Jesus in Love Blog

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love divine;

Love was born at Christmas;

Star and angels gave the sign.

-- Christina Rossetti, queer writer of carols and poetry

Kittredge Cherry and the Jesus in Love Blog hope you have a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, jolly Kwanzaa, joyous Yule, wonderful Solstice or enjoy other mid-winter festival of your choice! Soon the days will grow longer and the Bridge of Light will lead us to a new year.

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Credit: “Rainbow Star” by Andrew Craig Williams, a queer artist in Wales. Thanks, Andy, and Nadolig Llawen!

“Jesus and the Beloved Disciple” by Laurie Gudim

John the Evangelist is commonly considered to be Jesus’ “Beloved Disciple” -- and possibly his lover. His feast day is today (Dec. 27).

The love between Jesus and John has been celebrated by artists since medieval times. And the idea that they were homosexual lovers has been causing controversy at least since the 16th century.

John was an apostle of Jesus and is the presumed author of the Gospel of John, the Book of Revelation and the Epistles of John. The Bible describes their warm relationship in depth. John left his life as a fisherman to follow Jesus, who nicknamed him “son of thunder.” John participated in many of the main events in Christ’s ministry. He was one of the three who witnessed the raising of Jairus' daughter, the transfiguration and Jesus' agony in Gethsemane.

The unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved” is referenced five times in the gospel of John (John 13:23, 19:26, 20:22, 21:7, 20). Church tradition identifies him as John himself. He reclined next to Jesus at the Last Supper, resting his head on Jesus’ chest. He was the only male disciple present at the crucifixion. From the cross, Jesus entrusted the Beloved Disciple and his mother Mary into each other’s care. There is even a medieval European tradition that John and Jesus were the bridal couple at the Cana wedding feast.

The idea that Jesus and his Beloved Disciple had a sexual relationship dates back at least to the early 16th century, when English playwright Christopher Marlowe was tried for blasphemy on the charge of claiming that “St. John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom, that he used him as the sinners of Sodoma.” In 1550 Francesco Calcagno, a citizen of Venice, was investigated by the Inquisition for making the heretical claim that “St. John was Christ’s catamite,” which means a boy or young man in a pederastic sexual relationship with an older man.

Many modern scholars have expressed belief that Jesus and his Beloved Disciple shared a an erotic physical relationship. They include Hugh Montefiore, Robert Williams, Sjef van Tilborg, John McNeill, Rollan McCleary, Robert E. Goss and James Neill. A thorough analysis is included in “The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament

” by Theodore Jennings, Biblical theology professor at Chicago Theological Seminary. He finds the evidence “inconclusive” as to whether the beloved disciple was John, but it leaves no doubt that Jesus had a male lover.

“A close reading of the texts in which the beloved disciple appears supports the hypothesis that the relationship between him and Jesus may be understood as that of lovers. As it happens, both Jesus and the beloved are male, meaning that their relationship may be said to be, in modern terms, a ‘homosexual’ relationship,” Jennings writes (p. 34).

After Jesus died, John went on to build a close, loving relationship with his younger disciple and scribe, Prochorus, bishop of Nicomedia. Tradition says that John was the only one of Christ's original 12 apostles to live to old age, and the only one not killed for his faith. He died in Ephesus around 100 AD.

Over the centuries many artworks have illustrated the deep love between Jesus and his Beloved Disciple. One of the newest is the 2012 icon “Jesus and the Beloved Disciple” by Laurie Gudim at the top of this post. Based in Colorado, Gudim is an artist, Jungian psychotherapist and progressive Episcopalian.

Her work uses a motif dating back at least to the 13th century. A long artistic tradition depicts John as the Beloved Disciple resting his head on the breast of Jesus. It can be seen in an early 13th-century stained glass window at the Cathedral of St. Etienne at Bourges and in “Christus Johannes Gruppe” (Christ John Group) by the unknown Master of Oberschwaben. This sculpture spent many centuries in an Augustinian convent in Inzigkofen, a town in the region of Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany. A museum in Berlin acquired in it the early 20th century, and it is now housed in the Bode Museum of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

“Christus Johannes Gruppe” (Christ John Group) by the unknown Master of Oberschwaben, oak sculpture, 1320.

Another fine early sculpture in this style is "St. John Resting on Jesus' Chest," circa 1320, which can be seen online at the Museum Mayer van den Bergh in Antwerp and the Web Gallery of Art. It was sculpted by Master Heinrich of Constance for the the Dominican convent of St. Catherine's valley in Switzerland. These were devotional images intended to help viewers deepen their connection to Christ.

In Germany the image is so important and iconic that it has even been made into a postage stamp. The subject is known as "Christus Johannes Gruppe" (Christ John Group) or Johannesminne (John Love), with minne being a Middle High German word for erotic-emotional love.

1967 German Stamp with "Christ-John Group" (Wikimedia Commons)

A modern interpretation of the subject is “Christ the Bridegroom,” by Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar known for his innovative icons. Author-priest Henri Nouwen

, famous but struggling with a secret gay identity, commissioned it in 1983. He asked for an icon that symbolized the act of offering his own sexuality and affection to Christ. Research and reflection led Lentz to paint Christ being embraced by his beloved disciple John, based on an icon from medieval Crete.

www.trinitystores.com

“Henri used it to come to grips with his own homosexuality,” Lentz said in an interview for my book “Art That Dares

,” which includes this icon and the story behind it. “I was told he carried it with him everywhere and it was one of the most precious things in his life.” Nouwen’s goal was celibacy and he did not come out publicly as gay before his death in 1996. The icon takes the Biblical theme of Christ as bridegroom and joins it to the medieval motif of Christ with John. The resulting image expresses their intimate friendship with exquisite subtlety.

The intimate bond between the two men is emphasized in “One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved” by the French painter Ary Scheffer (1795-1858).

“One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved” by Ary Scheffer

Atlanta artist Becki Jayne Harrelson painted another especially loving version of Jesus and the Beloved at the center of her “Last Supper.” Unlike the classic icons of Jesus and the Beloved Disciple, her painting shows the two men gazing at each other and holding hands. She is a contemporary lesbian artist who uses LGBT people as models in her religious art. Raised in a fundamentalist Christian family, she uses art to express her passion for justice.

Detail from Study for The Last Supper
by Becki Jayne Harrelson

Another icon celebrating the love between Jesus and the beloved disciple was painted by Jim Ru (below). It was displayed in his show “Transcendent Faith: Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered Saints” in Bisbee Arizona in the 1990s.

“Jesus and the Beloved Disciple” by Jim Ru

In recent years some artists have adapted the classic iconography to other racial and ethnic groups. For example, John Giuliani's “Jesus and the Beloved Disciple” shows the figures in the native dress of the Aymara Indians, descendants of the Incas who still live in the Andean regions of Chile, Peru and Bolivia. Giuliani is an Italian-American artist and Catholic priest who is known for making Christian icons with Native American symbols. He studied icon painting under a master in the Russian Orthodox style, but chose to expand the concept of holiness to include Native Americans, the original inhabitants of the Americas.

“Jesus and the Beloved Disciple” by John Giuliani, 1996

One more picture of Jesus and his beloved must be mentioned, even though I haven’t been able to get permission to display it here on the Jesus in Love Blog (yet). It is well worthwhile to click the title to see this stunningly beautiful photo of Jesus and his Beloved Disciple as black Africans:

“Every Moment Counts” (from “Ecstatic Antibodies”) by Rotimi Fani-Kayode

Fani-Kayode (1955-1989) was a Nigerian photographer who explored themes of sexual and cultural difference, homoerotic desire, spirituality and the black male body, often in collaboration with his late partner Alex Hirst. Their last joint work was "Every Moment Counts" from 1989. In it a beloved disciple leans against black Christ figure who wears pearls over his dreadlocks as he gazes toward heaven. “The hero points the way forward for the lost boys of the world - the young street-dreads, the nightclub-chickens, the junkies and the doomed,” Hirst explains on their website.

I also wrote about John as the beloved disciple in my novels “Jesus in Love” and “At the Cross.” In honor of John’s feast day, I post this scene from “Jesus in Love: A Novel

.” Jesus, the narrator, remembers the day he met John:

I became distracted by the not unwelcome presence of somebody standing close behind me, closer than necessary in the loosely packed crowd. I sensed that it was John, and spun around to see him planted there like a tall cedar tree. He leaned against me, eyes flashing. “I can’t wait for the Messiah to come. I’ve seen him in visions.”

“Really? Tell me what you remember.” It was exciting to find someone who was aware of God’s efforts to communicate.

“The Messiah is like a gentle lamb who sits on a throne with a rainbow around it. And yet his eyes flame with fire, and a sharp sword comes out of his mouth to strike down evildoers.”

“The truth is large,” I said.

“Are you saying my vision isn’t true?” he challenged.

“No, I’m not saying that. I expect that you will see more.”

When John smiled, his faced crinkled into a fascinating landscape of wrinkles. His eyes felt black and mysterious like the midnight sky as they roamed over me. “Do you want a prayer partner tonight?” he asked.

If anyone else had asked, I would have said no, but I looked again at John’s handsome, bejeweled soul and his long, sinewy body.

“Sure,” I agreed impulsively.

Only then did I notice that the Baptist had finished preaching. John steered me toward the caves where the Baptist and his inner circle of disciples lived. Lower-ranking disciples were ready with water vessels and towels to assist everyone with ritual purification before we ate a spartan meal of locusts and wild honey. One of them approached me.

“Wash up, and we’ll get together after supper,” John said as we parted.

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Related links:

Dec. 27: John the (Queer) Evangelist (Queering the Church Blog)

Pharsea’s World: Homosexuality and Tradition: Jesus, John and Lazarus

Disciple whom Jesus loved (Wikipedia)

St John the Evangelist and Prochorus” (Queer Saints and Martyrs)

Jesus’ Gay Wedding at Cana (Queering the Church)

Statues of “John Love” (Johannesminne) in Germany (Wikimedia Commons)

San Juan el Evangelista: Discípulo Amado de Jesús (Santos Queer)

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Special thanks to Ann Fontaine for the introduction to Laurie Gudim.

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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

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Icons of Christ the Bridegroom, John the Evangelist and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at Trinity Stores

David and Jonathan window (detail) fromSt. Mark's Portobello, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1882

Love between men is celebrated in the Bible with the story of David and Jonathan. They lived about 3,000 years ago, but they still inspire LGBT people of faith -- and many others. David’s feast day is today (Dec. 29).

The two men met when David was a ruddy young shepherd. Jonathan, a courageous warrior, had returned victorious from battle. Jonathan was the eldest son of Saul, Israel’s first king. David was taken to see King Saul right after beheading the Philistine giant Goliath. Scholars estimate that David was about 18 and Jonathan was at least 10 years older.

Jonathan fell in love at first sight of the handsome young hero. As the Bible says, “The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David.” Their story gets more chapters in the Bible than any other human love story.

David, the second king of Israel, was an acclaimed warrior, musician and poet. He is credited with composing many of the psalms in the Bible. The gospel genealogies list David as an ancestor of Jesus.

The modern idea of sexual orientation didn’t exist in Biblical times, but the powerful love story of Jonathan and David in 1 and 2 Samuel suggests that same-sex couples are affirmed and blessed by God.

Artists throughout the ages have tried to capture the drama and passion of their story, beginning with the moment that David and Jonathan met. A beautiful romantic version of their first meeting appears on their stained-glass window at St. Mark's Portobello, a Scottish Episcopal church in Edinburgh. The inscription states, “The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David” (1 Samuel 18:1).

David and Jonathan window fromSt. Mark's Portobello, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1882

Created in 1882, the window has a dedication at the bottom: “In loving memory of George Frederick Paterson of Castle Huntly who died at Portobello, 30th Sept. 1890, aged 33.” All that is known about Paterson is that he was in the army and unmarried. The window was paid for by "a friend."

Soon after David and Jonathan met, the two men expressed their commitment by making a covenant with each other. The dramatic moment is described in 1 Samuel 18:3-4: “Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.”

Ryan Grant Long, a young gay artist based in Wisconsin, emphasizes the homoeroticism of the gesture as Jonathan strips off his robe and wraps it around David with a kiss on the neck in the image at the top of this post. For more about Long, see my previous post Artist paints history's gay couples.

“David and Jonathan” by Ryan Grant Long

A more traditional view is presented by 16th-century Italian painter Cima da Conegliano. In both images David is still carrying the head of Goliath as he bonds with his new friend Jonathan, hinting at the union of violence and eroticism.

“David and Jonathan” by Italian painter Cima da Conegliano, 1505-1510 (Wikimedia Commons)

“Jonathan Made
a Covenant with David”
by Trudie Barreras
Collection of
First Metropolitan
Community Church
of Atlanta

In contrast Atlanta artist Trudie Barreras shows the new friends both putting aside their armor to make a covenant with each other (left).

The Bible chronicles the ups and downs of David and Jonathan’s relationship over the next 15 years, including tears and kisses. King Saul is jealous of David's popularity and keeps trying to kill him, while his son Jonathan rescues his friend in various ways. An 18th-century German “friendship medal” (below) captures another highlight as Jonathan pledges to David, “I will do the desires of your heart” (“Ich will die thun was dein Herz begehrt”) from 1 Samuel 20:4.

German friendship medal of Jonathan and David by Philipp Heinrich Müller, c.1710 (Wikimedia Commons)

Other artists focus on a dramatic moment that came later when Jonathan met David at a pile (or "ezel") of stone to warn him that Saul intended to kill him. An 1860 woodcut by German artist Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld illustrates that tearful farewell scene from 1 Samuel 20: 41-42:

"Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most. Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever.’”

“David and Jonathan” woodcut for "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (Wikimedia Commons)

Detail from "David and Jonathan
at the Stone Ezel"
by Edward Hicks

Another version of the farewell scene was painted by American folk artist and Quaker minister Edward Hicks in 1847. In both paintings a boy can be seen carrying away their weapons. In the lower right Hicks places a scene of the Good Samaritan rescuing a downtrodden man. Interestingly, the Jonathan and David window at St. Mark's Portobello is also paired with a window showing the Good Samaritan.

"David and Jonathan at the Stone Ezel" by Edward Hicks, 1947

David and Jonathan became so close that it looked like someday they would rule Israel together. But that day never came because Jonathan was killed in battle. David mourned deeply for him with his famous lament from 2 Samuel 1:26:

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
you were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
more wonderful than that of women.

The love between the two men is honored in a golden icon by Brother Robert Lentz. Unlike most images of Jonathan and David, the Lentz icon shows Christ above blessing their relationship. It is one of 10 Lentz icons that sparked a controversy in 2005 when conservative Roman Catholic leaders accused Lentz of glorifying sin.

Jonathan and David by Br. Robert Lentz, OFM
www.trinitystores.com

Gay-positive Bible scholars have written extensively about the relationship between David and Jonathan. The classic book on the subject is “Jonathan Loved David: Homosexuality in Biblical Times” by Thomas Horner.

Jonathan and David embrace.
Manuscript illustration, circa 1300
La Somme le roy

The love between the two men is celebrated is also celebrated in literature, including the poem “The Meeting of David and Jonathan” by 19th-century English poet John Addington Symonds. He is known as an early advocate of male love (homosexuality) and wrote many poems inspired by his own homosexual affairs. In “The Meeting of David and Jonathan” he writes:

There by an ancient holm-oak huge and tough,
Clasping the firm rock with gnarled roots and rough,
He stayed their steps; and in his arms of strength
Took David, and for sore love found at length
Solace in speech, and pressure, and the breath
Wherewith the mouth of yearning winnoweth
Hearts overcharged for utterance. In that kiss
Soul unto soul was knit and bliss to bliss.

The full poem appears in “Many Moods: A Volume of Verse

” by Symonds.

It’s impossible to know whether David and Jonathan expressed their love sexually. Some consider David to be bisexual, since the Hebrew scriptures also recount how he committed adultery with Bathsheba and later made her one of his eight wives. There is no doubt that many people today do honor David and Jonathan as gay saints.

Their story is used by contemporary LGBT Christians to counteract conservatives who claim that the Bible condemns homosexuality. The “David loved Jonathan” billboard below is part of the Would Jesus Discriminate project sponsored by Metropolitan Community Churches. It states boldly, “David loved Jonathan more than women. II Samuel 1:26.” For more info on the billboards, see our previous post, “Billboards show gay-friendly Jesus.”

David loved Jonathan billboard from GLBT Christian billboards from WouldJesusDiscriminte.com and WouldJesusDiscriminte.org

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Related links:

David and Jonathan: Why did God focus on their intimate partnership? (GayChristian101)

Homosexuality and Tradition: David and Jonathan (Pharsea’s World)

Subjects of the visual arts: David and Jonathan (glbtq.com)

David the Prophet and Jonathan, His Lover (Queer Saints and Martyrs - And Others)

David y Jonatán: El amor entre hombres en la Biblia (Santos Queer)

Bible story of David and Jonathan’s first meeting: 1 Samuel 18

Bible story of Jonathan’s death: 2 Samuel 1

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Special thanks to Ruth Innes for the photo and info on the stained-glass window at St. Mark's Portobello.

Special thanks to Mitch Gould, curator of LeavesOfGrass.org, for introducing me to David and Jonathan at the Stone Ezel by Edward Hicks. It is part of their project on LGBT Quaker history.

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

"Rainbow Reflections" by Kittredge Cherry

Welcome the new year by lighting rainbow candles for Bridge of Light, a new winter holiday honoring LGBT culture.

Rainbow Arch candle holder

People celebrate Bridge of Light by lighting six candles, one for each color of the rainbow flag, on New Year’s Eve -- or from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, one candle per day.

Each candle stands for a spiritual principle and its expression in the lives and history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. The candles are intended to provide a starting point for individual and group meditations on these principles:

1. Red - The Root of Spirit (Community)
2. Orange - The Fire of Spirit (Eros, sexuality, passion)
3. Yellow - The Core of Spirit (Self-esteem, courage)
4. Green - The Heart of Spirit (Love)
5. Blue - The Voice of Spirit (Justice, self-expression)
6. Purple - The Eye of Spirit (Wisdom)
7. All Candles - The Crown of Spirit (Spirituality)

Together these colors form a rainbow, a time-honored symbol of a bridge between two worlds: heaven and earth, East and West, male and female, queer and non-queer.

The principles are beautifully expressed in a new benediction prayer written for Bridge of Light by Yewtree (Yvonne Aburrow) of the Dance of the Elements Blog:

Let us embody the values of the rainbow flag of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Red is the root of spirit, found in beloved community,
Orange is for Eros, the fire of spirit, the experience of erotic connection,
Yellow is for self-esteem, the strong core of spirit,
Green is for love, the heart of spirit, the verdant growth of the soul,
Blue is for self-expression, the voice of spirit, calling out for justice,
Purple is the eye of spirit, which sees inwardly with the eye of wisdom.
And all the colours together form the crown of spirit, the experience of spirituality.

Joe Perez, author of “Soulfully Gay

,” founded Bridge of Light in 2004. It has obvious parallels to Kwanzaa, the African-American cultural holiday started by Ron Karenga in 1966.

“Bridge of Light is an interfaith and omni-denominational cultural and spiritual tradition,” Perez says. “The annual winter ritual...has helped to draw attention to the positive contributions made by members of the LGBT community in the areas of spiritual growth, inner transformation, and religious leadership.” His most recent post on the subject is The Seven Principles of Bridge of Light. (GaySpirituality.com)

Bridge of Light continues to evolve. Aburrow suggested adding sacred foods, such as “rainbow-tinted marble cake maybe, or one food of each colour?”

I like the idea of doing a daily candle for each color, but every year Dec. 26-31 is such a busy week for me! I wonder if Bridge of Light could also be celebrated at the summer solstice in connection with LGBTQ Pride?

The following summary of the seven principles of Bridge of Light includes historical time periods, foods and more about the chakras, the energy centers of the human body. I synthesized and developed this info based on the resource links at the end of this post. For Jesus in Love readers I highlighted Christian history with links to LGBT Saints. The seven principles are also matched with the seven models of the queer Christ from gay theologian Patrick S. Cheng’s new book “From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ.

1. Red - The Root of Spirit (Community)

Red evokes life, energy and blood. Shadow side: violence/death.

Time period: Before Christ / Before the Common Era
Celebrate same-sex love in goddess worship, paganism and other pre-patriarchal spiritualities, in ancient myths and cultures, and in the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament.

Living and Self-Loving Christ (sin as shame, grace as pride)

Mary, Diana and Artemis: Feast of Assumption has lesbian goddess roots

David and Jonathan

Ruth and Naomi

Foods: Root vegetables (carrots, beets, potatoes, etc.), protein-rich foods, sweet and spicy tastes.

2. Orange - The Fire of Spirit (Eros)

Orange evokes fire, passion, sexuality and relationships. Shadow side: lust/addiction.

Time period: 1st - 4th centuries
Celebrate same-sex love in the life of Christ, among early Christians, in the late Roman Empire and other cultures.

Erotic Christ (sin as exploitation; grace as mutuality)

Historical Jesus and the Beloved Disciple

Mary and Martha

Sergius and Bacchus

Perpetua and Felicity

Foods: Foods growing from ground-level to 2 feet (melons, strawberries, squash, etc.), sweet and salty tastes.

3. Yellow - The Core of Spirit (Self-Esteem)

Yellow evokes courage, confidence and personal power. Shadow side: fear/anger.

Time period: Middle Ages, 4th - 15th centuries
Celebrate same-sex love in medieval times. Queer medieval Christians include pairs of lovers in monasteries and convents, writers of homoerotic verse, and cross-dressing women. Medieval mystics describe erotic-ecstatic union with God.

Out Christ (sin as the closet; grace as coming out)

Brigid and Darlughdach (c.451-525)
Symeon of Emessa and John (c. 522-c. 588)
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
Aelred of Rievaulx (c.1110-1167)
Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)
Rumi (1207 - 1273)
Julian of Norwich (1342-c. 1417)

Foods: Foods growing 2-6 feet above the ground (grains, sunflower seeds etc.), bitter and minty tastes.

4. Green - The Heart of Spirit (Love)

Green evokes growth, nature, balance and compassion. Shadow side: jealousy/greed, hatred.

Time period: Renaissance, 15th-17th centuries (c. 1400-1699)
Celebrate same-sex love in the era that included the Age of Discovery, the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press.

Transgressive Christ (sin as conformity; grace as deviance)

Joan of Arc (c.1412-1431)
John of the Cross (1542-1591)
Juana de la Cruz (1648-1695)
Gay Popes, Papal Sodomites (Queering the Church Blog)

Foods: Green leafy vegetables (broccoli, spinach, green tea, etc.), sour and savory tastes.

5. Blue - The Voice of Spirit (Justice and Self-Expression)

Blue evokes peace, communication and independence. Shadow side: depression/arrogance.

Time period: Modern, 1700 to 1950
Celebrate same-sex love in modern times, including gender role evolution in Romanticism, Transcendentalism, secular philosophy, and the movements for women’s suffrage and abolition.

Liberator Christ (sin as apathy; grace as activism)

Bernardo de Hoyos (1711-1735): Mystical same-sex marriage with Jesus
Jemima Wilkinson / Publick Universal Friend (1752-1819) Queer American preacher
John Henry Newman (1801-1890) and Ambrose St. John
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) Poet who wrote Christmas carols
We’wha of Zuni (1849-1896)

Foods: Food that grows 6 feet or more above ground (apples, oranges, avocadoes, etc.), sour and salty tastes.

6. Purple - The Eye of Spirit (Wisdom)

Purple evokes vision, intuition and understanding. Shadow side: passivity/nightmares.

Time period: 1950 to present
Celebrate same-sex love and gender role defiance in recent LGBT, queer, feminist and black liberation movements, including the struggle for LGBT religious rights. LGBT-affirming churches and religious institutions are founded. Pluralistic expressions of sexuality and gender multiply, but some are martyred in anti-gay hate crimes.

Interconnected Christ (sin as isolation, grace as interdependence)

Saints of Stonewall
Harvey Milk
Bayard Rustin
Mychal Judge: Gay saint of 9/11
Matthew Shepherd
Pauli Murray

Foods: Dark purple foods (blueberries, purple grapes, red wine, etc.), subtle tastes (poppyseed, lavender, etc.).

7. All Colors / White - The Crown of Spirit (Spirituality)

When all the colors of the rainbow mix, they create white light, evoking universal consciousness.
Time period: Now and the future
Celebrate same-sex love now and in the future! Be a witness of love in all its expressions. Sainthood is a state to which all are called.

Hybrid and All-Encompassing Christ (sin as singularity; grace as hybridity)

Foods: Fasting. Instead of eating, inhale incense and smudging herbs such as sage. Or… Celebrate with a slice of rainbow cake!

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Links to other resources for Bridge of Light:

Rainbow Christ Prayer: LGBT flag reveals the queer Christ (Kittredge Cherry and Patrick Cheng)

The Story of the "Queer Saints and Martyrs" by Terence Weldon

Author Carolyn Myss connects the seven chakras with the seven sacraments of the church in her book “Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

.”

CD set of meditations based on the chakras, “Activating Your Chakras Through the Light Rays

.” It’s definitely “new age,” but it’s the best of its kind.

S(t)even Years: A 7-year art project based on the chakras by Steven Reigns

Happy Bridge of Light, everybody! Like the rainbow, may we embody all the colors of the world! Be renewed and refreshed as the New Year begins! May 2013 bring everyone peace, health and prosperity!

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Image credits:

Chakra images by Anodea Judith of SacredCenters.com

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This post is part of the LGBT Holidays series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to LGBT and queer people of faith and our allies.

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

Three stylish Magi wear fabulous outfits on a 1972 German Christmas stamp (Wikimedia Commons)

Reimagining the three kings as queer or female gives fresh meaning to Epiphany, a holiday celebrating the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. It is observed on Jan. 6.

The word “epiphany” also refers to a sudden, intuitive perception. By looking at the Bible and church history from a LGBT viewpoint, people can experience new insights -- their own personal “epiphanies” of understanding. New interpretations of the Magi include:

Queer Magi. Biblical scholarship suggests that the Magi were eunuchs -- people who today would be called gay, queer or transgender.
Female Magi appear in a controversial painting by Janet McKenzie.
Queer gifts are presented to the Christ child in an icon by William Hart McNichols.

Queer Magi

The Magi played the shamanic role often filled by eunuchs, an ancient term for LGBT people, says Nancy Wilson in her book Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible

.” She writes:

“They were Zoroastrian priests, astrologers, magicians, ancient shamans from the courts of ancient Persia. They were the equivalent of Merlin of Britain. They were sorcerers, high-ranking officials, but not kings—definitely not kings. But quite possibly, they were queens. We’ve always pictured them with elaborate, exotic, unusual clothing—quite festive, highly decorated and accessorized! …Also, the wise eunuchs, shamans, holy men were the only ones who had the forethought to go shopping before they visited the baby Jesus!

They also have shamanistic dreams. They deceive evil King Herod and actually play the precise role that many other prominent eunuchs play in the Bible: they rescue the prophet, this time the Messiah of God, and foil the evil royal plot against God’s anointed.”

The concept of the queer Magi is amplified by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, author of Omnigender

. “My guess is that they were people who today would be termed transwomen,” she writes in the brochure “Gender Identity and Our Faith Communities.”

Eunuchs and cross-dressers were surprisingly common in the Mediterranean world of the Bible and later. By happy coincidence, a cross-dressing saint happens to have a feast day on Jan. 5, the day before Epiphany. Apollinaria of Egypt, put on men’s clothing and presented herself as a eunuch named Dorotheos in order to live as a monk. For more info on Apollinaria and other cross-dressing saints in early Christian communities, visit Queering the Church.

“Epiphany” by Janet McKenzie, copyright 2003.
www.janetmckenzie.com
Collection of Barbara Marian, Harvard, IL

Female Magi

A multi-racial trio of female Magi visit the baby Jesus and his mother in “Epiphany” by Janet McKenzie. Instead of the traditional three kings or three wise men, the artist re-interprets the Magi as wise women from around the world.

The unconventional portrayal of the Magi makes good theological sense. Barbara Marian, who commissioned the painting, explains: “The story of the Magi in the Gospel of Matthew allowed the Jewish followers of Jesus to imagine the unthinkable -- God’s grace extending to the outsiders, the gentiles. Who are the outsiders in our world? Can we imagine the favor of God extending beyond the human boundaries of race, class, nationality, ethnicity, religious devotion, and gender?”

Marian commissioned “Epiphany” for the Nativity Project, which revisits and revitalizes the Gospel with new images of women. “It’s easy to get so caught up in regal images of Matthew’s night visitors that we miss the core message -- Christ for all people,” Marian says.

Conservative Christians protested against the inclusive “Epiphany” in 2007 when it appeared on the Christmas cards of the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth, Texas, sent a notice to clergy and 2007 convention delegates condemning Jefferts Schori for her choice of art. “Happy Multicultural Feminist Celebration Day,” sneered the headline of a traditional Anglican blog where nearly 100 comments were posted condemning the image as “stupid,” “faux-nouveau hipster theology” and worse. For more info, see our previous post Conservatives blast inclusive Christmas card.

McKenzie denies the accusations that she is trying to be divisive and rewrite scripture. “Of course this is as far from my thinking as possible,” she says. “I feel called to create sacred and secular art that includes and celebrates those systematically ignored, relegated and minimized, and for the most part that is women and people of color.”

The artist continues to be amazed that her loving images provoke so much anger. “Even this gentle image of a loving Holy Mother and Child, with no agenda except to include and honor us as the nurturing feminine beings we are, surrounded in community with other women, is still misunderstood -- even at this late date,” she says.

McKenzie has weathered even bigger storms before. Her androgynous African American “Jesus of the People” painting caused international controversy when Sister Wendy of PBS chose it to represent Christ in the new millennium.

Critics focus on the content of McKenzie’s art, but her outstanding artistic style is one reason that her work attracts attention. The Vermont artist uses drawing and line with oils to build images that glow. Her painting technique and pastel colors are reminiscent of American Impressionist Mary Cassatt, who is famous for painting intimate scenes of mothers and their children.

The controversy over McKenzie’s work is a reminder of the power of art, and the continuing need for progressive spiritual images. Opposition seems to fuel her passion to paint. “We all need to find ourselves included within the sacred journey of life, and afterlife,” McKenzie says. “I have been surprised to find archaic and out-dated hate still in place, still alive and well and fueled by fear, in response to some of my art. I have made the decision to respond to such hate not in the way it comes to me, but by creating ever more inclusive art that confronts prejudice and hate. The only path open to any of us is the one of love.”

McKenzie’s art is featured in my book “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More” and her book “Holiness and the Feminine Spirit

.”

(Special thanks to Barbara Marian for permission to quote from her article “Recasting the Magi.”)

“The Epiphany: Wisemen Bring Gifts to the Child”

Queer gifts

Father William Hart McNichols paints another kind of queer Epiphany. McNichols is a New Mexico artist and Roman Catholic priest whose gay-positive icons have caused controversy. He worked at an AIDS hospice in New York City from 1983-90, when many in the gay community were dying of the disease. During that period he painted “The Epiphany: Wisemen Bring Gifts to the Child.”

St. Francis and St. Aloysius are the wise men visiting the baby Jesus in this icon. Instead of the usual gold, frankincense and myrrh, the “gifts” they bring to the Christ child are people with AIDS, perhaps gay men. The baby Jesus reaches eagerly to receive these gifts. The child and his mother appear in a form popular in Mexico and other Latino cultures as Our Lady of Guadalupe and El Santo Niño de Atocha. The halo around them echoes the colors of the rainbow flag of the LGBT community. McNichols offers a prayer with this icon:

Dearest Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe,
Mother of the poor and the oppressed,
we watch full of reverence
and joy as St. Francis and
St. Aloysius bring the gifts of
these two people afflicted with AIDS
to the Holy Child in your arms,
who is so eager to receive them.
Teach us to find and embrace
your Son Jesus in all peoples,
but most especially those who
are in greatest need and
who suffer most.
Amen

In closing, the question arises: What gifts are queer people bringing today to Christ, the church and the world?
___
Related links:

Three Queers from the East: Thoughts for the Epiphany (Queering the Church Blog)

LGBTQ Nativity 4: Queer Magi visit Mary, Josephine and Jesus

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This post is part of the LGBT Holidays series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to LGBT and queer people of faith and our allies.

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

St. Aelred of Rievaulx

By Brother Robert Lentz, OFM, www.trinitystores.com

Aelred (1109-1167) is considered one of the most lovable saints, the patron saint of friendship and also, some say, a gay saint. His feast day is today (Jan. 12).

Aelred was the abbott of the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in England. His treatise “On Spiritual Friendship” is still one of the best theological statements on the connection between human love and spiritual love. “God is friendship… He who abides in friendship abides in God, and God in him,” he wrote, paraphrasing 1 John 4:16.

Aelred’s own deep friendships with men are described in Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality

by Yale history professor John Boswell. “There can be little question that Aelred was gay and that his erotic attraction to men was a dominant force in his life,” Boswell wrote.

Boswell’s account inspired the members of the LGBT Episcopal group Integrity to name Aelred as their patron saint. Click here for the full story on how they won recognition for their gay saint.

Aelred certainly advocated chastity, but his passions are clear in his writing. He describes friendship with eloquence in this often-quoted passage from his treatise On Spiritual Friendship

“It is no small consolation in this life to have someone who can unite with you in an intimate affection and the embrace of a holy love, someone in whom your spirit can rest, to whom you can pour out your soul, to whose pleasant exchanges, as to soothing songs, you can fly in sorrow... with whose spiritual kisses, as with remedial salves, you may draw out all the weariness of your restless anxieties. A man who can shed tears with you in your worries, be happy with you when things go well, search out with you the answers to your problems, whom with the ties of charity you can lead into the depths of your heart; . . . where the sweetness of the Spirit flows between you, where you so join yourself and cleave to him that soul mingles with soul and two become one.”

Aelred supported friendships between monks, comparing them to the love between Jesus and his beloved disciple, and between Jonathan and David in his treatise on spiritual friendship. Louis Crompton reports in Homosexuality and Civilization

that Aelred allowed the monks at his Yorkshire monastery to express affection by holding hands, a practice discouraged by other abbots.

The icon of Saint Aelred was painted by Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar and world-class iconographer known for his innovative icons. It includes a banner with Aelred’s words, “Friend cleaving to friend in the spirit of Christ.”

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Related links:

12th January: St Aelred of Rievaulx, Patron of Same Sex Intimacy (Queer Saints and Martyrs -- and Others)

A St. Aelred Catechism (Walking with Integrity Blog)

St. Aelred of Rievaulx (Pharsea’s World: Homosexuality and Tradition)

Worship resources for Saint Aelred (Integrity USA)

San Elredo de Rievaulx: Santos gay de amistad (Santos Queer)
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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.
___

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

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

Jeanne Manford in 1993 with a photo of her gay son Morty

In memory of
Jeanne Manford
PFLAG founder
Dec. 4, 1920 - Jan. 8, 2013

white candle Pictures, Images and Photos

I light a memorial candle for Jeanne Manfred, founder of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). She died on Jan. 8, 2013, at age 92.

Her son, the late Morty Manford, was beaten during a gay rights protest in April 1972. She responded by writing a letter to the New York Post stating, “I have a homosexual son, and I love him.” A couple months later she and her son marched in New York's Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade. These actions and the support she received led to the founding of PFLAG in 1973.

PFLAG has grown to 350 chapters with 200,000 members, and Jeanne Manford is an inspiration to many. President Obama talked about her in his 2009 speech to the Human Rights Campaign National Dinner in 2009.

Thank you, Jeanne, for your courage and your love! I count you among the LGBT saints for the huge positive impact that you had on queer people and straight allies everywhere.

___
Related links:

Jeanne Manford, 92, Who Stood Up for Her Gay Son, Inspiring Others, Dies (New York Times)

PFLAG Founder Jeanne Manford Dies at 92 (Advocate)

PFLAG.org

Patron saints for straight allies of LGBT people: Adele Starr of PFLAG and others (Jesus in Love)

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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, 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

Poster for “Fine Dead Girls” from Gavella Theatre

A poster with a lesbian Virgin Mary was withdrawn in Croatia yesterday after religious and political pressure. It advertised the play “Fine Dead Girls” at the municipal Gavella Theatre in Zagreb.

According to Croatian news reports, the mayor of Zagreb ordered theater director Darko Stazic to remove the poster from all public areas after an unprecedented campaign against it by Catholic and other religious groups. They denounced the poster as blasphemy.

Now the theater director is being criticized for cowardice by some LGBT Croatians advocating freedom of expression.

The controversial poster shows a traditional statue of Mary being embraced from behind by another woman. “Fine Dead Girls” (Fine Mrtve Djevojke) by Dalibor Matanic is about a young lesbian couple who move into a seemingly quiet apartment building in Zagreb. Soon they face hostility from neighbors and family, including a religious fundamentalist father. The theatrical version is based on the award-winning 2002 film of the same title.

As a lesbian Christian, I am upset by the censorship of the lesbian Virgin Mary. The conservatives got rid of the lesbian Virgin Mary posters by demanding their religious rights, but what about my right to see images that affirm me as a lesbian Christian?! I welcome images that show lesbian love as sacred, but they are hard to find.

The Croatian controversy is the most recent of many conflicts over LGBT religious images as freedom of religion clashes with freedom of speech. It is important to support LGBT Christian images because conservatives use religious rhetoric to justify discrimination against queer people.

Similar controversies are covered in my book Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More. I report about the more recent controversies on this blog, including a gay Nativity in Columbia, a queer baby Jesus poster in New Zealand, a gay Jesus exhibit in Spain, “Our Lady” by Latina lesbian artist Alma Lopez, and a crucifix symbolizing the pain of gay men with AIDS by David Wojnarowicz at the Smithsonian.
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Related links:

Lesbian Virgin Mary posters withdrawn (Croatian Times)

Fine Dead Girls film (Amazon.com)

David Wojnarowicz : Smithsonian censors gay artist when conservatives attack (Jesus in Love)

Alma Lopez: Our Lady and Queer Saints art attacked as blasphemy (Jesus in Love)

Fernando Bayona Gonzalez: Protests end gay Jesus exhibit in Spain (Jesus in Love)

Conservatives attack our lesbian and gay Nativity scenes today! (Jesus in Love)

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

“Homage to Sebastian” by Tony De Carlo

Saint Sebastian has been called history’s first gay icon and the patron saint of homosexuals. His feast day is today (Jan. 20).

Sebastian was an early Christian martyr killed in 288 on orders from the Roman emperor Diocletian. He is the subject of countless artworks that show him being shot with arrows. Little is known about his love life, so his long-standing popularity with gay men is mostly based on the way he looks .

Starting in the Renaissance, Sebastian has been painted many times as a near-naked youth writing in a mixture of pleasure and pain. The homoeroticism is obvious.

“Saint Sebastian”by Il Sodoma, 1525 (Wikimedia Commons)

Other blogs have already compiled the St. Sebastian masterpieces from art history, so I will simply post one example and refer readers to the best online collection of Sebastian art that I have found:
Saint Sebastian: The Homoerotic Patron of Gay Men (Artwork I Love Blog)

Saint Sebastian is a favorite subject of contemporary gay artist Tony De Carlo, whose work is at the top of this post. He began his ongoing Sebastian series in the 1980s in response to the AIDS crisis. It has grown to more than 40 pictures.

“I chose him because he was known as the Patron Protector Saint Against the Plague, as the Plague was sweeping Europe,” De Carlo said in an interview with the Jesus in Love Blog. “It wasn't until the year 2001 when I went into a Catholic store in New Mexico, picked up a pewter statue of Saint Sebastian, and saw a label on the bottom that said ‘Patron Saint of Homosexuals.’”

The historical Sebastian actually survived the arrow attack and was nursed back to health by Saint Irene of Rome, only to be “martyred twice” when the emperor executed him later.

Sebastian is also referenced frequently in the gay literary world. For example playwright Tennessee Williams named his martyred gay character Sebastian in “Suddenly, Last Summer,” and Oscar Wilde used Sebastian as his own alias after his release from prison.
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Related links:

Subjects of the Visual Arts: St. Sebastian (glbtq.com)

Not Dead Yet: St Sebastian as Role Model (Queering the Church)

St. Sebastian (LGBT Catholic Handbook)

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

A lesbian minister, Nancy Wilson of Metropolitan Community Churches, became the first openly gay or lesbian clergy member in history to participate as a worship leader a Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service.

She read the scripture at President Obama’s Inaugural Prayer Service yesterday morning (Jan. 22) at the National Cathedral in Washington.

You can see her reading the Bible passage (Isaiah 55:6-11) there on video at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIrhAh-ApYg

I worked closely with Nancy in the 1990s when I was MCC’s National Ecumenical Officer and she was Chief Ecumenical Officer. Since then she went on to become moderator of the whole Metropolitan Community Churches denomination, which was founded in 1968 as a LGBT-affirming church and now has ministries in 40 countries. Nancy was part of the first LGBT delegation to meet with a sitting president in 1979. Almost 35 years later she is serving on President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Rev. Nancy Wilson at President Obama’s Inaugural Prayer Service (mccchurch.org)

Nancy read a scripture that includes one of my favorite lines: "My word... will not return to me empty; but it will accomplish that which I have purposed, and prosper in that for which I sent it."

How often I turned to that scripture in the early days of my LGBT ministry! It helped me through the emptiness of the AIDS crisis and the rejections that Nancy and I faced in trying to do "dialogue on homosexuality" at the World Council of Churches and National Council of Churches. It is amazing to see that the seeds we planted are bearing fruit now. God's purpose is being accomplished, although the journey is far from over.

Nancy stood for many queer people when read the Bible at the Inaugural Prayer service. Before the event, she wrote about what is means in a blog post for Believe Out Loud: “When I stand in the presence of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden to read the Hebrew Bible under the soaring arches of the National Cathedral on Tuesday, I will be exalting. This exaltation is not for myself but for the millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people who have longed for a safe place to call home,” she wrote.

The Inaugural Prayer Service was the final event on the inauguration schedule. The inclusion of an openly lesbian minister was a suitable ending for an inauguration with many breakthroughs for LGBT people. No president had ever even mentioned LGBT people before in an Inauguration speech, but Obama set a new precedent with a strong affirmation of LGBT equality:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until… click here for full text.

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Related links:

Inaugural Prayer Service Includes First Out Gay Clergy Member (Advocate)

A Lesbian, a Bible and an Inauguration Service: In Search of Safe Homes by Nancy Wilson (Believe Out Loud)

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

“David Kato” by Rod Byatt

David Kato, Ugandan LGBT rights activist, is considered a father of Uganda’s gay rights movement. He was beaten to death two years ago today (Jan. 26) in a case that some blame on anti-gay religious rhetoric.

David Kato

American evangelicals helped stir up the hostility that led to Kato’s death because they promoted a law imposing the death penalty for homosexuality. Shortly before his murder Kato won a lawsuit against a Ugandan magazine for identifying him as gay and calling for his execution.

The law never passed and Kato’s murderer was sentenced to 30 years in prison. However, the anti-gay motive for the murder was covered up in the trial.

Australian artist Rod Byatt drew the portrait of David Kato above. The stark, unfinished quality of the portrait conveys the sense of a life cut short. Byatt posted it on his blog **gasp!** (Gay Artists’ Sketchbook Project) with a reflection that begins, “We grieve over the loss of David Kato. We know that being gay is anathema to Family, Church and State, and increasingly The Media...” Byatt is part of the Urban Sketching movement that seeks to link personal identity to broader social issues.

A documentary about Kato, “Call Me Kuchu,” will premiered in 2012 at the Berlin Film Festival. Watch the trailer for the video below. "Kuchu" is the term used in Uganda for LGBT people.

Call Me Kuchu - Trailer from Call Me Kuchu on Vimeo.

Below is a news video about Kato from “The Rachel Maddow Show.” It includes scenes from David’s funeral, where Ugandan clergy speak both for and against LGBT rights, and David’s own voice in an NPR interview about homosexuality in Uganda.

On the anniversary of his murder, may those who honor David Kato’s legacy continue to work for justice and equality for all. May he find peace with all the other LGBT martyrs and saints who have gone before.

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Related links:

Activists, Filmmakers Mark First Anniversary of David Kato Murder (Towelroad)

Portrait of David Kato by Random Salmon

They will say we are not here (New York Times, Jan. 25, 2012)

Ugandan Activists Commemorate Anniversary of David Kato's Death (Advocate)

David Kato at Wikipedia

In Uganda, a “Fearless Voice” for Gay Rights is Brutally Silenced (Wild Reed Blog)

David Kato: A new Ugandan martyr (Queer Saints and Martyrs - And Others)

Martyrs of Uganda (Walking with Integrity Blog)

The Silence of the Wolves (Counterlight's Peculiars Blog)

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

“Pink Triangle” by John Bittinger Klomp, 2012

International Holocaust Remembrance Day honors the victims of the Nazi era, including the estimated 5,000 to 60,000 sent to concentration camps for homosexuality. The United Nations set the date as Jan. 27 -- the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

Nazis used the pink triangle to identify prisoners sent to concentration camps for homosexuality. Originally intended as a badge of shame, the pink triangle has become a symbol of pride for the LGBT rights movement.

A new painting on the theme is “Pink Triangle” by John Bittinger Klomp, a gay artist based in Florida.

“The Pink Triangle was part of the system of triangles used by the Nazis during World War II to denote various peoples they deemed undesirable, and included Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals,” Klomp said. The painting is part of his “Gay Dictionary Series” on words and symbols related to being gay.

Established by the UN in 2005, International Holocaust Remembrance Day recalls the state-sponsored extermination of 6 million Jews and 11 million others deemed inferior by the Nazis, including 2.5 million Poles and other Slavic peoples, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies and others not of the "Aryan race," the mentally ill, the disabled, LGBT people, and religious dissidents such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Catholics. Holocaust Remembrance Day aims to help prevent future genocides.

The pink triangle appears in a variety of monuments that have been built around the world to commemorate LBGT victims of the Nazi regime. Since 1984, more than 20 gay Holocaust memorials have been established in places ranging from San Francisco to Sydney, from Germany to Uruguay. Some are in the actual concentration camp sites, such as the plaque for gay victims in Dachau pictured below.

Plaque for gay victims at Dachau concentration camp by nilexuk

To see powerful photos of all the queer Holocaust memorials and read the stories behind them, visit:
http://andrejkoymasky.com/mem/holocaust/ho08.html

The logo for the Jesus in Love Blog also shows the face of Jesus in a pink triangle. He joins queer people in transforming suffering into power.

Some lesbians claim the black triangle as their symbol. The Nazis imposed the black triangle on people who were sent to concentration camps for being “anti-social.”

One of those who wore the pink triangle was an anonymous 60-year-old gay priest, brutally beaten to death because he refused to stop praying at the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, Germany. Eyewitness Heinz Heger reported that the murder was so brutal that “I felt I was witnessing the crucifixion of Christ in modern guise.”

Holy Priest Anonymous one of Sachsenhausen

By William Hart McNichols ©

www.fatherbill.org

The priest is honored in the icon above, “Holy Priest Anonymous One of Sachsenhausen.” It was painted by Father William Hart McNichols, a New Mexico artist and Catholic priest who was rebuked by church leaders for making LGBT-affirming icons of unapproved saints. His Anonymous Priest of Sachsenhausen icon appears in his book “The Bride: Images of the Church

,” which he co-authored with peace activist Daniel Berrigan.

Here is the beginning of his tragic story, as told by Heger in his book The Men With the Pink Triangle

Toward the end of February, 1940, a priest arrived in our block, a man some 60 years of age, tall and with distinguished features. We later discovered that he came from Sudetenland, from an aristocratic German family.

He found the torment of the arrival procedure especially trying, particularly the long wait naked and barefoot outside the block. When his tonsure was discovered after the shower, the SS corporal in charge took up a razor and said "I'll go to work on this one myself, and extend his tonsure a bit." And he saved the priest's head with the razor, taking little trouble to avoid cutting the scalp. quite the contrary.

The priest returned to the day-room of our lock with his head cut open and blood streaming down. His face was ashen and his eyes stared uncomprehendingly into the distance. He sat down on a bench, folded his hands in his lap and said softly, more to himself than to anyone else: "And yet man is good, he is a creature of God!"

The book goes on to recount in heartbreaking detail how the Nazis tortured the priest, hurling anti-gay slurs and beating him to death. More excerpts are available at the Queering the Church Blog in a post titled The Priest With the Pink Triangle.

In recent years new memoirs of gay Holocaust survivors have been published and queer theory has brought new understanding of the Gay Holocaust as not just atrocities, but also a system of social control. New books include:

I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror

by Pierre Seel (2011)

Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism

by William J. Spurlin (2008)

An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin

by Gad Beck (2000)

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals

by Richard Plant (1988) -- first comprehensive book on the subject

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed here with the prayer “We All Wear the Triangle” by Steve Carson. It appears in the book “Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations

.” Carson was ordained by Metropolitan Community Churches and served congregations in New York, Boston and San Francisco.
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One: We are in many ways a culture without memory. The Holocaust, a series of events that occurred just over a generation ago, changed the world forever. Yet by some the Holocaust is forgotten, or seen as irrelevant, or even viewed as something that never happened.

All: As people of faith, we refuse to forget. We refuse to participate in the erasing of history. As a community of faith, we decide to remember, as we hear the historical record from Europe a generation ago and reflect upon events in our own time. We dare to listen to the voices of the past, even as they echo today.

One: In this moment, we are all Jews wearing the yellow Star of David.

All: We are all homosexuals wearing the pink triangle.

One: We are all political activists wearing the red triangle.

All: We are all criminals wearing the green triangle.

One: We are all antisocials wearing the black triangle.

All: We are all Jehovah’s Witnesses wearing the purple triangle.

One: We are all emigrants wearing the blue triangle.

All: We are all gypsies wearing the brown triangle.

One: We are all undesirable, all extendable by the state.

…Leader: To God of both memory and hope, we pledge ourselves to be a people of resistance to the powers of death wherever they may appear, to honor the living and the dead, and to make with them our promise: Never again!

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Related link:

Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (Wikipedia)

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This post is part of the GLBT 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.

Saints Brigid and Darlughdach of Kildare

trinitystores.com

Saint Brigid and her soulmate Darlughdach were sixth-century Irish nuns who brought art, education and spirituality to early medieval Ireland. Brigid (c.451-525) shares her name and feast day (Feb. 1) with a Celtic goddess -- and she may have been the last high priestess of the goddess Brigid.

Raised by Druids, Brigid seems to have made a smooth transition from being a pagan priestess to a Christian abbess. Today she is Ireland’s most famous female saint. Her name is also spelled Bridget. Legend says that when she made her final vows as a nun, the bishop in charge was so overcome by the Holy Spirit that he administered the rite for ordaining a (male) bishop instead.

A younger nun named Darlughdach served as Brigid’s ambassador and her “anam cara” or soul friend. The two women were so close that they slept in the same bed. Like many Celtic saints, Brigid believed that each person needs a soul friend to discover together that God speaks most powerfully in the seemingly mundane details of shared daily life. The love between these two women speaks to today’s lesbians and their allies. Some say that Brigid and Darlughdach are lesbian saints.

Brigid started convents all over Ireland and became the abbess of the “double monastery” (housing both men and women) at Kildare. Built on land that was previously sacred to her divine namesake, the monastery included an art school for creating illuminated manuscripts.

After turning 70, Brigid warned Darlughdach that she expected to die soon. Her younger soulmate begged to die at the same time. Brigid wanted her to live another year so she could succeed her as abbess. Brigid died of natural causes on Feb. 1, 525. The bond between the women was so close that Darlughdach followed her soulmate in death exactly one year later on Feb. 1, 526.

Both Christians and pagans celebrate St. Brigid’s Day on Feb. 1. It is also known as Imbolc, a spring festival when the goddess Brigid returns as the bride of spring in a role similar to the Greek Persephone. People still celebrate her day by weaving twigs into a square “Brigid’s Cross,” an ancient solar symbol traditionally made to welcome spring.

“St. Brigid of Ireland” by Lewis Williams, SFO, trinitystores.com

Brigid’s main symbol was fire, representing wisdom, poetry, healing and metallurgy. The nuns at the Kildare monastery kept a perpetual fire burning in Brigid’s memory for more than a thousand years -- until 1540 when it was extinguished in Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The Order of St. Brigid was reestablished in 1807. Two Brigidine sisters returned to Kildare and relit the fire in the market square for the first time in more than 400 years on Feb. 1, 1993. The perpetual flame is now kept at the Solas Bhride (Brigid’s Light) Celtic Spirituality Center that they founded there. In addition, anyone may sign up to tend St. Brigid’s flame in their own homes through the Ord Brighideach Order of Flame Keepers.

Brigid and Darlughdach are shown with their arms around each other in the above icon by Brother Robert Lentz. He is a Franciscan friar and world-class iconographer known for his progressive icons. The two women are dressed in the white gowns worn by Druid priestesses and Celtic nuns. Flames burn above them and on the mandala of Christ that they carry. It is one of 40 icons featured in his book Christ in the Margins

.

The icon was commissioned by the Living Circle, a Chicago-based interfaith spirituality center for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community and their friends. Four Living Circle members took the original icon to Kildare with them in 2000 for the flame-lighting ceremony at the recently excavated site of Brigid’s ancient fire temple.

Dennis O’Neill, the priest who founded the Living Circle, includes the icon and an excellent biography of Brigid and Darlughdach in his book “Passionate Holiness: Marginalized Christian Devotions for Distinctive People

.”

Brigid’s spirit of fun and hospitality is expressed in her reputation for loving beer. She made beer for the poor every Easter. In a well known poem attributed to Brigid, she envisioned heaven as a great lake of beer. Here are some of the words to St. Brigid’s Prayer, as translated and performed by Irish singer Noirin Ni Riain:

I’d sit with the men, the women of God
There by the lake of beer
We’d be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer.

Riain also sings a heavenly Ode To Bridget on the video below and on her Celtic Soul album.

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Related links:

February Ritual: Celebrating Brigit, Goddess of Healing, Holy Saint by Diann Neu (WATER)

Santa Brigid y Darlughdach: Irlandés santo amaba a su alma amiga (Santos Queer)
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Icons of Brigid and Darlughdach and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at Trinity Stores

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This post is part of the GLBT 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

“The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” by Douglas Blanchard, at JHS Gallery in Taos, NM (Photo by Dorie Hagler)

A gay vision of Christ’s Passion was the top LGBT spiritual arts story for 2012, the Jesus in Love Blog announced today.

In second place was a cartoon for marriage equality showing Jesus in bed with rock star Freddie Mercury.

The top 10 LGBT spiritual arts stories of the year were named today by Kittredge Cherry, founder of Jesus in Love. The ratings are based on pageviews reported by Google Analytics.

The blog’s most popular post of the year was an introduction to “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision,” a series of 24 paintings by Douglas Blanchard with reflections by Kittredge Cherry. The paintings present Jesus as a contemporary gay man in a modern city.

“The gay Passion series was most popular story of 2012, but religious cartoons and queer historical research were also big crowd pleasers,” Cherry said. “Marriage equality was a recurring theme that ran through several of the Top 10 stories this year. LGBT saints and queer Bible interpretation continued to be important to readers of the Jesus in Love Blog.”

Here is a list of the year’s top 10 stories. Click the headlines to see the original posts at the Jesus in Love Blog.

1. Gay Passion of Christ series

All 24 paintings in Douglas Blanchard’s epic masterpiece “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” were posted with new commentary by Kittredge Cherry for Holy Week last year. It covers the events of Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, and his arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection. Blanchard’s images show Jesus being jeered by fundamentalists, tortured by Marine look-alikes and rising again to enjoy homoerotic moments with God and friends. He faces forms of rejection that feel familiar to contemporary LGBT people.

Here is a list of individual gay Passion posts in order of popularity. All of these would have made this year’s top 10 list, but they are combined here to prevent the gay Passion from dominating the whole list:

Day 5: Jesus Before the Soldiers; Jesus is Beaten

Day 1: Jesus Enters the City on Palm Sunday

Day 6: Jesus goes to his execution, is nailed to the cross, and dies

Day 2: Jesus drives out the money changers and preaches in the Temple

Blanchard, a gay painter based in New York, and Cherry, a lesbian minister and art historian based in Los Angeles, plan to run an updated version of the series on the Jesus in Love Blog for Holy Week this year and later turn it into a book. More info

“Marriage Made in Heaven”
by Mr. Fish

2. Jesus and Freddie Mercury: Marriage Made in Heaven cartoon supports equality and other religious political cartoons

A gay Jesus cuddles in bed with rock star Freddie Mercury in “Marriage Made in Heaven” by cartoonist Mr. Fish of ClownCrack.com, also known as Dwayne Booth. He created the image to support marriage equality. After a vote banning same-sex marriage, Mr. Fish decided to expose the hypocrisy of anti-gay Christians indirectly by showing Jesus in bed with a gay icon. More info

Two other cartoons on religion and LGBT rights were also hugely popular at the Jesus in Love Blog in 2012:

Cartoon shows Pope mad at nuns and Jesus for not condemning homosexuality

Cartoon: Jesus saves LGBT kids from jaws of clergy hat

3. Saints Sergius and Bacchus: Male couple martyred in ancient Rome

Sergius and Bacchus were third-century Roman soldiers, Christian martyrs and gay men who loved each other. Their story is told here in words and art, including historical works and contemporary art. The couple was openly gay, but secretly Christian -- the opposite of today’s closeted Christians. The close bond between Sergius and Bacchus has been emphasized since the earliest accounts, and recent scholarship has revealed their homosexuality. More info

4. Gay centurion: Jesus heals a soldier’s boyfriend in the Bible

Jesus praised a gay soldier as a role model of faith and healed his male lover in the gospels, according to many Bible experts. Both Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 tell how a Roman centurion asked Jesus to heal the young man referred to in Greek as his “pais.” The word was commonly used for the younger partner in a same-sex relationship. It is usually translated as boy, servant or slave. In recent years progressive Bible scholars have concluded that the centurion was in a homosexual relationship with the “slave who was dear to him” in the gospel story. More info

5. Jemima Wilkinson: Queer preacher reborn in 1776 as “Publick Universal Friend”

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. In 1776, the same year that America issued the Declaration of Independence, Wilkinson declared her own independence from gender. Wilkinson is recognized as the first American-born woman to found a religious group, but is also called a “transgender evangelist.” More info

6. Gay Jesus kiss: "Corpus Christi" play behind the scenes

Jesus kisses a man behind the scenes at “Corpus Christi,” a play about a gay Jesus by Terrence McNally, in a new photo. A traditional Christ seems to reach across 2,000 years of history to share a kiss with a 21st-century man in a tie-dyed shirt. Jesus is still carrying his cross, but that can’t stop him from expressing man-to-man love with a gay kiss. More info

7. Artist Tony De Carlo paints gay saints, Adam and Steve, and marriage equality art

Artist Tony De Carlo affirms the holiness of gay love with colorful, festive paintings of gay saints, Adam and Steve, same-sex marriage and much more -- all with a zesty Latino flavor. Gay saints in his art include the martyred male couple Sergius and Bacchus and a series on Sebastian, the protector against plague. De Carlo began his ongoing Sebastian series in response to the AIDS crisis. De Carlo has done more than 20 paintings of Adam and Steve as the original gay couple. More info

8. Ash Wednesday: A day to recall queers executed for sodomy

Ash Wednesday is an appropriate time to reflect on the sins of the church and state against queer people, including the burning of “sodomites” and execution of thousands for homosexuality over the past 1,000 years. This article uses historical images and research to remember and honor all those killed for homosexuality in church- or state-sanctioned executions. In 2013 Ash Wednesday will be Feb. 13. More info

9. Joan of Arc: Cross-dressing warrior-saint

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. 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. More info

10. Francis of Assisi’s queer side revealed by historical evidence

Historical records reveal a queer side to Saint Francis of Assisi, one of the most beloved religious figures of all time. The 13th-century friar is celebrated for loving animals, hugging lepers, and praying for peace, but few know about his love for another man and his gender nonconformity. Research by Franciscan scholar Kevin Elphick shows that when Francis was a young man, he had an unnamed male companion whom he dearly loved. Other friars called Francis as “Mother” and “Lady Poverty.” Francis allowed a widow to enter the male-only cloister, naming her “Brother Jacoba.” More info

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Related links:

2011’s top 10 LGBT spiritual arts stories

2010’s top 7 LGBT spiritual arts stories

2009’s top 7 GLBT spiritual arts stories

2008’s top 5 queer-spirit arts stories

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

Saints Polyeuct and Nearchus

Saints Polyeuct and Nearchus were Roman soldiers in 3rd-century Armenia and “brothers by affection.” They are a prime example of same-sex lovers in the early church. Polyeuct’s feast day is Feb. 13.

The earliest account of Polyeuct’s martyrdom, a 4th-century Armenian biography, says that they were “brothers, not by birth, but by affection” and enjoyed “the closest possible relationship, being both comrades and fellow soldiers.”

St. Polyeuctus (Wikimedia Commons)

Nearchus was Christian, but Polyeuct was not. The men had a strong desire to spend eternity together, so Polyeuct converted from paganism to Christianity, the faith of his beloved Nearchus. With a convert’s zeal he attacked a pagan procession. He was beheaded for his crime in the year 259 in the western Armenian city of Militene. Shortly before he was executed, he spoke his last words to Nearchus: “Remember our secret vow.” Thus Polyeuct is known as a protector of vows and avenger of broken promises, in addition to his role as a probable “gay saint.”

Yale history professor John Boswell names Polyeuct and Nearchus as one of the three primary pairs of same-sex lovers in the early church. (The others are Perpetua and Felicity and Sergius and Bacchus.) The love story of Polyeuct and Nearchus is told with extensive historical detail in two books, “Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe

” by Boswell and “Passionate Holiness

” by Dennis O’Neill. He is founder of the Living Circle, the interfaith LGBT spirituality center that commissioned the above icon of the loving same-sex pair.

The icon is by Brother Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar and world-class iconographer known for his innovative icons. It is one of 10 Lentz icons that sparked a major 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 the controversial images to his distributor, Trinity Stores.

Polyeuctus and Nearchus by Jim Ru

Artist Jim Ru was also inspired to paint Polyeuct and Nearchus. His version was displayed in his show “Transcendent Faith: Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered Saints” in Bisbee Arizona in the 1990s.

O’Neill reports that French writer Robert Dartois recently took the story of Polyeuct and Nearchus from “Passionate Holiness” and turned it into a libretto, which was then set by the Swiss composer Thierry Chatelain as the oratorio “Polyeucte et Nearchus.”

There are many variations in the spellings of their names, such as Polyeuctus, Polyeuctes, Polyeuktos and Nearchos and Nearch. Polyeuct’s feast day is Feb.13 in the Catholic calendar, but falls on Jan. 9 in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and Jan. 7 in ancient Armenian calendars. The feast day for Nearchus is April 22.

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Related links:

Saints Polyeuct and Nearchos, 3rd Century Lovers and Martyrs (Queer Saints and Martyrs -- And Others)

Homosexuality and Tradition: Polyeuct and Nearchus (Pharsea's World)

Hermanos de afecto: Santos Polieucto y Nearco (Santos Queer)

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This post is part of the GLBT 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

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

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Dutch massacre of sodomites,
detail (Wikimedia Commons)

Ash Wednesday today is an appropriate time to reflect on the sins of the church and state against queer people, including the execution of thousands for homosexuality over the past 800 years.

Some of the executions for sodomy were recorded by artists, either long ago or in recent times. This post features 6 images, both new and historical, to remember and honor those whose lives were desecrated and cut short.

Christians traditionally put ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentance on Ash Wednesday. The ashes can also serve as a sobering way to remember and repent the church’s role in executions for homosexuality, including the burning of “sodomites.”

“Catharina Margaretha Linck, executed for sodomy in Halberstadt in 1721” by Elke R. Steiner. Steiner’s work is based on Angela Steidele’s book "In Männerkleidern. Das verwegene Leben der Catharina Margaretha Linck alias Anastasius Lagrantinus Rosenstengel, hingerichtet 1721." Biographie und Dokumentation. Cologne: Böhlau, 2004. ("In Men's Clothes: The Daring Life of Catharina Margaretha Linck alias Anastasius Rosenstengel, Executed 1721.")

German artist Elke R. Steiner illustrates the last known execution for lesbianism in Europe. Born in 1694, Catharina Margaretha Linck lived most of her life as a man under the name Anastasius. She was beheaded for sodomy on Nov. 8, 1721 in Halberstadt in present-day Germany. Linck worked at various times as a soldier, textile worker and a wandering prophet with the Pietists. She married a woman in 1717. Her mother-in-law reported her to authorities, who convicted her of sodomy with a "lifeless instrument," wearing men's clothes and multiple baptisms. The subject is grim, but Steiner adds an empowering statement: “But even were I to be done away with, those who are like me would remain.”

“The Shameful End of Bishop Atherton and his Proctor John Childe,” hanged for sodomy in 1641 in Dublin (Wikimedia Commons)

John Atherton, Anglican bishop of Waterford and Lismore, and his lover John Childe were hanged for “buggery” in 1640 in Dublin, Ireland. The bishop was executed under a law that he helped to institute! The picture comes from an anonymous 1641 booklet titled “The Shameful End of Bishop Atherton and his Proctor John Childe.” The title tries to shame and blame the victims, but I believe that the shame belongs to the church and society who killed them for who and how they loved.

Balboa executing two-spirit Native Americans for homosexuality in 1513 in Panama -- engraving by Théodore De Bry, 1594 (Wikimedia Commons).

The Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa found homosexuality among the Native American chiefs at Quarqua in Panama. He ordered 40 of these two-spirited people thrown to his war dogs to be torn apart and eaten alive to stop the “stinking abomination.”

The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused of sodomy, were executed by burning in Zürich in 1482. (Wikimedia Commons)

The knight of Hohenberg and his servant, accused sodomites, were executed by burning before the walls of Zurich, Switzerland in 1482. Source: Diebold Schilling, Chronik der Burgunderkriege, Schweizer Bilderchronik, Band 3, um 1483 (Zürich, Zentralbibliothek)

Execution of sodomites in Ghent in 1578 -- drawing by Franz Hogenberg (Wikimedia Commons)

Five Catholic monks were burned to death for homosexuality on June 28, 1578, in Ghent, Belguim.

"Timely Punishment..." shows Dutch massacre of sodomites in Amsterdam in 1730-31 (Wikimedia Commons)

A total of 96 gay men were executed for sodomy in the Netherlands years 1730-31.

Terence Weldon of Queering the Church is doing extensive research on the whole sad history of execution of queer people. He is assembling a chronology called “Burned for Sodomy” with the goal of listing all those killed for homosexuality in church- or state-sanctioned executions. It stretches from the 13th century almost to the present.

For the first 1,000 years of church history, Christianity was relatively tolerant of homoerotic relationships. Then came campaigns against heresy, which began to use the terms “heresy” and “sodomy” interchangeably. Then hostility began to be directed specifically at same-sex erotic behavior. Weldon locates the fateful period when the atrocities began in a well researched overview titled “Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs”:

In 1120, the Church Council of Nablus specified burning at the stake for homosexual acts. Although this penalty may not immediately have been applied, other harsh condemnations followed rapidly. In 1212, the death penalty for sodomy was specified in in France. Before long the execution of supposed “sodomites”, often by burning at the stake, but also by other harsh means, had become regular practice in many areas.

The church contributed to the deaths of thousands for homosexuality over the next 700 years. Witch burning occurred in the same period and claimed the lives of countless lesbian women whose non-conformity was condemned as witchcraft. (Current events in Uganda prove that some are STILL using Christianity to justify the death penalty for homosexuality up to the present day.) As Weldon concludes:

Obviously, the Catholic Church cannot be held directly responsible for the judicial sentences handed down by secular authorities in Protestant countries. It can, however, be held responsible for its part in fanning the flames of bigotry and hatred in the early part of the persecution, using the cloak of religion to provide cover for what was in reality based not on Scripture or the teaching of the early Church, but on simple intolerance and greed.

It is important as gay men, lesbians and transgendered that we remember the examples of the many who have in earlier times been honoured by the Church as saints or martyrs for the faith. It is also important that we remember the example of the many thousands who have been martyred by the churches – Catholic and other.

More recent examples include the "gay Holocaust" of persecution by the Nazis, who sent an estimated 5,000 to 60,000 to concentration camps for homosexuality.

Milder forms of anti-LGBT persecution continue in the church. Now it is common to freeze LGBT people out of church leadership positions. Chris Glaser writes about the exclusion from clergy roles as a “fast imposed by others” in the following prayer based on the practice of fasting during Lent, the season of individual and collective repentance and reflection between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

One: Jesus,
     our fast has been imposed by others,
     our wilderness sojourn their choice more than ours.
Many: Our fast from the sacraments,
     our fast from ordination:
     our only choice was honesty.
One: With the scapegoats of the ancient Hebrews,
     sexual sins of generations
     have been heaped upon our backs,
     and we have been sent away,
     excommunicated, into the wilderness to die.
Many: Yet we choose life,
     even in our deprivation
One: Jesus, lead us to discern our call
     parallel to your own:
     rebelling against the boundaries,
     questioning the self-righteous authorities,
     breaking the Sabbath law
     to bring healing.

This prayer comes from “Rite for Lent” by Chris Glaser, published in Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations. Glaser spent 30 years struggling with the Presbyterian Church for the right to ordination as an openly gay man before he was ordained to the ministry in Metropolitan Community Churches in 2005. He writes progressive Christian reflections at chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

It is horrifying to remember the "burning times," especially for those like me who count ourselves as part of the Christian tradition. Let us rise from the ashes with these verses from the Bible:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.
[Psalm 51: 10, 17]

Is such the fast that I choose,
a day for a you to humble yourself?
Is it to bow down your head like a rush,
and to spread sackcloth and ashes under you?
Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to God?
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily.
[Isaiah 58:5-8]

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Related links:

“Burned for sodomy” (Queering the Church)

Lest We Forget: The Ashes of Our Martyrs (Queering the Church)

The blood-soaked thread (Wild Reed)

List of people executed for homosexuality (Wikipedia)

Significant acts of violence against LGBT people (Wikipedia)

BURN BABY BURN: A Knight, a Squire, a Bishop, a Steward, Five RC Monks and Millions of murders initiated by bigots at Church! (Eruptions at the Foot of the Volcano Blog)

The Gay Holocaust (Matt and Andrej Koymasky)

A History of Homophobia, 3 The Later Roman Empire & The Early Middle Ages (Rictor Norton)

A History of Homophobia, 4 Gay Heretics and Witches" (Rictor Norton)

Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (Rictor Norton, editor)

“Pilloried” - a poem by Andrew Craig Williams

Blessing the Dust: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday by Jan Richardson

Holocaust Remembrance with new pink triangle art (Jesus in Love)

Ex-gay movement as genocide (Jesus in Love)

Book: Homosexuality and Civilization

by Louis Crompton
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This post is part of the LGBT Holidays series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to LGBT and queer people of faith and our allies.

Marcella Althaus-Reid

Marcella Althaus-Reid was a queer theologian whose controversial books include “Indecent Theology” and “The Queer God.” Born in Argentina, she became the first woman appointed to a chair in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in 2006. She held that post when she died at age 56 on Feb. 20, 2009 -- three years ago today.

Althaus-Reid (May 11, 1952- Feb. 20, 2009) was baptized as a Roman Catholic and grew up in Buenos Aires. She earned her first theological degree there from ISEDET (Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos), Latin America’s renowned center for studying liberation theology, which emphasizes God’s “preferential option for the poor.”

Next she gained recognition for working on social and community projects in the slums of Buenos Aires. As she continued her studies, Althaus-Reid applied the principles of liberation theology to women and sexual minorities, including LGBT people.

Her first book, “Indecent Theology

,” was published in 2000 and established her international reputation as a self-proclaimed “indecent, Latina, bisexual theologian.” The book challenges the sexual oppression behind traditional Christian concepts of decency and introduces theology rooted in the context of people whose sexual freedom has been limited. In 2003 she wrote “The Queer God

,” in which she aims to liberate God from the closet of sex-negative Christian thought and embrace God’s role in the lives of LGBTQ people.

Her writing style is dense and her books continue to be controversial, even among LGBT people of faith. But nobody denies that Althaus-Reid took risks to raise important issues based on queer life and spirituality.

Her originality and flashes of insight are expressed in the following quotation from “The Queer God”:

“Our task and our joy is to find or simply recognise God sitting amongst us, at any time, in any gay bar or in the home of a camp friend who decorates her living room as a chapel and doesn’t leave her rosary at home when going to a salsa bar.”

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Links to book by or about Marcella Althaus-Reid:

Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics

The Queer God

From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology

Liberation Theology and Sexuality

Dancing theology in fetish boots: Essays in honour of Marcella Althaus Reid

More books by Marcella Althaus-Reid

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Related links:

Official website Althaus-Reid.com

Remembering Marcella Althaus-Reid, “Indecent theologian” (Queer Saints and Martyrs - And Others)

Marcella Althaus-Reid: Theology’s bisexual shock jock an queen of obscene (Rollan’s Censored Issues Blog)

Marcella Althaus-Reid (The Dance of the Elements)

Vale Marcella Althaus-Reid 1952-2009 (Michael Carden's Jottings)
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This post is part of a new effort to add authors and theologians to the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, 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

Queen Esther by Jim Padgett, Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing (Wikimedia Commons)

Queen Esther, a role model for LGBTQ people, helped save the Jews from destruction in ancient Persia, an event commemorated today in the Jewish festival of Purim (Feb. 23-24 this year). LGBT Jews see her as an inspiration for coming out. A possible lesbian love story between Biblical queens Esther and Vashi has fired the imagination of a lesbian playwright, while a scholar says both queens are role models for gay and lesbians in ministry.

Esther hid her Jewish identity in order to become the next queen of Persia. Later she "came out" as Jewish to the king, thereby saving her people from a planned massacre. Their story is told in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament). Vashti was a Persian queen who refused to obey a summons from her drunken husband, the king.

The Washington Post article Gay Jews Connect Their Experience To Story of Purim reports that some see Purim as an unofficial LGBT Pride Day. Esther is traditionally considered the heroine of the story, but independent-minded Vashti has been reclaimed by feminists and now LGBT people.

Lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage imagined a love story between the two queens in her play “Esther and Vashti.” Gage describes her play as “a fast-paced, high-action drama where the love story of two women of different cultures and class backgrounds plays itself out against a backdrop of anti-Semitism and the sexual colonization of women.” Her “radical feminist retelling” fills in the blanks of scripture. In her version, Esther, a radical Jewish lesbian living in exile, and Vashti, a Persian woman of privilege, were lovers before Vashti married the king. The plight of the two women coincides with their successful effort to stop the impending massacre of the Jews.

Rev. David Bahr applies the strategies of the two queens to contemporary challenges in “Openly Gay and Lesbian Pastors Called by Predominantly Straight UCC Congregations,” a research project for his Doctor of Ministry degree at Wesley Theological Seminary in 2006. His theological reflection states, “As Esther and Vashti wrestle with their callings, I believe they can be instructive for gay men and lesbians called to ordained ministry. When should we wait, wondering if we are being prepared for something bigger? And when is enough, enough? What gives us the greatest sense of integrity? Or perhaps, who is best served? Both Esther and Vashti also present ‘models of resistance to wrong’ – one of direct dissent and one of working within the system.” Bahr currently serves as pastor of Park Hill Congregational Church UCC in Denver, Colorado.

In a famous quote from the Book of Esther, the man who had urged her to hide her Jewish identity changes his advice when their people are about to be massacred: “Perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14) Now is a good time to reflect what Esther and Vashti mean to queer people and our allies today.

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Related links:
The Proudest Queen of Purim (Human Rights Campaign

Closets (Esther 4:13-14) (The Bible in Drag Blog)

Esther: The Queen Who Came Out (Talking Dog)

Mona West also writes about Esther in The Queer Bible Commentary

Carolyn Gage page at Amazon.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, 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

The traditional view of Esther is presented in the following:

“The Rev. Peter Gomes, of Plymouth, 1942 – 2011” by Jon Dorn

Peter Gomes was a gay black Baptist minister at Harvard and one of America’s most prominent spiritual voices against intolerance. Gomes reportedly hated being labeled “gay minister,” yet he used his national celebrity to make the religious case for LGBT people. He died two years ago today at age 68 on Feb. 28, 2011.

A man of many contradictions, Gomes became a Democrat in 2007 after decades as a conservative Republican. He even gave the benediction at President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985 and preached at the National Cathedral for the inauguration of Reagan’s successor, George Bush.

Gomes (May 22, 1942 - Feb. 28, 2011) was born in Boston to a black African immigrant father and a mother from Boston’s African American upper middle class. He grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts, earned a divinity degree at Harvard University, and taught Western civilization at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama for two years before returning to work at Harvard in 1970. Four years later he became the first black person to serve as chief minister to Harvard. He held the positions of Pusey minister at Harvard’s Memorial Church and Plummer professor of Christian morals for the rest of his life.

He came out publicly as “a Christian who happens as well to be gay” at a student rally in 1991 after a conservative student magazine at Harvard published a condemnation of homosexuality. “I now have an unambiguous vocation -- a mission -- to address the religious causes and roots of homophobia,” he later told the Washington Post. “I will devote the rest of my life to addressing the 'religious case' against gays.”

In his 1996 best-seller, “The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart,” he showed how the Bible was misused to defend homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and sexism.

His 2007 book “The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

” went on to show that Jesus was a subversive whose radical gospel always overturns the status quo.

Among Gomes’s many admirers is artist Jon Dorn, who drew the portrait at the top of this post. Dorn is a cartoonist, filmmaker, and Master of Fine Arts student at Emerson College in Boston. He also serves on the Plymouth Cultural Council.

Gomes’ blend of scholarship, wisdom and accessibility is expressed in a few selected quotations:

“Hell is being defined by your circumstances, and believing that definition.” -- Peter Gomes

“The question should not be ‘What would Jesus do?’ but rather, more dangerously, “What would Jesus have me do?’” -- Peter Gomes in The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

“To some, the temporal triumph of the Christian community in the world is a sign of God's favor and the essential righteousness of the Christian position. The irony of the matter, though, is that whenever the Christian community gains worldly power, it nearly always loses its capacity to be the critic of the power and influence it so readily brokers.” --Peter J. Gomes in The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

“The battle for the Bible, of which homosexuality is the last front, is really the battle for the prevailing culture, of which the Bible itself is a mere trophy and icon. Such a cadre of cultural conservatives would rather defend their ideology in the name of the authority of scripture than concede that their self-serving reading of that scripture might just be wrong, and that both the Bible and the God who inspires it may be more gracious, just and inclusive than they can presently afford to be.” -- Peter Gomes in The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

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Books by Peter Gomes include:

The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

Sermons: Biblical Wisdom For Daily Living

The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need

Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living

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Related links:

Peter Gomes at LGBT Religious Archives Network

Remembering Peter Gomes: Black, Gay, Baptist Preacher (Queering the Church)

Rev. Peter Gomes: The Accidental Gay Advocate (Irene Monroe at HuffPost)

Gay, Black, Republican, Baptist Preacher, Rev. Peter Gomes, 1942-2011 (Candace Chellew-Hodge at Religion Dispatches)

Rev. Peter J. Gomes Is Dead at 68; A Leading Voice Against Intolerance (New York Times)

Video: Peter Gomes discusses: Would Jesus Support Gay Marriage? (also posted below)

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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, 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

“He-Man and St. Michael Find They Have a Lot in Common” by Ria Brodell

Queer desire, gender identity and growing up Catholic are explored by artist Ria Brodell in paintings of “Butch Heroes” and “The Handsome and the Holy.”

Brodell, a culturally Catholic gender-queer artist in the Boston area, brought together her favorite saints, pop culture icons and other seemingly paradoxical characters from her childhood in her series “The Handsome and the Holy.” For example, an angel and a hunky action figure, both warriors for good, embrace in “He-Man and St. Michael Find They Have a Lot in Common.” The series also includes self portraits of the artist as an ideal man, whether as a monk or a movie star.

Now the up-and-coming artist is working on a new series called “Butch Heroes,” using the format of traditional Catholic holy cards to present butch lesbians, queer women and female-to-male transgenders from history. They come from various continents, races and ethnicities and led surprisingly dissimilar lives. Some faced punishment, even execution, for homosexual acts or “female sodomy.”

“Catharina aka Anastasius Linck” by Ria Brodell

Brodell grew up looking at her aunt’s holy card collection for inspiration, but she didn’t find any that fulfilled her longing for queer role models.

“I see the Butch Heroes as the role models of which I was never aware,” Brodell told the Jesus in Love Blog in the interview below. “Knowing that we have always existed, struggled, survived, in some way or another, even if we were persecuted for it is important.”

So far she has completed 17 paintings of Butch Heroes, ranging from the celebrated French artist Rosa Bonheur to the infamous Catharina Linck, the last known woman executed for sodomy in Europe. She was beheaded in 1721. Brodell also depicts Butch Heroes from Asia and North America, including a Native American warrior-healer known as Sitting in the Water Grizzly. Some are shown alone and others are pictured as couples, such as British pub keeper Mary East (aka James How) and Mrs. How. All are posted now on her website (riabrodell.com) in an online exhibition.

“Rosa Bonheur” by Ria Brodell

Brodell paints with gouache on paper in a style that is meticulous and yet evocative. The scale is intimate, with each “Butch Hero” measuring only 11 by 7 inches. Her research skills are as impeccable, precise and detailed as her artistic technique.

She scours LGBTQ history books, libraries, museum archives and other sources to uncover the true lives of gender-variant people whose stories have been censored, heterosexualized or criminalized. She studies their social class, employment, clothing and environment in an effort to be as accurate and culturally sensitive as possible. Ultimately she aims to represent the full diversity of cultures and eras in which queer women lived.

“James How aka Mary East and Mrs. How” by Ria Brodell

The artist writes a brief biography to accompany each of her Butch Heroes. Every text is an achievement of scholarship and concise readability, summarizing a queer life with eloquence. The artist also provides a list of sources for each Butch Hero. Her most frequently cited source is the 2009 book Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women by Leila J. Rupp.

Brodell has had solo exhibitions in Massachusetts and California, where she is represented by the Kopeikin Gallery. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2006 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2002 from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.

The artist discusses her life and work in the following interview for the Jesus in Love Blog with Kittredge Cherry, art historian and author of Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More

.

Kittredge Cherry: On your website you say that your art makes connections between queer desire, gender identity and your Catholic upbringing. Many of my readers have struggled to reconcile LGBTQ identities with Christianity. Some developed their own post-church spiritualities. Please tell more about your spiritual journey.

Ria Brodell: Well, I have to admit that this is a very hard question to answer. Catholicism is a large part of the life of my extended family members. I, however, am not a practicing Catholic any longer. There is a bit of tension or sadness there on my part, in relation to Catholicism and my family. I feel nostalgia for it. I am attracted to the iconography, and I still feel an attachment to some of the saints and the stories. But, as a queer person, I struggle with the contemporary reality of Catholicism; their stance on homosexuality is just one sticking point. I cannot be a member of a church I disagree with on so many issues. So I suppose my spiritual journey at this point is one that I’m still contemplating, but I’m not using a church to do so.

“Self-Portrait as a Nun or a Monk, circa 1250” by Ria Brodell

KC: I am intrigued by your "Self-Portrait as a Nun or a Monk, circa 1250." What does it say about your identity and place in history? Did you ever consider joining a convent or monastery?

RB: This was one of the pieces that led up to my Butch Heroes painting series. I was thinking about history, specifically what my situation would have been had I been born into a different century. I concluded that as a queer person, and as a gender nonconforming person, I would have had few options. Basically, if I didn’t want to wear female clothing, be a wife and mother, or if I wasn’t wealthy…nun or monk would have been a possibility. Now I see that there were other, albeit risky options, as modeled by the lives of the people in Butch Heroes.

Yes, I actually did consider joining a convent. I thought about it a lot in my late teens, though I’m not sure how serious I was. I was struggling with (confused by) my sexuality, gender identity, Catholicism, and family. I remember looking for answers in the HUGE Catholic Catechism book my parents had, I don’t remember exactly what it said, but it didn’t help. I was basically a pretty good kid, and this book was telling me (through no actions or fault of my own) that I was flawed, and that therefore, I essentially was not a good kid, or that’s how I interpreted it. That confused me, and led me to think that a convent may be a solution.

KC: Why did you choose the holy card format for your "Butch Heroes"? In what sense do you see the "Butch Heroes" as holy?

RB: The primary reason I chose the holy card format for Butch Heroes was because it was one of the formats in which role models were presented to me as a child. My aunt had a huge collection and we would look at them together. She would tell me about the various saints whose stories were depicted on them. The visuals were beautiful and the stories were fascinating. The symbolism and the graphic, sometimes gruesome, details are something I still love about them.

So, when I started researching people for Butch Heroes, I immediately thought of holy cards. The way that holy cards employ symbolism, their intimacy, colors, style etc. was perfect. They elevate a person to reverence. They are used for remembrance. I want this for the Butch Heroes. I see the Butch Heroes as the role models of which I was never aware.

I don’t necessarily think of the Butch Heroes as holy, however I do see them as important. By using the holy card format I’m not intending to say that they were saints, and I’m definitely not intending to catholicize them. My intention is to use a format that has a personal significance to me, that has an inherent reverence to it, in order to elevate them, give them a presence and tell their stories.

KC: Many of these Butch Heroes faced terrible punishments or execution. What is the value for queer people today to remember their stories?

RB: I’ve thought about this frequently, especially as things are getting better for us (slowly). Is it necessary to look to the past? Is it important? My conclusion is always yes, because history is long, and it is forgotten easily. It puts our lives in perspective. Knowing that we have always existed, struggled, survived, in some way or another, even if we were persecuted for it is important. It’s comforting for me; finding our queer ancestors, to know who came before, and that we are not “a plague that has infected the modern world.” It also debunks the heteronormative and male-centric way in which history has been presented.

KC: How do you decide who to portray as "Butch Heroes"?

RB: I try to keep it personal. This series started by me musing over how I would have managed to get by as a queer, butch or masculine-of-center person. So when looking for Butch Heroes, I look for lives I can identify with. When choosing someone to include, I have decided to use specific search criteria: female bodied people who lived outside of their society’s gender norms, who were more masculine than feminine in the way they presented themselves (i.e., clothing, appearance, employment, or role in society, etc.), and had documented relationships with women.

KC: Do you have any plans to include any Butch Heroes who were officially recognized as saints or religious leaders? Some who come to mind are the cross-dressing "transvestite" saints such as Joan of Arc, or queer colonial Quaker preacher Jemima Wilkinson aka Public Universal Friend?

RB: If I find people who were recognized saints or religious leaders that fit the personal criteria I’m using for Butch Heroes, I am very happy to include them. In fact, I have a Methodist minister, on my to-do list.

KC: I see 17 Butch Heroes on your website. How many more will be added to your Butch Heroes series?

RB: I’m not entirely sure about the final number. I’d like to continue the series until I feel that I have represented people from many different backgrounds. I’d like to show the breadth of our history, even if in reality it is just a glimpse. As of now, I’m still finding new people whenever I start researching a new area, so I know I’m not done yet.

“Sitting in the Water Grizzly” by Ria Brodell

KC: What are other ways that people can access your Butch Heroes? Are the paintings available for purchase as art objects? Do you intend to reproduce them as actual holy cards or in a book? When and where will they be exhibited again?

RB: Right now they are only available for viewing on my website (riabrodell.com) and in my studio. I definitely plan on selling the original paintings, but only during or after they have been exhibited as a whole. I do have plans to make a book, I think that would be a wonderful way to get their stories out to a wider audience, and I am currently looking for a publisher. I would definitely consider making them into actual holy cards, perhaps in sets. As far as upcoming exhibitions, I am still researching/painting them, but they may be ready to exhibit after I finish a few more, probably here in Boston or in L.A. If people want to stay up to date on the availability of the work, upcoming publications or exhibitions, they can contact me via my website to be added to a mailing list.

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March is Women's History Month, so the Jesus in Love Blog is especially pleased to highlight Brodell’s paintings of historical women this month. Many thanks for bringing these butches back to life again, restoring them to wholeness and holiness.

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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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.

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Artist paints history’s butch heroes: Ria Brodell interview