What is Queer Theology?

Countless people will be perplexed by the combination of the words queer and theology. Isn’t this a contradiction in terms? What has queerness to do with theology? For others, the word queer itself might be troublesome. It frequently carries with it negative and even painful connotations because it has been used as an expression of ridicule and discrimination in the past. Over the last few decades though, the word queer has been used increasingly by theological and biblical scholars in a neutral or positive sense. Basically, queer theology can be defined as queer talk about God. Patrick Cheng begins by laying out three positive meanings of the word queer for discussion.

To begin with, queer is an umbrella term. It refers to all people with marginalized sexualities and also their allies. Cheng introduces us to two key concepts which will be vital for our understanding as we proceed. The first of these is sexuality, which is defined as the ways in which people are emotionally and physically attracted to others. The next is gender identity, which refers to the ways in which people self-identify with respect to their gender (regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth).

Secondly, queer is a transgressive action; a self-conscious embrace of all that violates societal norms, with a particular focus upon issues of sexuality and gender identity. To be queer is to engage in a methodology that challenges and disrupts the status quo, and that is furthermore determined to overturn convention and authority. To be queer is also to view the world from a different perspective; to reclaim voices and sources that have long been ignored, silenced, or discarded. In this sense, queerness is understood to have a strong prophetic edge, proudly asserting a worldview for which a multitude of people with non-normative sexualities and/or gender identities throughout history have been harassed, excluded, crushed, tortured, and even murdered for espousing.

Third and finally, to be queer is to erase boundaries (with special attention given to the essentialist or fixed binary classifications of sexuality and gender identity). Cheng endorses the notion that binary categories of sexuality and gender identity (i.e. homosexual/heterosexual, female/male) are nothing more than social constructions. He maintains that to adhere to the belief that sexuality and gender identity can be reduced to conventional essentialist categories is to ignore the fact that both occur across a spectrum (i.e. bisexuality and cross dressing do not fit neatly into the traditional socially constructed binaries). He also notes that it was not until the nineteenth century that a person’s identity was defined in terms of the gender of her or his preferred sexual partner.

Cheng intends to draw upon all three of these definitions of queer in this book, but he states that his emphasis will be on the third. From his perspective, the third definition represents the most significant point of connection between queer theory and Christian theology. Via radical love, both are resolved to challenge supposedly natural binary categories which often appear to be fixed and unchanging. Traditional binary categories such as life and death, divine and human, center and margins, beginnings and endings, infinite and finite, and punishment and forgiveness have been deconstructed as a consequence of the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Jesus Christ. Queer theology endeavors to contest and to collapse the seemingly inflexible categories of sexuality and gender identity in a manner that mirrors the Christ event.