Jesus in Love Blog

“Julian of Norwich,” a memorial drawing for his cat Betty, by Douglas Blanchard

“Julian of Norwich” by Brother Robert Lentz, OFM, TrinityStores.com

Julian of Norwich is a medieval English mystic who celebrated “Mother Jesus.” It’s not known if Julian herself was queer, but some of her ideas were. Julian is often listed with LGBT saints because of her genderbending visions of Jesus and God. Her feast day (May 8) always falls near Mother’s Day (May 10, 2015).

Her discussions of Jesus as a mother sound radical even now, more than 600 years later. In today’s understanding, Julian’s Jesus can seem to be transgender! Her omnigendered vision of the Trinity fits with contemporary feminist and queer theology.

Mother’s Day is also a great time to honor mothers whose love for their gay children helped launch LGBT organizations, including: Jeanne Manford and Adele Starr, founders of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); and Edith “Mom” Perry of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC).

Julian of Norwich (c.1342-1416) is the first woman to write a book in English. The book, “Revelations of Divine Love

,” recounts a series of 16 visions that she experienced from May 8-13, 1373 during a severe illness when she was 30 years old. The book includes Julian’s most famous saying, “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” -- words spoken to her by God in one of Julian’s visions.


Julian of Norwich from Wikimedia Commons

Later Julian went on to become an anchoress, a type of recluse who lives in a cell attached to a church and does contemplative prayer. Her hermit’s cell was at the Church of St. Julian in Norwich. The cell had two windows, one opening to the church and the other opening to the street. She became known throughout England for the spiritual counseling that she gave there.

A longstanding legend tells of Julian’s friendship with her cat companion, depicted in the paintings at the top of this post. As an anchoress, Julian probably lived alone. It is said that the only other being to share her room was a cat -- for the practical purpose of keeping it free from rats and mice.

Julian is considered the first Catholic to write at length about God as mother. Her profound ideas speak powerfully today to women and queer people of faith. “As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother,” Julian wrote.

Here are a few short quotes from Julian’s extensive writings about “Mother Jesus”:

“So Jesus Christ who sets good against evil is our real Mother. We owe our being to him--and this is the essence of motherhood! --and all the delightful, loving protection which ever follows. God is as really our Mother as he is our Father.“ (Chapter 59)

“So Jesus is our true Mother by nature at our first creation, and he is our true Mother in grace by taking on our created nature.” (Chapter 59)

“A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our dear mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and he does so most courteously and most tenderly with the holy sacrament, which is the precious food of life itself… The mother can lay the child tenderly to her breast, but our tender mother Jesus, he can familiarly lead us to his blessed breast through his sweet open side….” (Chapter 60)

These quotes come from modern English translations of “Revelations of Divine Love” by Elizabeth Spearing

and Clifton Wolters

. For longer quotations Click here.

The sacred feminine is just one of the many revelations that have endeared Julian to the public. She also uses objects from ordinary life to illustrate God’s loving, forgiving nature. For example, in one vision God shows Julian a small object like a hazel-nut in the palm of her hand. Julian writes:

“I looked at it and thought, 'What can this be?' And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, 'It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God'.” (Chapter 5)

Julian lived a long life. The date of her death is unknown, but records show that she was still alive at age 73 to receive an inheritance. She was never formally canonized, but Julian is considered a saint by popular devotion. The Episcopal and Lutheran Churches keep her feast day on May 8.

New York painter Douglas Blanchard shows the saint with the artist’s own cat Betty in a drawing done as a memorial tribute to a beloved feline companion who died in 2013. He includes a favorite quote from Julian:

“He that made all things for love,
by that same love keepeth them,
and shall keep them without end.”

Blanchard is best known for his epic series “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision,” which is now available as a book. He teaches art and art history at the Bronx Community College of the City University of New York

The other icon of Julian and her cat was created by Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar based in New York. Known for his innovative icons, he was rebuked by the church for painting LGBT saints and God as female.

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To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
Juliana de Norwich: Celebración de la Madre Jesús (Santos Queer)
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Related links for Mother's Day:
Jeanne Manford: PFLAG founder loved her gay son

Adele Starr and others: Patron saints for straight allies of LGBT people

Edith “Mom” Perry, mother of Troy Perry and first heterosexual member of the Metropolitan Community Churches
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This post is part of the LGBT Saints series at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, heroes and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.
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Icons of Julian of Norwich and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at TrinityStores.com

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A queer sensibility shines through revolutionary new lyrics about resurrection in a song performed on Easter at LGBT-affirming Founders Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles.

Lucia Chappelle, minster of social justice at Founders MCC, wrote new words for a melody made popular by Paul Simon as “American Tune.” The same music is also known as the traditional hymn “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.”

Chappelle's version begins:

I think of the questionable history,
I think of the fascination with death,
I think of the role of Christianity
In spreading human distress,
But it's alright, it's alright,
The Resurrection's here!
Though the institution may be our cross to bear,
We're called to persevere, we're called to persevere…

(Full text is at the end of this post.)

Titled “The Resurrection’s Here,” the song premiered on Easter morning when singer-guitarist Garrett Wolfe performed it during communion.

Garrett Wolfe

In typical MCC style, communion was served with touch and personalized prayer to individuals, couples and groups, thereby affirming queer families along with everyone else.

In a video of the song’s debut, Jesus in Love publisher Kittredge Cherry can be seen receiving communion with her partner Audrey Lockwood starting at minute 1:45.

Founders MCC is the first church in a denomination that has served the LGBT community since 1968. Chappelle has been part of MCC since 1972. She pastored DeColores MCC, a lesbian feminist-womanist collective congregation in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The DeColores MCC Hymnal includes more of her new lyrics to familiar hymns, such as her Christmas carol “Silent Night, Raging Night,” plus songs and liturgies contributed by many other women from DeColores and beyond.

There is also a queer connection to the tune's better-known hymn lyrics, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.” Those words are based on a homoerotic poem by Bernard of Clairvaux. For more info, see Saints Bernard of Clairvaux and Malachy: Honey-tongued abbot and the archbishop he loved.

Thanks, Lucia, for writing these liberating lyrics and sharing them on the Jesus in Love Blog!

Lucia Chappelle, center, shares a joyous moment with Kittredge Cherry, left, and Audrey Lockwood after the Easter premiere of her resurrection song

The Resurrection's Here!

By Lucia Chappelle

I think of the questionable history,
I think of the fascination with death,
I think of the role of Christianity
In spreading human distress,
But it's alright, it's alright,
The Resurrection's here!
Though the institution may be our cross to bear,
We're called to persevere, we're called to persevere.

Sometimes the church just drives me crazy,
Sometimes religion rubs me wrong,
Sometimes the meaning gets so hazy,
Like I don't really belong,
But I'm alright, I'm alright,
The Resurrection's here!
Even when you seem to get crucified again,
It always reappears, it always reappears.

And I live in the vortex --
A place where my faith grows exponentially,
Experientially,
Blessed dichotomy!
And I dream of the promise --
I honor a voice crying inside of me,
Full of complexity,
"Here's where you need to be."
So I live in the vortex.

We look for the Resurrection morning,
We look for a supernatural event,
We look past the simple springtime flowering
For some new sacrament,
But it's alright, it's alright,
The Resurrection's here!
So when it seems to be playing hard to get
Just use your eyes and ears, just use your eyes and ears.

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Related links:
eclecticlucialand.blogspot.com (Lucia Chapelle’s blog)

“Harvey Milk of San Francisco” by Brother Robert Lentz, OFM. (TrinityStores.com)

Equality for all is celebrated today (May 22) on Harvey Milk Day, the birthday of LGBT rights pioneer Harvey Milk.

As America’s first openly gay man elected to public office in a major city*, Milk was responsible for passing a tough gay-rights law in San Francisco before his assassination on Nov. 27, 1978. He has been called a martyr for LGBT rights -- and for all human rights.

Milk (1930-1978) served only 11 months on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors before he was killed, but in that short time he fought for the rights of the elderly, small business owners, and the many ethnic communities in his district as well as for the growing LGBT community.

Harvey Milk Day March,
by Show Me No Hate
St. Louis, MO

Harvey Milk Day events happen all across America, especially in California, where it became an official state holiday in 2009 and public schools are encouraged to teach suitable commemorative lessons about the LGBT rights activist. Milk is the only openly gay person in the United States to receive such a distinction.

The Harvey Milk Day Facebook page offers updates. A calendar of events and other resources are available at HarveyMilkDay.co, the official home of Harvey Milk Day. Their materials emphasize that Milk was more than an LGBT rights activist, but a “social and political pioneer” who ”fought for the rights and equality of all” and inspires “disenfranchised communities.”

Harvey Milk Day events often include showing one of the two Oscar-winning movies about his life, the documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk

” (1984) or the biographical drama “Milk

” (2008), which stars Sean Penn as Milk. The definitive book about his life include “The Mayor of Castro Street

” by Randy Shilts.

Milk has received many honors for his visionary courage and commitment to equality. In 2009 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and inducted into the California Hall of Fame. He was included in the Time “100 Heroes and Icons of the 20th Century” for being “a symbol of what gays can accomplish and the dangers they face in doing so.”

Milk became the public face of the GLBT rights movement, and his reputation has continued to grow since his assassination.

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country,” Milk said. Two bullets did enter his brain, and his vision of queer people living openly is also coming true.

Haunted by the sense that he would be killed for political reasons, Milk recorded tapes to be played in the event of his assassination. His message, recorded nine days before his death, included this powerful statement:

“I ask for the movement to continue, for the movement to grow, because last week I got a phone call from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and my election gave somebody else, one more person, hope. And after all, that's what this is all about. It's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power — it's about giving those young people out there in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias, hope. You gotta give them hope.”

Shots fired by conservative fellow supervisor Dan White cut Milk’s life short. More than 30 years later, the hope and the movement for LGBT rights are more alive than ever.

The Harvey Milk icon painted by Robert Lentz (pictured above) was hailed as a “national gay treasure” by gay author/activist Toby Johnson. Milk holds a candle and wears an armband with a pink triangle, the Nazi symbol for gay men, expressing solidarity with all who were tortured or killed because of their sexuality. It is one of 40 icons featured in the book “Christ in the Margins

” by Robert Lentz and Edwina Gateley.

The Harvey Milk icon sparked a church controversy in 2005. Critics accused Lentz of glorifying sin and creating propaganda for a progressive sociopolitical agenda, and he temporarily gave away the copyright for this and nine other controversial images to his distributor, Trinity Stores. All 10 were displayed there as a collection titled “Images That Challenge.”

The icon has also been criticized for portraying Milk, a secular Jew, in a iconographic style rooted in Christian tradition. “The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion!” He is honored in the interfaith LGBTQ Saints series here as a martyr who died in the struggle for LGBT rights.

Harvey Milk is assassinated as Jesus falls in “Stations of the Cross: The Struggle For LGBT Equality” by Mary Button, courtesy of Believe Out Loud

Milk’s assassination is juxtaposed with Jesus falling under the weight of his cross in the image at the top of this post: Station 9 from “Stations of the Cross: The Struggle For LGBT Equality” by Mary Button. Using bold colors and collage, Button puts Jesus' suffering into a queer context by matching scenes from his journey to Golgotha with milestones from the last 100 years of LGBT history. For an overview of all 15 paintings in the series, see my article LGBT Stations of the Cross shows struggle for equality.

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[*Note: When Milk was elected, two gay politicians were already in office: lesbian Massachusetts State Representative Elaine Noble and Minnesota State Senator Allan Spear, who came out after he won re-election.]

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Related links:
Harvey Milk Day Quotes 2015: 11 Inspiring Sayings That Still Ring True Today (International Business Times)

Icons of Harvey Milk and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at TrinityStores.com

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This post is part of the LGBT Saints series at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

“Rosa Bonheur” by Ria Brodell

Rosa Bonheur, the most famous female painter of the 19th century, was a queer cross-dresser who honored what she called the “androgyne Christ.” She had two consecutive long-term relationships with women. She died on this date (May 25) in 1899.

Born in France in 1822, Bonheur received much acclaim in her lifetime for her paintings of animals. In recent decades she has been celebrated as a queer pioneer, feminist icon, and role model for the LGBT community. Her achievements grew out of an unusual religious upbringing in the proto-feminist Saint-Simonian sect, and the queer Christian ideals that she expressed in adulthood. Bonheur’s gender-bending lifestyle has been covered extensively by scholars, but her spirituality has received much less attention.

Her parents raised her in Saint-Simonianism, a French utopian Christian-socialist movement that advocated equality for women and prophesied the coming of a female messiah. Her father was an artist and an ardent apostle for the Saint-Simonian religion. Bonheur writes a whole chapter about growing up as a Saint-Simonian in the book “Rosa Bonheur: The Artist's (Auto)biography,” which she wrote with her companion Anna Klumpke.

The Saint-Simonian concept of gender equality paved the way for Bonheur’s father to train her as a painter -- and for her own defiance of gender norms. As she put it, “To his doctrines I owe my great and glorious ambition for the sex to which I proudly belong and whose independence I shall defend until my dying day.”

Rosa Bonheur's
Permission to cross-dress
(Wikimedia Commons)

Cross-dressing was illegal in France at that time, but she got permission from the police to wear men’s trousers so she could sketch at such male-dominated places as horse fairs and slaughterhouses. She broke rules of feminine behavior by smoking cigars and wearing her hair short. She was never arrested for wearing men’s clothes, but she was arrested once in female attire when a policeman thought she was a man pretending to be a woman!

Bonheur had two female companions in her lifetime. She spent 50 years living with her childhood sweetheart Nathalie Micas, who died in 1889. Bonheur grieved deeply and then shared the last years of her life with a new companion, American artist Anna Klumpke.

One of their joint projects was writing Bonheur’s autobiography. In it she discusses her religious beliefs, stating, “I get blamed for not going to church! I may have more religion than the folks who, instead of doing their best to lead a blameless life, go mutter prayers there every day in a language they don’t understand…. I’ve written my own versions of the most important Catholic prayers.”

Here are some excerpts from prayers written by Bonheur and published in her autobiography:

Bonheur’s version of the Hail Mary prayer:

Hail, O earth full of grace, the living God is with you. Blessed are you among all the planets, the fruit of your womb is our salvation. Holy earth, mother of love, pour out your grace on those who suffer, now and in our divine transformation.

From Bonheur’s Creed:

I believe in God the all-powerful, everlasting Father, creator of all things eternal. I believe in his beloved Son, the saving Two, androgyne Christ, the highest point of human transformation, the sublime manifestation of the living God who is in everything that is.

Bonheur died at age 77, and Klumpke went on to champion Bonheur’s work until she died in 1942. They are buried together in a grave in Paris. Bonheur’s most famous paintings are “The Horse Fair” and “Plowing in the Nivernais,” but she leaves a large legacy of art depicting horses, cattle, sheep, lions, dogs, and many other creatures. A selection of her work is posted below.

The portrait at the top of this post is part of the “Butch Heroes” series by Ria Brodell, a culturally Catholic gender-queer artist in the Boston area. For more about Brodell, see my previous post “Artist paints history’s butch heroes: Ria Brodell interview.”

"Royalty at Home" by Rosa Bonheur (Wikimedia Commons)

"The Horse Fair" by Rosa Bonheur (Wikimedia Commons)

"Relay Hunting" by Rosa Bonheur (Wikimedia Commons)

“Plowing in the Nivernais” by Rosa Bonheur (Wikimedia Commons)

"Sultan and Rosette" by Rosa Bonheur (Wikimedia Commons)
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Related links:

Rosa Bonheur (glbtq.com)

Rosa Bonheur (Art History Archive)

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This post is part of the Artists series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series profiles artists who use lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spiritual and religious imagery. It also highlights great queer artists from history, with an emphasis on their spiritual lives.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

“Jeanne D'Arc” by Rowan Lewgalon

"Saint Joan of Arc" by Brother Robert Lentz, OFM

Joan of Arc was a tough cross-dressing teenage warrior who led the medieval French army to victory when she was 17. She is a queer icon, girl-power hero and patron saint of France. Her feast day is today (May 30).

Smart and courageous, Joan of Arc (c. 1412-1431) had visions of saints and angels who told her to cut her hair, put on men’s clothes and go to war. At age 18 she helped crown a king and at 19 she was killed by the church that later made her a saint. She died for her God-given right to wear men’s clothing, the crime for which she was executed on May 30, 1431.

Joan of Arc portrait, c. 1485
Wikimedia Commons

Contemporary LGBT people recognize a kindred spirit in her stubborn defiance of gender rules. Queer writers tend to downplay Joan’s Christian faith, while the church covers up the importance of her cross-dressing. In truth, Joan believed strongly in God AND in cross-dressing. She insisted that God wanted her to wear men’s clothes, making her what today can be called “queer” or “transgender.” She fits the medieval archetype known as the “holy transvestite.” Cross-dressing was illegal, but what really upset the church authorities, then as now, was the audacity of someone being both proudly queer AND devoutly Christian. Her belief that God was the source of her gender-bending queerness makes her an especially inspiring role model for LGBT Christians and our allies.

Joan’s extraordinary life continues to fascinate all kinds of people. Many are eager to claim her as a symbol, from LGBT people and feminists to the Catholic Church and French nationalists. Joan is the subject of more than 10,000 books, plays, paintings and films, including recent works by transgender author Leslie Feinberg and lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage.

Gage’s one-woman show “The Second Coming of Joan of Arc

” is an underground classic with Joan as “a cross-dressing, teenaged, runaway lesbian” confronting male-dominated institutions. Feinberg has a chapter on Joan as “a brilliant transgender peasant teenager leading an army of laborers into battle” in her history book “Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

.”

The extensive records of her trials by the Inquisition make Joan of Arc the best-documented person of 15th century. There are only hints that she may have been a lesbian, but the evidence is absolutely clear about her trans expression as a cross-dresser.

Joan of Arc, also known as Jeanne d’Arc, was born to peasants in an obscure village in eastern France around 1412, toward the end of the Hundred Years War. Much of France was occupied by England, so that Charles, the heir to the French throne, did not dare to be crowned. When Joan was 13, she began hearing voices that told her to help France drive out the English.

The visions continued for years, becoming more detailed and frequent. Once or twice a week she had visions of Michael the Archangel and two virgin saints: Catherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch (another transvestite saint who refused to marry a man). They told her that God wanted her to meet Charles and lead an army to Reims for his coronation.

Joan’s family tried to convince her that her visions weren’t real, and her first attempt to visit the royal court was rejected. When she was 17 she put on male clothing and succeeded in meeting Charles. He agreed to outfit her as a knight and allowed her to lead a 5,000-man army against the English.

On Charles’ order, a full suit of armor was created to fit Joan. He had a banner made for her and assigned an entourage to help her: a squire, a page, two heralds, a chaplain and other servants.

Joan of Arc on Horseback, 1505
Wikimedia Commons

Joan’s appearance awed the soldiers and peasants when she traveled with the army. Mounted on a fine warhorse, she rode past cheering crowds in a suit of armor. Her hair was “cropped short and round in the fashion of young men.” She carried an ancient sword in one hand and her banner in the other. Her sword was found, as Joan predicted, buried at the church of St. Catherine at Fierbois. The banner showed Christ sitting on a rainbow against a background of white with gold lilies and the motto “Jhesus-Maria.” Legend says that white butterflies followed Joan wherever she rode with her banner unfurled.

With Joan leading the way, the army won the battle at Orleans and continued to defeat English and pro-English troops until they reached Reims. She proudly stood beside Charles VII at his coronation there on July 17, 1429.

Joan soon resumed leading military campaigns. Even during her lifetime the peasants adored her as a saint, flocking around her to touch her body or clothing. Her cross-dressing didn’t disturb them. In fact, they seemed to honor her for her transgender expression. Perhaps, as some scholars say, the peasants saw Joan as part of a tradition that linked transvestites and priests in pre-modern Europe.

One of the first modern writers to raise the possibility of Joan’s lesbianism was English author Vita Sackville-West. She implied that Joan was a lesbian in her 1936 biography “Saint Joan of Arc

.” The primary source for this idea was the fact, documented in her trials, that Joan shared her bed with other girls and young women. She followed the medieval custom of lodging each night in a local home. Joan always slept with the hostess or the girls of the household instead of with the men.

Nobody knows for sure whether Joan of Arc was sexually attracted to women or had lesbian encounters, but her abstinence from sex with men is well documented. Her physical virginity was confirmed by official examinations at least twice during her lifetime. Joan herself liked to be called La Pucelle, French for “the Maid,” a nickname that emphasized her virginity. Witnesses at her trial testified that Joan was chaste rather than sexually active.

Joan’s illustrious military career ended in May 1430. She was captured in battle by the Burgundians, the French allies of the English. During her captivity they called her “hommase,” a slur meaning “man-woman” or “masculine woman.”

In a stunning betrayal, Charles VII did nothing to rescue the warrior who helped win him the crown. It was normal to pay ransom for the release of knights and nobles caught in battle, but he abandoned Joan to her fate. Historians speculate that French aristocrats felt threatened by the peasant girl with such uncanny power to move the masses.

The Burgundians transferred Joan to the English, who then gave her to the Inquisition. She spent four torturous months in prison before her church trial began on Jan. 9, 1431 in Rouen, the seat of the English occupation government. She was charged with witchcraft and heresy.

The politically motivated church trial was rigged against her, and yet Joan was able to display her full intelligence as she answered the Inquisitors’ questions. Her subtle, witty answers and detailed memory even forced them to stop holding the trial in public.

Witchcraft was hard to prove, so the church dropped the charge. (Many of today’s Wiccans and pagans still honor Joan as one of their own.) The Inquisitors began to focus exclusively on the “heresy” of Joan’s claim that she was following God’s will when she dressed as a man. The judges told her that cross-dressing was “an abomination before God” according to church law and the Bible. (See Deuteronomy 22:5.)

They accused Joan of “leaving off the dress and clothing of the feminine sex, a thing contrary to divine law and abominable before God, and forbidden by all laws” and instead dressing in “clothing and armor such as is worn by man.”

Joan swore that God wanted her to wear men’s clothing. “For nothing in the world will I swear not to arm myself and put on a man’s dress; I must obey the orders of Our Lord,” she testified. She outraged the judges by continuing to appear in court wearing what they called “difformitate habitus” (“monstrous dress” or “degenerate apparel.”)

Today Joan’s conservative admirers claim that she wore men’s clothes only as way to avoid rape, but she said that it meant much more to her. Joan of Arc saw cross-dressing as a sacred duty.

The judges summarized Joan’s testimony by saying, “You have said that, by God’s command, you have continually worn man’s dress, wearing the short robe, doublet, and hose attached by points; that you have also worn your hair short, cut ‘en rond’ above your ears with nothing left that could show you to be a woman; and that on many occasions you received the Body of our Lord dressed in this fashion, although you have been frequently admonished to leave it off, which you have refused to do, saying that you would rather die than leave it off, save by God’s command.”

Joan refused to back down on the visions she received from God, and she was sentenced to death. She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431 in Rouen. Twenty five years later she was retried and her conviction was overturned. Joan was declared innocent.

Her armor, that “monstrous dress,” became an object of veneration, sought after like the Holy Grail with various churches claiming to possess her true armor. Joan of Arc was canonized as a saint in 1920. Famous writers and composers who have done works about her include Shakespeare, Voltaire, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Mark Twain, Bertolt Brecht and George Bernard Shaw. A stunning portrait of Joan kissing her sword (below) was painted by Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose sister Christina Rossetti is also part of the LGBT Saints series at the Jesus in Love Blog.

“Joan of Arc Kisses the Sword of Liberation” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1863 (WikiPaintings)

This post features contemporary portraits of Joan by Rowan Lewgalon, Robert Lentz and Tobias Haller. Lewgalon is a spiritual artist based in Germany and also a cleric in the Old Catholic Apostolic Church. Her work is online at tir-anam.weebly.com. Lentz is a Franciscan friar known for his innovative and LGBT-positive icons. He is stationed at Holy Name College in Silver Spring, Maryland. His icons are available at Trinitystores.com.

“Jeanne d’Arc” by Tobias Haller

“Jeanne d’Arc” was sketched by Tobias Haller, an iconographer, author, composer, and vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church in the Bronx. He is the author of “Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-Sexuality.” Haller enjoys expanding the diversity of icons available by creating icons of LGBTQ people and other progressive holy figures as well as traditional saints. He and his husband were united in a church wedding more than 30 years ago and a civil ceremony after same-sex marriage became legal in New York.

A widely used prayer to Saint Joan of Arc makes a powerful statement that can inspire those who believe in equality for LGBT people, despite rejection by religion and society:

“In the face of your enemies, in the face of harassment, ridicule, and doubt, you held firm in your faith. Even in your abandonment, alone and without friends, you held firm in your faith. Even as you faced your own mortality, you held firm in your faith. I pray that I may be as bold in my beliefs as you, St. Joan. I ask that you ride alongside me in my own battles. Help me be mindful that what is worthwhile can be won when I persist. Help me hold firm in my faith. Help me believe in my ability to act well and wisely. Amen.”

Joan has a dialogue with the fire that is about to consume her in a haunting song written by award-winning Canandian poet Leonard Cohen and sung on July Collins video .

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Related links:

Wikipedia article on Cross-dressing, sexuality, and gender identity of Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc trial transcript online

Joan of Arc: Cross-dressing martyr at Queering the Church Blog

Jeanne-darc.info

Joan of Arc sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City

To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
Juana de Arco: Santa Travesti

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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, heroes and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Icons of Joan of Arc and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at Trinity Stores

New LGBTQ Christian books this month include queer theology and the memoir of a gay Anglican priest.

Theology

“That We Might Become God: The Queerness of Creedal Christianity” by Andy Buechel, with a foreword by Mark D. Jordan.

A theologian reveals how queer Christianity already is. He argues that queer theory fits well with Christian faith, specifically the incarnation of “Christ’s queer body,” the sacraments, and eschatology. Buechel teaches theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati and Jordan is a renowned Harvard professor of Christian thought. His foreword says, “"Andy Buechel's book exerts itself to avoid false certainties, easy algebras, in order to acknowledge the full queerness of Christianity. That effort is one of the queerest things about the book.”

Memoir and biography

“A Disreputable Priest: Being Gay in Anti-Gay Cultures”by Ian Corbett.

A gay Anglican priest gives a personal account of his journey to accept his sexual orientation and minister to LGBT people while serving in Africa, Ireland and among the indigenous tribes of North America. Corbett was sustained by values learned from indigenous peoples about the importance of the land, artistic expression, human relationships and contemplative reflection. In Botswana he established an AIDS hospice and cared for AIDS patients in the slums.

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Related links:

New LGBTQ Christian books: May 2015 (Jesus in Love)

New LGBTQ Christian books: March 2015 (Jesus in Love)

New LGBTQ Christian books: Feb 2015 (Jesus in Love)

Top 25 LGBTQ Christian books of 2014 named (Jesus in Love)

Top 20 Gay Jesus books (from Jesus in Love)

Queer Theology book list (from Patrick Cheng)

Queering the Church book list

Jesus in Love Bookstore (includes LGBT Christian classics)

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

“Julissa” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Andrew” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Queer Icons” by Mexican American queer artist Gabriel García Román reveal the holiness of LGBTQ people of color in much the same way that traditional icons open a window to heaven.

“I’d like to think of them as a hybrid between saints and warriors," Roman said in a recent interview with Mic.com. "Saints are usually depicted as martyrs, noble and selfless individuals working for the betterment of the world, but also I wanted to portray them as fearless warriors. They are looking right at you and challenging you."

His subjects are activists and artists who help the community -- presented with haloes, gold accents and vibrant colors and patterns. The queer icons give power to the disempowered, visibility to the invisible. Like traditional icons, they gaze directly into the eyes of viewers, daring them to see what is sacred.

“Jahmal” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

But these are also living, breathing icons who populate contemporary America in its diversity. All are queer people of color, including Latina/o, black, Asian and mixed heritage. Some are immigrants -- naturalized, documented or undocumented. They come from many different places on the gender spectrum.

Traditional Catholic icons were Roman’s first introduction to art when he was growing up. He was especially fascinated by the haloes on the saints who graced the walls of his neighborhood church. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico, Roman was raised Catholic in Chicago and currently lives in New York City.

The Mic.com interview was part of an explosion of Internet attention sparked by his participation in “Manifest Justice,” a major group exhibit in Los Angeles in May. Roman’s images displayed there included “Mitchyll,” whose hooded sweatshirt echoes the hoods of medieval monks -- and the famous hoodie worn by Trayvon Martin, the unarmed African American teen whose 2012 murder led to massive national protests against racism.

“Mitchyll” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

Roman begins the process of creating a Queer Icon by photographing the person. He uses a chine-collé method of silkscreen printing to put layers of colors, patterns and text over each portrait.

In some cases, especially if his subject is a poet, he collaborates with the “icon” by inviting them to background text in their own handwriting on the icon. He describes this as a way to amplify their voices and “give them a canvas to speak about their identity.”

For example, poet Julissa Rodriguez begins, “She used to believe in miracles.” Rodriguez lives in the Bronx, NY, and her family is from the Dominican Republic.

“I have no map or stars to guide me through the night,” writes Emanuel Xavier, a poet and LGBT activist whose background is Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican. The Jesus in Love Blog covered his work in the 2010 article Poet imagines “if Jesus were gay.”

“Emanuel” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Today you were reminded that you are not ‘queer’ enough, not ‘artistic’ enough, not ‘migrant’ enough,” writes Sonia Guiñansaca, a poet and community organizer who was born in Ecuador, raised in Harlem, NY. She is open about her undocumented status.

“Sonia” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“I just mourned my former self. One thinks about how we are very, very lovely, lonely, grasping at parts of ourselves,” begins Bakar Wilson, a poet who teaches English at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

“Bakar” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

Roman gives credit to a variety of artistic sources for inspiring his Queer Icons, including Renaissance, Flemish and Christian Orthodox portraiture traditions. More contemporary influences include portrait artists such as African American painter Kehinde Wiley, Armenian Canadian photographer Yousef Karsh, and South African photographers Zanele Muholi and Pieter Hugo.

Queer people of color are under-represented in art overall and religious art in particular. Roman’s “Queer Icons’ have similarities with other queer art projects, including the “Saints” series of Tony O’Connell, who captures holy moments in everyday life; the Queer Clergy Trading Cards of Chris Davies, who gives visibility to ordained queer ministers; and Ria Brodell’s “Butch Heroes” series, which puts historical queer women into the format of Catholic holy cards. But Roman may be the first to focus exclusively on queer people of color with Christian iconography.

Roman’s Queer Icons also stand in the tradition of Pop Art master Andy Warhol, another queer silkscreen artist whose portrait style was influenced by the Catholic icons that he saw while growing up in an immigrant family. (In Warhol’s case, it was Byzantine Catholic.) Warhol took the iconic style beyond the church to create colorful silkscreens of pop-culture icons such as Marilyn Monroe. Roman further democratizes the process by making icons out of people who rarely get any attention in either secular or sacred contexts.

A variety of galleries on both coasts have exhibited Roman’s art. He has completed more than 30 images in his ongoing “Queer Icons” series. They are posted on his website gabrielgarciaroman.com. A selection is posted here to inform readers and inspire those who wish to meditate on the unlikely people who embody embody God’s spirit today.

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Credit: All images are from the series “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman, 2011-2015, Photogravure w/ Chine-Colle and silkscreen, 11x14, image size 8x10.

“Kathy” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Abdool” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Sidra” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

“Hiroshi” from “Queer Icons” by Gabriel Garcia Roman

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Related links:

Influenced by Catholic Upbringing, Artist’s “Queer Icons” Offer Windows to God (New Ways Ministry)

Not Your Mother's Catholic Frescoes: Radiant Portraits Of Queer People Of Color (npr.org)

10 Stunning Images That Shatter Stereotypes About LGBTQ People of Color (mic.com)

One Photographer Is Using Social Media To Celebrate 'Queer Icons' Of Color By Katherine Brooks (Huff Post)

Icons as Religious Art

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Special thanks to the many people who sent me news tips urging me to write this article, including Terry Weldon of Queering the Church, Ann Fontaine of Episcopal Cafe, Chris Davies of Queer Clergy Trading Cards, Jane Redmont and Scott Sella.
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This post is part of the Artists series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series profiles artists who use lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spiritual and religious imagery. It also highlights great queer artists from history, with an emphasis on their spiritual lives.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Uganda Martyrs (with Saint Charles Lwanga in the center) by Albert Wider (Wikimedia Commons)

Tough questions about homosexuality, religion and LGBT rights are raised by the Uganda Martyrs whose feast day is June 3.

Forty-five Ugandan male pages refused to have sex with their king after they converted to Christianity -- so he executed them. Many were burned to death on June 3, 1886. These boys and young men were canonized by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, leaving some truths hidden by their halos.

Does the experience of the Ugandan martyrs illustrate a gay king being oppressed and demonized by conservative Christians? Or does it exemplify Christians heroically trying to rescue boys from sexual abuse by a pedophile king? Did Christians teach young African men shame about their own same-gender-loving desires? Or did Christians give the pages a way to refuse rape by a ruler with absolute authority? Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between? How can the story be interpreted so that LGBT Ugandans have equal access to justice... and to God?

The Uganda Martyrs are little known in the West, but they are famous in much of Africa. Martyrs Day on June 3 is a national holiday in Uganda. The story is called “African Christianity’s most celebrated martyr-passion narrative” by religion scholar Kenneth Hamilton. They were canonized in 1964 by Pope Paul VI.

The 45 martyrs were executed in 1886, but they are still important now with Uganda at the center of worldwide debate on homosexuality and the recent release of the film “God Loves Uganda.” The award-winning documentary exposes the role of today’s American evangelical missionaries in persecuting LGBT Africans and promoting a harsher law against homosexuality.

Once again LGBT Christians are caught in the middle as conservative Christians and LGBT advocates offer dueling interpretations use the story of the Ugandan martyrs for their own purposes. Perhaps this uncomfortable position gives a perspective that can shed fresh light on the event. The history doesn’t fit neatly into the usual debates about the church versus homosexuality.

The Uganda Martyrs have been used to instill homophobia and, as Pope Pope John Paul II put it, “to draw Uganda and all of Africa to Christ.” The story weaves together homo-hatred, racism, and imperialism that are still affecting the world today. Conservatives play up the sexual angle in salacious detail to win converts, discredit the LGBT-rights movement and promote “chastity.” At the other extreme, LGBT-rights advocates use the story to prove that homosexuality was indigenous to Africa, not a “western import” as the anti-gay faction claims. They tend to ignore the difference between sex and rape, while both sides blur the line between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Ultimately the story leads back to the same questions that people of faith are grappling with all over the world now: How can the church condemn sexual abuse while still affirming the goodness of sexuality, including same-sex relationships? The search for a new LGBT-positive sexual ethics is expressed in books such as “Sex as God Intended” by gay priest and psychotherapist John McNeill and “Sexuality and the Sacred,” edited by James B. Nelson and Sandra P. Longfellow.

Today’s understanding of human psychology shows that rape is violence, not sex, and that pedophilia is not homosexuality, regardless of the gender of the child targeted. Christianity has been used to oppress queer people and colonize native peoples, but sometimes it has also provided an escape from abuse and an alternative to heterosexual marriage.

I watched “God Loves Uganda” for the first time in 2014 when it was broadcast on PBS (and released on DVD). Many others have praised the film, so I will focus here on questions that it raised in my mind.

I agree that American evangelicals are whipping up anti-LGBT sentiments in Uganda now to fuel their own power and egos. I also agree that American LGBT activists should be involved to some extent in Uganda to counteract the hate that is being imported. Thanks in part to the film, Uganda’s new Anti-Homosexuality Act law was eased so that homosexuality is punished by imprisonment, not the death penalty.

But what do Ugandans really want, apart from all this outside influence? Before Europeans brought Christianity and colonialism, what did the people of Uganda think about homosexuality?

It’s hard to say. I did a lot of research, but reliable answers are not easy to find. Sara Weschler offers the insights of a foreigner working in Uganda in her article, “How the West Was Wrong: Misunderstanding Uganda’s Gay Rights Crisis Makes It Worse” at Ttruthdig.com:

“One problem with Western LGBT activism vis-à-vis Uganda is that it is largely carried out by people who know little about the country beyond its stance on sexual orientation.... Gay rights will come to Uganda, but they will come slowly, and they will come only as part of a wider movement toward social justice in the country.”

Like many progressive reports on Uganda and homosexuality, the movie “God Loves Uganda” doesn’t even mention the Uganda Martyrs. It’s easier to omit the inconvenient truth of male-male sexual exploitation in the past. But no history of homosexuality in Uganda is complete without discussing the Ugandan martyrs killed in1886.

Here is a closer look at what happened. The Uganda Martyrs died at a time of tremendous change and culture clash in Uganda. The first Christian missionaries had arrived there only about a decade earlier in 1877. Arabs introduced Islam to Uganda at about the same time. It was still a few years before the British annexed the country in 1884.

King Mwanga II of Bugunda, now part of Uganda, was having sex on demand with the young men (and maybe boys) who served as his pages. He has been called “Africa’s most famous homosexual.” But maybe his sexuality was more complex. He had wives and children, so he might have been bisexual. He has been labeled a pedophile, but he was still a teenager himself. He began to reign at age 16 and was about 18 at the time of the executions. No matter how old the king’s sex partners were, requiring sexual service on pain of death is more like rape than gay sex between consenting adults. The youngest martyr, Saint Kizito, was about fourteen year old.

Saint Kizito, Uganda Martyr (Wikimedia Commons)

The crisis started when the king’s favorite pageboy, Mwafu, joined others in resisting his sexual demands. The royal pages were members of the elite, the noble sons of chiefs, but they ranked low in the king’s court. Some of them converted to Christianity and started denying King Mwanga the usual “pleasure,” so he rounded up the pages and ordered them to choose between him and Christianity. Only three chose the king. The rest of the pages got the death sentence. A large group ended up being marched eight miles and burned to death on Namugongo hill, where a shrine has been built. When all the killing was done, the victims were 23 Anglicans and 22 Catholics, including chief pages Joseph Mukasa (first black Catholic martyr on the African continent) and Charles Lwanga.

“St. Charles Lwanga” by Julile Lonneman (TrinityStores.com)

The earliest accounts report that the king had sex with his male pages, but over the years there has been increasing emphasis on the “sinful demands” and “perversion” of the “debauched” king. Toxic colonial hagiography mixed homophobia with racist fears about the “dark.” uncivilized, heathens of Africa. The dead were quickly nominated as saints, and were canonized as official martyrs in the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches.

A helpful queer analysis of the martyrdom is provided by Kenneth Lewis Hamilton, who wrote about the Uganda Martyrs in several scholarly articles and in his Ph.D. dissertation at Union Institute and University. Hamilton identifies himself as “an Afri-guided, postcolonial, queer, ordained, Catholic missioner.” He writes in an article titled “The Flames of Namugongo: Postcoloniality Meets Queer on African Soil?”:

And so, the establishment of Christianity—particularly Roman Catholic and Anglican Christianity—in Uganda directly coincides with a narrative about transgressive same sex desire. This makes for a provocative beginning for Christian discourse in Eastern Africa; and the subsequent canonization of the martyrs inscribes dark, dangerous desire into the very skin of Christian Uganda. The canonization, indeed, is a preached message; the narrative of the “martyrdom” now becomes part of a canon of new narratives: the ones about sodomy, race, desire and conquest.

The same article concludes:

I want to get more pictures of the martyrs into African chapels and online….I want more pictures of the martyr-boys on our black Catholic walls. These are the bodies and clans that now inhabit the heavens. But they do so like the slaves did: as a subversive presence, smiling in your face, but always ready to revolt and set each other free.

Inspired by these words by Hamilton, I searched the Internet for images of the Ugandan martyrs to accompany this reflection. First I found various icons. Then I was stunned to discover an actual group photograph of the martyrs themselves, taken about a year before they were killed. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the photo for a long time. And their faces still haunt me.

Some of the future Uganda Martyrs were photographed in 1885, less than a year before they were killed, at Bukumbi Mission in Mwanza (northern Tanganyika). They went there to welcome the new Catholic bishop, Leon Livinhac.

I was doubly surprised that the queer analysis of the Ugandan martyrs in “The Flames of Namugongo” included a prayer from one of my own books, “Equal Rites.”

I wanted to end this reflection with a prayer too. First I looked at the official church prayers dedicated to the Uganda Martyrs, but they focused heavily on Christian faith and even “chastity, purity, and sexual morality.” They didn’t seem suitable for a reflection that seeks to develop a new ethics and spirituality that affirms loving same-sex relationships between consenting adults.

So I bring this to a close with the same prayer that Hamilton quoted from “Equal Rites.” These words were written by Elias (Ibrahim) Farajaje-Jones in his “Invocation of Remembrance, Healing, and Empowerment in a Time of AIDS”:

Yes, we honor you, our sisters and brothers.
Yes, we remember and recognize you have gone before us.
Without you, we would not exist here today.
Through us, you live on from generation to generation, from everlasting to everlasting.
And so we commit ourselves to a spirit of resistance and life.
We raise our light, our lives, our hope, our love, and we say boldly
and without fear, "Never again!" [Equal Rites, page 27]

I give the last word to one of the Uganda Martyrs. These lines are attributed to Bruno Serunkuma, spoken shortly before he was killed:

"A well that has many sources never runs dry. When we are gone, others will come after us."

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To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
Mártires de Uganda plantean preguntas sobre la homosexualidad, la religión y los derechos LGBTI

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Related links, queer interpretations:

“Colonial Legacies, Decolonized Spirits: Balboa, Ugandan Martyrs and AIDS Solidarity Today” by Kenneth Hamilton (Journal of Bisexuality)

“When Sodomy Leads to Martyrdom: Sex, Religion, and Politics in Historical and Contemporary Contexts in Uganda and East Africa” by John Blevins (Journal of Bisexuality)

Uganda Martyrs: Charles Lwanga and Companions (Queering the Church)

The Martyrs of Uganda witness against sexual violence (Daily Episcopalian)

“Freedom To Love For ALL: Homosexuality is not Un-African” by Yemisi Ilesanmi

“Heterosexual Africa?: The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS” (book) by Marc Epprecht

“Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities” (book) by Will Roscoe

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Related links, Catholic and standard Christian interpretations:

Uganda Martyrs’ Shrine (official website)

St. Charles Lwanga and Companions (Catholic.org)

The Story of the Ugandan Martyrs (America magazine)

The Uganda Martyrs: Their Countercultural Witness Still Speaks Today (The Word Among Us)

“African Holocaust: The Story of the Uganda Martyrs” (book) by John F. Faupel (Author)

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Related links at Jesus in Love:

David Kato: Ugandan LGBT rights activist (1964-2011)

A saint for kidnapped girls of Nigeria: Josephine Bakhita

Icons of Charles Lwanga and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at TrinityStores.com

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This post is part of the LGBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

“Queering Christ in Image and Text” will be taught this summer at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

It is probably the first time that an entire seminary course has focused on the queer Christ in visual art.

The intensive course will be taught July 27-31 by Justin Tanis and Jay Emerson Johnson. Early registration is encouraged.

The required textbook for their ground-breaking course is “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More” by Kittredge Cherry.

Tanis is director of PSR’s Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies in Religion and Ministry. His scholarly interests include theology as expressed by LGBT visual artists, which is the basis of his PhD studies at the Graduate Theological Union. He is the author of “Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith.”

Johnson is an Episcopal priest and lecturer in theology and culture at PSR. He coordinates the school’s Certificate of Sexuality and Religion and Certificate of Spirituality and Social Change programs. His mos recent book is “Peculiar Faith: Queer Theology for Christian Witness.”

Here is the official course description:

“Who do you say that I am?” Matthew’s Jesus asked that question of his disciples (Mt 16:15). Many different answers in multiple theological approaches have emerged over the centuries since then. The question itself both expands and deepens when accompanied by visual responses which depict the particularities of Christ’s body, including gender, color, sexuality, culture and more. Artists and authors can expand our sense of connection with Christ and engage critical social and theological issues. This course combines a variety of modern images and texts in an exploration of how “queer” Christ appears outside “standard” representations and how this queerness can inspire and inform movements of liberating social change. Beyond white heterosexual maleness, who do you say Jesus is?

For more info, visit:
http://www.psr.edu/summer-session-2015-courses

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This post is part of the Queer Christ series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.

Jim Mitulski, left, and Kittredge Cherry bless a motorcycle in 1988 (Photo by Mister Marcus)

Motorcycle blessings at a gay leather bar in San Francisco brought together spirituality and LGBT culture in the 1980s.

I was one of the worship leaders at the 1988 “Bike Blessing” at the Eagle Tavern. Recently I dug out photos of the event -- prompted by news that a friend led a “blessing of the bicycles” at his church for AIDS/Lifecycle.

Worship leaders at the Seventh Annual Bike Blessing on July 17, 1988 were all clergy from Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a denomination that ministers in the LGBT community. They included Rev. Jim Sandmire, pastor of Golden Gate MCC and his student clergy; Rev. Jim Mitulski, pastor of MCC-SF, and me. At the time I was also a student clergy, serving as MCC-SF women’s programming coordinator.

1988 Bike Blessing worship leaders at the Eagle were, from left, Kittredge Cherry, Golden Gate MCC student clergy Paul Steindal, Jim Mitulski and Jim Sandmire. (Photo by Mister Marcus)

Times have changed in the 27 years since I blessed bikes at the San Francisco Eagle. We were in the midst of the AIDS pandemic then, with a lot of people dying and no cure in sight. We got through it on faith -- a strong faith that we took to the streets and to the people in unusual LGBT events like the Bike Blessing. Now AIDS has effective treatments and to most people today “blessing of the bikes” means the AIDS/Lifecyle fundraiser, which just ended its 14th annual ride last week.

I remember feeling nervous as I arrived and carried my clergy robe on a hanger through the unfamiliar bar crowded with men in black leather. But their warm welcome quickly put me at ease. I probably shouldn't have been surprised to find out that the leather bar had its own dressing room. “You can put your drag on over here,” one man said as he led me to it.

I was startled to hear my clerical robes referred to as “drag,” but then I realized that the leather community understood the value of dressing for a role. They wore leather drag and I wore clergy drag, but we all felt a need to look to the part.

After a short opening ceremony, we spent most of the time saying personal prayers over individual bikers and their bikes. My prayer partner was my supervising pastor. He began each encounter with a question that I never expected: “What is the name of your bike?”

Sure enough, all the bikes had names. Soon I got the hang of it and joined in asking God’s blessing upon each rider and bike by name, with a special request for safely on the road.

Praying over each individual bike are Jim Mitulski, left, and Kittredge Cherry (Photo by Mister Marcus)

Jim Mitulski, left, and Kittredge Cherry lay hands of blessing on a motorcycle at the Eagle leather bar (Photo by Mister Marcus)

The Bike Blessings at the Eagle were an annual summer event founded in the early 1980s by Harry Harkness, a leatherman and longtime organist at MCC-SF. A full description and liturgy is provided in a chapter by Steve Carson in the book “Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations,” which I edited with Zalmon Sherwood.

Almost 30 years have passed since I first blessed bikes at a leather bar. Harry Harkness died in 2010 at age 85. Marcus Hernandez, who photographed the event as the Bay Area Reporter's longtime leather columnist under the pen name “Mister Marcus,” died in 2009 at age 77. The Eagle closed and reopened, but they don’t seem to sponsor Bike Blessings anymore.

My experience at the 1988 Bike Blessing was expressed well by Steve Carson in “Equal Rites”:

This can be a peculiarly moving event. Bikers form a genuine community in which people know and respect each other…. This group is ignored, misunderstood, or condemned by many religious bodies, yet I have found it to be a deeply spiritual community. Worship leaders will be genuinely welcomed and appreciated, and may find among the leather and the varooms of the motorcycles a spiritual event more real than many they have been in before.

Worship leaders at the 1988 Bike Blessing were, from left, Kittredge Cherry, Jim Mitulski, Golden Gate MCC student clergy Paul Steindal and Jim Sandmire. (Photo by Mister Marcus)

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

“Stained-glass Rainbow Flag with Cross" by Andrew Craig Williams

Colors of the rainbow flag reveal the many faces of the queer Christ in the Rainbow Christ Prayer by lesbian author Kittredge Cherry and gay theologian Patrick S. Cheng. A new short version was released today:

Rainbow Christ, you embody all the colors of the world. Inspire us to celebrate each color of the rainbow!

Red gives us life. Self-Loving Christ, you are our Root.

Orange stirs our passion. Erotic Christ, you are our Fire.

Yellow awakens our courage. Out Christ, you are our Core.

Green moves us to love. Transgressive Christ, you are our Heart.

Blue frees us to speak. Liberator Christ, you are our Voice.

Violet clears our vision. Interconnected Christ, you are our Wisdom.

The colors of the rainbow are distinct, but they all shine together to make one light. Hybrid Christ, you are our Crown.

Rainbow Christ, you are the light of the world. May the rainbow lead us to experience the whole spectrum of life! Amen.

The prayer matches the colors of the rainbow flag with the seven models of the queer Christ from Patrick’s book “From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ.

Rainbow flags are flying around the world in June for LGBT Pride Month. Rainbows are also an important symbol in many religious traditions. The Rainbow Christ Prayer honors the spiritual values of the LGBT movement.

Here is the original version of the Rainbow Christ Prayer:

Rainbow Christ, you embody all the colors of the world. Rainbows serve as bridges between different realms: heaven and earth, east and west, queer and non-queer. Inspire us to remember the values expressed in the rainbow flag of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community.

Red is for life, the root of spirit. Living and Self-Loving Christ, you are our Root. Free us from shame and grant us the grace of healthy pride so we can follow our own inner light. With the red stripe in the rainbow, we give thanks that God created us just the way we are.

Orange is for sexuality, the fire of spirit. Erotic Christ, you are our Fire, the Word made flesh. Free us from exploitation and grant us the grace of mutual relationships. With the orange stripe in the rainbow, kindle a fire of passion in us.

Yellow is for self-esteem, the core of spirit. Out Christ, you are our Core. Free us from closets of secrecy and give us the guts and grace to come out. With the yellow stripe in the rainbow, build our confidence.

Green is for love, the heart of spirit. Transgressive Outlaw Christ, you are our Heart, breaking rules out of love. In a world obsessed with purity, you touch the sick and eat with outcasts. Free us from conformity and grant us the grace of deviance. With the green stripe in the rainbow, fill our hearts with untamed compassion for all beings.

Blue is for self-expression, the voice of spirit. Liberator Christ, you are our Voice, speaking out against all forms of oppression. Free us from apathy and grant us the grace of activism. With the blue stripe in the rainbow, motivate us to call for justice.

Violet is for vision, the wisdom of spirit. Interconnected Christ, you are our Wisdom, creating and sustaining the universe. Free us from isolation and grant us the grace of interdependence. With the violet stripe in the rainbow, connect us with others and with the whole creation.

Rainbow colors come together to make one light, the crown of universal consciousness. Hybrid and All-Encompassing Christ, you are our Crown, both human and divine. Free us from rigid categories and grant us the grace of interwoven identities. With the rainbow, lead us beyond black-and-white thinking to experience the whole spectrum of life.

Rainbow Christ, you light up the world. You make rainbows as a promise to support all life on earth. In the rainbow space, we can see all the hidden connections between sexualities, genders and races. Like the rainbow, may we embody all the colors of the world! Amen.

Detail from “Christ and the Two Marys” by William Holman Hunt (Wikimedia Commons)

I got the idea for the Rainbow Christ Prayer as I reflected on Patrick Cheng’s models of the queer Christ. Patrick and I each spent years developing the ideas expressed in the Rainbow Christ Prayer. It incorporates rainbow symbolism from queer culture, from Christian tradition and from the Buddhist/Hindu concept of chakras, the seven colored energy centers of the human body. The prayer is ideal for use when lighting candles in a rainbow candle holder.

Kittredge Cherry with Rainbow Candles (photo by Audrey)

The Rainbow Christ Prayer has been welcomed and used by many progressive Christian communities and denounced as blasphemy by conservatives at Americans for Truth About Homosexuality.

I first wrote about linking the colors of the rainbow flag to queer spirituality in my 2009 reflection on Bridge of Light, a winter holiday honoring LGBT culture. Meanwhile Patrick was working on his models of the queer Christ based on LGBT experience. In 2010 he presented five models of the queer Christ in his essay “Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People” at the Jesus in Love Blog (and as a chapter in the book “Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection

.”)

In a moment of inspiration I realized that Patrick’s various queer Christ models matched the colors of the rainbow flag. Patrick and I joined forces and the Rainbow Christ Prayer was born.

With wonderful synchronicity, Patrick had already added two more queer Christ models, so he now had seven models to match the seven principles from Bridge of Light. He wrote a detailed explanation of all seven models in his 2012 book “From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ.” The following year Patrick authored “Rainbow Theology: Bridging Race, Sexuality, and Spirit.”

For more on the history and meaning of the rainbow flag, see my Huffington Post article Rainbow Christ Prayer honors LGBT spirituality.

Gay spirituality author Joe Perez helped lay the groundwork for this prayer in 2004 when he founded the interfaith and omni-denominational winter ritual known as Bridge of Light. People celebrate Bridge of Light by lighting candles, one for every color of the rainbow flag. Each color corresponds to a universal spiritual principle that is expressed in LGBT history and culture. I worked with Joe to revise the Bridge of Light guidelines based on my on own meditations on the chakras and their connections to the colors of the rainbow flag.

The symbolism of the rainbow resonates far beyond the LGBT flag. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the rainbow stands for God’s promise to support all life on earth. It plays an important role in the story of Noah’s Ark. After the flood, God places a rainbow in the sky, saying, “Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” (Genesis 9:15-16). In the Book of Revelation, a rainbow encircles the throne of Christ in heaven.

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Related links:
Rainbow Christ Prayer goes nationwide at churches, schools and events (with version adapted by Heath Adam Ackley)

Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People by Patrick Cheng (Jesus in Love)

Welcome the New Year with Bridge of Light by Kittredge Cherry (Jesus in Love)

Rainbow Christ Prayer at Huffington Post

Rainbow flag (Wikipedia)

Patrick Cheng's website and Twitter feed

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This post is part of the Queer Christ series series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

“See You at the UpStairs Lounge” by Skylar Fein

The deadliest attack on LGBT people in U.S. history is being remembered in powerful new ways today on its 42nd anniversary, including two new films. An arson fire killed 32 people at the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans, 42 years ago today on June 24, 1973.

“Upstairs Inferno,” directed by Robert Camina and narrated by Christopher Rice, premieres tonight in New Orleans, where “Tracking Fire” is currently filming on location with director Sheri Wright. “Upstairs Inferno” brings humanity to the headlines by interviewing more than 20 people, including several survivors who have kept silent for decades.

Few people cared about the UpStairs Lounge fire at the time. The crime was never solved, churches refused to do funerals for the dead, and four bodies went unclaimed. Now there is a resurgence of interest in the martyrs of New Orleans.

Other recent works about the fire include an award-winning online exhibit at the LGBT Religious Archives Network; the 2014 book “The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-two Dead in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973” by Clayton Delery-Edwards; and the musical drama “Upstairs” by Louisiana playwright Wayne Self. In 2013 the New Orleans Museum of Art acquired Louisiana artist Skylar Fein’s major installation “Remember the UpStairs Lounge.” The tragedy is also recounted in a short documentary by award-winning film maker Royd Anderson released on June 24, 2013, and in the 2011 book “Let the Faggots Burn: The UpStairs Lounge Fire” by Johnny Townsend.

For queer people, the UpStairs Lounge served as a sanctuary in every sense of the world. It was a seemingly safe place where LGBT people met behind boarded-up windows that hid them from a hostile world. Worship services were held there by the LGBT-affirming Metropolitan Community Church of New Orleans. The pastor, Rev. William R. Larson, died along with a third of congregation. Half the victims were MCC members. Those who died included people from all walks of life: preachers, hustlers, soldiers, musicians, parents, professionals and a mother with her two sons.

The horror of the fire was compounded by the homophobic reactions. Churches refused to hold funerals for the victims. Finally MCC founder Rev. Troy Perry flew to New Orleans to conduct a group memorial service. Families of four victims were apparently so ashamed of their gay relatives that they would not identify or claim their remains. The City refused to release their bodies to MCC for burial, and instead laid them to rest in a mass grave at a potter’s field.

UPSTAIRS INFERNO - Teaser Trailer [HD] from Camina Entertainment on Vimeo.

The full-length feature documentary “Upstairs Inferno” was produced and directed by Camina, whose previous film was the widely praised “Raid of the Rainbow Lounge” about a police raid at a Texas gay bar. Now he has created the most comprehensive and authoritative film on America's biggest gay mass murder. Survivors interviewed in the film include Ricky Everett and Francis Dufrene and a survivor who lost her lover Reggie Adams in the blaze.

Narrator Chrisopher Rice is an openly gay New York Times bestselling author whose hometown is New Orleans. His debut novel "A Density of Souls" got a landslide of media attention, mostly because he is the son of famed vampire author Anne Rice.

“Upstairs Inferno” will play at film festivals around the United States over the next 18 months before it becomes available on DVD. Two videos trailers for the film have been released. The first trailer provides an overview while the second trailer present additional interviews about the personal impact of the fire.

UPSTAIRS INFERNO - Trailer 2 [HD] from Camina Entertainment on Vimeo.

Meanwhile a different film crew working on “Tracking Fire” discovered vandalism on the memorial plaque while filming an interview there in May 2015. Someone through a paint bomb at the plaque, leaving it discolored even after the paint was cleaned off.

A sidewalk memorial plaque outside the UpStairs Lounge building in New Orleans was dedicated in 2003 and vandalized in 2015 (photo courtesy of "Tracking Fire")

“Tracking Fire” is just about to wrap filming and a video trailer is posted. “My focus is to tell the story of what happened, honor the victims, including the mother who died with her two sons, the survivors, their friends and family. It is also my intention to present a way for healing to replace the pain of tragedy and to offer a healthy resolution for personal and social conflict,” the film’s website explains.

Announcing the full-length trailer for Tracking Fire, a documentary which chronicles an unsolved case of arson that claimed 32 lives - one of the worst tragedies in LGBT history in America.
Posted by Tracking Fire on Monday, March 24, 2014

LGBT Religious Archives created an online exhibit about the UpStairs Lounge Fire with more than 120 artifacts that weave together stories about the fire and its aftermath, early gay activism, and the beginnings of Metropolitan Community Church in New Orleans. Original artifacts include newspaper and journal articles, photographs, correspondence, government reports and recordings from the time. The exhibit went online in September 2013 and received the 2014 Allan Bérubé Prize for “outstanding work in public or community-based LGBT and/or queer history.”

The crime received little attention from police, elected officials and news media. The only national TV news coverage at the time was these video clips from CBS and NBC:

Louisiana playwright and composer Wayne Self spent five years weaving together the stories of the UpStairs Lounge fire victims and survivors. The result was the dramatic musical "Upstairs," which has been performed in various cities in Louisiana, New York and California after opening in New Orleans and Los Angeles in June 2013. He says his work takes the form “of tribute, of memorial, even of hagiography.”

The musical "Upstairs" brings back to life people such as MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell, who managed to escape the fire, but ran back into the burning building to save his boyfriend, Louis Broussard. Both men died in the fire. Their bodies were found clinging to one another in the ashes. In the musical, Mitchell sings a song called “I’ll Always Return”:

…Modern age,
Life to wage.
To get ahead, must turn the page.
I can't promise I'll never leave,
But I'll always,
I'll always return….

“I’ll Always Return” is one of five songs from the musical that are available online as workshop selection at http://upstairsmusical.bandcamp.com/.

Self raised funds so that Mitchell’s son and the son’s wife and could travel from Alabama to attend the play. Many victims of the UpStairs Lounge fire were survived by children who are still alive today.

The musical also explores the unsettled and unsettling question of who set the fire. Rodger Dale Nunez, a hustler and UpStairs Lounge customer, was arrested for the crime, but escaped and was never sentenced. He was thrown out of the UpStairs Lounge shortly before the fire for starting a fight with a fellow hustler. He committed suicide a year later. Self says that other theories arose to blame the KKK and the police, but he implicates Nunez -- with room for doubt -- in the musical.

A gay man may have lit the fire, but the real culprit is still society’s homophobia that set the fuse inside him. Hatred for LGBT people was also responsible for the high death toll in another way. The fire was especially deadly because the windows were covered with iron bars and boards so nobody could see who was inside. But they also prevented many people from getting outside in an emergency.

The UpStairs Lounge is recreated with haunting detail in Skylar Fein’s 90-piece art installation. He builds an environment with artifacts, photos, video, and a reproduction of the bar’s swinging-door entrance, evoking memories of how the place looked before and after the fire. “Remember the UpStairs Lounge” debuted in New Orleans in 2008 and was shown in New York in 2010. In January 2013 the New Orleans Museum of Art announced that it had acquired the installation. Fein donated it to the museum, saying that he did not want to dismantle the work or profit from its sale. He discusses the fire and shows objects from his installation in this video.

The victims of the UpStairs Lounge fire are part of LGBT history now, along with the queer martyrs who were burned at the stake for sodomy in medieval times. Their history is told in my previous post Ash Wednesday: Queer martyrs rise from the ashes.

The UpStairs Lounge fire gives new meaning to the Upper Room where Jesus and his disciples shared a Last Supper. It was also the place where they hid after his crucifixion, but the locked doors did not prevent the risen Christ from joining them and empowering them with the Holy Spirit.

The shared journey of LGBT people includes much loss -- from hate crimes, suicide, AIDS, and government persecution. But the LGBT community has also found ways to keep going. Reginald, one of the survivors of the UpStairs Lounge fire, expresses this strength in the song "Carry On" from the "Upstairs" musical:

I can speak.
I can teach.
I can give of the compassion I've received.
I can build.
I can sing!
I can honor all the loves,
That have passed away from me,
By sharing all the good that they have ever shown to me.
I can live my life.
I can carry on.
Carry on.
Carry on!

New Orleans film maker Royd Anderson's “The UpStairs Lounge Fire” documentary lasts 27 minutes (longer than the fire itself) and includes interviews with an eyewitness, a son who lost his father, a rookie firefighter called to the scene, author Johnny Townsend, and artist Skylar Fein, whose art exhibit about the tragedy gained national prominence. Here is a video trailer for the documentary.

The value of remembering the UpStairs Lounge fire was summed up by Lynn Jordan in the LGBT Religious Archives online exhibit that he co-curated. Jordan, founding member of MCC San Francisco, visited New Orleans shortly before and after the fire. In his introduction to the UpStairs exhibit, he explains:

“I left New Orleans with the promise to each of the 32 who would become immortal, that I would remember their sacrifice and carry them with me in all that would unfold in my life. The research and documentation that is an integral part of this Upstairs exhibit is “my” living into completion the promise to these “32 martyrs of the flames” that they “would not” be forgotten.

For those who would say that this event was so yesterday, i.e., we have achieved so many advances in our civil rights and in our acceptance for this to happen again, I would remind them that hate and intolerance are not constrained to finding shelter in any one moment, any one location in our “queer” history. To focus only on how far our LGBTQI communities may have progressed in 40 years; to fail to remember the sacrifice of all the lives lost or shattered in this journey; to lapse into complacency about our personal security: places us at risk of reviving the tragedy of our past in the present.”

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Related links:

UpStairs Lounge online exhibit (LGBT Religious Archives)

The Horror Upstairs (Time.com -June 21, 2013)

UpStairs Lounge arson attack (Wikipedia)

The Tragedy of the UpStairs Lounge (Jimani.com - website of the bar now at the same location)

Remembering the UpStairs Lounge Fire (glbtq.com)

32 Died, and I Wrote a Musical About It: Why I Did It and Would Do It Again by Wayne Self (HuffingtonPost)

NOMA acquires evocative major artwork by Skylar Fein: 'Remember the Upstairs Lounge'(nola.com)

‘Upstairs Inferno’ Recounts The Gay Mass Murder You Didn’t Know About (2015 interview with Robert Camina)

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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

A new poem weaves together LGBT spiritual themes, making connections between gay men burned to death, global warming and the Rainbow Christ. Georgia poet S. Alan Fann evokes Stonewall-style empowerment in the face of the UpStairs Lounge Fire and the thousands who were executed for homosexuality throughout history.

Faggots We May Be

By S. Alan Fann ©

Faggots We May Be
- standing strong despite at times being strewn about like broken wood,

- though burned by society’s condemnation, homophobia and persecution,

- together we rise to reclaim the livelihood of purposeful living with the planetary elemental solution.

Where sacred mutual respect abounds, where the Lupus Dei, Corporis Leo Deus and gravity laden Earth walkers surround the living while remembering and honoring all who have come before us, and all beginning to begin the journey and chances at choosing, yet again.

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

With that knowledge, we - empowered, look forward without the shackles of the past holding us back. Co-creating space for regeneration, transformation and liberating fulfillment with sustainable communication.

We faggots advocate - nay demand, a reversal of the global warming trend.

We transform fear of being burned as faggots by refusing to be consumed with convention,
by leading and enjoining ourselves and others into harmonious, sustainable living,
by educating ourselves and others as to our impact, dependency and interrelatedness to our Mother Earth and Rainbow Christ on this glorious, eternal reincarnation journey.

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Georgia poet S. Alan Fann identifies as a mystic and has master’s degrees in clinical psychology and project management. Part of his journey is described at http://gentlefeminist.tumblr.com. Fann has a deep, abiding commitment to his same-sex life partner of over 11 years. He occasionally writes poems and meditations on http://alanfann.tumblr.com and shares LGBTQ items of interest, including some political opinion pieces also on Twitter and Facebook @salanfann.

“The Crucifixion of Christ” by Becki Jayne Harrelson

Painter Becki Jayne Harrelson also lives in Georgia and uses LGBT Christian imagery to re-interpret a common anti-gay slur. She explains the painting sometimes known as “Faggot Crucifixion” this way on her website:

“I chose the word FAGGOT because today, gays are socially-acceptable and religiously-justifiable targets for hate. And, just like gays, Jesus was made a hate target in his time because he dared to be different, to tell his understanding of the truth even though his words and his position defied the religious establishment. We all are created by God to be who we are, including gays and lesbians.”

A chapter about Harrelson is included in “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More” by Kittredge Cherry.

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Related links:

Ash Wednesday: Queer martyrs rise from the ashes

Earth Day: LGBTQ theologians join in protecting the environment

Faggot: slang (Wikipedia)

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This post is part of the Queer Christ series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.

“It was Beautiful” by Douglas Blanchard shows the Stonewall Rebellion

Oil on canvas, 24" x 36," 1999.

Queer people fought back against police harassment at New York City’s Stonewall Inn in June 1969, launching the modern LGBT liberation movement. The Stonewall uprising began 46 years ago today (June 28, 1969).

Their bold rebellion against government persecution of homosexuality is commemorated around the world during June as LGBT Pride Month. The Stonewall Uprising continues to inspire a variety of art that is featured here today.

The LGBT people who resisted police at the Stonewall Rebellion (also known as the Stonewall Riots) are not saints in the traditional sense. But they are honored here as “saints of Stonewall” because they dared to battle an unjust system. They do not represent religious faith -- they stand for faith in ourselves as LGBT people. They performed the miracle of transforming self-hatred into pride. These “saints” began a process in which self-hating individuals were galvanized into a cohesive community. Their saintly courage inspired a justice movement that is still growing stronger after four decades.

Before Stonewall, police regularly raided gay bars, where customers submitted willingly to arrest. A couple of dozen acts of resistance pre-dated and paved the way for Stonewall, such as the 1967 demonstration at the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles.

Despite the progress made, police raids of gay bars have continued in recent years, such as the notorious 2009 Rainbow Lounge raid in Forth Worth, Texas. June 28 is also the anniversary of the 2009 raid on the Rainbow Lounge, a newly opened gay bar in Fort Worth, Texas. Five customers were zip-tied and taken to jail, multiple others were arrested or detained, and one got a severe brain injury while in custody. The raid sparked an unprecedented public outcry that led to historic change.

The Stonewall Inn catered to the poorest and most marginalized queer people: drag queens, transgender folk, hustlers and homeless youth. Witnesses disagree about who was the first to defy the police raid in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. It was either a drag queen or a butch lesbian. Soon the crowd was pelting the officers with coins, bottles, bricks and the like. The police, caught by surprise, used nightsticks to beat some people before taking refuge in the bar itself. News of the uprising spread quickly. Hundreds gathered on the street and a riot-control police unit arrived. Violence continued as some chanted, “Gay power!”

Drag queens started spontaneous kick lines facing the police with clubs and helmets. That dramatic moment is captured in the painting “It was Beautiful” by Douglas Blanchard. The drag queens met violence with defiant humor by singing,

We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear no underwear
We show our pubic hair
We wear our dungarees
Above our nelly knees!

That night 13 people were arrested and some hospitalized. The streets were mostly cleared by 4 a.m., but a major confrontation with police happened again the next night, and protests continued on a smaller scale for a week.

A month later the Gay Liberation Front was formed, one of many LGBT rights organizations sparked by the saints of Stonewall. LGBT religious groups are indebted to the saints of Stonewall for our very existence.

“Gay Liberation” by George Segal commemorates the Stonewall rebellion (Photo by Wally Gobetz)

One of the most significant Stonewall artworks is also the world’s first piece of public art honoring the struggle for LGBTQ equality. “Gay Liberation” was created in 1979 by famed pop sculptor George Segal. It consists of four statues, a gay couple and a lesbian couple, cast in bronze and painted white in Segal’s typical style. The figures are arranged realistically in casual poses, evoking the power of love with their ghostly presence.

The idea for a public sculpture honoring the 10th anniversary of Stonewall came from LGBT activist Bruce Voeller. His vision inspired the Mildred Andrews Fund of Cleveland to commission Segal to create the sculpture. After much controversy, vandalism and alternate locations, the sculpture was installed permanently across the street from the Stonewall Inn at Christopher Park, which also holds two monuments to Civil War heroes.

Artists usually choose between two approaches when addressing the Stonewall Uprising. Some focus on the action in the past while others highlight the present-day Stonewall Inn, which is still in operation as a bar for the LGBT community.

Artists who recreate the past include Doug Blanchard, a gay New York artist who teaches art at City University of New York and is active in the Episcopal Church. “It was Beautiful” and other Stonewall paintings by Blanchard were shown at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center of New York in 1999. His series “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” has been featured here at the Jesus in Love Blog and in a 2014 book with text by Kittredge Cherry.

“The Battle of Stonewall - 1969” by Sandow Birk

California artist Sandow Birk put Stonewall history into heroic context in a big way. The oil paintings in his Stonewall series measure up to 10 feet wide. The crown jewel of the series is “The Battle of Stonewall - 1969.” It updates the classic painting “The Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle - 1304” by 19th-century French artist Charles Philippe Lariviere. In both cases, the physically superior side attacked those who were considered weaker, but the underdogs won and gained their freedom. Birk replaces swords with police batons and turns national flags into “Gay Power” banners. The knight in shining armor is replaced by a drag queen in mascara and high heels. For more about Birk’s Stonewall series, see my previous post: Sandow Birk: Stonewall's LGBT history painted.

The actual Stonewall riots weren’t as white as Birk's paintings make it appear: “On the first night of the Stonewall riots, African Americans and Latinos likely were the largest percentage of the protestors, because we heavily frequented the bar,” scholar-activist Irene Monroe writes in Dis-membering Stonewall, her chapter in the book Love, Christopher Street. “For homeless black and Latino LGBTQ youth and young adults who slept in nearby Christopher Park, the Stonewall Inn was their stable domicile.”

“Stonewall Inn” by Trudie Barreras (Collection of Kittredge Cherry)

The location where history happened is emphasized in the colorful painting of the Stonewall Inn by Trudie Barreras, a long-time member of Metropolitan Community Churches. Her art and writing on queer religious themes have appeared frequently here at the Jesus in Love Blog. She also does personalized pet portraits as “donation incentives” for Jesus in Love.

“Prostrations at the Holy Places and Veneration to Our Martyrs (Stonewall Pilgrimage)” by Tony O’Connell

British artist Tony O’Connell paid homage to the power of Stonewall by photographing his own personal pilgrimage to the historic bar in New York City in 2013. He prayed with incense at the Stonewall Inn as part of his series on LGBT pilgrimages, which he does as performances recorded in photos. He travels to places of importance in LGBT history, treating the trip as a pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint. For more about O’Connell’s pilgrimages and other art, see my previous post Tony O’Connell reclaims sainthood: Gay artist finds holiness in LGBT people and places.

Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem and the Stonewall Riots happen in Station 8 from “Stations of the Cross: The Struggle For LGBT Equality” by Mary Button

Tennessee artist Mary Button weaves together the LGBT uprising at Stonewall with Christ’s journey to Calvary in Station 8 of her LGBT Stations of the Cross. She shows that a chain of oppression that stretches from the crucifixion of Christ to police harassment of LGBT people today, offering hope for resurrection. For more about Button’s Stations, see my previous post LGBT Stations of the Cross shows struggle for equality.

The history of the Rainbow Lounge raid and reaction is told in the 2012 film “Raid of the Rainbow Lounge,” directed by Robert Camina. He says it has “haunting parallels” to Stonewall. Emmy-nominated actress Meredith Baxter narrates the documentary. A video trailer is posted online.

May the saints of Stonewall continue to inspire all who seek justice and equality!

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Related links:

2015 book for teens: “Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights” by Ann Bausum

Book: “Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution” by David Carter

Book: “Stonewall” by Martin Bauml Duberman

Video: “American Experience: Stonewall Uprising”

Stonewall (Qualia Encyclopedia of Gay Folklife)

Stonewall Inn and Christopher Park (Qualia Encyclopedia of Gay Folklife)

George Segal’s "Gay Liberation" (glbtq.com)

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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, heroes and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Pauli Murray by Laurel Green

Human rights champion and queer saint Pauli Murray is a renowned civil rights pioneer, feminist, author, lawyer and the first black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest. Her feast day is today (July 1).

Murray was arrested and jailed for refusing to sit in the back of a segregated bus in Virginia in 1938 -- 15 years before Rosa Parks became a national symbol for resisting bus segregation. In 1941 she organized restaurant sit-downs in the nation’s capital -- 20 years before the famous Greensboro sit-ins.

She was approved for trial inclusion in the Episcopal Church’s book of saints, “Holy Women, Holy Men” in a 2012 vote. Usually the Episcopalians wait until 50 years after a person has died before making granting sainthood, but for Murray the church set aside the rule and approved “trial use” of materials commemorating her now.

Murray was attracted to women and her longest relationships were with women, so she is justifiably considered a lesbian. But she also described herself as a man trapped in a woman’s body and took hormone treatments in her 20s and 30s, so she might even be called transgender man today.

Others have written extensively about her many accomplishments, but material on Murray’s sexuality is hard to find. She did not speak publicly about her sexual orientation or gender identity issues, but she left ample evidence of these struggles in her letters and personal writings.

Pauli Murray (Wikipedia)

Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray (November 20, 1910 – July 1, 1985) was born in Baltimore, Maryland and raised in Durham, North Carolina. She became aware of her queer sexuality early in life. In Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware: Forty Years of Letters in Black and White

, historian Anne Firor Scott explains:

“In adolescence Murray began to worry about her sexual nature. She later said that she was probably meant to be a man, but had by accident turned up in a woman’s body. She began to keep clippings about various experiments with hormones as a way of changing sexual identity…. In 1937, at the initiative of a friend, she had been admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York, and during her stay there she examined her worries about her sexual nature in writing, and said that she hoped to move toward her masculine side... . She continued for years to discuss the developing medical literature about hormones, thinking they might help her. She discussed the possibility of homosexuality with doctors; she knew that she was attracted to very feminine, often white, women, and she knew as well that… she was not physically attracted to men. This conflict would continue for the rest of her life.”

Murray’s queer side is discussed in many books, including American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism

by Nancy Ordover and To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America

by Lillian Faderman, and in the play “To Buy the Sun: The Challenge of Pauli Murray” by Lynden Harris.

A graduate of New York’s Hunter College, Murray was rejected from the University of North Carolina UNC Chapel Hill’s graduate school in 1938 because of her race. She became a civil rights activist. In the late 1930s Murray was also seeking psychological help and testosterone implants from doctors in an effort to “treat” her homosexuality by becoming more male.

Eager to become a civil rights lawyer, Murray was the only woman in her law school class at Howard University in Washington, DC. She graduated first in her class in 1944, but was rejected by Harvard because of her gender -- even though President Franklin Roosevelt wrote a letter of support for her after Murray contacted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Instead Murray studied law at the University of California in Berkeley. She wrote numerous influential publications, and NAACP used her arguments in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that ended racial segregation in U.S. public schools.

In the early 1960s President John Kennedy appointed Murray to the Commission on the Status of Women Committee. She worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin on civil rights -- and criticized the 1963 March on Washington at the time for excluding women from leadership. In 1965 she became the first African American to receive a law doctorate from Yale. A year later she co-founded the National Organization for Women.

Instead of retiring, Murray launched a new career at age 62. She entered New York’s General Theological Seminary in 1973, before the Episcopal Church allowed women priests. She was ordained in 1977. She celebrated her first Holy Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, NC -- the same church where her grandmother, a slave, was baptized.

After a lifetime as a human rights activist, she drew on her own experience to preach a powerful vision of God’s justice. In a 1977 sermon recorded in Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings

, she said:

It was my destiny to be the descendant of slave owners as well as slaves, to be of mixed ancestry, to be biologically and psychologically integrated in a world where the separation of the races was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States as the fundamental law of our Southland. My entire life’s quest has been for spiritual integration, and this quest has led me ultimately to Christ, in whom there is no East or West, no North or South, no Black or White, no Red or Yellow, no Jew or Gentile, no Islam or Buddhist, no Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, or Roman Catholic, no Male or Female. There is no Black Christ, no White Christ, no Red Christ – although these images may have transitory cultural value. There is only Christ, the Spirit of Love.

Murray died of cancer on July 1, 1985 at age 74. Her best known book is Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family

(1956), her memoir of growing up as a mixed-race person in the segregated South.

The image of Pauli Murray at the top of this post is part of the “In the Spirit of Those Who Led the Way” series by North Carolina artist Laurel Green. She creates digital artworks in conversation with more traditional media.

“Pauli Murray” by Angela Yarber

A new icon of Pauli Murray was painted for the "Holy Women Icons" series by Angela Yarber, an artist, scholar, dancer, minister and LGBT-rights activist based in North Carolina. for her series "Holy Women Icons." It is one of nearly 50 color images of her folk feminist icons included in her 2014 book "Holy Women Icons." Her colorful icon shows Murray with a closed eyes and large heart inscribed with the words:

“When her throat grew weary,
Her heart pulsed a song of hope,
Of justice, of equality,
Unconstrained by the binaries
That bind.
Authentically free.”

For more info on Yarber, see my previous post "Artist paints holy lesbians and other women."

The trial use commemorations of the Episcopal Church include this new prayer:

Liberating God, we thank you most heartily for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from bonds of prejudice and fear so that we show forth your reconciling love and true freedom, which you revealed through your Son and Our Savior Jesus Christ.

Pauli Murray image from Holy Women, Holy Men on Facebook celebrating saints in the Episcopal Church, produced by the Paradoxy Center at St. Nicholas Church.

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Related links:

Pauli Murray profile at LGBTHistoryMonth.com

www.paulimurrayproject.org

Pauli Murray Named to Episcopal Sainthood (duke.edu)

Paul Murray bio (Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina)

“Queering Iconography, Painting Pauli Murray” by Angela Yarber (Feminism and Religion Blog)

“Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints: Additional Commemorations” (Episcopal resource including Pauli Murray)

Convention OKs continued trial use of ‘Holy Women, Holy Men’ (Episcopal News Service)

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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Two new books about AIDS and LGBTQ Christianity are announced this month.

“Religion, Flesh, and Blood: The Convergence of HIV/AIDS, Black Sexual Expression, and Therapeutic Religion” by Pamela Leong.

Successful AIDS ministry by one black LGBT congregation in Unity Fellowship is the focus of a rich case study by a sociology professor. She describes how they blend African-American Christianity with the therapeutic ethic of American pop culture. The author focuses on the Los Angeles congregation through field work, interviews and analysis of sermons. Unity Fellowship founder Carl Bean is discussed in depth. Leong is assistant professor of sociology at Salem State University in Massachusetts.

“After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion” by Anthony M. Petro.

The entire religious history of AIDS in America is examined by a Boston University religion professor. He goes way beyond the usual discussion of the Religious Right to cover a wide range of mainline Protestant, evangelical, and Catholic groups as well as AIDS activist organizations. The author reveals how the AIDS crisis prompted American Christians to start discussing homosexuality, fostering a moral discourse whose legacy includes abstinence education and same-sex marriage. This detailed and discerning history was published by the prestigious Oxford University Press. The section on Metropolitan Community Churches includes the ministry of long-time AIDS survivor Stephen Pieters.

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Related links:

New LGBTQ Christian books: June 2015

New LGBTQ Christian books: May 2015

New LGBTQ Christian books: March 2015

New LGBTQ Christian books: Feb 2015

Top 25 LGBTQ Christian books of 2014 named (Jesus in Love)

Top 20 Gay Jesus books (from Jesus in Love)

Queer Theology book list (from Patrick Cheng)

Queering the Church book list

Jesus in Love Bookstore (includes LGBT Christian classics)

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Gay history hidden in Vatican religious art can now be seen firsthand through new LGBT-friendly tours never offered before.

In a sign of the Vatican’s increasing acceptance of queer people, Italian travel company Quiiky has begun leading two gay-oriented day tours based on the lives, loves and masterpieces of Renaissance artists Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci.

Same-sex kisses in the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s love for a young male poet are the focus of Quiiky's queer tour of Rome. Moving north to Milan, the LGBT Da Vinci tour reveals how the artist’s own beloved male disciple Salai was probably the model for Christ’s apostle John in the Last Supper.

The most popular part of the tour comes in the Sistine Chapel when guides point to the top right corner of “Last Judgment,” just behind Saint Peter. Michelangelo painted three pairs of male figures kissing and embracing to celebrate their ascent to heaven.

Detail from “Last Judgement” by Michelangelo

“Our customers like the Sistine Chapel painting of a kiss between two men going to Paradise, not in Hell,” Quiiky CEO Alessio Virgilli told the Jesus in Love Blog.

Using slang and simple language, Quiiky guides point out details that other guides ignore -- details related to the homosexuality of the artists. The tours were conceived especially, but not exclusively, for an LGBT audience.

“This gay tour gives finally the right importance homosexuality had in the Renaissance period and in the Italian art itself, a role that has been hidden until now because of the bigotry of certain environments,” the Quiiky.com website states.

Plans are underway to add two more gay excursions: a Caravaggio tour of Baroque Rome and a tour of Tivoli highlighting ancient Roman emperor Hadrian and his male lover Antinous.

“There is an untold history that some gays know, but I think it is time for everybody to find out,” Virgilli said in an interview with Jesus in Love. “When I traveled abroad I always used to meet LGBT people who told me that they liked visiting Italy to look for history, especially places and art made by gay men and lesbians.” So he launched the gay tours.

The Quiiky Vatican Museum tour begins with ancient statues, such as Hadrian and his beloved Antinous, and concludes with a visit to the Gallery of Tapestries and St. Peter’s Basilica. But the highlight is the Sistine Chapel.

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings were controversial even in his own time because they include many sensous male nudes who are modeled on manual laborers. The models were probably men whom Michelangelo saw at gay bathhouses and brothels, according to historian Elena Lazzarini of Pisa University. Michelangelo's homoerotic interests are evident not only in his paintings, but also in the hundreds of love poems that he wrote during his lifetime.

"John the Baptist" by Da Vinci

The Da Vinci tour visits different sites in Milan linked to the artistic genius, including the Biblioteca Ambrosiana library where his work is preserved and the Sforza Castle where he painted on commission for a noble family.

The centerpiece of the tour is viewing “The Last Supper” in the convent refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie. Next to Christ is his beloved disciple John, who resembles Da Vinci’s apprentice Gian Giacomo Caprotti. Nicknamed Salai (“little devil”), he was also Da Vinci’s frequent model and most likely lover. Salai is also presumed to be the model for a painting of an almost coquettish John the Baptist by Da Vinci.

Historical documents show that Da Vinci was accused of sodomy as a young man. The charges were dismissed for lack of evidence, but speculation has continued for centuries as viewers perceived proof in his artwork.

Quiiky’s gay tours have been popular since their inception in November 2014. Every day about 15 people take the gay tours, which are designed for an intimate, small-group experience. About 70 percent of customers come from the United States, followed by England and Spain.

Vatican officials are aware of the gay tours, but have done nothing to stop them. “It is not a secret that Quiiky is a LGBT tour operator open to everybody, and we have access to Vatican Museum with official guides. This is, I think, because Vatican wants to open its doors to everybody, with no difference,” Virgilli explained.

Pope Francis set a new tone in 2013 when he told reporters that his attitude about LGBT people is: “Who am I to judge?”

Virgilli said that nonjudgmental attitude extends to the gay tours that he offers: “And so the Vatican doesn’t judge if you are looking for your personal identity and history in a place created to embrace the whole human being.”

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Related links:
Vatican Art in a Gay Light (New York Times)

“The Last Judgement” and the Homoerotic Spirituality of Michelangelo (Queer Spirituality)

Michelangelo's 'The Last Judgement' was 'inspired by visiting gay saunas' (Daily Mail)

The Passions of Michelangelo by Rictor Norton

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Special thanks to Marco Wooster for the news tip.
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This post is part of the Artists series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series profiles artists who use lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spiritual and religious imagery. It also highlights great queer artists from history, with an emphasis on their spiritual lives.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

Jemima Wilkinson / Publick Universal Friend (Wikimedia Commons)

Jemima Wilkinson (1752-1819) was a queer American preacher who woke from a near-death experience in 1776 believing she was neither male nor female. She changed her name to “the Publick Universal Friend,” fought for gender equality and founded an important religious community.

It’s appropriate to consider the Publick Universal Friend on July 4 for Independence Day. In 1776, the same year that America issued the Declaration of Independence, Wilkinson declared her own independence from gender. This fascinating person died almost 200 years ago today on July 1, 1819.

Wilkinson is recognized as the first American-born woman to found a religious group, but is also called a “transgender evangelist.” The breakaway Quaker preacher spoke against slavery and gave medical care to both sides in the Revolutionary War.

Wilkinson was 24 when she had a severe fever leading to a near-death experience. Upon waking she confidently announced to her surprised family that Jemima Wilkinson had died and her body was now inhabited by a genderless “Spirit of Life from God” sent to preach to the world. She insisted on being called the Publick Universal Friend or simply “the Friend.” From then on, the Friend refused to respond to her birth name or use gendered pronouns.

Seal of the Universal Friend
(Wikimedia Commons)

The preacher and prophet known as “the Friend” defies categorization. The Friend has been labeled a “spiritual transvestite” and is on lists of “famous asexuals” and “a gender-variance Who’s Who.” As a gender nonconformist whose life was devoted to God, the Friend fits the definition of a queer saint. The androgynous Friend was many things to many people.

Jemima Wilkinson was born to a Quaker family in Rhode Island on Nov. 29, 1752. She showed a strong interest in religion while growing up. On Oct. 13, 1776, the Sunday after being reborn, the Friend gave a public sermon for the first time. Quaker officials rejected the Friend as a heretic, but s/he went on to preach throughout Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

The Friend blended traditional Christian warnings about sin and redemption with Quaker pacifism, abolitionism, plain dress and peaceful relations with Native American Indians. Women had no legal rights in the United States, but the Friend advocated equality of the sexes. The Friend was a firm believer in sexual abstinence.

People were drawn not only to this progressive message, but also to the Friend’s forceful personality and genderbending appearance. S/he rejected standard women’s attire and hairdos for a unique blend of male and female. The Friend commonly wore a flowing black male clergy gown with female petticoats peeking out at the hem. The Friend’s long hair hung loose to the shoulder. The rest of the Friend’s outfit often included a man’s broad-brimmed hat and women’s colorful scarves.

The first recruits were family members, but the Friend soon attracted a diverse group of followers, including intellectual and economic elites as well as the poor and oppressed. Known as the Universal Friends, they upset some people by proclaiming that the Friend was “the Messiah Returned” or “Christ in Female Form.” The Friend did not make such claims directly.

The Friend founded the Society of Universal Friends in 1783. Members pooled their money and started a utopian communal settlement in the wilderness near Seneca Lake in upstate New York in 1788. As the first settlers in the region, they cleared the land and became the first white people to meet and trade with the Native Americans there. By 1790 the community had grown to a population of 260.

Hostile observers put the Friend on trial for blasphemy in 1800, but the court ruled that American courts could not try blasphemy cases due to the separation of church and state in the U.S. constitution. Thus the Friend was a pioneer in establishing freedom of speech and freedom of religion in American law.

Like other isolated utopian communities based on celibacy, the Society of Universal Friends dwindled. The Friend “left time,” as the Universal Friends put it, on July 1, 1819 at age 61. The organization disintegrated within a few years of the founder’s death.

The Publick Universal Friend continues to fascinate people today. One of the most authoritative biographies of this mysterious person is Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend

by Herbert A. Wisbey Jr. In recent years the life and work of the Friend has been examined by feminists and LGBTQ scholars, including gay historian Michael Bronski in his new Lambda Literary Award-winning book, A Queer History of the United States

.
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Related links:
Chapter on Jemima Wilkinson from “Saints, Sinners and Reformers” by John H. Martin(Crooked Lake Review)

The Assumption of Jemima Wilkinson by Sharon V. Betcher (Journal of Millennial Studies)

Scherer Carriage House (permanent museum exhibit on Jemima Wilkinson)

The Publick Universal Friend – Penn Yan, NY (Exploring the Burned-Over District: Sacred sites in upstate New York)

Leavesofgrass.org

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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

“Judith and Her Maidservant” by Artemisia Gentileschi

Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi inspires many with her paintings of strong Biblical women -- created despite the discrimination and sexual violence that she faced as a woman in 17th-century Italy. She was born more than 400 years ago today (July 8, 1593).

Gentileschi was apparently heterosexual, but lesbians have drawn energy from her life and art. Many queer people can relate to her battles against prejudice and sexual violence, documented in her rape trial in 1612. She can be considered the patron saint of lesbian artists, women artists, and everyone who breaks gender rules.

Gentileschi (1593–1652) was successful in her own day, but was mostly written out of art history until the 1970s, when feminist scholars rediscovered her work. Now she is celebrated in many books, films and plays, and her work is widely reproduced. Her greatest paintings include “Judith Beheading Holofernes” and “Susanna and the Elders.”

Lesbians who have created tributes to Gentileschi include painter Becki Jayne Harrelson and playwright Carolyn Gage. In the play “Artemisia and Hildegard,” Gage has two of history’s great women artists debate their contrasting survival strategies: Gentileschi battled to achieve in the male-dominated art world while Hildegard of Bingen found support for her art in the women-only community of a medieval German nunnery.

The daughter of a painter, Gentileschi was born in Rome and trained as a painter in her father’s workshop there. She was refused admission to the art academy because she was a woman, so her father arranged for her to have a private painting teacher -- who raped her when she was about 19. Gentileschi herself was tortured by thumbscrews during the seven-month rape trial, but she stuck to her testimony. The teacher was convicted, but received a suspended sentence.

“Judith Beheading Holofernes”
by Artemisia Gentileschi

Gentileschi used art to express her outrage. During the trial Artemisia began painting the Biblical scene of “Judith Beheading Holofernes” (left). Judith, a daring and beautiful Hebrew widow, saves Israel by cutting off the head of the invading general Holofernes. Judith and Holofernes became one of Gentileschi’s favorite subjects, and she painted several variations during her lifetime.

Her realistic style, influenced by the artist Caravaggio, shows dramatic contrasts between light and dark. But Gentileschi usually created her own unique interpretation expressing a strong female viewpoint. The violence of Judith beheading the male general Holofernes speaks for itself. Another example is her painting (below left) of the Biblical story of the Hebrew wife Susanna and the lustful elders who spied on her while she was bathing. Although her male contemporaries painted the scene as a voyeuristic fantasy, Gentileschi presents it as a violation of the vulnerable Susanna by the predatory elders.

“Susanna and the Elders”
by Artemisia Gentileschi

Soon after the rape trial Gentileschi married and moved to Florence, where she became the first woman accepted into the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing). She had a full career, producing many paintings of powerful women from Christianity, history and mythology. She worked in various Italian cities and even spent a few years painting in London, England. It is believed that she died when she was about 60 years old in a plague that swept Naples in 1656.

Today Gentileschi’s life and work are admired by many, including artist Becki Jayne Harrelson. She is best known for her LGBT-affirming version of “The Crucifixion of the Christ” with the word “faggot” above Jesus on the cross, but Harrelson has also honored Gentileschi in her art and blog.

Harrelson offers this tribute in celebration of Gentileschi’s birthday: “Artemisia Gentileschi’s talent and mastery was equal to her male counterparts, yet because of sexism and misogyny, she was denied the recognition she deserved as a master painter until many centuries later. She also suffered sexual violence and was treated unjustly for standing up against it. Her art and life inspires me to persevere despite adversity and prejudice.”

“Tribute to Artemisia’s Judith” by Becki Jayne Harrelson, www.beckijayne.com

Oil on canvas | 36”w X 48”h

Gentileschi's story is told in a variety of movies and novels, including "The Passion of Artemisia" by Susan Vreeland.

Theologian Susan Thistlethwaite writes about Gentileschi in her forthcoming book “A Theology of Women's Bodies as Battlefield: Just War, Just Peace, and the Global War on Women” (publication date: July 15, 2015). Gentileschi concludes the section on Renaissance painting and establishing the visiblity/invisiblity of rape culture.

Artemisia Gentileschi is included in the LGBT saints series at the Jesus in Love Blog because she has inspired so many lesbians with her paintings of women and her success despite gender barriers and sexual violence.
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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, heroes and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

“Christa” by Angie Devereux

Female Christ figures by international artists are on display at the University of Winchester in England through Aug. 9.

“Celebrating Female Images of Christ/a” brings together women artists from across Europe to celebrate the ongoing heritage of Christ as a woman.

Artists include Silvia Martinez Cano (Spain), Annette Esser (Germany), Sylvia Grevel (Netherlands) and British artists Megan Clay, Angie Devereux and Jess Wood. The exhibit at the university's Link Gallery also includes the Bosnian Christa created by Margaret Argyle in 1993. The exhibition poster features “She is Risen” by Megan Clay, curator of the show.

I wrote about the importance of female Christ figures and their connection to queer Christ images in my book “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More.” Here are some excerpts from the book:

Two dramatic new visions are coming into consciousness: the gay Jesus and the woman Christ. They break gender rules and gender roles. Their very presence stirs controversy. These radically new Christ figures embody and empower people who are left out when Jesus is shown as a straight man. They can free the minds of everyone who sees them. Artists who dare to show Christ as gay or female have had their work destroyed—if they can find a way to exhibit it at all….

Appreciation for the gay Jesus and woman Christ images is not limited to LGBT people, women, or even Christians. Many others are also turned off by dogmatic, male-dominated religions and the wars they fuel. Such people may welcome the sacred feminine and the gay-sensitive reassessments of Christ. On a deeper level, the new images aim to heal the painful split between body and soul that came with patriarchy. Without that basic wholeness, humanity is likely to continue down the destructive path of war, economic exploitation and ecological destruction. …

The woman Christ is a radical reimagining of the central figure of Christianity. It’s possible that the historical Jesus was gay, but he definitely was not female. All artists who portray the female Christ are breaking with historical fact in order to express a deeper truth. Most say they are drawn to the Christ archetype for reasons that they cannot explain. Some note the influence of feminism or faith—the Christian belief that the risen Christ transcends gender. Some point out that the world needs to honor the sacred feminine and is cycling back to it.

A woman on the cross is still rare enough to shock, but for those who go looking, it is the most common motif for female Christ figures in art. As with the gay Jesus, crucifixions far outnumber resurrections. Female crucifixions generally express the sacrifice and suffering of women—and yet the power to overcome death is implicit in every crucifixion….

The current exploration of the female Christ is new, but not unprecedented. Some artists draw inspiration from Sophia, the female incarnation of Wisdom in the Bible. Sophia is considered a Christ figure in Byzantine tradition, and she has appeared in Byzantine churches and icons at least since the Middle Ages.

At the University of Winchester, lectures are being presented in conjunction with the Christa exhibit by Nicola Slee of the Queen's Foundation in Birmingham and Angela Berlis of the University of Bern, Switzerland. Slee is the author of “Seeking the Risen Christa

.”

The exhibition catalog for “Celebrating Female Images of Christ/a” features a description of each painting and its meaning. To purchase the catalog, contact Lisa Isherwood, professor of feminist liberation theologies and director of the Institute for Theological Partnerships, which oversaw the exhibit. Her email address is Lisa.Isherwood@winchester.ac.uk.

The Christa exhibit opened on July 10, 2015. The opening weekend was so successful that the institute is already making plans for a follow-up exhibit next year on feminist images of Mary/Miriam.

For more info on the Christa exhibit, contact: Joanna.Wilson@Winchester.ac.uk.

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Related links:

Crucified Christa embodies female Christ (Jesus in Love)

Exhibition poster for “Celebrating Female Images of Christ/a”

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

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