An Analysis of Two Perspectives of Queer Christianity

Queer theology is the process of unsettling the common effort to reduce the experience of God and Christianity into simple heteronormative categories and dismantling binary thinking about gender. Queer theology contains two main perspectives: (1) reparative, which states that queer theology is an active theology that uses the processes of queer(ing) and trans(ing) the sacred and biblical texts to disrupt cishetnormative Christianity, and (2) aboriginal, which is the recognition that the sacred and biblical texts are already queer(ed) and trans(ed) and what makes them appear cishetnormative are cultural and societal influences throughout history. Theologian P.S. Cheng explains in his book, Radical Love: Introduction to Queer Theology, that queering is an active process, that one extracts the queer translations from a text or chooses to experience God as a queer God. Theologian Austen Hartke makes the argument for the reparative perspective that the book of Genesis should be read with the removal of binary gender. To contrast, Teresa Hornsby and Ken Stone make the primary argument for the aboriginal view in their book, Bible Trouble, that queerness originates in Christianity from the chaos of creation. Additionally, Elizabeth Edman, in Queer Virtue, argues that Jesus is the queer(er) at the historical origin of Christianity. Both viewpoints on the nature of the queerness of Christianity provide insight into the topic, but the aboriginal view provides a better argument overall