological training, according to a new report from RealClearInvestigations.
“Rather than merely settling for the acceptance of gender-nonconforming people within existing marital norms and social expectations, queer theology questions heterosexual assumptions and binary gender norms as limiting, oppressive and anti-biblical, and centers queerness as the redemptive message of Christianity,” RCI reported.
The report provides numerous examples, including Duke University’s divinity school where “future religious leaders conduct a Pride worship service in which they glorify the Great Queer One, Fluid and Ever-Becoming One. The service leads off with a prayer honoring God as queerness incarnate: ‘You are drag queen and transman and genderfluid, incapable of limiting your vast expression of beauty,'” RCI reported.
“Queer theology” continues to flourish, despite its incompatibility with the Bible.
The article reported:
Courses on queer theology are offered at the leading progressive divinity schools, such as Harvard Divinity School, whose spring 2023 catalog lists “Queering Congregations: Contextual Approaches for Dismantling Heteronormativity.” The class trains ministers and educators in “subverting the heterosexist paradigms and binary assumptions that perpetuate oppression in American ecclesial spaces.”
Wake Forest University’s divinity program offers a course called “Readings in Queer Theology” and another course, “Queer Theologies.” The latter course’s catalog description shows how the field has proliferated and branched out into its own subspecialties: LGBTQ+ inclusive theologies, intersectional queer of color critiques, queer sexual ethics and activism, and queer ecotheologies.
“Jesus’s empowered companionship or God’s reign is radically queer in its inclusivity attracting queer outsiders.…Jesus is out of place with heteronormativity; he subverts the prevailing heteropatriarchal, cis-gender ideologies, welcoming outsiders,” a former Jesuit priest who is now a pastor a church that conducts “polyamory nuptial rites.”
Robert Shore-Goss, the former priest, was going to comment to the RealClear reporter until he found out the publication was conservative. He told reporter John Murawski that he “will not help you in the GOP cultural genocide of LGBTQ+ people.”
Some pushed back against the trend.
RCI reported:
Perverse, blasphemous, narcissistic, heathenish, heretical and cultish are the ways in which queer theology will appear to traditional Christians and to many nonreligious people with a conventional notion of religion. Robert Gagnon, a professor of New Testament theology at Houston Baptist Seminary, described the movement as a form of Gnosticism, referring to a heresy that has surfaced in various periods of church history. Followers of Gnostic cults claimed they possessed esoteric or mystical knowledge that is not accessible to the uninitiated and the impure, Gagnon said, a belief that often leads to obsessive or outlandish sexual practices, like radical abstinence and purity, or libertinism and licentiousness.
“They’re only for subversion until they’re in power,” Gagnon said. “And then they’re adamantly opposed to subversion.”
MORE: Students rebel against Gay Pride
IMAGE: Syda Productions/Shutterstock.com
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
Add to the Discussion