The College Fix

Brittney Cooper, an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and africana studies at Rutgers University, has some interesting views about Jesus.

Writing in Salon this week, she posits:

The Jesus I know, love, talk about and choose to retain was a radical, freedom-loving, justice-seeking, potentially queer (because he was either asexual or a priest married to a prostitute), feminist healer, unimpressed by scripture-quoters and religious law-keepers, seduced neither by power nor evil.

As shocking as that sounds, that view or similar ones is not out of the ordinary among some academics.

A Harvard professor has long maintained Jesus was probably married, citing a 4th century papyrus fragment that implies Jesus had a wife.

A 2013 guest lecture at Swarthmore College by a then-prominent homosexual seminary professor highlighted a growing argument among the queer community that Jesus was bisexual.

The scholar argued there are “seven models” to consider: the Erotic Christ; the Out Christ; the Liberator Christ; the Transgressive Christ; the Self-Loving Christ; the Interconnected Christ; and the Hybrid Christ.

“Jesus Christ is the embodiment of radical love because – in addition to crossing divine and social boundaries – Jesus also crosses sexual boundaries,” Rev. Patrick Cheng said at the time. “This is, Jesus’ life and ministry can be viewed as dissolving the rigid line between ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual.’ ”

The notion that Christianity embraces homosexuality is also not new.

This month last year, The College Fix reported on a “Queering Christianity” series hosted at the University of Kentucky that explored the intersections between the faith and LGBTQ community.

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