Queer Theology

In this episode, Brian is joined by the inimitable Reverend Sex @reverand_sex (Alba Onofrio), executive director of Soulforce (@souforceorg), for a conversation about queer faith, spiritual violence, and the liberative possibilities of sex-positive theology. Rev. Alba Onofrio is a theologian and spiritual activist rooted in the U.S. South, engaged in human rights work for over two decades throughout the U.S. and Latin America. As a queer, feminist Christian pastor, their ministry moves at the intersections of religion, gender, and sexuality to heal the wounds of spiritual violence and weaponized religion. Also known as Reverend Sex and co-founder of the Sexual Liberation Collective, their global education work seeks to eradicate shame and fear around bodies and sex, reclaiming pleasure and desire as sacred centers of knowledge, healing, and spiritual practice. As Executive Director and Spiritual Strategist of Soulforce, Rev. Alba has published liberatory theological resources uncovering the ideologies of white Christian Supremacy. Their work has been translated into seven languages and shared around the world. Brian and Rev. Alba talk about Soulforce’s evolution from direct action to global culture-change work and unpack the realities of white Christian supremacy. They get into how it is important to name the lasting harm, and healing, around weaponized religion. Rev. Alba shares how moving beyond deconstruction into reconstruction opens up conversations about consent, pleasure, bodily autonomy, and finding the divine everywhere from drag worship to kink spaces, while also highlighting Soulforce’s projects like Shameless Theology and an upcoming book on spiritual violence.  Resources: Learn more about Soulforce at: https://soulforce.org/  Learn more about Rev. Sex | Alba Onofrio https://www.reverendsex.com/about  Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community/ This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. 1 (10s): Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. 2 (13s): And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from 1 (17s): Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how 2 (23s): Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. 1 (33s): Reverend Alba Onofrio is a theologian and spiritual activist rooted in the US South, engaged in human rights work for over two decades throughout the US and Latin America. As a queer feminist Christian pastor, their ministry moves at the intersections of religion, gender, and sexuality to heal the wounds of spiritual violence and weaponized religion. Also known as Reverend Sex and Co founder of The Sexual Liberation Collective. Their global education work seeks to eradicate shame and fear around bodies and sex, reclaiming pleasure and desire as sacred centers of knowledge, healing, and spiritual practice. As Executive Director and Spiritual Strategist of Soulforce, Reverend Alba has published liberatory Theological Resources on uncovering the theologies of white Christian Supremacy. 1 (1m 16s): Their work has been translated into seven languages and shared around the world. And as you will hear In this episode, Soulforce shares a special place in my heart as it is one of the places in which I came back to faith. And what I learned there has informed much of my work and activism and spirituality since then. And so I’m so excited for you to hear this conversation with Reverend Sex. Abba, thank you so much for being here where it’s really exciting to have the Reverend Sex on the Queer Theology Podcast. So thank you for being here. 3 (1m 47s): It is a pleasure and a delight. I’ve been waiting for my invitation with Baited Breath forever, so I’m glad to be here with you. 1 (1m 55s): Yeah, and as, as you know and as like many of the listeners know, like I think Soulforce is what really like radicalize me, if you will. And so there’s definitely like a before Soulforce and after Soulforce. And so I’m so like, I’m just so jazzed I talk about your organ, what the organization that you are now of executive director of, I mean, have been for over a decade so much. And so I’m so glad that we’re able to have you here on the podcast with us. 3 (2m 18s): Yes. I’m glad we could ruin you in the best way. Yes. 1 (2m 21s): I was saying before we started recording you like really like talked, but like in a, in a delightful, delightful way. 3 (2m 26s): Yes. Yeah, yeah, it is like that sometimes. So 1 (2m 29s): For folks who don’t know already, like what is soulforce and relatedly like what is this like Reverend sex project or persona that you’ve got going on? 3 (2m 39s): Oh my goodness. Big questions. I’ll try to, I know it’s like standing 1 (2m 41s): On one 3 (2m 42s): Leg. Short order. 1 (2m 43s): Yeah. 3 (2m 45s): Soulforce has been around for almost three decades now and we started as kind of a rabble rousing, wholly trouble making, calling attention to the issue of lgbtqia plus inclusion in Christian college campuses, in church denominations across the board, but on the heels of a very famous book that was written by our founder Reverend Dr. Mel White and his husband Gary Nixon. And that came out, it was about being gay and Christian in America called Stranger at the Gate. And that got so much publicity and press that this kind of communication strategy of calling a lot of attention to this issue through not being scared of the Bible and not being scared of theology and being willing to take our actual bodies into conservative Christian spaces to try to have dialogue that proved that we were willing to engage and honest and earnest in what we wanted to talk about. 3 (3m 44s): That’s how we started. Lots of civil disobedience, lots of colleges shut down. You would know about that better than I would ’cause you were on those equality rides back in the day. Yeah, that’s how we started. That’s how a lot of people know us as kind of a fearless organization, willing to have the hard conversations about things that most people are taught or taboo or not allowed or wrong or evil. And then over the course of the decades we’ve transformed into more of an ideological change work and culture change work kind of organization. And basically what that means is that we found that at the core of what was oppressing LGBTQI plus people in terms of religious violence is actually at the intersection of almost every social justice issue. 3 (4m 33s): And we call that thing white Christian Supremacy. And that basic concept is just this idea that power and systems of power, whether it’s imperialism, white supremacy, pick a thing, takes on the false robes of Christianity in terms of text tradition lingo, how we talk to get people to be complicit with systems of power and domination. And we claim that as not Christianity. That is not about a faith practice that’s actually about keeping and hoarding power and greed. And so doing some of that work of helping de mythologize all of this Christian ease and all of these traditions that we come from that we find ourselves nodding along to things that are actually really horrific that we wouldn’t normally say yes to except for that they come cloaked with a fancy preacher in the good book and therefore we, we kind of go along with it. 3 (5m 23s): So that’s what we do now. We do it a million ways from Sunday. We really love it. We work in the US South and in the global south to do some bridging work across the academy, the streets and activism as well as the church and communities in general. 1 (5m 39s): Yeah, it’s really incredible. We’re talking about doing like a, an episode or a, a series about like diving into like direct action activism days with so forth. So if people are 3 (5m 48s): I love that. 1 (5m 49s): Yeah. But so that’s the last conversation for another day, I think. But to, but to get at the heart of it, I know that, so folks who are listening almost certainly came from some version of conservative Christianity or, or in some version of like maybe progressive faith. But so I know for a lot of folks either they used to wrestle with, is it okay to be queer or like Gay and Christian, L-G-B-T-Q, maybe they are okay with that, but they have like friends or family who are not fully accepting or like maybe they’re surrounded by love and affirmation, but they just sort of are aware that like Christian based homophobia is an issue. And so they’re like, have a heart for trying to to change that. And so you yes, you really specialize on like this sort of like change work, I think you called it. 1 (6m 33s): So like what, what did, And I know that you’ve taken different tactics over the years, like what have you found, like is the thing that changes hearts and minds but also changes like policy and culture and are those the same things or, or, because I know, I know Scott, we were talking about this beforehand, like so many people just like wanna be like, let’s talk about so ga more. And I like, what does this word in like Romans Yeah, in Romans are in First Corinthians mean, and like blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And all the books that have been written about that, but like, is that it or is there something else? And like what is that? 3 (6m 60s): Well, I am a believer in a multitude of strategies and tactics. So I will say yes to all of the above. Soulforce really specializes in how we work on healing our own spiritual violence. And that’s what we call that either spiritual violence or spiritual terrorism. When it gets to kind of the systemic from all sides level that hurt that comes inside us, really inhibits us from being able to try to participate in democracy from trying to demand our rights or even just respect in our own families, communities, et cetera. Because a lot of us carry these tiny little voices in the back of our head of someone we loved probably or respected who told us something about being queer, being trans, that we put away as illogical and not true when we deconstructed the Bible. 3 (7m 50s): But maybe there’s a little question, especially when something bad happens or something goes wrong, which is like, oh, are were they right? Or does God hate me or am I going to hell? It’s like those little, those little voices that can really just leave really deep wounds or at the very least little splinters that are just irritating all the time. So that we call spiritual violence. And what our strategy is, is we start with working on ourselves because that’s the sphere over which we have the most control. We have the most agency, we have the most excitement, I hope about how we heal our own spirits and our minds. So some of that is education work. 3 (8m 30s): Like until somebody broke down Sodom and Gaura for me, I was like, maybe it does say that. I mean I have been in places like South Africa for example, where I was doing work with a group of LGBT clergy and it was still almost panic inducing for folks to look at the actual text. Even though I was saying, this isn’t about us. It was so embedded in cultural speak, in family speak that so many of us don’t wanna even confront the text to look at it. And so that’s part of it is education. So we have a whole theological library that’s free for download online that talks about gender diversity in the Bible, Sodom and Gamora, Mary’s choice if you’re interested in reproductive justice, a zillion things in seven different languages. 3 (9m 17s): So hopefully you’ll find what you need there. So that’s one piece is the education. Another piece is community and finding other folks who are doing similar work and peeling away so that we don’t have shame around. I can’t believe I believe that. Which is like, of course we believe that that’s what we were taught. Yeah. That’s what our heart was trained to respond to. So we actually have to peel back and unlearn those things. It wasn’t because we were somehow stupid or naive even, it was just what we were surrounded with, like the fish in the water. So we do work around creating community. Most recently that’s looked like our queer feminist podcast focused on Latinx folks in Latin America and the US who are theologically trained, who are working through issues of our time. 3 (10m 5s): And it’s not always just about gender and sexuality, the intersection of that kind of harm, where weaponized religion comes for social justice is true for environmentalism, it’s true for democracy. It goes down the line for so many different kinds of struggles. So we really work at that intersection. And then of course there’s always a celebration. We have this really fun, wonderful experimental spirit space called, or Church of the Queerly beloved, that actually centers drag performance and trans burlesque and spoken word to different things like that from a local community in partnership with us where we do a reverse altar call where we offer a, a symbolic apology or where we do a trans Baptism, where we affirm folks with their new names or a revised communion based on the promise of milk and honey, a land flow with milk and honey. 3 (11m 2s): So we have a lot of ideas and then we execute some of those ideas into practice and try it out and see how it goes. And then try something else and then try something else and then try something else. 1 (11m 12s): I love it. I love it. I could imagine for folks it’s like a little bit like greeking from a fire hose, every, all of that. And so like what, like it either you can take it in in two ways. Like what’s like a day in the life of, of Reverend Sex or like what’s like one story of like impact that like really sticks with you or I guess both. Ooh, 3 (11m 37s): Well, there’s no two days that are the same. There’s a lot of meetings and coordination, but I, on, on our busy years, I can travel the circumference of the earth multiple times in a year. So there’s a lot of bouncing around to be with our lgbtqia plus community, particularly in the global south. And I think one of the things that stands out over and over and over again is that no matter where I am, so for example, I did a workshop with our team in a brothel in downtown keto Ecuador. And so I’m in this brothel with more than a hundred sex workers. 3 (12m 18s): And that same experience can translate into an experience with a group of trans folks in Nairobi and Kenya. There are always these places where I hear really horrific stories actually about weaponized Christianity and about how our people are told that we’re not allowed to have access to God or to tradition or to rituals or practice. I think the thing that sticks with me so strongly is folks will always start with, especially if they’re feminists, which I love this about activists and particularly feminists, they’re like, all right, let’s start with a rib. 3 (12m 58s): Like, and it just turns into this maybe hour and a half, two hour long session about the Bible and the Rowans and the Sodom Mangan war, like just going down list. It’s like testing my chops, being like, do you actually know what you’re talking about? Okay. Then we move from that stage to the next phase, which is like, this is, this is what I was taught. This is the horrible things that I experienced from conversion therapy to genital mutilation all the way down the line. And then there’s always this moment that for me is so impactful where the people or a person in front of me will always confess, I never really gave up on God. I just couldn’t go to church anymore. 3 (13m 38s): Or I couldn’t believe that thing that was hurting me anymore. And that I think is such a testimony to our right as human beings to have spirituality in whatever form and how even those of us who have by and large been either tossed aside, given up on or demonized by a religious tradition and institutions continue to persist in our own faith practices and beliefs in spite of all of that. And that for me is such a hopeful and powerful moment because then it turns into this very frenetic chatter of like, but how can you be queer and a Christian? And you’re a pastor and you’re a woman, and how can that happen? 3 (14m 18s): And are there more like you? And are you the only one? And, and, and and that experience that I could repeat for you on four different continents on any given year is so powerful about what is true about our people and where we are, whether we’re Christian or not Christian is irrelevant to me. We have every right to be Christian and every right to not be Christian, but it is that that reality that our people are hurting and spirit is very much alive and well regardless of what clothing or tradition it takes on. 1 (14m 52s): Yeah. Oh gosh. So a lot of our listeners are in English speaking countries. Most of them are in the United States, like, you know, a smattering of, I mean, we’re, where are we? It’s, it’s wild because we realized a few years ago that I think we’ve had visitors and or downloads to our website from like over 200 countries. Like it’s basically like every country in the world about like seven Yes. Or six. And so like, so it, this also spans the globe like, and also a lot of them are in the US or in like Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, et cetera. And so I could imagine folks that are like at home, not on four continents every, every year. 1 (15m 33s): Like, so there’s like this, all of this like movement happening all over the world. Like what’s the message for the like person at home, whether that’s in like upstate New York or Nebraska or like Johannesburg or like wherever, wherever they might be. Like they’re sort of like in their own home listening. The two of us talk in their ears. Like how does, like what’s, how do you connect the dots between everything out there and your, someone’s like day-to-day life? 3 (15m 59s): Hmm. Great question. I love that question. That makes any sense. I think so let me try. I think that some of us who are full-time gay for pay activists, nonprofit workers, or just like out and proud in our workplace, I think we lose sight of how alive and relevant questions are. And I think in the US those are coming back around where we learned that some of the things that we thought were foregone conclusions in terms of our access and our rights is no longer a foregone conclusion. It isn’t yesterday’s news anymore. It continues to be on the horizon as a growing and ongoing concern. So I wanna just remind us all that there are so many of us all over the world in so many languages and cultures, and the vast majority of folks that I talk to have one never heard of being queer and Christian. 3 (16m 54s): They, it just doesn’t exist in their world unless they’re one of the few who has snuck on to the internet. Our website, I don’t know about y’all’s podcast, but our website is banned in like many countries, including like the University of Mississippi, right? Depending on what country you’re in. Yeah. But 1 (17m 14s): We clear the names 3 (17m 15s): Out, Right? Literally it’s just really important to remember that there are so many of us who continue to exist in almost impossible circumstances, both within the US and outside of the us. And that colonizing religion, the part of Christianity that was used to say that some of us were more human than others, some of us deserved wellbeing, while others deserved less than that is still something that we have to actively fight against. And so if you’re not Christian, but you come from that tradition, then I feel like there’s a lot there for you to pull from learn from and help decolonize for other folks in the world who are on that journey. 3 (17m 59s): And if you are a Christian, us more than anyone has a responsibility around this God that we claim to serve being stolen and co-opted and used not just in the us. Like just because we don’t hear about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Yeah. For example, you know, I’m thinking about Exodus. Exodus, the ex-gay reparative therapy, miserable strategy of trying to make queer trans people straight and cis when, when that fell out of fashion here and there was apologies and all of that stuff, I feel like a lot of people in the US were like, Ooh, we’re done with that, thank goodness. Whew. But that actually that whole operation, that money making operation, because the point was making money, not just trying to quote unquote heal people, just move south. 3 (18m 49s): So there’s a huge operation in Ecuador that’s like flowing all throughout Latin America. That’s also true all across Eastern Africa and Southern Africa. I don’t know a lot about, much more about the rest of the continent, but those things still exist and are alive and around. So us knowing about them and being in solidarity with others who have less access, whether that means you have less access is because you’re in a rural place, or whether you’re in a really insulated bubble inside your community or whether you’re on a different continent. Being vigilant about that and really doing the depths of taking responsibility for our religion or our religious traditions that we were raised in feels like one of the most important things that we can do as people of good conscience, whether we’re Christian or not. 3 (19m 37s): Yeah. 1 (19m 37s): And so that like brings me to, I, one way that folks can be like paying attention and learning is, is one of your podcasts, which I unfortunately don’t speak Spanish, so I’m not gonna try to say it in Spanish, but like your your shameless theology podcast, shameless, yeah. Which is now had this like a season in English, I believe. And so like can you tell us like about, like more about that project? 3 (19m 57s): Totally. So it’s called, which roughly translate as shameless theology, but is a term used in Spanish. It’s a little bit different depending on the place and the culture throughout Latin America, but it almost always has this very gendered most of the time sexualized term. And I think about my granny, I grew up in Appalachia, so I think about my granny would saying something like, have, you know Shane? Like, it feels like that the Za. And so this podcast started during the height of pandemic in Spanish. We did 77 episodes in Spanish, and then we have a whole new season in English that’s focused on the US diaspora, which is brilliant and amazing. 3 (20m 40s): And it’s basically folks who engage with queer and Latinx theology, liberation theology in thinking about how that applies to everyday life for folks in really important issues of our time, whether that’s divorce or human sexuality or the environment or the Bible. And so everybody’s theologically trained and we just sit down and have a conversation where we really try to listen to that person’s whole life and experience and how all those things go together to make this kind of juicy theology that helps us break away from all the things that we are taught. Because often in immigrant communities and first gen communities, we’re totally connected to our homelands and our homelands religious traditions and cycles of life. 3 (21m 26s): And yet the far right, I mean the extreme right almost has an entire monopoly on all the airwaves, you know, especially in other languages. So we started in Spanish, But we recognize that not all Latinx people have access to Spanish either because they come from a non-Spanish speaking country or just because they were raised in the US where they don’t, we also invite all of our allies and other folks to listen. ClickUp (21m 50s): Clickup just solved AI’s biggest problem and it’s saving 4 million teams from productivity loss every day. Unlike chat, GBT and other AI tools, clickup converges all your work into one platform. So your AI super agents have full context to prioritize tasks, execute workflows, and draft documents instantly. Teams using Clickup finish work 30% faster and cut meetings in half. Try CLICKUP for free today and get 15% off AI upgrades at clickup.com/podcast. That’s cli ku.com/podcast In. 3 (22m 21s): But if there’s something, if your only narrative about immigrants or Latina folks is one about fleeing war torn countries or immigration or the border or those poor farm workers, this is a way for those of us who didn’t, I mean, I went to Diviv school And I didn’t get any education around Latin American feminist theology at all. This is a way for those folks, for folks who are interested in that but didn’t have access to it in Spanish, can tap in and hear what we’re talking about in those spheres. What’s alive, what’s the new and current things that we’re thinking about, and how might that help us actually in the US in lots of other issues that we’re facing that countries in Latin America have already faced or been facing in grand part often because of us interventions. 3 (23m 9s): So it’s a really juicy podcast to listen to voices that you wouldn’t normally hear here in, in mainstream media or in even in theological education for the most part. 1 (23m 22s): Mm. Yeah. I mean there’s like some great theology coming out of like Latin America and, and like in addition to like, you know, James Cohen Black Liberation Theology, but like yeah. An American libert theology and like ourselves, like we’re not like place my heart. Yes. And so like, so I can imagine, because we get this also of like Shannon went to Union Theological Seminary, we do a lot, we like, so we like talk these like big ideas. And so I can imagine someone being like, well, it’s great theology podcast. Like, you’re like about ideas, but like how does, like how does that, like why is that important to, to, to to for, for folks to like listen to? 1 (24m 7s): Like what, like what change does that making people? 3 (24m 10s): Hmm. Well let me give you a couple examples. Just from this season alone. Yeah. ’cause I could go down the laundry list of all of our brilliant theologians from past years, but just in this season alone, we have a trans pastor who is from the Texas borderland region who’s doing summer camp for trans kids in this kind of incognito moves from here, moves to from there kind of thing because of that hostile atmosphere. There’s another theologian who lived and survived the dictatorship in Argentina. And so her focus on, y’all probably know of her, Dr. 3 (24m 50s): Nancy Bedford, she does work that’s beautiful but also really relevant to this moment that we’re living in in the us. So hearing her talk about what church tradition was like for her, how she sees theology, the Holy Spirit when she’s talking about one of the most important resources for this moment, for this political moment as prayer that really perks my ears. And I’m like, what are you talking about? Prayer is like a deeply internal devotional practice, whatever. She’s like, no, this is a political strategy because, And I won’t spoil it, you have to go listen, hers is episode two. There’s another person who is undocumented. So they’re coming out and sharing their story of being theologically trained as a person who is part of the DACA and the Dreamers movement who was currently undocumented in the US and her lived experience around that. 3 (25m 39s): There’s another one that part of an episode that is brilliant about someone who is a pastor of a UCC congregation inside a virtual reality called Second Life. So listening to how they provide truly and authentically accessible, meaning anyone in different countries with different needs. And like for example, one of, just a quick example of that is there was someone in Europe, I think in Sweden who was in a facility and wanted to be baptized but was super touch averse and so couldn’t go through the regular process of Baptism, but through their avatar in first life, they literally created the baptismal font. 3 (26m 21s): They invited people, they had it live streamed so that their family could be a part of it. And that person got to have their Baptism through this virtual reality with all of their accessibility needs being addressed in the moment. How brilliant is that? Love it. How brilliant are our queer and trans people that they’re figuring this shit out in real time, in real life. So when I think about how does it impact our lives, one, it gives me endless amounts of hope to see the creativity Yeah. And strategy of our people, but also it helps us just rethink things that we were already taught and we just took for granted or we discarded because a lot of people would discard prayer as like, ugh, that thing that Christians do, but her focus on it as a meditative focusing practice to figure out what is our work in this time? 3 (27m 9s): That’s a very different orientation to spending some time in prayer than going before God and asking for your like honey do list. Right? So that’s what I would say. That’s my short answer. Yeah. 1 (27m 20s): Yeah. It makes me think of Laverne Cox’s idea, like a possibility model, but like, not just like on the, on the scale of a famous person, right? But like here, because like, I don’t know, like I’m not gonna be on a Netflix TV show, but like I, right. But I could perhaps like reimagine prayer for myself or I could like, I’m also probably not gonna start a start a UCC church in in Second Life, but like, they, like it turns something in you right about sort of like, oh, like what, what other possibilities are there? Whether you’re like a pastor or just like a person in the pew or someone who’s like no longer at church. And so I, I love all of that like inspiration. And so 3 (27m 56s): It also helps you connect better to what’s going on in the world around you because we often have feedback loops that just tell us the same things we already know over and over and again in this echo chamber. And so getting outside of that to feel and hear what others’ lived experiences are from a very different position and how they engage with that and what things like radical self-love looks like is a brilliant study in how do I be ready to be a member of a global society because I will encounter people who are different than me, or maybe I will encounter someone with chronic pain even if that’s not my experience. So listening to somebody talk from a theological position and a position of faith around chronic pain is a really helpful entree into being like, okay, I know enough about this little thing that I would know how to engage with somebody if I met them at my church, at my kids’ school in the community. 3 (28m 53s): And that is also such good practice in this moment where we’re taught to be more and more isolated. 1 (28m 59s): Yeah, I know it’s really easy to like the algorithms and the feeds and the like in 24 7 news cycle, like everything is so terrible. The world is on fire And I, And I like not that the world is not on fire, right? Like it absolutely is. But I think, I think that like sometimes like progressive folks are leftist focused, it’s really easy to like only see all the stuff that’s like going wrong and there wasn’t all of the effects that need to need to happen. And so like I, I think it’s like so important for us to all stay plugged into all of like the hope and the possibility and this not just possibility, but the things that are like actually happening. Because I think if I, yes, so I, I think I’ve like curated my algorithm such that like, I, I don’t like, like don’t get depressed by it because I just, the podcast that I listen to the news stories that I’m reading that like the organizers that I’m following, I’m like, there’s like so much amazing stuff going on in the world. 1 (29m 46s): Like you don’t have to just rage tweet all day long. Like you can go be a part of something constructive. And I know we were talking about that a little bit before the show of, but like before we started recording was like, you know, lots of folks don’t need to go through the process of deconstruction and, and you know, what are these clever passage us saying, let’s talk about Sodom and Gomorrah all day long and, and that that’s important work. Like, and also we were, we’re talking about there’s, there’s more to it than that. There’s a sort of a like, like a constructive work. And so I think that’s like a little bit of what Reverend Sex is doing. And so can you talk a little bit more about like moving from deconstruction into like reconstruction and like Yeah. 1 (30m 27s): Not just that, but also like really going there when it comes to, to sex and sexuality. 3 (30m 33s): Yes. I would love to, I think it’s easy to get stuck in the deconstructive part because we really wanna know and understand what happened. And I really applaud folks who are brave enough to look, that’s the most important first step is what is actually true, what’s actually there and being able to face whatever reality is that you encounter after you, after you look at the text, after you look at your tradition, your family, et cetera. But the thing that makes me come alive is what do we do based on all of that that we know to be true? What, what is the way of being in the world that isn’t just constantly being like, God loves us too, God loves everyone there that is, that has its role. 3 (31m 16s): And for some of us that’s, that’s where we start. That’s as much as we can get out as just this clinging to this idea that God loves us also, which is not bad at all. And there’s a maturing in the faith that allows us to be more expansive. Because if we weren’t taught all of that terrible shit to start with, there is so much other basis of queer God. And that’s kind of where Reverend sex work comes in. So I go by Reverend Sex because I found that I kept talking with evangelical preachers in particular and we would start with the Bible and then we would start, then we would move, like once we addressed all the ber passage, us one by one in thorough detail, then we would move on to morality and goodness. 3 (32m 4s): And then it would just be the progression at the end of the day. And I’m talking about many, many long multi-hour conversations. At the end of the day it was still panic around somebody is gonna treat my body, a man is gonna treat my body, how I as a cis man have treated or have been told I was allowed to treat other people’s bodies, whether that’s women’s bodies, children’s bodies, it’s about agency. And so I was like, if the panic is about Butt Sex, what if we just skipped the other stuff and went straight to the Butt Sex? Because we could talk about the Bible, we could talk about morality or we could just get to the thing that is actually why you are clinging to this so tightly, which is what if a gay man flirts with me? 3 (32m 49s): And it’s like, well why don’t we just start there? What if a gay man flirts with you, what kind of theology, what kind of belief do we need to have in practice so that you straight cis man have bodily autonomy and agency to be able to say, thank you so much, I’m not interested, I’m not gay, or whatever the other million things that you could politely say and move it along, what would it, what would we need? Right? And then we’re talking about the good stuff now we’re talking about bodily autonomy. Now we’re talking about the right of bodies to be well to be informed. We’re talking about consent, all these words that I literally never heard growing up. So I just use reverence, sex as this shortcut to say, I’m willing to talk about the things you’re most scared to talk about. 3 (33m 34s): You wanna talk about masturbation, you wanna talk about orgasms? The number of women I’ve talked to who are scared to masturbate because they think God will condemn them, send a lightning strike down, aren’t satisfied by their husbands. I mean these are straight women that I’m talking to of many ages, like 50 sixties more by going by Reverend Sex, I’m kind of leading with this. I’m here to talk about those things. So you don’t need to be shy. So when we get in session, lots of people are willing to talk about lots of things because I’ve just laid it out there on the front line. So I use Reverend Sex, I use Audrey Lorde’s uses of the erotic as my primary source text and comparing this idea of the erotic energy that is in all of us as the Imago de and connecting with that source of power that is instilled in the spark of the divine that is within all of us as made in the image of the divine. 3 (34m 31s): And using that to be like, okay, if we start here, what’s possible? Because just look outside. Like just think about the types of plants. Even if you’re not a plant person, think about the types of teas, just the types of teas that you can drink or the flowers like I truly believe, I didn’t come up with someone else said it, but I truly believe that God’s orientation is much more drag queen than anything else. Because some of the colors in the same flowers, you have oranges and pinks and reds and purples, like the world is so full of difference and diversity and wildly creative things that I’m like, if you start from that position, God made this world, this earth, this cosmos, and it has everything from black holes to wooly worms, right? 3 (35m 18s): And everything in between. We actually as queer and trans people are very normal. I know that’s a bad one for some normal, yeah. But we actually fit in really, really well here. What doesn’t make sense is that God would create these very rigid boxes that people are supposed to stuff themselves in. And anything other than that is bad there. There’s no proof of that anywhere around us in all of creation from plants to animals, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s kind of the orientation of the constructive theology is what happens if we start by knowing God through what God has created, where do we as queer and trans people fit in? Where do we see shame or not shame? And then from there we can see the constructs of white Christian Supremacy for what they are, which is instilled ways of thinking and frameworks to try to control us in different forms. 1 (36m 5s): Yeah. Oh man. When you were saying like at the end of an eight hour day, people are like, what are we? But like Butt Sex is like gross, I feel like. Like, oh man, I like, I think the two big things I took away from my time with the equality, right? Having like hundreds and hundreds of these conversations was like, oh, it almost always, if you just keep digging, it comes down to like, but the parts just don’t fit. Or like, I don’t know, that seems kind of weird to me. You’re like, ooh. And so like you gotta like, you gotta address the like the ooh at some point. Yes. And that people think that they want, the other thing that I like figured out was that like people think that they want like academic dissertations, which like they do oftentimes. And also the thing that’s gonna like move people is like stories. 1 (36m 48s): Like it’s the, the Bible is not, yes, there’s like some tical laws in there, but the Bible is mostly stories. Like that’s how we humans like transmit values and meaning. And so like, yes, I’m like we gotta skip breaking down Leviticus and like get into like let’s talk about sex like and and relationships and consent and autonomy. And it’s also like why Queer Theology is like it, it’s not just for queer people, right? It benefits like straight people too. Yeah. Because like we can break, it’s an oppo, it’s an invitation to like break up these conversations and be like, for straight CI men, for straight women, for like straight relationships. Like there’s just so, so much, so much bigger. And so I love 3 (37m 27s): Invitation. Absolutely. I actually think that that’s part of why God created us is that for those of us who have to deal with our gender and sexuality in order to survive. And let me be clear that not all of us do survive. Yeah. But for those of us who make it to the other side of that very hard soul searching difficult process, we have something to teach everybody else because we have lived through what it means to come to terms with our own beings, our own desire, our own truths, and find God on the other side. So I actually think that that’s a perfect place where there should be leadership amongst our community, not just for our community, but for the wider community. 3 (38m 8s): And you know, you said earlier like what changes hearts and minds? And I would, And I started with talking about how we work on ourselves because that’s where we have the biggest fear of influence. But I wanna just wrap that up to circle back around to that by saying, when we are sure about what we know, whether that is me and God are okay, I can’t tell you the number, number of grandmothers who have been pacified and calmed by their queer and trans grandchildren saying, grandma, me and Jesus are okay. Like I promise we’re okay. It’s like at the end of the day, if someone loves you, they want you to be well with yourself, with Jesus, with God, with whoever. 3 (38m 48s): And doing that soul searching work does that. And so I would say the thing that changes the most hearts to minds, at least in my experience, is me claiming my own truth about my body, about my desire, about my life, and about God of being like, I have a prayer life. Me and God are good. We talk a lot. We have some very difficult and beautiful and affirming conversations. And that work I think is actually the hearts and minds work. But we have to, we have to have done the soul searching and had the community support to be able to get there, to be able to say, this is what I know to be true about myself, and this is what I know to be true about my relationship with God. 1 (39m 24s): Yeah. Amen. And And I, I see sometimes, like in our work, L-G-B-T-Q Christians will be like, well I, I’ve like repaired my relationship with God and Jesus and so like, I just like wanna make sure that everyone else hears the good news about Jesus. Like, I want my partner to become Christian. Or like, maybe they’ve like, it’s okay to be gay, but like you still have to accept Jesus to go to heaven. And so I think that there’s also like some work that I know, like when I talk about my work, like it, it often comes up like at gay clubs, at gay beaches, I mean people who are like not ostensibly religious. That’s fun. It’s delightful. And like, I think that like people, I don’t, I dunno what people imagine, but like, and the ways that people like light up, like they don’t necessarily wanna go to church. 1 (40m 5s): They might not even ever like wanna pray or God, but just like a, the idea that someone is like going to places and talking about come chops and communion in the same sentence is like, oh my God, that’s yes, that’s possible. But also like, oh, well maybe if I can see this dance floor as like something sacred like that, that like jives with me. Like yes. And so like I think there’s also an element of like deconstruction, reconstruction of sort of like what works for you, like might not be what works for some other queer person and, and to like finding all so the the different ways that people like might access the divine. 3 (40m 41s): Yes. Brian, thank you for bringing that to the fore. It’s so true. And it’s so important because I will also do work with a, with a group called the Sexual Liberation Collective. And we’re working with sex workers, sex healers, sex educators, and the folks, I mean, I would say my primary ministry with that group of people is the kink community within queer and trans world. And that includes sex parties and other forms of expression. And we do writing workshops. It’s all kinds of really fun and interesting things. Many of the things that other people would be like, even queer people will be like, Ooh, this makes me a little uncomfortable. 3 (41m 24s): Right? And so doing some of that own work, even those of us who feel like we’re marginalized or on the outskirts to understand well how if the divine is actually in everyone and in everything, where might God show up? And what if that include things like the bedroom or what if that included things like BDSM kind of engagements, like those kinds of things feel so alive and potent and so right for the possibility of connecting with the divine. If we get out of our own way without having to stuff God, this is the thing we tell. We get told that we’re supposed to be stuffed into these tiny little boxes, and then we turn around and do the same thing with God and try to stuff God in these tiny little boxes and be like, why couldn’t God be in a sex party? 3 (42m 9s): Why couldn’t God be interested in pain and pleasure? And what that has to do with each other? Like, all these things are possible. Let me tell you, if you never thought about it before, it is possible. And some of our deconstructive work, knowing how religion has been used to hurt us, is understanding how other pieces of that same religion might be being used to hurt others and not perpetuate that same harm against others. Even if it’s a slightly different flavor or texture or with different words or with different marginal identities. 1 (42m 38s): Oh my God, you, this is, we can’t do a whole other something on this because I, I touch upon like kink and pain and submission in my book Lovey Monogamy. But like it’s about yes, not monogamy most, more generally. And so like, but I’m like, oh, there’s like, there’s another book in me about like, just about kink and faith and it’s like, it’s rich absolutely richly. 3 (42m 58s): I think kink theology has stuff to teach all of us actually because just the work consent, I never once heard that in all of my years of church. And even now in progressive Christianity, I don’t hear it very often. And the, the ideas and the scenes of the construction that, of imagination that happens in kink communities, I think those of us who are working out in the wider world for social justice and change could really take a lesson from that level of creativity, world building, construction, all of that kind of stuff. And I do a, a writing workshop called Jesus is a Power bottom. And 1 (43m 37s): I love that 3 (43m 39s): It’s, it’s a really fun workshop. But basically what it does for, for folks is it takes the relationship of how you see your relationship to God and then it switches the roles of the scene and says, well what if God played a different role? What if you played a different role? What if that role was sexual? Like how might that engagement feel and look and change what’s in your body in terms of your ability to connect with God? Because as one of the brilliant participants of the first time I did the workshop said is like God is just, this was a pk, so a pastor’s kid, and she was like, it just feels like God’s an evil Sky daddy sometimes. And sometimes that’s fine, but other times that’s not fine. 3 (44m 20s): And it really stuck with me of like, what happens when we take God out of that evil Sky Daddy role and actually engage with God as a real entity. So we have a lot of fun, but it’s also about doing some of that deep deconstructive work in an embodied way. 1 (44m 38s): Yeah. Okay. So talking about workshops makes me, makes me wonder if, if folks are late listening at home, what are like various ways other than obviously the podcast that folks can either like get plugged into, learn about support, be a part of experience, your work, y’all’s work, either you’re work or soulforce worker? Both. 3 (44m 56s): Yeah. Well, on my website, reverend sex.com, you can, it says Find me at church or something like that. And it often has where I will be preaching next or where I’ll be, we do conference circuits, so you’ll find us at places like Creating Change sometimes if you hit those kinds of places. Or Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina where I’m from. And then I would just say, check us out on social media soulforce org or if you speak Spanish at robot for the Spanish language stuff. We do lots of workshops. I think on the horizon we’ll do a community cohort kind of class around the upcoming book, which is on spiritual violence. 3 (45m 37s): And its different forums. And so we often will do a community course. When we did it in Spanish, we had a community course that had like a hundred folks from 10 different countries that kind of came together reflecting on their experiences, learning some of this new vocabulary like spiritual terrorism or spiritual trauma and then moving from there. So just stay tuned. There’s so many different places to plug in. 1 (45m 59s): I love it. And I always like to ask folks like, what’s, what’s coming down next? And so can you share a little bit more about, about this, this upcoming book? 3 (46m 6s): Yeah, I’d love to, well, we’ll have another season of, in English and it will be centered around some of the folks who contributed for this book project, which is called Spiritual Violence and Religious Phenomena that defile the Faith. And it’s a US adaptation of a book that we put out a few years ago in Spanish that we did a whole Latin American tour and it identifies white Christian Supremacy, spiritual violence, spiritual terrorism, religious abuse and spiritual trauma. So for folks who are hearing those words for the first time and they don’t quite sure how they go together and what that means, it’s a book that has somatic practices. 3 (46m 49s): If you feel that in your body, it has surveys of, you might have been a target of this kind of violence, if these things have happened to you or you’ve experienced them, it has intellect for those of us who are sapiosexual has the intellectual theory parts that we dive deep on what these concepts mean. And then there’s some space to engage with real people’s case studies of real lived experience, real people’s lived experiences that explain that idea or that that framework a little bit more for each of those five concepts. So that’s coming out in January. We’ll be doing lots of things around that, around those issues, how it connects with Latinx communities, how it connects with gender and sexuality. 3 (47m 30s): And folks should look very much look forward to that. 1 (47m 33s): I love it so much. And so for folks wanna connect with you on Instagram, you’re Reverend Sex, Reverend Sex over there. Any other, any other places that folks should be connecting with you 3 (47m 44s): At Sexual Sex Lib, co Sexual Liberation Collective, sex Lib co or soulforce org all together, those are the places where you’ll find us on social media and we’re out and about a lot actually. So you should get on our Soulforce newsletter. We send one a month. It’s not a overload of emails, but it gives you a look into things, it gives you all the latest connects to the podcast or other things that we’ve done that you have access to from your home. 1 (48m 13s): Also if, if you give money every now and then you’ll get something in the mail. I got like some really sweet art not not too long ago from y’all on like a postcard or a magnet or something. Yeah. That I have in my fridge. So that and and, okay, so let’s, now that the, now that the logistics are out of the way, we like to close by asking like, what’s one thing that’s bringing you joy? 3 (48m 31s): Ooh, so much joy. So much joy. I’m doing this series called Love Letters with Reverend Sex, which I was a little bit strong armed into doing. They’re shorts, 15 to 30 minute reflections. And even though it, it was hard to get me to say yes, it’s been bringing me so much joy to revisit some of the things that I was taught as a young person. And looking back decades later, I just completed my 10th anniversary of ordained ministry. So you know, almost 20 years of digging into these kinds of things and going to school for them. And it was, it’s been a real joy to kind of circle back and be like, oh, the Rapture was a big deal growing up. 3 (49m 15s): The Left Behind series really impacted me. I don’t know if you were paying attention, Brian, but in many parts of the world that we were supposed to have rapture happen, not twice, but three or four times. Just this past fall. 1 (49m 28s): Yeah, 3 (49m 29s): Yeah. So, So just circling back and being like it, searching my own heart and spirit and being like, what is true about that for me now? And how do we engage in conversations that can be healing for others? Because that, for example, was a hugely traumatic thing for me when I was a young person. So being able to see, oh, we do heal over time, we do this work and it’s hard and we do land in a different place that’s more loving and more open and more ourselves. And that brings me a lot of hope. ’cause I’m a very stubborn person, so it’s hard change is hard for me. 1 (50m 2s): Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for being here, Alba. It’s been a delightful conversation and hopefully the first of many. 3 (50m 9s): Yes, what a pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. I’m so happy to be here. 5 (50m 13s): The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q Christians and straight cisgender supporters. 2 (50m 22s): To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. 5 (50m 30s): We’ll see you next week. The post Butt Sex, Baptism, and the Divine with Rev. Alba Onofrio appeared first on Queer Theology.

Fr. Shannon is joined this week by author Margot Douaihy (@NeonMargot), and this is very exciting for him since he is a huge fan of her Sister Holiday series! Margot is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College as well as the author of the award-winning, nationally bestselling Sister Holiday series, as well as the poetry collections “Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace, and Girls Like You.” Her debut mystery, “Scorched Grace,” won The Pinckley Prize in Crime Fiction and was named a Best Crime Novel of the Year by the New York Times, Guardian, and others. In this conversation, Margot reflects on her Maronite Catholic upbringing, her queerness, and how those threads come together in her noir mystery series, which features a devout, tattooed, riot-girl lesbian nun navigating crime, desire, justice, and faith in New Orleans. She discusses subverting the crime genre, queering narratives of law and order, desire and celibacy, found family, and the sacred possibilities of storytelling. There is so much holiness in storytelling, and Margot’s work shows why art and community matter more now than ever.   Resources: Learn more about Margot at https://www.margotdouaihy.com/  Buy her books: https://www.margotdouaihy.com/scorched-grace  Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community/   This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. (10s): Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello and welcome back to the Queer Theology Podcast. This week we have a special guest, Margot Dhe, And I cannot wait for you to hear this interview. Margot is the author of one of my favorite trilogies of books, the sister holiday series. It’s an incredible, incredible series, and we’re gonna talk a lot more about that on the podcast this week. (54s): And in general, I just think you’re gonna love this conversation with Margot. So here is Margot’s official bio, and then we will jump into the interview. Margot dw, he lives in North Hampton, Massachusetts and is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. She’s the author of the award-winning nationally bestselling Sister Holiday series. In addition to the poetry collections Bandit Queen, The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace and Girls Like You, Her debut Mystery Scorched Grace, won the Pinkly Prize in crime fiction and was named a Best Crime Novel of the Year by the New York Times Guardian and others. Welcome, Margot. Welcome to the Cariology Podcast. I am so, so thrilled to have you here. (1m 36s): It’s gonna be so fun. Thank You. Thank you so much. I am just a huge admirer and fan of yours and thank you. The community that you nurture and care take with and among and co-create. I just think we need more, more community and kind of affirmation of Queer Theology and just expansive ways of thinking about the structures that give us comfort and grace Yeah. In life. And I’ll say it, especially now. Yeah. So yeah, I’m, I’m just very grateful for the work that you do, Shea. Well, Thank you. Appreciate that. And likewise, likewise. (2m 17s): And we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about the, what do we do now a little bit later, but I, I would love to maybe start out with, for folks who are not familiar with you and your work, we’re gonna talk about the sister holiday series here in just a minute. But I, I’m wondering if you can maybe just share a little bit about your life and also maybe, maybe a bit about your spiritual journey, however, however that makes sense for you. Absolutely. So I currently live in Northampton, Massachusetts, but I’m from Scranton, Pennsylvania. And it’s really hard to talk about my life as a, as an artist, as an educator, or even my aesthetic without my religious upbringing and my spiritual life. (2m 60s): And that’s connected to my ethnic heritage. I’m third generation Lebanese American, and our church was also our family kind of community heartbeat. So I grew up in the Maronite Catholic Church. So that is the Catholicism of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and the diaspora. It is campier than a Roman Catholic mass, I would say. Which, just saying something. It’s just saying there’s, it’s longer, there’s more gold, there’s more drama. (3m 40s): And we have these murals in our church, St. Ann’s of, in West Granton, of just, so, it’s just this incredible merger of the semiotics of the Middle East, cedar trees, Lebanon and Jesus Christ, and all of our saints. And it’s like the, you know, really fascinating. It was always really interesting to me. I apologize, my cat is also crying in the background part, part of my spiritual journey. I grew up just utterly fascinated by the, the world of just knowing there’s something greater, bigger that we don’t see, you know, the nice creed, what is all that is seen and unseen, that there’s always this, not even shadow side, But we are not alone. (4m 31s): You know, we have this kind of greater connectivity in the, it’s both exterior and interior in the connective tissue. And so growing up, it was just a huge part of my life. You know, I went to Catholic school and my teachers were nuns. And so there were all these just facets of my epistemology of like learning about what I thought I knew that were shaped by Catholicism, and not just Catholicism, but a really kind of intense discipline, like almost a disciplined, quite dogmatic take on Catholicism. ’cause these, the lines of it trace back to like the crusades. (5m 15s): So people like expanding the word out to, you know, all these areas and protecting kind of a very strict vision of Catholicism. And so also alongside of my fascination and what I thought was incredibly elegant and beautiful, and also carnal and dian and weird, and, you know, in noir in many ways of like sitting in a pew and seeing the, you know, body of Christ and thinking like about murder and murder mysteries and greater mysteries in the ways that they nest. But was also realizing that I was queer. And so that was not acceptable, you know, all of the things that you could just sort of like input into Gen X, you know, growing up in the Rust Belt. (6m 4s): And so I moved away from attending mass every week, you know, in, in sort of my, I guess, late twenties, thirties. But I’ve never considered myself non-religious, even though I don’t have the kind of freedom that I sort of used to have. It’s a little slippery and porous. There’s a lot of kind of porosity around it because I’ve never excised that really personal relationship that I’ve had with faith. And also the fact that I turn to Catholicism in ways that are really so instinctual, they’re almost pre-verbal. (6m 45s): Mm. And that’s always fascinated me too. I try to stay curious about it. And so merging all of that and all of those like influences and my deep, deep, deep love of mystery fiction and mystery narratives and the ways that they kind of invite you to puzzle through a space and time with someone. And so I knew I always wanted to write a mystery series, And I thought, who, how can I recast the typical hard boiled, hard-nosed kind of insider, outsider, obsessive investigator in a radically feminist and re comparatively religious lens? (7m 30s): And so Sister Holiday was born, she, the character is a 33, starts as a 33-year-old nun who makes a countercultural move to go from Brooklyn in sort of like this out and wild fun life. And she’s in a, you know, post punk riot girl band. And she makes a move to here’s my cat bear, to part of our Queer Theology to join a convent, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood in New Orleans. And so she, you know, puts herself in these put of investigation and her spirituality, her reli deep, deep religious faith. (8m 13s): She is pious, she is, you know, liberation theologists. So I wanted to create a transgressive interiority that felt really real to me and textured. So she’ll think of, you know, bikini kill lyrics or lunatics in the same breath as like, you know, Exodus or the Ians or, you know, various gospels Yeah. That they’re braided together and they’re not, so that we don’t have to choose how we kind of move through the world, that it’s just very much merged merger. Yeah. So she doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to a whole lot of people who believe that life functions better with like tidy categories and silos and partitions, and they could be only one thing in the world. (9m 1s): And so she is a mystery to herself. She’s a mystery to, you know, the sisters in her convent. ’cause you know, she’s, she’s tattooed stem to stern. She has to wear gloves and, and a scarf to, to cover her tattoos, to put the focus on the work and on the sacred and on God and not on herself. And so she’s been a really fun character to write. She’s been a really reparative character for me to write. And in many ways gives me just so much more appreciation for the nuns that I grew up with. Who are my teachers, who are my mentors. And always, I don’t want to curse on this podcast, but like, you know, no, you can a bad just badass feminists that prefigured my understanding of second wave feminism and even third wave. (9m 47s): So, And I import a lot of that, a little bit’s exaggerated, but it’s authentically true. So in the convent, the sisters, they don’t drive, they walk everywhere. They grow their own food. They’re anti-capitalist. They are, they minister at the prison, the prison birth project, you know, praying and playing music with people who have either just given birth or about to. And that was inspired by a lot of the social justice work that the Catholic nuns that I knew growing up were not only deeply invested in, but leaders, they were leaders in this work were reparations, community solidarity, mutual aid, like Catholic nuns. (10m 34s): You know what I’m saying? Yeah. You know, yes. It’s not that. But then at the same turn, it’s not monolithic. We have the res schools, you know, native American communities in which nuns are really colluded with the era of identities. And so all of these different facets kind of fed my interest in creating a mystery series. And particularly a very gritty r rated noir inflected mystery series led by a genuinely devout none who was also very, very idiosyncratic. Yeah. So long way of, of introducing you all to me and, and to this character of Sister Holiday. (11m 14s): Yeah, no, that’s so great. So yeah, so the first two books in the series are Out Scorched Grace and Blessed Water. And I gotta say, like this book is all of my niche interests wrapped in one. It felt like if someone was writing a mystery series just for me. So it’s, it’s been such a gift to spend time with Sister Holiday. I wanna pull out two different threads if we can, of course, specifically debut mystery series, start with and like kind of detective novels and not all of that, because like I am a huge fan of that genre and also often feel bad about my love of that genre because it’s so, yes. (11m 56s): You know, law enforcement and propaganda and kind of a often like law enforcement acting outside of the law to bring vengeance and what they would call justice, which is like not always justice. And so I’m wondering if you can just talk a little bit about like, wrestling with that genre and then bringing Right, this queer sensibility. Because, because the other piece of, of many mystery novels is that queer and trans folks are often the victims, right? Like queer or the, or the bad guys or the whatever, where we end up being cast in the kind of negative light. (12m 37s): And so you, you not only have this, this queer person who is the protagonist of the novel, I don’t, I wouldn’t say she’s always the hero, but at least like aiming towards heroics maybe and working within the genre conventions. Like how, how were you thinking about that as you engaged in this work? Well, fellow fan here, fellow genre fan. So I see you And I hear you on that. I’m a fan first. You know, as always (13m 11s): A mochi moment from Sadie who writes, I’m not crying, you’re crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn’t have to convince him I needed a GLP one. He understood And I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks, Sadie. I’m Myra Ammo, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit join mochi.com. Sadie is a mochi member compensated for her story. (13m 41s): And it’s true, there are so many of the kind of bestselling titles really propagate that a type of old formula that in many ways keeps it very tidy and straightforward, that there’s a good guy, quote unquote good guy and a bad guy. And there’s one recipe for satisfactory resolution. And I completely see the almost inverse of that. I think mysteries to me about asking questions, yes, about getting satisfactory, delicious feelings at the end that feel satisfactory in terms of the narrative, but really pushing and testing the boundaries and even the very questions of that undergird at all, what is justice? (14m 26s): What is criminality? What’s the crime behind the crime when folks make decisions? And then, you know, are, have to face the consequences of those decisions. When did it start? When did all of that start? Where are the structural institutions that in many ways actually create the conditions for combustibility and criminality, and why are they never brought into the question and equation of justice? And when we queer work and when we queer the conversation, we expand it, we test it, we contest it, so it all becomes a contested territory. And the, the mysteries that I love the most kind of are, they offer that familiar deliciousness within the mystery of like, ooh, clues and red herrings, and what’s a vital clue versus what is a misdirection and someone we can deeply invest in. (15m 25s): And you know, certainly in this case we have the anti-hero, flawed individual, but hopefully someone that, you know, you wanna follow into these bizarre situations. And so I love mysteries for the fact that we, when queer and trans authors, and I’m part of a really wonderful community, we’d love to share with your, your, the folks watching called Queer Crime Writers. And so, you know, Robin Geiger’s, brilliant series of legal thrillers based on her 30 plus years as an attorney. And the protagonist of her books is a trans woman whose name is Aaron McCabe. (16m 6s): And so, you know, bringing in all of these life experiences into like, so folks that read John Grham and Scott Ot, like will love her books, and we have this incredible, beautiful, rigorous trans lens that’s like shaping it. It’s, it’s just so perfect. So I see mysteries as an ideal place in many ways to, you know, ask really big questions, but keep it entertaining, keep it gripping. And, And I think it, the markets shows us, like readers want the new, within the familiar, they wanna know like, okay, if I’m going to the genre section or I’m watching a mystery on like, there’s certain little hallmarks I wanna hit. (16m 46s): But I think the more we can bring bigger and kind of more on, I guess, unique questions and nuanced questions about justice and injustice, authority, agency, authenticity, gaslighting, who gets to create the story that we live in, who’s taking up real estate in our head and why, you know, who leverages deception and affect to gaslight millions of people to vote for them. You know, these are questions that queer and trans writer writers are asking all the time. And then in a mystery space, we get all of that with like, as sumptuous clue engagement. (17m 31s): And so I love it for that. And I, you know, I still see, still see, like if I sit on a panel at Thriller Fest, you know, with former cops and detectives, it’s sometimes interesting to see the power dynamics. You know, and having said that, a good friend of mine is a former prison warden. I just blurbed his book, James LAIs. And his work is what you would consider like classically propulsive and really reparative in asking also these big questions. So I think we’re seeing changes for sure in the mystery and crime fiction space, still have a ton of work to do, but I think it’s more important now than ever for, for queer and trans people and the crime writers of color, for example, which was yeah. (18m 19s): Like, you know, a big force in the scene. But more than ever we need, you know, new and fresh Voices. Yeah, yeah. Kind of piggybacking off of that, I, I’m curious as to your take on how, how subversion of gen genre can help to like, shift our minds and how we’re thinking about things. So, so again, like thinking in, in the prison and law and justice space, where many of us, I think I’ll speak like many white folks, have ideas right? About how the system works, how it should work, that may or may not be reality for people of color for Yeah. (19m 2s): Women and poor communities for indigenous folks, right? So I, I’m curious if you can just talk a little bit about how you maybe think genre and subverting genre and playing in genre can help us to, to reframe how we think about systems and, and maybe live into new ways of being. Does that question make sense? Oh, Of course. And it’s actually something I think about and invest in all the time. I believe that the art that we read and write not only reflects or should reflect the lives that we lead in our multicultural reality, but also I think influences new ways of thinking, new discussions. (19m 44s): So I think it’s this actually this kind of loop that’s quite self-contained, where the more we wanna seek expression and the more we express, the more new pathways open up for paradigms for thinking. And so, and there’s a lot of, you know, interesting theory if folks wanna read it, you know, there’s an interesting essay by literary theorist toter of called the origins of genre. And it’s, its main kind of argument is that genres or sub genres are new way, you know, forms of art are basically concretized by societal needs. (20m 30s): So for example, thinking like one example, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl came out in 2012 and is sort of spawned this new movement and crime narratives where their, you know, marriages get blown up and w you know, wives disappear themselves for various reasons to expand on their agency. And the, the sort of current is we want this, we wanna talk about this. Mm. We are living these lives. It is not so easy or sile to say that there’s one way to be in this world. That there’s one way to do gender, that there’s one way to do marriage, that there’s one way to learn. (21m 14s): We are, you know, we say multitudes. And so I think your question is spot on where subverting and reimagining tropes is giving new life, giving, helping people feel seen, which in turn lends to the next generation new voltage, new spaces to be, to be seen. And empathy where we can say, oh, you know what? I don’t know about that. Like, I’ve never, you know, you know, met a lesbian or something, but like, maybe I’ll through reading, I’m like, oh, I can hold space in this moment. Take that and apply it. (21m 55s): You know? So I believe it’s, I think that art is actually crucial. It’s not a privilege that, you know, it is a privilege of course, but I actually think it’s the stuff of life to keep kind of a way of, yeah. A way of thinking, a way of, of being in the world that is forward thinking and, you know, really kind of sacred actually. Yeah. Yeah. I, I wanna ask about desire and sublimation of desire and desire in religious spaces and in queer spaces. ’cause you have this right, really fascinating character in Sister Holiday, who is a young woman who chooses to take a vow of celibacy and join and join this, this convent. (22m 43s): And I imagine that some queer folks listening might be like, upset by that, nervous about that. Like what are, like, what, what is this saying about queer desire and, and yeah, and, and the rightness of queerness, like within religious structures. And so I’m just wondering if you can talk about that a little bit. Oh, absolutely. I’ve had many conversations on this topic, And I think it’s great. I think it’s, you know, contested territory and there’s, you know, I think it’s wonderful. I love it if hey, love it or hate it. Just for me, the worst is if there’s no opinion, you know, or like, oh, what I, maybe I read it, I don’t remember. (23m 27s): So I think for me, you know, desire and, and again, you know, thinking about the passion of Christ and even the etymology of the ways that we understand that word, passion and suffering and desire, they, they bleed out. And they, And I wanted to, in many ways also noir asks us to think about things that, that lift off the page and they, they’ve moved beyond their contained spaces and they almost can deform and reform and all that stuff. So for me, I wanted desire to be for Sister Holiday, something that propels her forward and sets her back. (24m 9s): I want that kind of carnal lust that she has, you know, for her, the sort of ex love of her life, Nina as well as her contemporary Rosemary Flynn, to be a way of seeing herself and of feeling all of herself, and also something she has to continually question and, you know, keep alive. And I think that for some people it might seem like completely paradoxical to have this woman say, yes, I am like proudly lesbian And I am celibate. But I think there’s just something that there’s, when there’s something that doesn’t make logical sense and it can make authentic sense, I am in, I’m interested in investigating that. (24m 57s): And I think that plays out in a variety of different ways. It’s like, I’m also trying to explore what it means to take a vow. So she’s on this path to take permanent vows for a lifetime, you know, of devotion in a way that gives her complete access. So I think for the character, desire is part of that, part of the path for her. And so, so it’s sublimated in some ways, it’s deeply, you know, rolled around in another ways. And more than anything, I’m just, I think I’m trying to create a, a character who has misbeliefs about herself, and she has, like, that I think is part of her unraveling of the mysteries and solving of the mysteries. (25m 45s): So it’s like continually, like there’s the who done it or the why done it, you know, and divine ruin is, it’s a, a drug ring. You know, there’s like, each book has its own kind of ecosystem of crime and mystery. And for her it’s, you know, where, where also does need versus want kind of splinter. And that is, you know, not to make my answer cr too crazily long, but it’s also about addiction and asking about, I don’t know how we understand ourselves in moments of kind of when we’re in love and also feeling like, you know, within ourselves and then also outside of ourselves. (26m 27s): So it’s a multifaceted kind of multivalent quality that I want her to just richly, richly, richly explore in every kind of possible way. Yeah. And also like the things that give us pleasure in life, food, her friendships, like with Revo or Bernard or her brother and the world of New Orleans, like plucking a plumb off of the tree. And the ways that in, in some of the nuns that I’ve read a lot about, like Sister Simone Campbell and Sister Helen PreOn talk a lot about fire and lust and desire, and they talk about St. (27m 11s): Augustine’s, you know, relationship to that as well. I just, again, I just kind of go back to it. It’s not just one thing. Right. And I think people, different people have different ways of kind of living out that truth. Yeah. And so I wanted the character to play with that too. Yeah. And I will say as a reader, one of the things that I loved about Sister Holiday is that I never had a sense that she was wrestling with the rightness of her queerness, right? Like, it, that wasn’t a part of it. It was a, how, how am I gonna embody this in the world? And like, what does that look like for me to do in a healthy way? And, and asking them all of these questions around that. But it wasn’t a, I’m gonna, I’m gonna like, like that, that she still had doubts about whether her queerness was okay. (27m 59s): And so I really appreciated that because I think that sometimes, And I I’m saying that because I think that sometimes people will pick up a book like this and be like, oh yeah, there’s gonna be a we that weird conversion therapy narrative. And that is not what’s happening here. Which I really appreciated. I really appreciated that there was like, she’s such a nuanced and interesting character in both her queerness and her religiosity, which I really, really Appreciate. Thank You. Yeah. Thank you for, for pointing that out. I, and for feeling that. And in many ways it’s like, and she jokes about it. She’s like, I’m a lesbian separatist, you know, if anything, and she plays with that, like the sort of lesbian lethario kind of character and as well as sort of like, again, the hard boiled jerk who’s like into the, the hot dames and like whiskey and that’s, that’s like her, yeah. (28m 50s): And so the cigarette and just the attitude and the brio is like, this is like the most lesbian character you would ever meet. And she’s hell of it. Wow. So I’m, you know, that, that really interests me too. And I also wanted to sort of take a pile driver to those notions of, again, like the ruling religious authorities that say what you can be and who you can be and who you cannot be depending on what your belief set is. Yeah. Sort of like an exact counter argument to that dogma. (29m 31s): And I get some, you know, I get a lot of folks that are like, oh, I’m a lapse cat Catholic and I’m queer, And I love this, this heals me. Thank you. And also folks saying like, no, she would, you know, it’s like a lot of debate about if you were truly to take a permanent vow, like all this stuff. But for, for me and for this character, her queerness is holiness, queerness is a, and to be queer and trans to be in the community is actually a promise of something better. To me, it’s the kind of a sense of like worship of possibility and hope. And I, you know, she has to defend that a lot in the books. (30m 14s): Yeah. Yeah. The same way we have to defend that. Yeah. I have, I have two questions more about this series. One is, I, I’m curious, you know, you’re talking about the cigarette and earlier, you know, bikini Keel and kind of the, the riot girl scene. I, I’m wondering if you can talk about the aesthetics of, of punk and Riot Girl and the aesthetics of Catholicism and, and honestly like of New Orleans and like how you thought about bringing all of that together. I think they were in an incredible conversation. Yes, Yes. The aesthetics of, you know, I’ve always, as I mentioned before, always had this vibe that Catholicism was kind of inherently noir because we wrestle with this question of, of kind of original sin. (31m 7s): And in noir all characters are fallen. And there’s a, you know, while I don’t, that’s not the guiding principle of the book, it’s like there are these questions of, if we’re all, we’re all together in this moment of trying to understand who we are, that there’s actually just something really special and pressurized and sacred about that. But the beauty and the theatricality and the maximalism of being in a Catholic church on Christmas at midnight, mass, I don’t know, it could get more kind of queer and theatrical and camp than that I’ve always felt seen in those spaces with like the, the dripping flowers and, and incense kind of knocking me out. (31m 60s): And in punk where you’re just kind of a sweaty col one of many, like a, a a thumb, you know, a collection of like bodies kind of worshiping the, the experience of art. You know? So whether it’s just like, and in for folks who don’t like, know punk or even post-punk and Riot Girl, it’s like, check out some videos of X-ray specs or bikini kill and like, just lat gray, whatever. But like, just some of those early groups where like people are just gathering in like basements and like gross venues and even like bedrooms and stripped down or just like, sorry, it’s like a pilgrimage. (32m 48s): A sense of power. A sense of power and community. And I feel that it’s like, whether it’s church upon a post punk feminist, like mosh pit, I don’t know. There’s just, there’s a lot of overlap for me authentically that I feel is like, so it just gives me so much power. Mm. Yeah. And, you know, comfort in a way of understanding a very, very hard world. Yeah. And, And I was, I was also really thinking about this community, right? This community of nuns and Sisters in the Sister holiday series, which is a, a very small community, right? (33m 30s): Which many we’re seeing, I think that across Catholicism, right, many of the, many of the communities of sisters are aging and shrinking. And to have this very small community that an outsider comes into, but also wants to join it, it just made me think a lot about community and how we’re forming community and how, how community works when we don’t all agree. And I wonder if, if you can say, just say a little bit about what, you know, why you chose to, to invent this tiny community of sisters in New Orleans and, and what the smallness of the group says and does. (34m 17s): Definitely. That’s another great question and one that is ever so pertinent right now, but it’s just like little, this little order there are at the start, there are four. And, you know, they talk about how at the height there were, you know, dozens. And that mirrors my own experience kind of growing up and seeing churches either combine or just shed congregants or clothes altogether. And then similarly, when certain sisters, you know, die that the, the ants kind of close. And so there’s just tho those trends that I think are on the macro context, but for me it was like, there’s so much truth in the LGBT community about found family. (35m 2s): And so many ways I thought the sisterhood of the Sisters of this blend blood could be a model for a different kind of a found family that also echoes the sisterhood of holidays band, you know, back in Brooklyn where there’s a lot of infighting and, you know, almost not like the opposite of group think and different personalities, distinct personalities, but can agree on a shared value, a shared greater purpose, something bigger to invest in, and, but also in a way that can hopefully use the beauty and glory of diversity to strengthen, not diminish. (35m 50s): And so in some ways it’s like allegorical, but it was also really fun to write all of these sisters to get, you know, and it’s just really fun to write. It’s really fun to hang out with these women and, and also explore their own paths. And in some ways I wanted to counter the erasure of nuns. They don’t often get the spotlight, you know, it’s like the pope and the bishops and archbishops. And I wanted to, in some ways, offer a counter narrative to that erasure too. Yeah, yeah. No problem. I’d love to zoom out a little bit and, and ask, you know, we are in, we are living in interesting times to put, to put not to find a point on it. (36m 35s): And I, I’ve been seeing a lot of narratives lately, even from artists saying, you know, art doesn’t change anything. And, and it wasn’t a why bother or we should stop creating, but there, there was this kind of sense of like, we should know that maybe a, a right sizing of the impact of artists, which I have some strong opinions about. But I’m, I’m curious for you, you know, like in this time, for you, what is the role of the artist and, and how are you thinking about art making in these times? At the risk of, again, sounding redundant, I just don’t think it’s ever been more important to stay close to the forces and the moments that give us a sense of who we are. (37m 29s): So comfort in a book that sweeps us away or entertains us, characters that shake us up, that stay with us. Beauty of slow moments. Like I just, last night my wife And I saw the new Kelly Reihart film called the Mastermind. It’s a, her aesthetic is like slow cinema. It was so slow and just, oh, it was almost just fetishizing moment to moment interactions. Art to me is about asking who are we? Who are we? What is why? You know? (38m 9s): And in many ways it’s these religious questions as well, like the divine mysteries and art is that direct portal in, it’s like, it’s direct injection of a way to explore the world, be with the world, be curious about the world, get weird about it, and in ourselves. And it’s, it can stay with us. I mean, I’m sure you, you know, you’re an artist yourself, like writing scripts and like the films that stay with us, the, the characters and the moments, and we might not understand why. And then like 20 years later we’re like, oh my gosh. Like, I think we once chatted about Terminator two. You know, I’m like, like the glory of, that’s why pop culture matters. (38m 55s): Art matters, subverting tropes matters, queer and trans art making matters. You know, the like more inclusive, like, we get, I think the, again, more kind of ju jumper cables to the soul. I think we get strength from art and art making. It gives us like a sense of purpose in a very, very chaotic, tyrannical, terrifying time. So I always think when I feel overwhelmed and which is daily, we could sit down and write something, even a line. It calms my nervous system. (39m 36s): It helps me like remember what matters in a way that is very real and embodied. And then when I read, you know, read something, it’s from your soul, into my soul, yes, from like one mind into my mind, but it’s actually very sacred. I think art is, is a sacred, sacred endeavor. And so I just think it’s more important, and maybe right sizing is in, it’s interesting to think about for sure. But I think in terms of gaslighting, tyrannical, author, author authoritarian narratives and affect, I think we can counter that with storytelling. (40m 22s): I think that’s really it. We’re in a quote unquote post fact moment, which is horrifying. So what do we do with that? Yeah, more art, more storytelling, storytelling that can break through. What does that mean? I don’t know. Keep it weird. Keep it authentic. I, I, I think my belief in it is more, more powerful than ever. And yet, you know, I, I’m not saying that I think like books are gonna get out of, get us out of an apocalypse, but like anything else, I just, it’s each individual person and how do we reach, you know, the individual soul through that soul work, you know? (41m 10s): Yeah. I, I’m curious, you know, as you’re, as you’re working with students right now and, and they’re experiencing overwhelm or like, how do I write at a time like this? What are, what are the things that you’re telling them? And many of them are so distraught in the same way that I am. The first I I say is I am with you. And we’ve always had our challenges and problems. We live in an extremely imperfect society with power structures and systems that incentivize greed and vice. You know? And now we’re in a moment of, instead of virtue signaling, virtue signaling, it’s vice signaling. (41m 53s): So who can be, you know, kind of more aggressive and incendiary, et cetera. So the first is like, I, I’m with you a hundred percent and that I understand this moment. And so I think my, my response is to say, how can the anxieties or the fear that you’re, you’re living through right now be channeled into the work that you’re creating? How can you, you know, be with it and not abandon yourself and allow this space to be one of empowerment, curiosity, fuel companion. (42m 36s): You know, we’re never alone. If there’s a book around, we’re never alone. We have, we’re with somebody, we’re in somebody’s head. You know, we, it’s somebody reading, being in sister holidays head, me being in someone else’s, you know? So I, I offer that to the students as well. And I, it’s the easiest question in the world to say, you know, what’s a book that’s changed the course of your life? And they’re like, rattling off, you know, a billion books. It’s like, okay, well now you are, you are part of this living ecosystem. You will be one of the books that then somebody else in a few years says, that book brought me back into myself. (43m 23s): That, that, that character is living in my head forever. And so it’s, it’s again, that I kind of a belief, belief in the fact that we’re all kind of creating something that will live, outlive us as well. Like our books and our art. They outlive us. Yes. I wanna close by, you know, traditionally when we do interviews, we ask, what’s one thing that’s bringing you joy lately? And so if you wanna answer that, great. But also I wanna ask, what’s one thing that is bringing you hope lately? Moments like this, moments like this and the fact that when you step outside of the social media corners, quote unquote, and the, you know, the glowing rectangle that is like forever bringing attention downward that just, we’re, we’re human animals. (44m 21s): And we are, I think, beautifully kind of raw and vulnerable in the ways that humans have always been. And that’s also the, that’s also hope because the joy is real. You know, the like at five minutes of a spontaneous dance party with, with friends is like the most electrifying thing in the world. And so that the ability to just take a walk with somebody and be reminded of the kind of sacred beauty that is just moment to moment awareness and also, you know, wonderfully subversive books. (45m 4s): And, and again, I’m gonna point to Robin ge legal thrillers with just the, that the success of the series, you know, named New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year, the her last book. That gives me so much hope that, you know, when it comes down to it, that people want, you know, we wanna, we wanna move towards, towards healing and the light, and that we can still hold space for that in all of our, our messy contradictions. Well, thank you so much for being here. I I wanna tell folks to again, go out and get the Sister holiday series, the third book in the series, divine Ruin comes out in January, January 13th, 2026. (45m 51s): The first two books are out now. And so, like, this is a great time. If you haven’t read the series to go pick up the first two and then you won’t have the wait, so the third one, because it’ll be ready for you. And so yes, get these, get these series. And thank you so much for taking the time to, to talk today and to, to share your heart and, and where your head is at. This has been a really lovely conversation. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q, Christians and straight cisgender supporters. To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. (46m 33s): You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. We’ll see you next week. The post Lesbian Nuns, Punk Rock, and God with Margot Douaihy appeared first on Queer Theology.

We’re excited to welcome @angelajherrington back to the podcast to talk about her new book and overcoming Christian patriarchy. For over a decade, Angela has helped women break free from the grip of Christian patriarchy and reconnect with the wisdom they were taught to silence. She is a trauma-informed coach, strategist, and author, who has walked alongside thousands through deconstruction, spiritual burnout, and the messy, beautiful work of building a life that feels whole and true. Her work brings together spiritual insight, nervous system awareness, and grounded practices that create lasting change. In this episode, Fr. Shay talks with Angela about her new book, “Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods: Liberating Feminine Wisdom from Christian Patriarchy” and how it is building on her first book about faith deconstruction. Angela explores how Christian patriarchy and nationalism shape our inner lives, limit our sense of self, and disconnect us from embodied wisdom. She discusses archetypal feminine wisdom beyond gender binaries, the power of intuition and embodiment after high-control religion, grief over missed developmental stages, and the healing potential of reconnecting with these feminine archetypes. This conversation offers a compassionate invitation to self-nurturing, wholeness, and reclaiming wisdom that was never meant to be lost. Resources: Learn more about Angela Herrington at https://angelajherrington.com/  Buy Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods: Liberating Feminine Wisdom from Christian Patriarchy by Angela Herrington Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community/   This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. 1 (10s): Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. 2 (13s): And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from 1 (17s): Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how 2 (23s): Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello and welcome back to the Queer Theology Podcast. Today we have a special guest in Angela Harrington. I’m really excited for you to hear this conversation. So, here’s a little bit about Angela before we jump in. For over a decade, Angela Harrington has helped women break free from the grip of Christian patriarchy and reconnect with the wisdom they were taught to silence. She is a trauma informed coach, strategist, and author who has walked alongside thousands through deconstruction, spiritual burnout, and the messy beautiful work of building a life that feels whole and true. 2 (1m 3s): Her work brings together spiritual insight, nervous system awareness, and grounded practices that create lasting change. So let’s get into it. Welcome, Angela. Well, Angela, welcome back to the podcast. I’m so thrilled to have you back to talk about your new book. Thanks for being here. 3 (1m 19s): Yeah, thanks for having me. 2 (1m 21s): So it’s been, it’s been, I think, probably at least a year, maybe even more since we had you on to, to talk about your first book. And I, I’m wondering for, for folks who missed that interview, we’re gonna link it in the show notes, but would you just tell us just a brief, brief bit about your first book and maybe anything that you’ve noticed in, in the time since that book came out? 3 (1m 47s): Yeah. So the first book really honed in on supporting people who already constructing, deconstructing your faith without losing yourself was just really timely and, and really important for me. And I think that it served, I think it served as a guide for a lot of people who weren’t sure if, if they wanted to hang onto their faith or not hang onto their faith, but they were sure that they were tired of people telling them what they should and shouldn’t believe. Right? Like, there’s just a lot of, yeah, deconstruction is fine as long as you don’t lose your faith or you don’t give up these core tenants. And so when I wrote that book, my, my goal was really to provide a container and some really valuable questions for people just to sit with and chew on. 3 (2m 35s): So it, it, it helps people with deconstruction. It talks about sort of some steps that you can take, maybe some stages that you can go through, but it’s not a Google Map 12 step program, because that’s not what deconstruction is. So really, really rooted in curiosity. Lots of questions I joke about, you know, this is the kind of book you may wanna throw across the room a couple times, and that’s fine. Go ahead, do what you gotta do, but I’m here to support you, not to give you all the answers that I think you should have. And that’s, that’s kind of the, the Tldr r version of the book. 2 (3m 11s): Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. And now, now you’ve written your second book, which is Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods, Liberating Feminine Wisdom from Christian Patriarchy. It came out in October for, yeah. And before we even dive into what that book is, I, I’m curious for you why that felt, why this book felt like the next thing to write after, after your book about deconstruction. Like, what was the journey that led you from writing about deconstruction to really diving into this, to this next topic? 3 (3m 50s): Yeah, so this book really, I, I don’t wanna say it’s part two of the first book, but it, it does feel like it’s on a continuum. It does feel like it’s time to go deeper with these conversations about Christian patriarchy, because I think that we can only deconstruct so far without really getting into this sort of Christian nationalism, Christian patriarchy. I mean, those are, you know, practically twins, right? Really getting into that conversation about how it has shaped culture, but more importantly, how it, it has shaped us internally. So a lot of my clients who were going through safety construction or who were just, you know, trying to sort out who they were and, and how to get over some limiting beliefs we’re always shocked to, to really dig into how much of the, the negativity and the doubt and everything was learned. 3 (4m 44s): And, and that’s really one of the things that I think everybody in deconstruction, I think goes through those conversations of like, okay, what have I learned? What have I unlearn? This book goes much, much deeper into talking about feminine wisdom and, and women in general and kind of, you know, historically how femininity has been seen in the church and how it has been corrupted and twisted in ways that then just, I mean, we’re, we’re literally holding ourselves back because of what we believe. And when I say we, you know, men, women, queer folks, non-binary folks, all of us are, are exposed to these tropes and these horrible stereotypes about gender. 3 (5m 30s): And there’s so much that’s wrong with to that’s wrong with society today that is really rooted in this idea that, that masculinity is valuable and strong and powerful, and femininity is weak and dangerous and needs to be colonized. It needs to be controlled and co-opted, and that’s what’s holy. Rather than saying no, actually there, the, it’s not binary. It’s not that forced binary. There’s good in all of us, there is messiness in all of us. There is strength and weakness in all of us, and really tapping into what it actually means to lean on feminine wisdom outside of this sort of co-opted view of, you know, sitting quietly raising kids, like kind of the proverbs. 3 (6m 16s): Even Proverbs 31 is a little, you know, that gets a little twisted into kind of a trad wifes type thing. But we just saying, okay, if we, if we can pull back a little bit from the mythology of, of Christian patriarchy, what’s actually true and, and how would we have lived had we not been swimming in that pond of this toxic religious system? And that sort of, so again, it’s, it’s not necessarily like book one, book two sort of chapters or, or volumes, but it’s very deeply connected to the work that I’ve done over the last decade or so as a coach and just saying, where are we getting stuck and, and what do we need to call out from inside of us that is learned behavior? 3 (7m 3s): But it just has happened for so long that it feels natural and it feels like it’s part of us. 2 (7m 8s): Hmm. Yeah, man, there’s so much I wanna dive in. I, but I, I feel like, I feel like the first question I have to ask, you know, this podcast of mostly probably queer listeners, probably lots of trans and non-binary folks who might be feeling nervous, right? About talking about femininity and feminine wisdom as opposed to masculinity and masculine wisdom. So like, how do you, can you maybe just define how are you talking and thinking about those terms? You mentioned it’s not a binary, but I feel like anytime we talk about feminine masculine, people are already like, but it, you’re talking about it in a binary way, And I know that you are not doing that, but like, you know Yeah. 2 (7m 55s): For anyone who might be feeling nervous about that, can you just talk about that a little bit? 3 (7m 60s): Yeah, absolutely. First of all, that nervousness is totally valid. Like our society kind of crap right now, having conversations that are nuanced and that are fluid. So I, so first of all, yeah, like, just take a deep breath and know that you’re not overreacting. Like you’re not overreacting at all. That’s a, that’s a natural valid response to the world that we live in. For me, when I talk about mothering, when I talk about feminine wisdom, when I talk about these terms that are, you know, Christian patriarchy, typically genders in a certain way kind of skews in a certain way. I’m talking about feminine wisdom from an archetypal perspective. 3 (8m 40s): And so if that’s, if that’s something that’s new, we’ll talk, I’m sure we’ll talk about a little bit here, But we go into the book a little bit more about what that means. And it’s, it’s more, it’s so funny because I think, I think that that talking about feminine wisdom is probably one of the most egalitarian conversations we can have if we can get back to its truest self. So when I talk about women, you are who you say you are, right? Like you, you know, it’s not, I’m not gatekeeping that, And I, I hope that anyone who hears this feels safe enough that they’re not trying to justify who they are or, you know, where they fit into some sort of manmade spectrum as far as gender goes. 3 (9m 28s): Because feminine wisdom’s in all of us, you know, even, even even the most masked people walking around in our life right now, there is feminine wisdom that’s there too. And I think part of the, part of the nervousness, part of that uncertainty and that question of, you know, is this a safe space to, to talk about gender comes from the hate of all things feminine, right? Because this hyper false idol of some sort of, you know, unattainable masculinity is like the thing that we’re told is the most powerful, the most sacred, the most godly, like yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, anything that’s not, that kind of gets looked down on. 3 (10m 14s): And there are different degrees, right? Intersectionality is real. We can talk about lots of different overlapping layers, but there’s like, you fit that, like you’re inside the circle of Christian patriarchy’s definition of men, or you’re outside. And from my perspective, that is, that’s just, that’s a method of control more than observation of people. It’s not rooted in science. It’s not even really ru rooted in Theology or, or philosophy or ancient wisdom. So wisdom, I’m, I hope that there’s no pressure coming from me when I say women or when I say feminine to, to fit into somebody else’s box of what that means. 2 (10m 58s): Hmm. Yeah. And I wonder, yeah. Talk. Can you talk a little bit more about the idea of archetypes? I I think that the archetypal language, it’s so fascinating to me, and it’s so interesting. Yeah. You know, like your book is so much of an echo of, of my, no one taught me how to be a man. And, and in that I’m talking about like Iron John and Robert Bly, which is also like, so much about the archetypes. And, And I, and we have so much, I think, inherited wisdom around gendered expectations that are, that are both like, can be really beautiful and also like really weird. So I wondering if you can talk about that. 3 (11m 39s): Yeah. I think for me, the big difference between sort of the, the framework that most of us know and the archetypal frameworks is that there’s not these hard delineated containers, right? There’s not these hard lines. So for example, with women, a lot of times we sort of have this, we talk about feminine archetypes. We sort of have this arc that’s age related, but it’s, it, it’s not like, oh, it’s not like in Christianity where you’re like, oh, you’re a maiden, you’re a virgin, you haven’t had sex, you’re not married. You’re a completely different human being with different value than people who have had sex that are the same age, right? 3 (12m 20s): It’s not, it’s, it’s not, it’s just not as judgy as that, right? It’s not as controlled as some of these really tight-fisted conversations that, that are driven by unhealthy religious systems. So the archetypes, we have the mother, we have the maiden, the crone, which the, the old witch in the Woods, we talk in the book, the Crone, that’s who she is, right? She’s the, the older woman who a lot of times is full, full of wisdom, but not necessarily valued by our society, and is therefore a little bit of an outcast. An outcast. But she’s also kind of okay with being an outcast. And she’s ornery and she’s like, you know what? 3 (13m 1s): I don’t have to chase your approval. I am who I am. And like, I think there’s so much beauty and strength in that that is really, I don’t know it right now. The world is just bonkers, like, just irrational, right? Like, I, like they, there’s just so much that doesn’t make sense. And for me, I think looking at these archetypes and saying, okay, these seasons have existed for as long as people have existed, and these, these archetypes, both the, the masculine and the feminine have been woven throughout all of our stories throughout all time. So no matter how hard the church, the unhealthy aspects of the church are trying to obliterate them, they’re still there. 3 (13m 47s): Which means we can still tap into the pieces that, that give us strength. And not just the grown, but you know, there’s a wild woman, you know, sometimes she’s called the sorceress. There’s a wild woman, there’s a maiden. There’s a lot of different stages. And I especially think people who’ve grown up in these really cult like high control religious spaces, you can go back and tap into the stages that you missed. Especially doing some inner child work and, and doing some, you know, just navigating things again that you would’ve had access to stages of, of archetypal femininity that you would’ve had access to, had that oppression not been there. 3 (14m 28s): So it’s a, it’s fascinating. It’s really easy to nerd out. I’m actually having a really hard time like cring it down because you And I always have such deep conversations, I’m like, oh, we could talk about this for three days. But there’s other stuff to talk about too. So 2 (14m 44s): I, what about like, going back And I that experienced in my own life both as like someone who grew up in a high control religious space, but also as someone who like grew up queer and trans in that space without language for it, and who then transitioned a little bit later, right? Is this real deep sense often of feeling like I’m behind, I’m behind other people, I’m behind where I should be Yeah. And, or that I’ve like missed out, right? I missed out on, I don’t know, the normal high school experience, not that looking back I’m like, I don’t think I would’ve wanted that. 2 (15m 26s): But, but there is this sense sometimes of like, oh, I, I feel like I, I feel like I missed out. And I, I feel like that’s probably an experience that a lot of the people that you talk with and work with have also experienced. Yeah. And so I’m wondering it, can you just riff on that, that experience a little bit more and, and what, how you’ve kind of coached people through that? 3 (15m 51s): Yeah. I, I think what I think right now, when we talk about resilience and we talk about navigating the world today, it is really, really, really important to be aware of those pieces that we missed. Because nourishment that we missed creates usually creates tender spaces. And tender spaces are scary, right? Tender spaces, especially when, when they’re getting stepped on. But we don’t know why, and we don’t know why they hurt so bad. And like how many times have we said, oh, I’m overreacting, or, oh, I just wish I could not be so emotional or not be whatever. 3 (16m 33s): A lot of times those are the tender spaces where we needed nurturing and we didn’t get it. Or where, you know, certain normal, like you said, normal experiences, air quotes, where those listed on the podcast, normal experiences didn’t happen. And we didn’t get that learning from those experiences that maybe our peers got, or, you know, maybe people who had a different support system got. And the reason that that’s important to resilience is because we are in a season where most of us aren’t gonna get our needs met. And I hate saying that I wish to God it wasn’t true, but I, I think that that is a fair statement, especially for people in, in marginalized groups. 3 (17m 19s): I have a but ton of privilege And I will absolutely acknowledge that. I also live in the Midwest in a really conservative, lots of fundamentalist religion around me in that kind of space. So, you know, I, I don’t have a, a progressive coffee shop with a bookstore that I could go sit at and find like-minded people. There’s, you know, there’s one an hour or two away, but I’m not gonna be able to just go have that community that nourishes me and, and, you know, helps anchor me in hard times. So what that means is I’m gonna have to be really conscientious about caring for my tender spaces in ways that maybe in a less crazy time I would be able to lean on community more. 3 (18m 7s): ’cause a lot of us are really tapped out, right? My friends who are activists, we’ve had this conversation all year long. Like, there’s just so much. There are so many needs. And so if, especially if we we’re kind of in a place of privilege where we have some resources, it may not feel good to, to lean on people and to ask for support from people who are caring a lot more than us. And so our activism is figuring out what we missed, figuring out those tender spaces and learning how to nurture and care for ourselves in a way that allows us to, to self sustain so that we can shoulder things for other people. 3 (18m 50s): And we have to be really careful, right? Like, I, I, if we’re doing work on ourselves for other people, we’re probably still tangled up in some of that. Oh, it has to be productive to be worth time. Otherwise it’s just selfish. But healing is not selfish. It’s not, you know, it’s essential. And if we’re in a place where growing up we, we didn’t get some of the things that we needed, or maybe we did, maybe we had a fantastic childhood, but then we had a couple years that were just catastrophic and, and created a lot of trauma in our life. And we have a lot of tenderness from that. 3 (19m 30s): Okay, well let’s, let’s figure out how to go back and connect with the us in that moment that just needs some love. And again, just doing it from a place of I deserve this, doing this from a place of healing and presence rather than like, oh, I gotta heal these things that are negative at me. ’cause then I can go save the world. You know? That’s that internalized, like, gotta be productive all the time, white saviorism kind of thing. And we just have to learn how to check out from that because it’s exhausting. 2 (20m 7s): Mm. Yeah. Yeah. I know that for a lot of folks, again, who grew up in kind of high control religious spaces, the idea of, of intuition, right? Of trusting ourselves Yeah. Is something that we’re very much encouraged against, right? Yeah. Trusting yourself is the, you know, the root of everything, evil and bad. And so as we start to do this healing work as, or as we deepen in this healing work, what, how, how, how would you talk about intuition and this idea, you know, in your book is wisdom, I think often talked about as a, as a more bodily intuitive wisdom Yeah. 2 (20m 54s): As opposed to an external wisdom. Can, can you just talk a little bit about, about that and also like how folks maybe start to get over the fear of, of leaning into that, that wisdom as opposed to a wisdom that comes from outside of us? 3 (21m 12s): Yeah, and you absolutely hit the nail on the head. Feminine wisdom is embodied, right? It, it’s, it’s very, very challenging to stay connected to all the different aspects. To stay connected to your, to your physical body, to stay connected to your curiosity, to those, those tender emotions that a lot of times we’re told are junk. And we need to just get over it. Your intuition, your soul, like all of these different parts, they’re, they’re more connected than, than what we’re led to believe. And so when we’re taught in these religious spaces to just shut off that part of us and shut off this part over here, and well, if you’re a dude, you can trust that part. 3 (21m 54s): But if you’re a woman, you better put it away. And you know, the people who are saying that, like, in their mind, non-binary folks don’t even exist. So that, again, it goes back to this very rigid, like, here’s the parts of you that are valuable and productive. Here’s the parts that aren’t, and you need to do something about it. But in all actuality, you can’t separate us out that way. Like, you can’t separate your brain and your heart. It doesn’t work. Like, I mean, maybe in some sci-fi movies it works, but when we’re talking about day-to-day living, I had a therapist a long time ago who I was actually my therapist, and she said, you can absolutely shut out the bad stuff. 3 (22m 36s): You can repress the old stuff that hurt. You can, like, you can do all of that, but you need to know that when you do that, you’re also blocking out the good. And not just memories, but like feelings, emotions, levels of connectedness with, with people. So when we’re thinking about all of these different pieces, anytime that we’re separated from our body, anytime that we’re separated can be complicated. Anytime we’re disconnected, anytime we’re disregarding our body, we’re easier to control and to confuse and to exploit. Because those, the intuition, those gut sense of like, Hmm, maybe something’s wrong here. 3 (23m 17s): Or maybe, maybe that, I dunno, that I like what that person is saying. Maybe I should take a step back. Like those voices get shut down when we’re not embodied, when our nervous system is activated. Think of a fight flight, and there’s a whole bunch of other words that go in there. But for simplicity’s sake, fight, fight, fawn and freeze. Right? If you’re being chased by a bear, honest to goodness, your emotions in that moment don’t really matter. We need all of the energy pumping. We need all the adrenaline, we need our oxygen flowing, like all those things. ’cause we need to get away from the bear. But if we’re walking down the street and we see somebody in a, you know, in a hat or something that has slurs on it, that’s probably not the same as the bear. 3 (24m 7s): And so we, it’s good to have a reaction, but if we’re always walking around like we’re running from a bear, then there’s like 75% of our brain and our intuition and the rest of our body that we’re just ignoring like it’s offline because our nervous system is so activated. And I, I, I wanna put a little asterisk by this, because the more marginalized you are, the, you know, the, the more of the, the Venn diagram of marginalization, the more circles that you’re within, the less safe the world is, and the more likely you are going to need to be, your nervous system’s gonna need to react a little faster and be a little edgier. 3 (24m 54s): And, and that’s not overreacting. Okay? So what I’m talking about is there are safe spaces and there are sometimes things that, that are learned behaviors so that even in safe spaces we’re not fully embodied, right? Our nervous system being activated in some ways is kind of a disembodied process because again, our body’s like trying to save us from the bear. So what happens if most of the time we are not in safe spaces, and maybe we’re not running from the bear, but we’re like, Ooh, the bear was here before, I need to be careful. 3 (25m 35s): We’re spend, that just means we’re spending the majority of our time in this hyper arousal and we’re not fully connected to all of our bodies. So reclaiming feminine wisdom, again, not, not within gender boundaries, but like just all of us, a big part of reclaiming feminine wisdom is understanding that those feminine aspects of our body, those parts of us that we’ve been told, were the fall of mankind, right? Like, all of those things, like those parts of us are sacred too. And even if no one else in the entire world is going to hold space for us embodied, and in our most full self, we can learn how to, and for some people, you, your body might be the only safe place you have in the entire world. 3 (26m 24s): And it breaks my heart to say that, but I think it’s, I think it’s that level of brutal honesty that we really need to be talking about and, and really understanding what’s at stake if we can’t figure out how to be embodied and how to reclaim these things that we’ve always been told are bad, but are just as sacred as, as the things we’ve been told are good. 2 (26m 48s): Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna go back to the archetypes for a minute. Yeah. Unless you maybe nerd out a little bit more. I, I’m wondering if you can talk us through each of the archetypes, obviously with like, not giving away your whole book because people should go and buy it, but like, what is maybe one, one thing from each of the archetypes that we could learn or should be paying attention to, or, you know, like for, for folks who are just totally new to archetypes, right? I think that a lot of that feels a little like, what, what are we even talking about? So like yeah. If you just really bring it down to something tangible. 3 (27m 28s): Yeah. So the, the archetypes, so here’s what’s interesting is the archetypes are a little bit different depending on your source, depending on what you’re looking at. There are slightly different names and they’re slightly different. I mean, there’s not like, it’s kinda like the Bible, right? Like, there’s not just like one translation. So I’m gonna take a little bit of a step back and what I, what I think is the most helpful, rather than getting too overly nerdy on like what each of them are and what we can draw is, is to think of them as a continuum, right? So we have, you know, you have the maiden, you have the child, you have these kind of young, innocent, playful, curious seasons, if you will, you know, there archetypes, But we could also talk about them as seasons of life in a way. 3 (28m 14s): Mm. And all of the archetypes are always present, but there are just some seasons where, you know, different ones come to the forefront. And so if maybe you’re one of those people who just didn’t have play as a child, and especially women in, in high control religions, like you might’ve been seven years old and taking on the role of raising your siblings and doing all these things where you are being treated like an adult, reconnecting with that child is gonna be really, really essential because you’ll be able to love on yourself in ways that you always should have been loved on. And you’re like, well, how do I do that? Well, maybe for you it’s blowing bubbles. 3 (28m 56s): Maybe for you it is. Gosh, I had a client once who, it had been, she lived in Florida and it was thunderstorming the day we had our appointment. And she was, she’s like, you never gonna guess what happened. And I was like, oh my gosh, what is everything okay? And she said, I was just out there stomping in the mud puddles, And I came in And I didn’t even wipe my feet. I just tracked metal over the kitchen And I don’t actually care. That was healing, right? Something that simple was healing because that was not a space she was able ever able to be in. There’s also different stages of, like, we talk about mothering a lot, so I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come back to mothering. There’s a wild woman stage. 3 (29m 36s): Like, who, like worry. Did you actually have permission to just, just be a little off the wall and try things that felt a little risky and like, you know, feel sexy and feel flirtatious and, and all of those things? Or was that off limits? Right? So in that case, maybe, maybe things need to get a little spicy. Maybe that’s the piece of the archetypes that you really wanna draw into your life. And again, it’s, it’s, it’s tapping into these, it’s reconnecting to these without shame. That is really kind of the secret sauce. Because a lot of us know that these are out there and we think about these desires, But we’ve been taught that they’re shameful. So we’re like, oh, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t listen to that spicy book. 3 (30m 20s): I’ll, you know, that’ll ruin me. Or I can’t, you know, get like a little frisky and try, you know, ask my partner about trying new things because you know, I, the last thing I wanna do is I wanna let that evil into our bedroom. Like, there’s so much baggage, right? So that, I mean, that wild woman is another one. Mothering whoof. There’s a lot in this book about mothering and, and for me, again, mothering in the archetypal sense, it’s kind of like when we talk about feminine wisdom in the archetype sense, we’re not talking about like fundamentalist baptist culty mothering, okay, yeah. Christian patriarchy. 3 (31m 1s): The more fun you go, the worse this is. Christian patriarchy doesn’t value mothers. It values what mothers produce. Hmm. And there are gonna be people that are like, whoa, that’s it. I gotta, I gotta shut the podcast off and chew on that for a little bit, right? When I’m talking about archetypal motherhood, the archetypal mother is the creator, is the nurturer. There’s so much junk. There’s just so I, there’s like probably a list of 500 things, all this baggage that we carry around, but the mother will not tolerate that, right? 3 (31m 44s): Like, when, when we can tap into that mother archetype, we can be tender and compassionate with ourselves and also, you know, be a little firm and, and, you know, it’s, it’s not just like willy-nilly do whatever you want, but like, there’s that, that sense. The mother creates a sense of safety a lot of times that we didn’t have growing up. Or again, you know, maybe we had a growing up, But we didn’t have it in young adulthood. And so even for people who will have zero desire to carry children or are are unable to carry children or just aren’t even sure mothering is essential. It is, it is a, it is a love and a nourishing on a soul level and it’s fully embodied. 3 (32m 31s): When you think about some of the matriarchs, you think about some of the activists that you see out there, there’s probably some, there’s probably some really strong, wise nurturing women who are in your community who are mothering even if they didn’t birth or raise children. So that one I think is really, really powerful right now. And then, you know, there’s others, but, but again, the, the old wish in the Woods, the crone, she knows who she is. She knows who she is. And, And I think that there’s a real fear of being ostracized that keeps a lot of us holding on to some of these old just toxic religious mythology of who we’re supposed to be. 3 (33m 18s): And I am seeing a lot of people who are just over it. They’re like, you know what? I am I, they’re not gonna be happy with me anyway, so why am I trying? Right? And I think that again, for, for the most marginalized people groups, same thing. Like they’re, they’re oppressors aren’t gonna be your friends just because you try harder. That’s not a thing. But that’s what we’re taught, right? Like, just be better, try harder, all those things. The old witch in the Woods is like, screw it, I’m gonna go live in the Woods. And some of the best, like ba yaga, if you’ve never looked at ba yaga, ba yaga, iss a hoot dude. 3 (33m 58s): She doesn’t give a crap. She’s usually ugly. She’s usually smelly. She lives in a house that has chicken legs. She’s kind of mischievous, And I wouldn’t say a trickster, but like, nobody’s gonna pull one over on her. I think that sounds pretty good. I dunno about the chicken legs. I’m a little weirded out by the house on chicken legs. But, but like, that’s who, that’s who you go to when you need something that’s like above and beyond what the average human can do. And to go with the metaphor again of the, the witch, like the beginning of the book, we start with this, this conversation about the witch trials never ended because it was never about witches. 3 (34m 39s): It was about wise, powerful women who anchored their community. And if you wanna take over community and strip away all its resources and have absolute power, you go for the strongest people. You go for the healers, you go for people who were a threat to whatever it is that you were trying to indoctrinate. And, and it was, it was, you know, Protestant church, the Catholic church, like that’s where that panic came from. It’s powerful people who saw people who are powerful in a different way, who were able to resist. And holy moly, don’t we need that now? 3 (35m 19s): Don’t, don’t we like, we can’t play the game of the powerful people because the deck is so far stacked against us. Like yeah, like you, you can’t, you’re not gonna be able to, to, to bet and win against the house. So what do you do? Well, you, you, you play a different game and you find resilience in ways that they can’t strip away. And that’s really what all of the archetypes are there. There are little pockets of strength and hope and compassion and all these other things that seem so rare right now that we can tap into and nurture in ourselves. And I promise they will spill out to others. 3 (36m 2s): I agree. I still say that should not be our number one goal, But we can only give out what we have in us. And so that’s why the archetypes are so important to me. 2 (36m 12s): Yeah. And I just wanna underline something that, that I think you’ve been saying throughout this and, and you say in the book too is like that these, these qualities are good for all of us no matter what your gender or how you identify, right? I think that so often, And I mean this, we talk about this all the time at Queer Theology, right? That that queerness and the lessons of queerness and transness are like good news and good for straight and cis people too, right? That there’s something deeply important about these things that isn’t just for women or queer folks or trans folks. Right? You know, I don’t, I don’t wanna center like men in this conversation, but I, but I am curious like what you think is the most vital tool or thing for people to kind of who are, who are interested in doing this work to grab onto who maybe like, don’t identify with the feminine or for for whom? 2 (37m 16s): And, And I I think that’s not just men, right? Like I think that there are probably some women who are like, I dunno if I identify with like the idea of the feminine or femininity or whatever, which is like, not exactly what you’re talking about, but I’m just curious how you would answer that, that question for someone who’s like, I I I’m not sure quite yet where I’m finding myself in this and, and what, what is in there for me, I guess. 3 (37m 51s): Yeah, no, that’s a great question because I, again, there’s so many definitions and stereotypes and, and, and things that are baked into our conversations that some of this is probably going to feel like it’s off limits or it’s not useful. Not that, not that anybody’s gatekeeping, but like, oh, I don’t actually wanna be more feminine. Okay. That defining it, that that way is rooted in that binary thinking. It’s rooted in that, that Christian patriarchal teaching of like, you’re either masculine or you’re feminine, but no, actually there, all of us, every single one of us has access to these different archetypes and these different energies. 3 (38m 36s): And maybe even thinking about it as as masculine energy versus feminine energy, sometimes that’s helpful. I, I wrestle with using that language because that’s like the opposite end of the spectrum from the toxic Christian patriarchy type thing. It’s like this just toxic spirituality that is just like, well, you gotta be in your masculine energy. Like it’s still toxic, right? Yeah. ’cause it’s pushing us to, to the polar opposites, right? It’s like, you know, A is good, B is bad, that’s how we live. You gotta embrace your A and ignore the B and like, you know, fill, fill in the blanks there, depending on which motivational speaker you’re listening to at the time. 3 (39m 19s): But really like, okay, so this is kind of a cheesy example, but what I, what I want you to think about is the, the archetypes that we’re talking about, I want you to think about it like air, okay, air is made up of a whole bunch of different components. And some of them we need, and some of them we don’t, But we still, we’re still swimming in it, like it’s still around us at all times. And so there are, that, that’s a better way to think about these different energies and these different archetypes is, you know, they’re always present. We all have access to them. There are times when I walk into a meeting where I’m definitely leaning more into some of my, what’s considered my masculine energy and attributes. 3 (40m 5s): And that doesn’t mean that I’m less feminine right in, in the way that we talk about how I’m presenting because I’m still me, I might have a dress on, I, you know, I probably have shiny earrings and crazy hair and you know, really presenting as feminine because I am. But I can draw from these, these different molecules of, of who I am And I can, you know, I can just lean different directions and, and it’s, it’s actually really similar to gender fluid, but I just want people to be really careful about discounting the value of things because it’s not how they present. 3 (40m 47s): Because you can present very masculine and still deeply be connected to feminine wisdom. It doesn’t show up externally. Like when we talk about presenting, it doesn’t show up that way In the same way, the opposite is also true. You can have someone who presents very femme, like loves, loves all the things, but, but walks in deep connection with the masculine energy and the masculine archetypes. So I, it’s, it’s, I don’t know, I’m really weird. I always use way too many metaphors, but it’s more of a salad bar than like a cut and dry. 3 (41m 29s): You’re either this or you’re that. Well, some, some days I’m not. And what happens for me is sometimes when I get dysregulated, I lean, I lean way too hard into some of those sort of masculine traits. But that, like, I lean too far into what the, the Christian patriarchy says is masculine because that’s how I survived during some traumatic times. But that doesn’t mean I’m actually leaning into masculine energy, right? I’m still leaning, I’m still chasing that safety that the, the false system always told me would be there if I just found the right mix, right? 3 (42m 10s): If I just suppressed my femininity enough, then I would be worthy of X, Y, z, trust, love, whatever it is. So it’s, it’s really challenging ’cause you’ve gotta hold like what you learned in one hand and then you, you hold what this new information is in the other hand, and sometimes they mash up a little bit and sometimes you’re just using the same words to describe two totally different things. Hmm. And that’s what happens with, with feminine and masculine a lot. 2 (42m 42s): Yeah. Yeah. I, I’m wondering, as we’re getting close to wrapping up, up, what is your, if you had to pick your biggest hope or dream for this book and the message in this book, what, what would it be? 3 (43m 1s): I think there’s, I think there’s two. Okay. The first is for the people who it is not for, okay. The people who don’t value the idea of equity and of healing. I hope it scares you off. 2 (43m 22s): Like 3 (43m 23s): I, I hope it, i, I hope that it is like something you turn off and walk away. Cool. Great. Maybe someday you’ll get there and that’s what I want for you. But today, isn’t it? So stay out of the communities that are ready, right? Like do less harm by going away. So there’s that, but you know, probably see that’s a little, this is a little spicy, but that’s the gen xer in me who still, still goes a little mama bear sometimes for the people who are reading it, for the people who are hungry. Like, I think my biggest hope is that it provides a container for you to learn how to care for you first to learn how to mother, whatever needs mothered. 3 (44m 13s): Because even if you don’t ever go out and change the world, the world is better if you have figured out how to heal and to love those parts that maybe nobody else is loving right now. And I think that that is more than enough, especially in times like these, like love that if you can, like, you think about, think about, you know, maybe the stereotypical sitcom where the, the mom is tucking the kiddo in at bed, or the dad is tucking the kiddo in, and there’s just that sweet tender moment and, and you know that if it was real life, that kiddo is drifting off to sleep, feeling safe and loved and connected and embodied. 3 (44m 60s): Like, I want you to learn how to do that for yourself and just be able to care for yourself that way so you get a good night’s sleep. ’cause God, we all need a good night’s sleep right now. 2 (45m 13s): Yes. Amen. Amen. 3 (45m 14s): Right. 2 (45m 18s): Well, Angela, thank you so much for this conversation. Everyone needs to go out and get Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods, Liberating Feminine Wisdom from Christian Patriarchy. It is available now. You can get it wherever you buy your books. And Angela, if people wanna know more about you, dive deeper into your work, get more connected, where is the best place for them to do that? 3 (45m 39s): Yeah, the best place is on my website, angela j harrington.com. I’m sure you’ll have it in the show notes. We’ll, I, I think if you’re finding yourself really curious about some of these topics, there’s a lot of blog posts that I’ve written that talk about ancestral healing. We didn’t even really get to talk about that, but like, ancestral healing, feminine wisdom, there’s just lots of good resources there and they don’t cost a penny and you can access ’em on your phone. So if, you know, maybe some of these topics aren’t safe at, at work or at home, like you can take the phone in the bathroom and read some of these articles and get some of the support that you need and just hopefully find that little, that little seed of hope that just tells you that maybe things are gonna be okay. 2 (46m 24s): Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. It was always a pleasure to talk with you. 1 (46m 28s): The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for BTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters. 2 (46m 37s): To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. 1 (46m 44s): We’ll see you next week. The post Reclaiming the Wisdom That Christian Patriarchy Tried to Bury with Angela Herrington appeared first on Queer Theology.

It’s a New Year and in this first episode of 2026, we reflect on highlights from 2025. From book releases and big life transitions, to moves, new jobs, and shifting rhythms. What has kept us grounded has been our approach to goals and intentions that have evolved as needed. It’s why we keep saying rituals and intentions are important, y’all! Going into this year we feel that community matters more than ever. We also feel that it’s important to build more meaningful lives and one of the ways to start doing that is by naming our longings and goals. If you want some help with that, we’re bringing back the Queerness Every Day Challenge, a simple, daily practice to help you start the year with greater intention around spirituality, queerness, and connection.   Takeaways Shannon released two books in 2025, marking a significant achievement. Brian also published his first book, focusing on relationships and spirituality. Shannon transitioned to a full-time job, requiring adjustments in her routine. Both hosts emphasize the importance of setting intentions for the new year. They discuss the challenges of maintaining personal well-being amidst professional demands. Brian reflects on the importance of community and local connections. Shannon is focusing on improving her local community involvement in 2026. They explore different approaches to goal setting and personal growth. The conversation highlights the need for intentionality in daily life. The Queerness Every Day Challenge offers a way to reflect on spirituality and identity.   Chapters 00:00 Reflecting on 2025: Personal Highlights 02:27 Navigating New Beginnings: Career Changes and Adjustments 05:30 Intentions for 2026: Setting Goals and Priorities 08:12 Rituals and Reflections: New Year Practices 10:46 Community and Connection: Building Local Relationships 13:32 Creative Pursuits: Balancing Work and Passion 16:31 The Importance of Intentionality: Aligning Goals with Values 19:18 Embracing Change: Acknowledging Longings and Desires 21:59 The Queerness Every Day Challenge: A New Year Initiative 24:56 Looking Ahead: Future Plans and Community Engagement   Resources: Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community/ This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. Grow Therapy (5s): If you are feeling bogged down by the impossible expectations or the noise of New Year, new me, take a second to pause. Grow Therapy gives you space to slow down, check in, and start the new year from a more grounded place. Whether it’s your first time in therapy or your 50th grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability, and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time, whatever challenges you’re facing. Grow Therapy is here to help grow. Accepts over a hundred insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states sessions average about $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit grow therapy.com/book now today to get started. That’s grow therapy.com/book now. Grow therapy.com/book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. 0 (1m 25s): Welcome 2 (1m 25s): To the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. 3 (1m 28s): And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis, 2 (1m 33s): Revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how 3 (1m 38s): Tuning in each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. 2 (1m 48s): Hello. Hello, hello. And happy New Year. It’s officially the first Sunday of 2026 and we are so excited to be back on the pod with you, Shannon. I don’t even know where to begin, but like I feel like so much has happened in the past year. I know, right? I guess like, for those listening at home, we’re gonna talk, we’re just gonna give like some highlights from our past year. We would love to hear some highlights from your past year. We’re gonna talk a little bit about like our intention, personal intentions, spiritual intentions, professional Intentions for the year ahead, those, and like then share some way, share a way that you might kick off the new year with some more intentionality. So Shannon, like highlights, it’s in 2025 for you. 2 (2m 29s): Wow. 3 (2m 29s): Yeah, it, it, it has been quite the year I had two books come out, which just feels kind of 2 (2m 36s): The nuts to say. 3 (2m 37s): Yeah. Right. And and some of that is, is funny because right by the time a book comes out you’ve been done working on it for forever and ever. So actually the bulk of the year was spent working on our book together, which of course will, will come out sometime this year. But I was really thrilled to release both. No one taught me how to be a man, what a trans man’s experience reveals about masculinity and also come and see, which is a young adult devotional in 2025. And, and both of those have been really fun. I had a great book launch for No one taught me how to be a man in Minneapolis at one of my favorite bookstores there called Moon Palace. And so all of that was, was really great. 3 (3m 17s): And then, you know, something I haven’t really talked about publicly and can’t say too much about, but as I took a full time job and that has been quite an adjustment as you might imagine. I went from working primarily for myself for four or five years to working, well, it’s not quite a nine to five, but working, you know, a 40 hour a week for someone else. And so that, that has been a huge adjustment and just kind of getting used to what does that look like and, and how do I be intentional with my time? You know, as we’re talking about intentions, it’s, it’s been a real adjustment to figure out how do I not lose sight of the things that are important to me while I’m also doing this job That’s really important to me. 3 (4m 5s): How do I like make sure that I’m making time to take care of myself? It’s, it’s been a journey of like learning how to sleep better and have a bedtime and cook for myself, right? Like all of these different things that have for the previous couple of years I haven’t really had to think about. And so, so that’s been a huge adjustment, but also it’s been, I, I’m doing some, some work that I’m really passionate about and that’s really beautiful. And so I’m, I’m grateful for that. And it feels now as we’re entering into a new year to be a little bit more settled. And so I, I’m excited to, to think more broadly about what my life and work and creative life looks like moving into 2026. 3 (4m 45s): So that’s just a little bit of, of my 2025. What about for you? Yeah, 2 (4m 49s): I mean I, it’s, I, it’s funny ’cause I, I also released a book, but until you said your book, so I guess I had kind of forgotten about, I mean at this point it was like three or four months ago, which doesn’t seem like that long ago. But like to your point, I finished writing it like over a year ago and it came out a year later. So that was like really exciting. It’s my first book. It’s, it’s about, it’s called Love Beyond Monogamy, what polyamory can teach you about or the wisdom of polyamory teach you about I don’t faith, relationships, spirituality, I, those three things in some order. The publisher changed in at the last minute and so I kinda quite remember it. So that was really exciting. And I, you know, obviously I’ve been talking about spirituality and sex and spirituality and polyamory for like, many, many years here. 2 (5m 34s): And I just know that like for so many of us, like, like, I don’t know, like being a sexual person is like already fraught and then like being a queer person and having sex is like an extra level of like fraught. And for those of us who are like some version non non-monogamous, that’s an additional level of frt and you like put all of that through the meat grinder that is conservative Christianity or like even just sort of American culture, pop culture, purity culture. There’s just like levels of levels of levels of sort of like muck to wade through. But also I think on the other side, like so much, I don’t know, beauty, joy, connection, inspiration, grace, healing. And so I I, it was really cool to put that out into the world. Yeah. I also having like, you know, juggling this work with my relationship coaching practice, work with some part-time work and always trying to take care of myself, I, I think that, like I’ve, I’ve been in New York City now for over a whole year. 2 (6m 28s): Wow. We’re back on the East coast and, and splitting our time between New York and Maryland. And so it’s, it’s wild to be back. It feels like some of our friends were like, it feels like you’ve been here for back for years. And that is true. And sometimes it also feels like we moved back like a few months ago. I’m not quite settled into my apartment, but, so there’s a lot of it sort of like finding routines, finding rhythms, like figuring out like where the trash can goes in the kitchen and like, we’re gonna reorganize our front closet and put shelves in instead of having stuff that’s like hanging and like what size would to buy and how do you cut the wood? And so there’s lots of sort of like logistics and like making a home. And I like, I I, I think that there’s like, it’s so easy to sort of like get swb up in the day to day of life that it, it’s sometimes hard for me to sort of like carve out the times to like figure out my sleep schedule and like set an alarm and go to bed on time. 2 (7m 19s): Even it means like watching one less episode of, you know, Abbott Elementary to tonight. But I also know that like when I do have some intentionality, I get more fulfillment out of my life. And so I’m always sort of like struggling with this, not struggling, but trying to balance like planning and intentionality with like actually like living my life. And so I feel like I’m finding a good groove and I’m excited like to see what the year ahead holds ahead holds. And one big change is now that our book is finished being written, I’ve been able to sort of take on more and more relationship coaching clients because I’ve had some more time now. And so that’s been really exciting to get in the weeds and in the trenches with folks on a one-on-one basis and really help people, you know, build right fit relationships and sizzling sex lives that are like in line with our deepest values. 2 (8m 2s): And so yeah, it’s been fun. That’s my 2025. Yeah, 3 (8m 6s): It, it feels like, you know, both of us have had pretty big transitional moments this year, which of course I, I think are natural inflection points to, to rethink and reimagine what life could look like. And I, And I think, you know, when you go through something big, like starting a new job, moving to a new place, moving to a new city, right? And you, you get invited into that, but it, it does remind me how, you know, just like you were talking about, it’s like it’s easy to get into a rut or routine and have to like really be intentional about carving out time. I I think outside of major transition points, it can also be hard to like stop and take stock of are the things that I’m doing working, are the routines that I’m in like actually serving me? 3 (8m 56s): Are they leading into the places that I wanna go? And I, And I know that like, I don’t know, people have all sorts of feelings about New year’s resolutions and goal setting and all of that stuff, but it does feel like no matter what your feelings about it, the new year is kind of a natural moment to at least take a breath and say, what do, what do I want out of my life? What do I want out of my year? What is working and what’s not working? And I know you And I have had various approaches to asking that question to Reflecting on that question, like end of year rituals, new year rituals, I like, where are you at with that these days? 3 (9m 36s): Like how are you approaching asking those questions? What are your rituals around that and what are you kind of thinking about for 2026? 2 (9m 45s): Yeah, I mean I think like historically for like most of my life up through like my, like early twenties, I somehow managed to dodge the, like lose 20 pounds, give up chocolate and soda, like make a million dollars, like New Year’s resolutions. And so probably like as I was like entering my adult post-college life and becoming a professional, I think at some point I started thinking through like goals for like the year or goals for like the next six months or for the season or whatever it might be. And I went through a period of having like, kind of like specific goals around like my career, whatever that meant, and friends and family and sex and partners and stuff like that. 2 (10m 29s): And then at some point I was like, oh, this just feels like I’m productivity my life And I don’t like it. So I chucked that out the window. Like in my like mid to late twenties. My roommate at the time, she was like, she did this thing where she picked a word for the year, which I think now lots of people do it, but I had never heard of it before. What was my, I think my first word of the year might have been edit. So I sort of like pick a guiding word for the year. And I did that for a few years And I wanna say in like 2018 or 2019, I, I picked four, I picked structure, strength, structure, space, strength and stride. And then I, the next year I was like, I’m just gonna keep those. I don’t feel like I’ve quite gotten those, but those feel like good. 2 (11m 9s): And I actually, I realized the other day I was like, well, I haven’t picked words of the year since then. Then the pandemic happened And I was like, survive. That’s like the word of, of the, that is like both the word of the year and the entirety of my new New Year’s resolutions, right? And also like going through like the death, the death of my friend and like another sort of like the second phase of my like breakup. Like there was just like, I don’t know, I, I just like maxed out of thinking about things. And over the past few years I’ve sort of like returned to, okay, I was noticing that I was going to work, I was doing the thing, I had friends, I was like seeing the people and like it was good. Like I have good friends. I enjoy, I enjoy the times I would go on a vacation once a year. 2 (11m 51s): And also there was a sense of like, I, I think my friendships could be deeper. I’m like not feeling as connected with my spirituality as I would like maybe like, I think there could be like some more depth there. Like I’m not really exactly sure what I’m doing with like work. Like I really love our work at Queer Theology, but I feel like it could be better, we could reach more people, we could be more effective or efficient or like, whatever it might be. And so I started coming back to like, well what have I just like picked a few things to sort of like orient my life around. And I tried to really make sure that they weren’t all like, save this much, make this much like run a a 5K and under whatever, whatever. 2 (12m 31s): Like one year I did have a goal to like run a 5K and under whatever, whatever time. And I like didn’t make it. I, I think I had on there for three years And I didn’t, I didn’t make it. And then like, go figure. Last year I just decided to run a half marathon and in the process of training for that, I ended up beating that like 5K time that I had set like, like so sometimes the goals come to you later, right? And so now I have like a few, like a few work related things, a few like deepening my relationships with friends and family things, a few spiritual things, a few like taking care of my like physical and mental health things to just to sort of like orient me as I like move through the year end. And I, I try to like keep an eye on it, but also not like, it’s not like a pass fail, it’s like a how close or far away from these did I hue? 2 (13m 15s): And like, I dunno, like if I, if if for instance, like my goal was to like meditate every day, which is, it’s not, but like I did it 80% of the day. Like, great, that’s a success, right? Yeah. So there’s, there’s sort of like goals and intentions, but like loosely held, but like, but routine brought, like regularly returned to and like taken seriously, if that makes sense. 3 (13m 36s): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I, for a couple of years, like really honed in on numeric goals, right? Like I, I was very much like, I want every goal that I set to be something that I can measure because I was realizing that prior to that I was kind of setting some really like vague goals and it, and then at the end of the year I was like, well, I don’t, I don’t even have a sense of if I was close for far right, because like, I don’t have, there was no way to measure it. So, so then I decided, I like went the other way And I was like, oh, everything I do is gonna be measurable. Everything’s gonna have a number on it. And I did that for a couple of years and, and was really happy with that. 3 (14m 17s): But then I had a year or a couple of years where like things drastically changed midyear either like I got an opportunity that I wasn’t expecting to get, or I started something new that took up a ton of time or whatever. And, And I realized that like my whole plan then got thrown out of out whack. And so the last couple of years I’ve shifted more towards thinking about quarters. Like I’ll, I’ll kind of plan the first three months of the year knowing that probably nothing too wild is gonna come up. Like obviously something can always happen. But, but last year again, I, you know, I ha I ended up getting a job that I was not expecting to get and like threw everything outta whack. 3 (15m 5s): So this year I’m thinking a lot about like, what are the kind of buckets of my life? Like what are the kind of, like you were saying, you know, there’s relationships, there’s my mental health, there’s my body, right? And so thinking about what are some things in each of those kind of buckets that I wanna pay attention to less about, like, I wanna run a 5K more about like, oh, I eat really crappy lunches. Like, so my, my Q1 goal is like, find out some better lunch solutions that you can like take to work that are not gonna be a giant plate of pasta in the middle of the day. 3 (15m 48s): Not that there’s anything wrong with a giant plate of pasta, but, you know, five days a week is probably not best for my 45-year-old body. And so trying to be a little bit more intentional about like, paying attention. I, I’m just noticing like as I’m aging, there are certain things that I haven’t done because I haven’t had access to healthcare. And so now I’m like, now that I do have access to healthcare, like I should probably go to the dentist, right? So there’s some things about that being more intentional about my body. But then I’m also, you know, I I I’ve been thinking a lot over the last several years, so much of, of our work, of my work has been really focused on, on a more public scale, right? 3 (16m 31s): Of like, we’re writing books, we’re on social media, we’re traveling and doing speaking. And I, I’ve been thinking a lot about like, what would it look like to get more deeply connected where I am, like in person, local community, like who are the people and organizations doing work here where I am that I am like really passionate about how, what might it look like to get more involved with them? What might it look like to partner with those organizations? And so that’s, that’s one of the big things I’m thinking about in 2026 of like being a little bit more hyper-local, really getting rooted in community and place. 3 (17m 14s): And also like, some of that is also about relationships. I have amazing friends all over the country and I’m realizing that I have very few friends like where I am. And so what does it look like to invest in those relationships, to put myself in places where I might be able to make new friends and find new community where I am. You know, I’m, I’m in rural communities in the deep, deep Midwest, and so it’s complicated, right? Yeah. And also I know that there are people here and so how can I put, put myself in places where I can find the like-minded people? So those are just some of the things that are on my mind. 3 (17m 55s): And then also I, I think the last thing is like, I, I mentioned earlier trying to be intentional about making sure that I’m, I’m carving out time for the work that I am most passionate about. And, and for me, a lot of that is creative work. So like, how can I go to work all day and still come home and have enough mental bandwidth to like do creative work? What does that look like? What guide rails need to be in place in the rest of my life to like, make it possible for me to do that creative work? What does it look like to prioritize that? Maybe on the weekend, right? Like, however that looks like I’m, I’m still feeling like I’m trying to figure that out, but that feels really important to me. 2 (18m 33s): Yeah, I love you so much. We’re such soulmates because I just love that we both like, we talk a lot, but I don’t think either one of us explicitly was like, we should make local community a priority. But both of us came to that. Yeah. Like in back in November, I was like, I, I remember I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Like, oh, I wanna do something more local, more local, more local. And so then finally at some point, one of my coaching clients, like is here in New York, happens to be here in New York City and was like, wanting to find a new church because like they realized there wasn’t affirming and didn’t know where to get started on how to look. And so I was like, I’ll, I’ll take you to church. And so like I put out on social media, I was like, anyone wanna go? Like any queer people wanna go find an affirming church together? We’ll like do a little group. 2 (19m 14s): And like, that was really special. And I was like, oh, I, like, we, we might, I might do another, another one in like later this month or next month for folks who are in New York City looking for affirming churches. We might hop around to different churches, but I was like, there’s something here about community in person and organizing in person and, and sharing stories in person. And so yeah, I’m, I’m really like jazzed about that in the new year as well. And like, on a meta level, I think that there’s something about having some intentions, whether it’s for like your week ahead, that’s something that I do with my co my coaching clients. I’m always like, you gotta make a plan for your week if nothing else, a week, a quarter, a year. Especially like, especially if you’re in any sort of relationship, a a really like deep friend relationship, a roommate relationship, a business relationship, a romantic relationship. 2 (20m 1s): Like, because it, like I can have all these intentions, right? But like, if I have a set of Intentions for our business that are wildly different than yours, like, we’re gonna have some problems, right? And so we have to, we have to, you And I Shay like have to like align on that and, And I can say like, oh, I wanna like go on a European vacation this year. And if my husband is like, no, I wanna like, I wanna like save money to pay off my student loans or like, whatever the course the case may be. Like, so, so sometimes there’s a, there’s like a using this moment of like, whether it’s planning or intention setting or goal setting as like a way to sort of align with some of the important people in your life. 2 (20m 41s): And in doing so, like you create a shared vision for your future. And that like is one of the things that like brings you closer together. And so even if you don’t like, set a bunch of goals, just like having a check in with a partner of yours to say like, what’s one thing we wanna get outta this year ahead, I think could be like a really useful practice. 3 (21m 2s): Yeah. And I, And I think that, you know, there’s been a lot of kind of negative talk around goals and, and goal setting and, And I totally get that. And also I think that you are really onto something by saying like, setting intentions is really important, right? Because I think so many of us, it’s so easy to go on autopilot all the time and to just be like, yeah, whatever happens this week happens. And then you get to the end of the week and you’re like, I have no idea what I did this week. I don’t think I like did anything that I wanted to do. And I feel like bummed out about it. Whereas setting its an attention again, isn’t about like failing, right? 3 (21m 47s): It’s not about failure, but it’s about like, how can we, how can we get ourselves a little closer to the life that we’re dreaming of and that we wanna live? And I think that also asks us to ask the question, what kind of life do we want to live, right? Yeah. Like, what do we want our spiritual life to look like? What does community mean to us? What does friendship mean? What does it look like to have a deep relationship? And I think that sometimes I think sometimes we avoid those questions because we maybe don’t wanna face how far we are from the ideal that is in our mind. And also what I’ve known in my own life is like, it’s not until I face how far I am that I can actually take any steps to close the gap, right? 3 (22m 35s): So that’s been really important to me to be able to look at something and be like, I’m, I actually am unhappy with how this goes. Or, or maybe not even unhappy, but like, I think this could be better. I’m discontented, right? I think that there’s more here. 2 (22m 51s): Yeah. Like the one for more Yeah. 3 (22m 52s): Yeah. By saying, by admitting that, then it’s like, oh, okay, well then what does it look like to have more? Or like, what is it, what what can I do to get me closer to that? And, and, and so that acknowledging the longing, I think is, is one of the first steps and can also be something that’s really hard, right? If if it feels like we’re really far from where we wanna be. 2 (23m 16s): Yeah. And like this sort of like figuring it all out work, like for some folks it comes like really quick and easy. They’re like, I know exactly what I want. And, and for some folks it’s like, you’re not sure how to even figure that out or how to pay attention to what you actually want, or you’re scared to give yourself permission to want some things, or you have a sense of what you want, but you’re not exactly sure how to go, go get there. And so if you’d like some like intensive support in figuring all that out, we have spiritual direction and coaching available at Queer Theology dot com slash coaching. That’s like a really high touch, one-on-one long-term experience. But if you’re just like, wanna start the new year with some lighter intentions, we have a much lower touch, but still like a more accessible way of getting involved with that. 2 (24m 3s): And that’s The Queerness Every Day Challenge. So Shea, can you tell us like a little bit about who the Queerness Everyday Challenge is for and, and what, like how it might enrich folks as they start their year? 3 (24m 13s): Yeah, so we’ve been doing The Queerness Every Day Challenge for a little while now. We started it as a kind of a pride thing of for folks that wanted to better integrate their sexuality and their spirituality or their gender identity and their spirituality. And what we found is that like folks were so engaged with it and it became this really fun both individual process, but also a, a community building tool. And so we thought it would be fun to revisit it for the beginning of the year. And so each day there’s like a super easy challenge that you can do in 10 minutes or less that invites you to kind of reflect on some aspect of your spirituality and your queerness. 3 (24m 58s): And we try to have things that are that kind of range in quote unquote difficulty level, right? So that if you’re like, just kind of starting to figure this out, there is one level at which you can do the challenge. And if you are like deep into your queer and spiritual journey, there’s like another level to that. So some things to reflect on, but each each day is like something to actually do. And for this kind of new year thing, it, it’s also an invitation for you to use the challenge as a jumping off point to ask these questions of like, what do I want these aspects and areas of my life to look like and what are maybe some of the first things I can do to start to make that reality happen? 3 (25m 47s): Then we also have a communal element so you can come and kind of share what you did and get ideas from other people. And it’s a really fun way to both like do these intention settings on your own, but then also to join together in community and celebrate each other’s wins. 2 (26m 2s): Yeah, when I think about The Queerness Every Day Challenge, it’s an opportunity to like bring closer together queerness and spirituality and faith, whatever it looks like for you. And also to bring yourself closer to both of those. So there’s just like, like you were saying, like more and so whether you’re like really discontented or you’re like, life is good, but like I just, like, I I, I know that there could be more. And so I, I I think there’s like lots of spheres where this can really like pay off in your interpersonal relationships, your romantic relationships, your community, like your Fr like friend and wider community, your sex life, your connection to the divine, your connection with spiritual communities. 2 (26m 44s): If you’re like wanting to like, make changes or improvements in any of those areas, I think this is like a really great way to, to sort of dive into that. And if you’ve done it before, or if you’ve considered doing it before this year, we’re like expanding it a little bit and also adding some new stuff to it. And what we’re really excited about is taking a like a, a page out of our querying advent experience. There will be a like private audio feed that you can put in any podcast player of your choice so you can get the prompts and the like adventures and even some inspiration with you wherever you are. There’s like, there’s no apps to download, no logins to remember. So if you want to just sort of like have like Brian Shea coaches in your ear almost to sort of bring some new queer faithful energy into your year, we would love to sort of be in your ear at the start of this year. 2 (27m 39s): And of course, if you would like to go deeper, there’s a whole community. You get access to all sanctuary collective and spiritual study hall as well. So it’s sort of like a choose your own adventure for how deeper, how shallow you wanna go. 3 (27m 49s): We’re gonna get started on January the 12th, so if you would like some more information about it, go to Queer Theology dot com slash challenge. You can find all of the details and sign up there. And then I think I also wanna just say, you know, as we head into 2026, we’re excited to a release our book this year that’s like a super excited, exciting thing that is gonna be coming later in the year, but also, you know, continue to be in community and providing resources for folks around all of these issues around gender identity, around sexuality, around spirituality and, and how, how these things can inform and enlighten and enrich one another. And we’re gonna keep this very long running podcast going even longer. 3 (28m 32s): And so if you have ideas of things that you want us to cover on the podcast, if you’ve got questions that you want us to answer, we would love to tackle those. You can send us an email to connect at Queer Theology com and we’ll be happy to entertain your suggestions for the podcast this year. We’ve got some great interviews already lined up and some other ideas that we’re noodling on, But we would love to hear your input as 2 (28m 56s): Well. Thanks for being here and talk to you soon. The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters. 4 (29m 7s): To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. 2 (29m 15s): We’ll see you next week. The post Building Routines That Actually Serve Us appeared first on Queer Theology.

In this episode, we respond to a listener question about how to challenge harmful uses of the Hebrew Scriptures without falling into anti-Semitism or Christian supersessionism. As Christians, we can’t rely on the New Testament to “fix” or dismiss the Old Testament and we unpack common misunderstandings about Judaism and the Hebrew Bible. We also queer the Ten Commandments by reading this foundational text through lenses of justice, liberation, and community rather than control or exclusion. Despite how we have been taught, the commandments can function as a framework for loving God and loving our neighbor. That doesn’t mean we get to ignore the fact that we need to wrestle honestly with the parts that feel troubling to us in modern times, to engage the text critically, contextually, and faithfully. Rather than discarding the Ten Commandments as outdated or weaponizing them against marginalized people, we show how lingering with the tension can open up richer, more life-giving interpretations that support the queer community flourishing.    Resources: Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community/   The post Queering the 10 Commandments appeared first on Queer Theology.

This week, we respond to a thoughtful listener question from Tumblr about whether progressive Christians can understand the Bible as uniquely authoritative, or whether it should be treated as inspired work alongside other great works of literature and poetry. We look at how different Christian traditions approach scripture, why “authority” depends on community and context, and how revelation can be understood without requiring inerrancy or literalism. We have to have a more nuanced engagement with scripture that challenges false dichotomies between taking the Bible seriously and reading it critically. In the second half of the episode, we queer Psalm 119:105-112, unpacking how poetry, song, and metaphor function within the Bible. We invite you to consider what it means for God’s word to be “a lamp to our feet and a light for our journey,” not as the path itself, but as something that illuminates the way as we navigate faith, queerness, relationships, and life.   Resources: Our resources have moved! You can find the workshop contents within our free resources at my.queertheology.com   This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. 1 (9s): Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. 2 (13s): And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from 1 (17s): Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how 2 (23s): Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. 1 (33s): Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Queer Theology of Podcast. 2 (36s): This week we’ve got a listener question from Tumblr and they ask, are there progressive non literalist ways of talking about the Bible as uniquely authoritative and communicative of revelation? Or are the scriptures only inspired in a relativized sense alongside great works of literature, poetry, et cetera? 1 (57s): Oh, I love this question. So this 2 (1m 1s): Is a great 1 (1m 2s): Question. Yeah, it get really gets at the heart of what we’re talking about on this podcast and in our work. I think it’s important to first name that there are gonna be a bunch of different answers to this question. Certainly if you survey all Christians, like conservative fundamentalist Christians are gonna have a different idea than other folks. Like there’s a whole range, like if you, if you survey fundamentalist Christians, if you survey Mormons, if you survey Catholics, if you survey progressive Christians, if you survey, you know, black preachers, if you survey whoever, we’re all gonna have different ideas about this. And also then, like, I think within each of those people are gonna have different ideas that there will probably be other L-G-B-T-Q, progressive Christians who think differently about this. 1 (1m 55s): And Shay And I actually think slightly differently about this, you know, or we might not. So I just wanna name that. And there’s not, so it’s not about like trying to find like the objective truth of this is gonna be impossible, which I know is an unsatisfying or might be an unsatisfying answer, especially as someone who comes from a, from a tradition that taught that there was always one correct answer for everything about God and religion and faith. And as someone from just sort of like a secular perspective, like really math and science just like gets me going. And so like there’s a formula, like a squared plus B squared equals C squared, right? Like you can like add things up or divide things out and get, get like the answer. 1 (2m 37s): And so figuring out like what the answer to this is is gonna be tricky. There’s always gonna be some nuance and some, some room for personal interpretation. Shay, where would you start? Yeah, 2 (2m 47s): I think the phrase to me that is, there’s an interesting in this question is uniquely authoritative. And so my, my very first question would be to ask back, like, for whom? So I think that, like that to me is where we start this conversation of like, is the Bible uniquely authoritative? Like are you asking if it’s uniquely authoritative to everyone in the world? Is it uniquely authoritative to Christians, to progressive Christians? Like who are you asking about? And for? And so for me it’s like, I would say that because of the history of Christian tradition that has used this collection of scriptures as a text that has guided and whatever, that it is uniquely authoritative for the Christian community when understood in its proper context. 2 (3m 51s): And I think when used well, and that also like that because so many people have used it because it’s been kind of a communal agreement that we are going to guide ourselves by this particular text that we can say it’s authoritative for those communities. But also, like, like you were saying, Brian, you know, the Catholics have like a bunch of extra books that are authoritative to them that Protestants don’t use or recognize. So like even within that question there is nuance. And then for me, I think it’s, it’s like there is also this sense of, of like, it is one of the great works of literature. 2 (4m 38s): It has shaped culture and cultural traditions and norms for good and for ill over the centuries. And so like it also holds up in, in that respect and that avenue. But I think if we talk about it being uniquely authoritative for groups outside of the ones who have claimed it, then I think we’re in tricky, potentially problematic or colonialist territory. 1 (5m 15s): I agree actually, like pretty, pretty to the t you know, as someone who has a, I wouldn’t say like a, I was gonna say like a lot of doubts about God, but I think at this point that’s like not even true. I just like don’t believe in God in the way that many religious folks seem to believe in God, whether they like, so, so maybe I am, maybe I have, I’m not as lonely as I think that I am, but, and so, so that, and also I definitely think that you like don’t need to be a Christian to be a good person to experience like an abundant life or salvation that like other religions are equally valid and being non-religious is also a great way to live your life. 1 (5m 56s): And so and so all that said I do, but like you were saying, I do think that like for folks who claim Christianity, there is something uniquely authoritative about the Bible. Is it like the only source of authority in our lives? No, you know, we talk a lot about, this is like a very Wesley idea, but like scripture reason, experience, tradition, all being important. And so there’s many ways that we experience God, the movement of God, the people of God. The Bible is one of those ways. And then I think also like getting into this communicative of revelation, like what does revelation mean to you? 1 (6m 43s): Is it there’s like a person in the sky with a Dictaphone that is dictating every, every jot and tittle, every word of the Bible to the authors? No, I definitely don’t, don’t think that, did the people who wrote and compiled the book experience something bigger than themselves that they like perhaps couldn’t quite put their figure on? And that seemed to be pointing towards a greater truth. Truth, yeah. Absolutely. And so is that also found in other scriptures, in other religious traditions, even in like literature and poetry, like Yes, absolutely. 1 (7m 26s): And so I think like getting in on this like revelation thing is also tricky. It’s, it’s perhaps like more comforting to think like there’s a person or like an entity that has all of these answers and objective truth and like, they have given us this one thing, but that’s just like, not how I understand the world or revelation or scripture working. And then I think also this, this relativized sense alongside great works of literature, poetry, et cetera, is again, going back to your, to your question of like, who are we talking about and, and what is this for? 1 (8m 6s): And so like in the scheme of all of humanity and all history, it’s, it’s one of many, for Christians, it might be a primary sense also, you know, literature, poetry, our experiences can help us understand God and even understand the Bible better. But like what poetry that really speaks to me isn’t necessarily going to really speak to you. Shea or parts of the Bible that speak to you aren’t necessarily gonna speak to me or vice versa. You know, there’s this quote by Carl Sagan’s wife that I like could be a bio passage for me that it just like really speaks to my heart and like helps me see God. 1 (8m 50s): And like your shea is like, whenever I sent it Shea, he was like, I’m glad that like means something to you, but it doesn’t really do anything for me. And you know, like, but that’s just like the, the Bible is also a collection of stuff. And so like, we don’t all encounter even the Bible in the same way. And so like, I wanna challenge the notion that relativized, And I know that you are not saying this, but like that relative is like an inherently inferior position that like, even within the Bible, things have relative importance to each other. Both. Like, I think that Paul would be shocked and perhaps like mortified that many people hold his rambly letters on the same level as what was his, like sacred like Torah scripture. 1 (9m 45s): And even within the Bible, some parts are given more or less relative importance, sort of like within the text itself. And then like all sort of Christians place more or less emphasis on different parts of the Bible. And so even the Bible itself is a collection of multiple texts that include literature and poetry that have relatively different importances to different people. And so I think that is also an important thing to remember 2 (10m 14s): For sure. I think the key for me is like you’re setting up this false dichotomy. If you talk about like, scripture is only meaningful or important if it’s in errand and literal and like has primacy of place. And like, I I, I think that there are ways that you can take scripture really seriously, that it can be a guiding principle in your life that you can think of it as sacred without it needing to be anything more than what it is, right? Like, And I think, And I think that it’s, it’s, it can be a problem to like elevate scripture higher than it needs to be. 2 (11m 4s): Or, or to say that like, if you don’t have it up on some kind of pedestal that you therefore don’t take it seriously. That’s something that I think gets thrown at liberal and progressive Christians all the time. And I, And I think that that’s like an unfair accusation. 1 (11m 22s): Yeah, there’s so much more that we could say about this, both why we think this and then also how to go about the process of figuring this out for yourself and approaching the Bible in serious and faithful ways. And so we’re gonna put together an more extended workshop, online workshop about this. We don’t know exactly when it’s gonna drop. 2 (11m 47s): Okay, let’s open up our Bibles and queer this text. Our text today is from Psalm 119 verses 1 0 5 through one 12. I’m gonna go ahead and read it for us. This is from the common English Bible. Your word is a lamp before my feet and a light for my journey. I have sworn And I fully mean it. I will keep your righteous rules. I have been suffering so much, Lord, make me live again according to your promise. Please Lord, accept my spontaneous gifts of praise. Teach me your rules though my life is constantly in danger. I won’t forget your instruction, though the wicked have set a trap for me. 2 (12m 28s): I won’t stray from your precepts. Your laws are my possession forever because they are my heart’s joy. I have decided to keep your statutes forever. Every last one. 1 (12m 39s): Hmm. When you started reading, I could just hear the song in my head. Yes. And I damn song, yo, what I’m gonna, I’m gonna wear you down and we’re gonna have music on this podcast eventually, but so I I love this text for This week, and one of the reasons why we picked it was because of the question earlier in the episode. And so this is an example of a part of scripture that is, you know, poetry or song depending on how you look at it or define those terms, right? And so like the Bible contains poetry and other types of literature. And I think that if you try and make the entire Bible a direct word for word revelation from God, that it cheapens it and distorts it. 1 (13m 34s): And that when you read this passage, it’s like just not poss like clearly the author of this passage didn’t in that wasn’t this person’s experience of them writing this song, the author of this, of this psalm writing about God and about God’s word and what that means to this person. And so it’s like, it’s written almost to and about God rather than from God. And if you’re gonna like take the Bible seriously, just like a, a quick cursory reading of that, of this text, like shows that God is the, the subject of this piece, not the author of it. 1 (14m 17s): So just wanna name that And I think that’s really beautiful thing to be included in the collection of, of sacred scripture. What about you Shay? 2 (14m 26s): Yeah, I just, I remember so distinctly how I was taught about this passage and about the Bible growing up, right? That, that it was the iner infallible word of God that we, it could answer all of our questions. That anything we needed to know about God was in the Bible. That all of that, and like this passage in particular was often used in reference to like the whole, the whole of scripture. Even that even though when this passage was written like the Christian scriptures did not exist yet, and actually probably a lot of the Hebrew scriptures did not exist yet either. 2 (15m 8s): And so this idea that, like your word is a lamp before my feet, the way that I was taught and a light unto my path was this, was this idea that we were supposed to memorize the Bible and use it to like guide everything in our lives. And, and so now reading back on this passage, I’m like, that is not what this is about. Like this poem is not about the Bible at all as a, as a whole. And it’s, it’s also more about like this poet reflecting upon the word that they’ve heard from their community, probably from their oral tradition, maybe from some of their sacred scriptures as like a guiding principle for their own lives. 2 (15m 53s): And like I think we can look at this text then and say, okay, well what are the lights for our own journey? What are the words that point us to God, point us to community? But like to read this passage as if it’s about the Bible is, is really is not a good reading. 1 (16m 17s): What I appreciate about this is your word is a lamp before my feet and a light for my journey. And I think about like, I imagine that image of a lamp and a light and what do lamps before your feet or lights for your journey do they illuminate the path. They aren’t the path itself. It’s not like the object. They help you see where you are and where you’re heading and like make sense of the world around you. But it isn’t like it helps you see things. It isn’t the thing at which you are looking. And that just like reminds me of the work that we do that we just wrapped up with this query in the Bible course, which we’re definitely gonna do. 1 (17m 2s): Again, it was super popular. And even that we’ve done in the Faithful Sexuality course or the Christianity polyamory course, that the word of God can help us. It can like illuminate our journey through our queerness, through our relationships, through our polyamory. And when we bring like the word of God, the Bible Christian traditions, our sort of like experience of our faith community to bear on all of those parts of our life, our queerness, our sexuality, our bodies, even polyamory, that we can see all of that in a new and holy and sacred light and realize our inherent holiness and goodness. 1 (17m 46s): And that also that as we illuminate that, those parts of us, those sort of like trees or bushes on the side of the road or the stepping stones across the creek, can then teach us about our faith. Also, it becomes this circle. And so we, we like need it all, we need like the lamp to guide us, but then we also need to look at the path outside of us to to see, to see where to go, and to notice that there’s a rocker that we’ve gotta step up, step over, or that if we keep going in this direction, we’re gonna hit a wall. And so we’ve gotta turn, 2 (18m 20s): If you’re interested in going deeper into conversations like this, this is the type of stuff that we talk about all the time in Sanctuary Collective, our online community stuff about how our views of the Bible have changed over time. Stuff about how to read the Bible now from wrestling with relationships and coming out and churches and family and all that stuff. If you’re interested in learning more, you can go to Queer Theology dot com slash sanctuary collective and we would love to have you in the community. 1 (18m 48s): The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters. 2 (18m 57s): To dive 4 (18m 58s): Into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. 1 (19m 5s): We’ll see you next week. The post The Lamp the Light the Path, Psalms 119:105-112 appeared first on Queer Theology.

As we come to the beginning of Hanukkah, Brian invites us to reimagine the Festival of Lights as a celebration of resistance, resilience, and the sacred spark within every queer body. When queering Hanukkah, we can explore how the Hanukkah story itself is rooted in defiance against erasure, and how its rituals can be reclaimed as affirming practices that honor queer joy, creativity, and survival. Resources: Learn more about Rituals for Resistance & Resilience here Join us and be part of Queering Advent! Find more info here. This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. 1 (9s): Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy, 2 (13s): And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts from Genesis, 1 (18s): Revelation. The Bible declares good news, LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how 2 (23s): Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. 1 (33s): A few days ago, I texted one of my friends who was also Jewish and asked if he wanted to come over for a lot ’cause and food and candles on the first native Hanukkah with some other friends. Wait, when does Hanukkah start? He asked, yes, I’m terrible for not knowing. He added, but you know what? Not knowing when Hanukkah starts is also a quintessentially Jewish experience for many Jews. It, it starts tonight, by the way, now if you know me, you know that I’m a big fan of counting holidays. I like to count the days of land count, the days of the Ooma count, the days of Advent, and of course, count the Knights of Hanukkah. It might be that that soothes some part of my A DHD brain, but for me, there’s also something deeply grounding about the practice of paying attention to the passing of time. 1 (1m 13s): Maybe you count the days since a partner or friend or a family members passing. Maybe you count the days of your sobriety. Maybe you count the days until your gender affirming surgery. I’m a bit obsessed with the idea that everything can be spiritual, that the divine is already at your fingertips. In our rituals for resistance and resilience workshop, I outline seven steps to transform a routine into ritual. Sure, you can pray the rosary or go to Shabbat services, but if that’s, but if those don’t resonate with you, perhaps you could take some inspiration from counting the days of Advent or Hanukkah and create your own sacred countdown or other type of spiritual practice. In Hanukkah, we remember two things. The more feel good story that we remember is that after the temple in Jerusalem was taken back by the Jews from occupation under this lucid empire in the second century, b, c, E, there was hardly any oil left that could be used to light the menorah, which is a seven branched candelabra that burned daily in the temple. 1 (2m 9s): Out of all the oil that was left, there was only enough for one night, but it would take seven more days to make and sanctify more oil. Still, they lit the menorah anyway, and somehow miraculously it burned for eight nights long enough to replenish the oil and keep it burning. A few years ago, my rabbi gave a talk on Hanukah. She shared how she started her rabbinet in the midst of the AIDS crisis and as a lesbian rabbi, she was one of the few clergy who would visit many gay men, sick or dying of aids. While we lost a devastating number of L-G-B-T-Q people to the AIDS epidemic, many survived against incredible odds. There’s a clip that I can’t get out of my head of Peter Staley organizing with Act Up in the 1990s where he says, I’m going to die from this, and yet over 30 years later, he’s still here. 1 (2m 59s): The world has tried over and over and over again to snuff out queer people, neglect our healthcare conversion therapy, shame us into silence. Burn books about us in the 1930s in Germany, rewrite history about us in the 2020s in the United States of America, legislate our rights away, deny our genders, pretend our relationships didn’t exist or don’t count. And yet here we are. Here you are still burning just as bright. Each night of Hanukkah, we light one additional candle, starting with a mish that help our candle and one regular candle on the first night, and then all the way up to the mish and eight regular candles on the final night. 1 (3m 40s): Each night, the light grows and grows and grows from a faint flicker in the beginning to a glorious roaring beacon. At the end, you might have started your queer journey small and timid, but you need not stay that way. Each day, the divine pours more light into you. May you grow stronger and brighter with each passing night. There is another reason we celebrate Hanukkah. In addition to the miracle of the oil, Hanukkah also celebrates a military victory. The reason why most of the oil has been destroyed and how the temple came to be your reclaimed by the Jews in the first place. Now, Jews have been occupied in and exiles from Israel countless times over our history and the second century, BCE was one of those times the saluted empire wanted to outlaw Jewish practice to destroy Jewish distinctiveness, to coerce assimilation into a hellenized society. 1 (4m 28s): Worship, and the temple became a mashup of Jewish and pagan cult worship. Eventually, a group of Jewish rebels led by Judas Maccabee revolted to oust the occupiers and restore Jewish cultural and religious practices in the land and in the temple. Right now, in our present day, there are people who want to stamp out queer distinctiveness. If they cannot erase or destroy us, perhaps they can coerce us into being imitations of them. Make your queerness smaller. They say, blend in, dull your glittery rainbow distinctiveness, and exchange it for khakis and sundresses. Give up your chosen families and retreat to insulated and isolated nuclear families. Bottle up your expansive love and force it into marriages that mirror straightness as much as possible. 1 (5m 13s): Assimilate, conform. Hanukkah reminds us to resist the temptation of assimilation. Queerness is holy, and in a world that is still unjust. As we wait for Alam Haba, as we say in Judaism, as we wait for the world to come, as we work, as Christians would say, for the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, we need queerness now more than ever. Your queerness is a light like the timid flames of Hanukkah that somehow miraculously burned and burned and burned. May your light never go out. May you burn and burn and burn, and in doing so, may you light up the whole world. Can you hear Raton? May it be God’s will. 1 (5m 53s): If you want to take better care of yourself, connect more deeply with the divine fuel, more integration with your queerness work for a better world, and yet it all just seems so hard. Shannon and I would like to invite you to take our rituals for Resistance and resilience workshop. You’ll learn about the revolutionary origins of some historic religious rituals while also being guided into crafting your own sacred practices that nourish and inspire you, so that you can go through the day with more joy, so you can feel more confident in your queerness, so you can be more bold in your words and actions. We would be so honored to support you. Learn more and register@queertheology.com slash rituals. The Queer Theology Podcast is just one of many things that we do@queertheology.com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q Christians and straight cisgender supporters. 2 (6m 38s): To dive into more of the action, visit us@queertheology.com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. 1 (6m 46s): We’ll see you next week. The post Queering Hanukkah  appeared first on Queer Theology.

In this episode, we dig into why leaving harmful churches isn’t enough, you also have to unlearn the bad theology you absorbed along the way.  We talk about how lingering fear, shame, reactivity, or discomfort around sex, Scripture, or Christian community can reveal where old beliefs are still running the show, even for folks who’ve left evangelicalism, Catholicism, or grew up in progressive spaces without learning how to engage the Bible for themselves. We get into what unlearning actually looks like and why arguing on evangelical terms keeps you stuck. You gotta be able to rebuild your faith (or recognize when to walk away from it) with grounding, nuance, and liberation. We also answer listener questions about the 1946 documentary and where to begin when returning to faith after fear. Resources: Join us and be part of Queering Advent! Find more info here. This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. 1 (9s): Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy. 2 (13s): And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts from 1 (17s): Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news, LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how 2 (23s): Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. 1 (33s): Hello. Hello. Hello. So good to be back in your eras with you today. On today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about the importance of not just leaving bad churches or leaving bad faith entirely, but also unlearning your path theology and this like danger of what could happen if you don’t take the time to un unload, unlearn. And you just sort of like try and pat it aside and pat it set aside and for, and forget about it for a while. We’ll also have a listener question that we will get to at the end of the episode. If you would like to have your question featured on the podcast, you can go to cardiology.com/listen. You can also leave us a voice message or send us a text message to 2 4 0 2 0 0 0 9 2 2. 1 (1m 19s): That’s 2 4 0 2 0 0 0 9 2 2. Okay, and with that said, Shea, what are we talking about this episode and why? 3 (1m 30s): Yeah, so I mean, I think one of the things that we see really, really often, and it’s especially prevalent among former evangelicals or folks who grew up in kind of evangelical or Catholic spaces, but it’s also, we see it in kind of a different way in folks that grew up in progressive and mainline spaces. So we can maybe talk about both of those things, but is folks who you know, are pretty sure that they know what they don’t believe and they have left homophobic or transphobic churches, maybe they’ve even left the church entirely, and yet they haven’t actually unpacked or unlearned the things that they internalized growing up. 3 (2m 13s): And so what happens often is that their faith then becomes either a response to those things of like, well, I don’t believe that, right? Like, I’m just, I don’t believe in hell, I don’t believe whatever. And yet underneath kind of all of those feelings, there is still a sense of fear or shame or anxiety. And so I just talk about like why it’s so, so, so important that not only you leave those spaces, but that you also unlearn the theology, right? Like you have to unpack what is it that I was taught? What are other ways to understand that? 3 (2m 54s): And you don’t have to necessarily stay a Christian or stay in the church or like even believe any of those other ways, but you have to do the work of understanding them so that those hard emotions don’t keep acting out in your life. 1 (3m 12s): Yeah, I sometimes say it’s like you seem scared of a God that you don’t believe in, and I, I’m sure I’m not the first person to say that. And so I wanna find up, I think it was start by talking about like some ways that you might be able to notice that you have still got some like unlearning to do. And then we’ll sort of get into, well then what do you do with, what do you do with that? If you’re like, that’s me. And so I think like one, a one clear sign that you’ve got some unlearning to do is if you find yourself like being reactive in like any sort of discussion of God or religion comes up. 1 (3m 59s): Obviously if like someone is using Christianity to like legislate against your body, you’re like allowed to be angry at that, right? Like that is a very like reasonable response. So it’s, we’re not saying that you have to like have like an absence of any emotion when it comes to religion or God or spirituality. Absolutely not. But like, you know, if you are, if you find out that someone you’re, you know, doing like abortion clinic escorting with like, also happens to be a Christian and you’re like, oh my God, how could you possibly believe in that? That’s all bullshit without knowing anything about the content of what she believes or he believes or they believe, and otherwise they seem like a thoughtful, justice centered kindhearted, you know, person doing good in the world. 1 (4m 54s): Like it’s like, oh, like what is going on there? Because it sounds like you both don’t believe in the same God, but so that, that’s like some, that’s like, that might be like an indicator that there’s something going on there. Another indicator is that if you like in theory believe that it’s okay to be L-G-B-T-Q, it’s okay to have queer sex, but you find yourself like in your body feeling weird about it after you have sex. If you find yourself feeling shame about the type of sex that you’re having, the type of relationships that you’re having, and like maybe you like hook up and then like immediately ghost someone, or you start dating someone for a few weeks or a few dates and then like, it’s all going well on the surface, but like for some reason you like, you can’t quite put your pan finger on, you just sort of like it fizzles out. 1 (5m 45s): This is, that was, this was my mo for the first, like I, I don’t know, five to seven years after I came out, probably if you asked me like, is it a sin to be gay? I was just like, absolutely not. It’s like not a sin to be gay. Like, and also like the way that I showed up in the world was, I didn’t notice this until my, one of my friends was away for a while and he came back and he was like, oh, whatever happened to that guy that Brian was dating. But like, when I left and, and my other friend told him like, oh, you know, like it was going really well. He was a great guy and like Brian did that thing that Brian does and like freaked out. And then it was over. And like when my friend told me like, this is what our other friend had said, I was like, oh, is that a, is that a pattern of, is that a pattern of mine? 1 (6m 28s): Shit, I’ve like really gotta like pay attention to this. I used to like hook up with people, feel bad, block them, I’ll just sit back on Facebook. I blocked them on Facebook. Then like two months later, like the, it was like, I was like in less crisis and I would, I start to get more horny so then I would like unblock them and then I would like hook up with ’em again and then feel bad like all over again. This like this cycle repeated of like, I don’t know why, in my mind I believe that it’s an okay thing to be queer and I wouldn’t necessarily judge my friends who were doing it, but like in my body I was having some sort of response which was different than like, this person isn’t right for you, or like, this situation isn’t safe or you don’t enjoy this thing. 1 (7m 12s): It was like they were good people that we had a good connection with and I was enjoying what I was doing. It was like the aftermath was like bringing up all of this weird shame or I thought that like I had to wait until I was in a certain type of relationship before having sex or progressed my sexual relationship like at a certain pace that was like, I was noticing was like not necessarily based on my like own comfort level of what was comfortable for me, but was like in response to like what I thought like I should do or what was appropriate. And so then when I started paying attention to like, well, why do I think that which we’ll get into later, like it was the, the shoulds. So if you find yourself like thinking that you like should do something or shouldn’t do something as opposed to being drawn towards wanting to do something or wanting to not do something. 1 (7m 59s): Those are some indicators. What other indicators that there’s like some more unlearning and relearning to be done, to be done. Would you, would you add? 3 (8m 8s): Yeah, so I think, you know, some other examples of folks who, who it’s clear, like they haven’t done some unlearning. I I wanna talk about like mainline folks for a second. So folks who maybe grew up in progressive spaces but they like, haven’t actually learned how to read the Bible on their own. And so what they’ve absorbed about Christianity is coming really from culture, right? From what they’re seeing on the news, what they’re hearing about Christianity. And so they have this sense of like, well, I don’t believe that, but I don’t actually know what it is I believe or like how to understand or think about those things. I saw this in with in a lot of folks in churches that I’ve worked at who like were were like dedicated churchgoers, we’re progressive people, but like wanted to throw out the Bible because they didn’t actually know how to read it, right? 3 (9m 5s): And like they would say things like, we, I, we just need to like get rid of the Bible. And it’s like, well I think it’s actually kind of important that as a church that is centered around this book that we maybe grapple with it and learn how to read it and deal with it. And, and I know that like they weren’t hearing those messages from the pulpit of the church that they were in, but they had gotten that information from somewhere, from their Christian bookstore, from other people that they ran into that were part of more conservative churches and they hadn’t quite learned how to parse it. And so, I mean, I think this goes a little bit back to what you were saying about, you know, folks being reactive, but I think that it’s also a real indication of like, of some unlearning that needs to happen about how we understand and think through certain things 1 (9m 58s): That, that, that made me, that made me think of just the other day in Sanctuary Collective, our online community, someone posted and they were like, I don’t know, they were, they were trying to like, like find new meaning in this story of Saddam and Gamo and like parsing through it. And then they just were like made this authentic comment of like, I just dunno, I find a lot of the like older testaments to be like really troubling to me. I’m like down with Jesus, but like, it’s just like hard to read the, the older testament that just seems like there’s like a lot of judgment in there. And I was like, oh, that, like, that is like not my experience of the older testament or the Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible. Those are kind of all different things, but like, if you like, but they sort of absorb this cultural message, right? 1 (10m 41s): That like parts of the bible are like bad or scary or irreconcilable and the sort of like way to deal with that is to like wanna cut it out, want to throw it out, want to avoid it. And so like if you find yourself avoiding parts of the Bible, like that also might be an indicator that there’s sort of like more like unlearning and relearning to do like, not, like, not that like every part of the Bible is glorious. Like I think like parts of the Bible are troubling, but like I don’t, you don’t have to be like intimidated by the troubling parts. You can be empowered to say like, yeah, that shit’s fucked up. But also like if you find yourself painting like in broad strokes like all of the Old Testament is hard, you’re like, probably that’s probably coming from a place like you were saying Shea of like either reactivity or just like a lack of understanding about how folks actually engage with those texts because oh my goodness in the Hebrew Bible is all sorts of love and justice and like embodied connection with God and care and concern and all that good stuff. 3 (11m 41s): Yeah. Yeah. And then I, I think the other piece is if you are in a space where fear keeps coming up for you, and again, I think that this is like right there is a, there is a world in which you actually have done some work and intellectually, you know, for instance like that there are lots of ways to believe about salvation or hell or the rapture or that the rapture isn’t real like any of those things and you still feel fear coming up sometimes that is just a, you’re still in a process of learning how to comfort and soothe your body and like convince your body that your head is right. 3 (12m 23s): And so like that is one thing and we can, we’ll probably talk in a, in a future episode about like how we work on that mind body connection. But there’s another piece of that where if you are someone who just like continuously feels afraid, afraid of God, afraid to read the bible, afraid to go into a church, it, there’s probably something in there that that is saying like, there’s still some more unlearning to do and this is different than a trauma response, right? Like I, I wanna also name that for some folks there is like a, a complex trauma or A-P-T-S-D because of harm that has happened in churches. And so like you should maybe avoid those spaces or, or like seek out some therapy to, to figure out how to navigate that this is something different. 3 (13m 12s): This is like a, just a sense of, I don’t know, doom or dread. Like this isn’t something where you’re, you’re talking about you’re having a panic response, but this is like a, I’m like afraid to read the bible because what if I read something that upsets me or sends me spiraling, I’m afraid to pray, I’m afraid to engage with Christian community because like I, I don’t want it to, to send me off the rails. And I think that all of that is, is usually a pretty good indication that you haven’t unlearned the theology and learned something new to take its place. 3 (13m 53s): And I think that this is, this is a moment to say again like, you don’t have to stay Christian or stay in the church or have faith. And also I think it’s really important if you grew up hearing certain things that you understand and learn the counterpoints to that right? That that is what gets us out of fear and whether or not you like choose to continue to engage in that is totally in many ways irrelevant. 1 (14m 26s): Yes. I think, I think like one of the things that we come across in our work is folks that are no longer Christian, either like explicitly no longer Christian or like kind of Christian, vaguely Christian, but it’s like not super important to them and they don’t wanna like do a lot of work around it but that have these like lingering beliefs about maybe they wouldn’t call it god anymore, but like the way the universe is gonna like get them back or fear or like just sort of like disconnected from their bodies, like shame, right? And that like actually sometimes like if it’s like if, if you want to stop being a Christian, sometimes like the best thing that you can do is like spend four to eight to 12 weeks like studying Christianity so that you like excise all of that from you and so that you can then like leave while we talk all the time about like, we wanna help folks who want to stay Christian, like do that really well and we wanna help folks that want to like leave Christianity, like do that well as well or who folks want to like do something else or reimagine their, their faith that like, but you gotta, in order to move on to like the best version of what’s next, you gotta make sure that you like leave all of the bullshit behind. 3 (15m 39s): Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is also like, it’s more in depth than just learning the like progressive counter to evangelicals talking points, right? I see this a lot too of folks who have left evangelicalism, but they’re still arguing against evangelicals using the rules and the terms that evangelicals have set up about like what the Bible is and what it means and how to read it. And I think that too gets us stuck in a cycle of being reactive, of being influenced and informed by evangelical theology and thinking, right? 3 (16m 20s): There’s this idea that, that they somehow hold all of the power in the conversations and that we’re like just responding to them and that we have to respond in that way. And, and one of the biggest things for me was, was learning that like, oh actually the rules of they rigged the rules of the game. So like me continuing to engage with them in that way actually helps to elevate how they’re thinking about scripture and how they’re thinking about theology and like, I’m not willing to do that anymore. And that was when I started to like get free because it was like, oh, there’s actually a whole other way to read the bible, to understand theology that doesn’t at all even give credence or any elevation to evangelical thinking and theology and like that’s where we need to be spending our time. 1 (17m 12s): Yeah, it reminds me of those passages and I know Matthew and Mark maybe at somewhere else also where Jesus is telling his disciples, like if you go somewhere and they like won’t listen to you, like leave and shake the dust off your sandals. I know we’ve covered that in my podcast a number of times. He isn’t like, if they don’t listen to you well then try to like meet them where they are or like try to like put them in like language that they’ll understand or like argue on their terms. He’s like, no man, like come preach the gospel like on our terms and they won’t hear it like peace. And I think like there is some power in in doing that so that we don’t, like you were saying by it’s kind also when I was doing media training from glad they were, were like you, if someone asks you like a problematic question you like don’t, you’d like don’t answer it on their terms, you respond, you don’t answer, you don’t like repeat problematic framings of things. 1 (17m 59s): Yeah. ’cause like sometimes like really like messy or problematic or harmful assumptions are like baked into the questions that you’re asked or the like the ways in which that scripture or theology is engaged with. And so like it is impossible not to affirm harmful theology if you answer on those terms. And so you just gotta like jet us in all of that together. Yeah. So if you’re 3 (18m 23s): Hearing all of this and you’re thinking, yeah, that sounds great and I’ve got some stuff to do and like, where the hell do I start? We’ve got you covered. You can go to cariology.com/resources and find resources on all sorts of things. Whether your biggest thing is that you’re still feeling shame around sex or you are wondering how to read the bible better and you know, starting to, to get some progressive theology in there, we’ve got you covered. So go to queer theology.com/resources if there’s something in particular that you’re looking for, you can always send us an email connect at queer theology com. We’d love to point you in the right direction. 1 (19m 2s): Alright, and now let us turn to our listener question. Just a reminder, if you have a question that you would like answered, you can send us a text message or leave us a voicemail at 2 4 0 200 0 9 2 2. That’s 2 4 0 2 0 0 0 9 2 2. If you prefer, if you’re international or you prefer to do it on the web, you can go to queer theology com slash listen and you can leave us a voice note or send us a text-based message there as well. So with that, let’s take a listen to our first question. 4 (19m 38s): It was a Brent, she I was just wondering, so I wanna say like a year or so ago, I ended up watching that 1946 movie, the documentary that was like posted online. They had it like circling at like, like movie festivals and stuff and I watched it and it was really good and then I commented on somebody’s page on like TikTok and stuff and they were saying that that actually is all false and that it’s really just like progressive Christian stuff and that like everything that they said in there was not true and all that stuff. So I just wanted to ask you all and because you actually like, you know, studied the bible and like the history and stuff and I just wanted to get your take on it. 4 (20m 26s): I know that this is probably a big thing and I’m sure you’ve maybe even have mentioned it before, but I just wanted to put it out here suggests that other people can also know too. And yeah, so thank you so much for your time and I hope you and everybody out there have a really blessed day. Thank you peace. Much love. 3 (20m 43s): Yeah, I love this question. I think it’s so, so important and interesting and the like short answer is it doesn’t matter slash you’re both right and the longer answer is a little bit more complicated. So the, the first thing to notice is that the folks who made the 1946 documentary are correct that, you know, in the English translations of the Bible, we didn’t have the word homosexuality inserted until 1946. The problem with that is that like, that doesn’t suddenly make the Bible homophobic, right? Like people were using the bible to be antique well before the insertion of that word. 3 (21m 29s): And so like the, the idea that like that was suddenly how we got homophobia in our churches is like just not true. And so I think that the, this, this leads to a more nuanced conversation about like what do we do with both those verses and with the understanding of like a progressive view of sexuality. Like how do we make sense of that? And then even further than that is also like how do we deal with the kind of the rhetoric that’s like, no, that’s just like wishful thinking, it’s actually wrong and like they’re just making it up and, and that kind of what you’ve called many times Brian, like the hamster wheel of Yeah, I was thinking that and, and of like reading theology. 3 (22m 18s): And so like I think that that is actually a more important place to sit and wrestle with anything you would add to what I’ve said. 1 (22m 26s): Yeah, when, when I was listening to this question, I immediately got a flashback to when I was figuring out that I was queer and like researching like what does the bible say? And obviously like however long ago, everybody, like 20 years ago this movie didn’t exist yet, but a lot of the same arguments were were being made there about like, this is a mistranslation of this word. And, and so then I would just go back and forth. So like I would, I would read about how these words were mistranslated, how the translation changed, how the word homosexual didn’t appear until the forties. Then I would, I then I would read some other article about saying like, all those, all of those arguments are like bs. And then I would read a third one about how the, the anti-gay argument was actually incorrect and the the original one was correct and I was just, it felt like I could, like never, I was just like, I could never get a, had a spy answer on either from either side. 1 (23m 16s): And I think that gets back to what we were talking about earlier in this episode that it’s like about more than just like, what does this one word mean? Because I baked into the question, right? Is that if this word means homosexual, then definitively homosexual is like not a sin, it like is a sin. And it’s like, well a like it was written Greek, so like we don’t even, I’m like homosexuality as a concept didn’t exist. And so I think think like we, we, what you find yourselves getting into is like you get into the weeds, right? About like, well homosexuality is a concept didn’t exist. So of course like, it’s not an exact translation, but it’s like it’s a close enough translation and it, you know, we have to update our translations to modern times, which is like not wrong, right? 1 (24m 1s): To your point, even if the translation didn’t mean homosexual, like there’s other verses that people can point to, right? Or there’s just more like a general sense of like, well there aren’t queer people in the Bible at all. So, so then what? And I think like if you, if your sense of it’s okay to be queer hangs on like a definitive reading of these seven passages and or of like David and Jonathan being gay, this ur and his like servant slash slave being gay, that’s like a really fragile thing to hang your, the love of yourself on. And it, it is just as fragile I would say as like evangelicalism, like you shay you all for years and years have been saying like it’s a house of cards. 1 (24m 46s): Like, and so if you, if you just blow on it, it all comes tumbling down. And I think like you, we want you to have a stronger faith foundation than like, I just hope that this translation of this like 2000 year old made up word is correct. Like, ooh, like that is a shaky foundation. And we, we have found over and over and over again is that like, that is like an unfulfilling argument for queer people that leaves us sort of like in a shaky place and it like is generally not gonna move homophobes who like are committed to believing that queer people are living in sin, that we gotta find some other way to move those, these like highly academic arguments are not the thing that moves the needle. 1 (25m 29s): And so I wanna pull back and say like, how do we read the Bible in totality? What are the messages that are trying that are being told? How does scripture like speak in a, like where does speak, where does scripture agree with itself? Where does scripture disagree with itself, contradict itself, wrestle with itself, argue with itself for, for folks who are Christian, like what does Jesus like say, what does Jesus do? How does like the early church in scripture understand Jesus? How does the church beyond like the, the Bible understand Jesus? And this is like that all what I just said, just explaining the process, let alone actually doing the process takes more time than like the homosexual and the fornicator shall not inherit the kingdom, right? 1 (26m 17s): It’s like not a soundbite, right? Yeah. But I do think that like you are made in the image of God that like God desires right relationship with you that like there’s, you have some internal sense of like the divine speaking to you and working with you, whether that is like still small voice from the Hebrew Bible, whether that’s the Holy Spirit from the Christian Bible that like the fruits of our theology manifest themselves like in our lives and in our world that like we can trust ourselves in some way. All of those things like come together to, we make a really beautiful and profound case, not just for, for like queer acceptance, but for like the importance of like justice work in general. 1 (27m 7s): Which is not to say that like there aren’t problematic passages or hard passages or passages like worth wrestling with in the Bible, but like this idea that we just have to accept passages that trouble us at face value is like a very modern understanding of how we’re supposed to engage with scripture and with God. And like, just ’cause like some people, some types of Christians are like saying it very loudly does like not actually mean that that is a faithful way to engage with a bible. 3 (27m 40s): Yeah. I I I think that also goes back to what we were saying earlier about like this argument about the, this word being added in 1946 is very much like predicated on on the idea of the Bible as infallible and in errand, right? Like it’s, it’s an argument designed to hold up how evangelicals understand scripture, which I would, I would say is like not the way that we want to engage, that we instead wanna be saying, no, actually infallibility and inerrancy are really, really new and modern inventions. And like there’s a, a more faithful way of reading all scripture. 3 (28m 24s): And that like, all scripture becomes much more interesting when you read it with nuance and with and and, and as in conversation with itself as opposed to this text that is clear and tells us what to do and is this like, you know, checklist for how to be, how to believe and behave. 1 (28m 47s): Yeah. And like it’s this word in particular, it’s like a 2000 year old word, it is like a made up word that is like an amalgamation of like two other words that were like everyone doing a translation is trying to like discern what it means from like how it was constructed and like this scam other places it was used. And so it’s like, that’s just like an unsatisfying response. It’s like that is like always going to be unsatisfying for queer people and for anti LGBT people. Like, they’re like man bigotry is a hell of a drug, right? So like if they’re coming into it already thinking that like queerness is like sick and sinful, like of course they’re not going to trust like this sort of like really nuanced academic arguments about this word. 1 (29m 33s): We’ve got to figure out how to move them like on a systems level, on a heart level so that they can then get to a point where they can like actually look at the data and be like, oh yeah, it probably doesn’t mean that. And like even if it does, like that’s like, that’s wrong. And so like if, if this sort of stuff is resonances to you, either you’re like a queer person and you’re like wanting some more affirmation and assurance about the Bible and whether or not it condemns queerness or you’re someone who wants to figure out how to like engage with others more effectively, definitely check out our resources page as Shea was saying earlier, queer theology.com/resources. I wanna flag two workshops I think would be particularly helpful for you collaborating the collabor passages, which is all about the passages that have historically been used against LGBT people and how you can sort of like unlearn and relearn around those we share, you know, not just the sort of like traditional arguments as you would hear in the, in the movie, but also our sort of take on how you can really, truly want and for all, like let go of the power that they have over you. 1 (30m 41s): And then also active advocacy if you wanna definitely for straight cisgender folks to like be a better advocate and ally for LGBT LGBTQ people folk. But also if you are a queer person yourself, you might get something out of that just in terms of like how to effectively organize and some like pitfalls and obstacles to avoid. 3 (30m 58s): Yeah. Alright, we got one more question. This person writes, hi, I’m a bi latina person. She, they wanting to return to my Christian roots and embrace what I felt scared to do growing up. I feel stumped over where to start and what resources to use. How can I overcome this fear to revisit God? What are the steps to start? 1 (31m 18s): This is a great question. Like you said, Shea, I, there, I’ve got like two high level places that I think you, you would start. One is, I guess kind of more like advice to the journey. And that is I think to make things like, make whatever it is that you’re doing, very small and very simple. This was something that came up for us when we were running our queerness everyday challenge a little while ago. The tasks were like super small, unachievable. This is also inside of Ox Up Your Faith program. We break things down into like this, into like the smallest, simplest chunks so that you can, so that you can actually like, make movement If you’re feeling fear, if you’re feeling resistance, if you’ve like been watching this for a while and you haven’t been able to figure how to get started, it’s probably because like the task feels too big. 1 (32m 11s): So rather than trying to go from this like place of fear right now to like next week feeling like a thriving prayer life and a like a community where you feel totally connected with and like nothing but like joy, no fear all joy, right? That’s like a huge, that’s like a huge chasm to to, to jump over. And so like, how can you make things smaller? It might be that like the first step is to like, you know, we always say this, it’s like journal and meditation, but like, it might be that the first step is to like, pay attention to the questions that you’re asking yourself to figure out like what exactly are you afraid of? 1 (32m 50s): It might be to like figure out like what you are like most excited about and what you are most like hesitant about. And like, I think like if ever you feel like I can’t do that, figure out a way to make it even make the step even smaller. Obviously, like if you want help breaking all this down, we can go into more depth via email and also inside of Flip Your Faith, which is currently close registration, but it’s coming back soon. So go to queer theology.com/waitlist to get on the wait list for that. But so like, my thing, my first step is like just like smaller and simpler. I have a second idea, but I’d also, I’ve been talking for a minute, so I I can hold that back while if you’ve got something to say Shey. 3 (33m 28s): Yeah, I mean I think, I think for me it’s, it’s making sure that as you’re restarting this journey, that you are restarting it in community and being resourced by folks who are progressive. That the way to restart this journey isn’t to like, go back to the evangelical church or conservative church that you grew up in. It’s not to like dig out your old daily devotional and restart that, right? It’s to get new resources that are gonna speak truth into your life and that are gonna help you understand in a new way. 3 (34m 8s): My biggest concern would be that you would jump back in with all of the resources that you started with. And so figuring out like, what is it that you need, whether it’s like, I need to start with reading a book about how to read the Bible and I’m gonna, I’m gonna go there, or I need to find an LGBTQ plus affirming church so that I can attend a worship service there. Or even just like watch some sermons online to dip back in. But just making sure that you are surrounding yourself with progressive people and progressive theology, which isn’t to say that like you only listen to what you wanna hear, which I know is gonna be the, the pushback to that. 3 (34m 49s): But it’s saying like, you’re in a space where you’re just starting on a journey where your faith is a bit fragile, where you’re relearning in some ways like how to walk in this space. And so you need to make sure that you are listening to voices that you can trust and that you’re not get overly confuse yourself or put yourself in harm’s way because you’re trying to like listen to a multiplicity of voices right off the bat. 1 (35m 16s): Amen to that. So as we’ve already said a few times, we have a bunch of those resources@queertheology.com slash resources. If you would like to hear from folks other than us, we think that’s a great idea. We, and if you’re a reader, we put together a bunch a a bunch of different book recommendations on our bookshop at bookshop.org/shop/ology. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes from all different sorts of perspectives, right? Like Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Re like liberation, like liberation work from like the Latin American perspective. Juliet takes a Breath, which is like a beautiful fiction book, Latina and queer. We’ve got a bunch of nonfiction recommendations, the black, you know, trans prayer book, all sorts of like really great stuff to sort of like start feeding you from a, like a queer perspective, a liberation perspective. 1 (36m 7s): And so resources, I think like, and, and starting to revisit your faith as like an important part of that process. And then I would also encourage you along the way to like pay attention to your body, how your body is reacting, and also how you can like, take care of your body, be gentle with your body and how you can not just like think about things or read about things, but also start to embody your beliefs and practices that is like way more than we can go into here, but in, in the time allotted. But we’ll, you know, I’m sure we’ll be doing like a ance everyday challenge again or something similar in the future and sharing more in depth by email. 1 (36m 47s): So make sure you hop on our email list if you have not already, so that you can go, we go like deeper with you around this because this is like a really important question and hopefully that can help get you started. 3 (36m 59s): Yeah. And so that is it for today. As a reminder, if you want to leave a question for us to answer in a future podcast episode, you can go to queer theology.com/listen and and do a video or text or you can call the Google Voice number. We would love to answer any of your questions, whether they’re about faith and theology or particular bible passages or something else entirely. Hit us with what you got. We would love to, to chat with you more. And that is it for this week. We will see you next week with another episode. 1 (37m 34s): See you soon. 5 (37m 35s): The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do@queertheology.com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for BTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters. 2 (37m 44s): To dive into more of the actions, visit us@queertheology.com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. 5 (37m 51s): We’ll see you next week. The post Moving Past Terrible Theology appeared first on Queer Theology.

Queering Advent is a guided audio experience for this time of waiting, dreaming, and preparing as we hope for and work toward liberation and salvation. Rituals and liturgical seasons like Advent are invitations for us to re-center on what is most important to us. This winter, journey with us through Advent to deepen your awareness of and commitment to the connections between queerness and faith. Learn more and register at queertheology.com/advent An Advent practices that enriches your December, rather than stresses you out Brian & Shannon will offer a deeper reflection each Sunday of Advent—a mix of teaching, queer insights, and questions to consider. Then, during the week, you’ll get a short audio guide—shorter readings, reflections, prompts, and experiments— delivered right to your podcast app or available in our community hub. So that you move through this season with intentionality and contemplation. Feel steadied and reassured in these trying times. And a greater inspiration for how our faith can speak a good word to your personal life and our communal systems. All for $25 — that’s just one dollar for each day of Advent. Register here: queertheology.com/advent   This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. 0 (0s): Hello. Hello. We are just a few days into Advent, and I wanted to make sure that you knew about Queering Advent, a daily guided audio exploration of Advent so that in this time of winter waiting, you might be able to draw closer to the Divine, also to draw your queerness and your faith closer to one another as part of Queering Advent. Each day there are short audio reflections on weekdays, they’re five minutes or less, and then on Sundays it’s a little bit longer of a conversation between myself and Shannon on the different themes of Advent. You get them in a private audio feed that you can put in the podcast player of your choice. 0 (41s): So if you’re listening to this podcast, you already know how that works. You don’t have to remember any logins. You don’t have to sit at your computer. There are no screens to stare at. Just a daily dose of queer Faithful Reflections, meditations, and even some challenges and inspirations. We would love to have you be part of it. It’s just $25. That’s $1 for each day of Advent. You can learn more at queer theology.com/advent. And now I would like to share with you a preview of what you’ll find inside of Queering Advent. 1 (1m 12s): Welcome to Queering Advent. 0 (1m 21s): After I came out, it took my parents many years for them to come around and be affirming, and in those in-between years, I spent a lot of time waiting, waiting for them to accept me, waiting for them to say the right things, waiting for them to ask meaningful questions about who I am and the life that I’m really living. When I think about it, I also spent some time waiting on myself before I even came out waiting to be sure that this was true, waiting on the right explanation to confirm for myself that it was okay to be queer, waiting for the right time to tell my friends and families and coworkers and people that I knew from church waiting to feel comfortable being perceived as queer out in public, and even since I’ve been out as queer for over half my life at this point, which is wild to think about, and even still, I find myself in these periods of waiting to settle into my identity, to feel comfortable as a polyamorous person of faith to uncover new areas of shame that I still carry in my body to weight. 0 (2m 29s): For those to be excised and to feel completely comfortable. Psalm one 30 says, I cry out to you from the depths, Lord, my Lord, listen to my voice. Let your ears pay close attention to my request for mercy. If you kept track of sins, Lord, my Lord, who would stand a chance, but forgiveness is with you. That’s why you are honored. I hope, Lord, my whole being hopes and I wait for God’s promise. My whole being waits for my Lord more than the night Watch waits for morning. Yes, more than the night. Watch waits for Morning Israel. Wait for the Lord because faithful love is with the Lord, because great redemption is with our God. 0 (3m 12s): He’s the one who redeem Israel from all its sin. Shannon and I are wondering today what you might be waiting for, and that is your prompt today. Take a few minutes right now to think on a time when you’ve been waiting for something. What were you waiting on? How did you feel while you were waiting, and then what did you do? As always, we invite you to not just reflect on these in your head, but to jot them down pen to paper or in a Notes app. If you feel comfortable, pop on over to Sanctuary Collective community to the querying Advent thread and share with us one of your experiences of waiting. 1 (3m 54s): That’s 0 (3m 55s): All for now. We’ll see you tomorrow, Shannon and I would love to have you be part of Queering Advent. In addition to the daily audio reflections, you also get access to the entire Sanctuary collective community, as well as the spiritual study hall library of resources already inside a sanctuary collective. We’re having some really interesting discussions about the themes and the questions and the reflections that have come up over acquiring Advent. We would love to get to know you and grow deeper in faith with you, so come on in queer theology.com/advent. The post Preview: Queering Advent appeared first on Queer Theology.

Father Shannon kicks off the Advent season with a solo episode where he reflects on the meaning of Advent as both a spiritual and practical season of preparation. During this time of rising threats for trans, non-binary folks, and immigrants, uncertainty and fear hangs over us. Fr. Shannon offers some grounding reflections about community, care, safety, resistance, and showing up for one another. You’re encouraged to bring your journal to this one! The Christian story calls us to co-create a more just and compassionate world, and we encourage listeners not only to reflect, but to take action in their communities.    Takeaways: We’re asking this question not out of a sense of doomsday prepper. What do I need to do right now, right where I am? Creating the kind of community I long to live in. Building a world that will protect the most at risk. The importance of personal responsibility in community building. Resilience is key in facing challenges. Safe spaces are essential for vulnerable populations. Community building requires active participation. We must think about our actions in the present moment. Creating supportive environments is a collective effort.   Resources: Join us and be part of Queering Advent! Find more info here.   This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. Amazon Music (1s): Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer’s identity is about to be revealed? During that perfect meditation flow on Amazon music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That’s why we’ve got millions of ad-free podcast episodes, so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon music app and start listening to your favorite podcast, ad free, included with Prime. 2 (43s): Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy. 3 (46s): And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts 2 (51s): From Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how tuning 3 (57s): Each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello. Hello and welcome back to the Queer Theology Podcast Today, you’ve got a solo Father Shannon episode. It is the beginning of Advent, and I just have a couple of thoughts and reflections that I wanted to share with you as we get this Christian season started. Advent has arrived. I kind of can’t believe that we are already at this point in the year. Hopefully you are already ready to go with your advent practice and that you’re raring to, to kick it off. 3 (1m 39s): I know for me, it sometimes takes me a bit to, to get into the season, but I, I find that advent is a, is a really important and reflective time. A time when we prepare, not only for Christmas of course, but also we reenter the Christian story. You know, advent is the beginning of the Christian calendar, and we begin anew to replay this ancient story, the story of Jesus, the story of the Christian people, a story that still resonates and resounds today, and, and whether or not you still consider yourself a Christian, whether or not you’ve ever celebrated or observed Advent before. 3 (2m 25s): I think that there’s a lot that we can get out of the themes of Advent and thinking through kind of this cycle of the Christian life, the cycle of the spiritual life, the cycle of the stories that we tell about ourselves and our communities. And I’ve been thinking a lot about the themes of advent, particularly in these days. You know, advent is often thought of as a time of preparation. And you know, right now, as I am recording this, we’re, we’re getting ready to enter into this season. And, you know, the threats against trans and non-binary people in particular continue to rise. 3 (3m 7s): So do prices and potentially healthcare costs if we can even get healthcare at all. And there’s so much violence and fear and anxiety the way that immigrants are being treated in this country. The political rhetoric all over, you know, it feels really scary sometimes, and it also feels often, I think with the 24 7 news media, like things are getting a lot worse. And, and I know for me as a trans person, I’ve been thinking a lot about what can I do to prepare? And I know a lot of other trans people are, are thinking about this as well. 3 (3m 47s): And we’re asking this question not out of a sense of pessimism or like a doomsday prepper, but we’re thinking about it, or at least I’m thinking about it, of, you know, what do I need to do right now, right where I am right in these moments in order to create the kind of community that I long to live in. What do I need to do right now, right here, right in this moment in order to keep building a world that will protect the most at risk? And so in this advent season, I am thinking both theologically and practically about these questions, about this theme of preparation. 3 (4m 31s): And I’m working to answer these questions for myself. And, and I thought that today it, it might be interesting to offer them as reflections for you too, if these questions feel useful. And so I’m, I’m gonna ask the question and pause just for a couple of seconds. If you wanted to use this as an exercise, as journaling prompts, as time to think, you could simply hit pause on the podcast after each question. If it’s more helpful for you to hear all the questions and then spend some time to reflect, feel free to do that. But here are the questions that, that I’m reflecting on, and then I offer to you as a reflection as well. The first is simply who is in my community? 3 (5m 15s): And you can think of this as narrowly or as broadly as you want. I encourage you to think about it, especially concretely, both like who is in your community, right, in your location and lo locality, like who around you is in your community. But you can also think more broadly of who is in your community. What does community care look like? What matters to me when it comes to my health? And how can I put measures in place to protect that health? 3 (5m 60s): What might I need to think about when it comes to legal documents moving forward? Who are the people I trust who can inform me about what I need to do to keep myself safe? How did my elders make it through similar times? What can I learn from strategies of resistance and strategies of care from the past? How am I giving back to my community? 3 (6m 41s): What can I offer my community? And after you’ve spent some time reflecting, I invite you to not just leave these as answers on paper or a screen, don’t just leave them in a journal, but use these answers to start to inform how you’re showing up. Maybe you wanna show up in some new ways. I am particularly using this advent to prepare and answer these questions so that I can begin to act so that I, I can begin to show up in my community in new ways. I think that the story of Jesus wasn’t just about a miraculous intervention into human history. 3 (7m 26s): You know, often we talk about the advent story and the Jesus story as you know, the people were waiting and then Jesus came and, and it was all fixed, right? ’cause, ’cause Jesus came. I think that instead the story of Advent is a reminder that there are always prophets who are pointing out what’s wrong in the world. There are always prophets who are looking around and saying, we don’t have to live like this. And then those same prophets are inviting us to be a part of the solution. And so in this advent time, I think it’s a time for us to look around and point out what’s wrong. It’s a time for us to uplift the voices of the prophets and to echo the voices of the prophets. 3 (8m 13s): But it’s also a time for all of us to remember the invitation, to be a part of the solution, to remember the invitation, to continue to build a new world together, to continue to look out for the most marginalized and the most at risk in our midst. And to do whatever we can to make the world safer for them and for all of us. And so I offer this as an advent reflection for you. If you want some extra support throughout this advent season, you can join Sanctuary Collective. We would love to have you as a member of the community. This 2 (8m 50s): Is Brian popping in as we edit. To let you know that inside of Sanctuary Collective during Advent, we have a guided audio advent experience for you called queering Advent. It’s a mix of bible readings, queer reflections, prompts for you to reflect on, and even a few suggestions for adventures and experiments to put your faith into an action. A new prompt drops every day of Advent, so you can learn more in signup@queertheology.com slash advent. It’s just $1 per day. And you also get access to the entire Sanctuary Collective community and spiritual study hall resources collection. Again, that’s queer theology.com/advent, and it’s happening all advent long. I hope to see you inside. 3 (9m 28s): We would love to support you through Advent and this holiday season. Be well and we’ll see you next time. 2 (9m 35s): The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do@queertheology.com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q, Christians and straight cisgender supporters. 3 (9m 44s): To dive into more of the action, visit us@queertheology.com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. 2 (9m 51s): We’ll see you next week. Libsyn Ads (9m 55s): Marketing is hard, but I’ll tell you a little secret. It doesn’t have to be, let me point something out. You’re listening to a podcast right now and it’s great. You love the host, you seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion, and this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libson ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to libsyn ads.com. That’s L-I-B-S-Y-N ads.com Today. The post An Advent Reflection for Uncertain Times appeared first on Queer Theology.