Jesus in Love Blog

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. LGBT church leaders suggest 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 visits 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 my 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?
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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

Magi: Followers of the Light (Jesus Loves Gays Blog)

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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

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

Jeanne Manford loved her gay son so much that she founded Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). She died one year ago today 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! You are counted among the LGBT saints for the huge positive impact that you had on queer people and straight allies everywhere.

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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

Bishop Otis Charles listens in 1994 as Kittredge Cherry speaks at Hands Around the God-Box, a prayer demonstration to end homophobia in the church. Charles stands in the front row wearing a purple clergy shirt.

Gay Episcopal bishop Otis Charles, right, stands with MCC founder Troy Perry at Hands Around the God-Box in New York City, June 1994. (detail from photo above)

Episcopal bishop Otis Charles, the first mainstream Christian bishop to come out as gay, died on December 26 at age 87.

I actually met Bishop Charles in person in June 1994, the year after he retired and came out publicly as gay. We met when he attended Hands Around the God-Box, a prayer demonstration that I organized at the National Council of Churches’ headquarters in New York.

The photo above shows me speaking at Hands Around the God-Box to a crowd that includes Otis Charles standing in the front row next to Rev. Troy Perry, founder of Metropolitan Community Churches. It was part of Stonewall 25, a LGBT pride festival celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion.

At the time Bishop Charles struck me as being rather dazed and confused by the unfamiliar experience of a LGBT pride celebration and his new role as our public advocate. It was unfamiliar territory. He had been a closeted Episcopal priest since his ordination in 1951. Then in 1993 he retired, came out publicly as gay, and divorced Elvira, his wife of 42 years. He seemed to be looking for guidance from Troy, who founded MCC as a LGBT-affirming denomination in 1968, even before Stonewall.

During his career Charles served as bishop of Utah for 15 years and then president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Simply by coming out in 1993 Charles moved the public debate on LGBT rights forward. He went on to run Oasis/California, the Episcopal LGBT ministry in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Retaining his bishop's rank after retirement, he advocated for LGBT rights as a member of the Episcopal church’s House of Bishops. He was even arrested and led away in handcuffs at the 1999 Episcopal convention as part of a protest against the church’s mistreatment of LGBT people.

“I was ashamed of myself for remaining silent when the church was involved in an acrimonious debate about the whole question of gay people in the life of the church. I couldn't live with that any longer,” he said in a 2004 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle after a church wedding with his husband Felipe Sanchez-Paris, a retired professor and political organizer.

They married again in 2008 when same-sex marriage was legalized in California. The couple appears together in the film “Love Free or Die,” a 2012 documentary about another gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson. Sanchez-Paris died only six months ago on July 30, 2013.

Bishop Otis Charles became a LGBT-rights trailblazer late in life and found love even later. May he join the LGBT saints who advocate for us on the heavenly side.

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Related links:

Bishop Otis Charles - gay rights advocate - dies (SFGate.com)

Requiescat in Pace: The Right Rev. Edgar Otis Charles (Walking with Integrity)

Bishop Otis Charles and the Bridge to Somewhere by Susan Russell (Huffington Post)

Profile of Right Rev. Otis Charles (LGBT Religious Archives Network)

THE BATTLE OVER SAME-SEX MARRIAGE / Gay bishop proves it's never too late to fall in love / With grandson in attendance, 78-year-old cleric marries same-sex partner (San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 2004)

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

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

St. Aelred of Rievaulx

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

Aelred of Rievaulx (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 abbot 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, professor of English at the University of Nebraska, 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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New material in 2014

Portrait of Aelred of Rievaulx from “Mirror of Charity” medieval manuscript, circa 1140 (Wikimedia Commons)

Queer theologian Hugo Cordova Quero writes about Aelred in his scholarly article "Friendship with Benefits: A Queer Reading of Aelred of Rievaulx and His Theology of Friendship.” It is included in “The Sexual Theologian: Essays on Sex, God and Politics,” edited by Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood.

Quero quotes and analyzes Aelred’s words from “Mirror of Charity” on the death of his first close friend, a fellow monk named Simon: “I grieve for my most beloved, for the one-in-heart with me…” He goes on to explore Aelred’s subsequent love for an unnamed monk, putting his attachments to men into historical context with queer perspective. Click here to view the article online.

“Brother and Lover: Aelred of Rievaulx,” by Brian Patrick McGuire is a charming chronological account that traces the homoerotic impulse in Aelred’s life. McGuire, a history professor in Denmark, tells the story with a personal and informal writing style.

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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

“Saint Sebastian” by Rick Herold

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)

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.

“Homage to Sebastian” by Tony De Carlo

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.’”

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.

New material in 2014

The painting at the top of this post is by California gay artist Rick Herold. He places Saint Sebastian against a colorful, cartoon-like backdrop reminiscent of gay artist / activist Keith Haring. “I over the years as a painter have been interested in the idea of the spirit and the flesh as one -- began by Tantric art influences and then using my Catholic background,” he told the Jesus in Love Blog. He paints with enamel on the reverse side of clear plexiglas.

Herold has a bachelor of arts degree in art and theology from the Benedictine Monastic University of St. John in Minnesota and a master of fine arts degree from Otis Institute of Art in Los Angeles. His religious artwork included a Stations of the Cross commissioned by Bob Hope for a church in Ohio before a conflict over modern art with the Los Angeles cardinal led to disillusionment with the church. Herold came out as gay and turned to painting male nudes and homoerotica.

“Saint Sebastian and Matt Shepard Juxtaposed” by JR Leveroni

“Saint Sebastian and Matt Shepard Juxtaposed” by JR Leveroni compares Sebastian’s martyrdom with the killing of a contemporary gay martyr, Matthew Shepard (1976-1998). Shepard was a student at the University of Wyoming when he was brutally beaten and left to die by two men who later claimed that they were driven temporarily insane by “gay panic.” His murder led to broadening the US hate-crimes law to cover violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Leveroni is an emerging visual artist living in South Florida. Painting in a Cubist style, he portrays the suffering gay martyrs in a subdued way with barely a trace of blood. A variety of male nudes and religious paintings can be seen on Leveroni’s website.
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Related links:

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

The Allure of St. Sebastian (Wild Reed)

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

St. Sebastian (LGBT Catholic Handbook)

San Sebastián: Historia de icono gay primero (Santos Queer)

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 three years ago today (Jan. 26, 2011) in a case that some blame on anti-gay religious rhetoric.

David Kato

It is especially important to carry on Kato’s legacy now because the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill was passed by parliament last month on Dec. 20, 2013 with the penalty reduced from death to life in prison. Uganda’s president has refused to sign it into law, but the struggle continues.

American evangelicals helped stir up the hostility that led to Kato’s death because they promoted a law imposing the death penalty for homosexuality. The influence of the US evangelical movement in promoting the anti-homosexuality law is explored in the award-winning 2013 documentary “God Loves Uganda.” Watch the trailer below or on YouTube.

Shortly before his murder Kato won a lawsuit against a Ugandan magazine for identifying him as gay and calling for his execution. Kato’s murderer was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but 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,” 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 Kato’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)

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)

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

Jesus falls the first time and Nazis ban homosexual groups in Station 3 from “Stations of the Cross: The Struggle For LGBT Equality” by Mary Button, courtesy of Believe Out Loud

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.

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.

Persecution of LGBT people during the Holocaust is juxtaposed with Jesus falling under the weight of his cross in the image at the top of this post: Station 3 from “Stations of the Cross: The Struggle For LGBT Equality” by Mary Button. The painting features headshots of men who were arrested for homosexuality under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code and sent to concentration camps between 1933 and 1945.

Using bold colors and collage, Button puts Jesus' suffering into a queer context by matching scenes from his journey to Golgotha with milestones from the last 100 years of LGBT history. For an overview of all 15 paintings in the LGBT Stations series, see my article LGBT Stations of the Cross shows struggle for equality.

Richard Grune, a trained artist sent to Nazi concentration camps for homosexuality, also saw a connection between Christ’s Passion and the suffering of people in the camps. After being imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg, he created “Passion of the 20th Century,” a set of lithographs depicting the nightmare of life in the camps. Published in 1947, it is considered one of the most important visual records of the camps to appear in the immediate postwar years.

“Solidarity.” Richard Grune lithograph from a limited edition series “Passion des XX Jahrhunderts” (Passion of the 20th Century). Grune was prosecuted under Paragraph 175 and from 1937 until liberation in 1945 was incarcerated in concentration camps. In 1947 he produced a series of etchings detailing what he witnessed in the camps. Grune died in 1983. (Credit: Courtesy Schwules Museum, Berlin) (US Holocaust Museum)

The Nazis also denounced and attacked lesbians, but usually less severely and systematically than they persecuted male homosexuals. Their history is told online in the article Lesbians and the Third Reich at the US Holocaust Museum.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.”

Identification pictures of Henny Schermann, a shop assistant in Frankfurt am Main. In 1940 police arrested Henny, who was Jewish and a lesbian, and deported her to the Ravensbrueck concentration camp for women. She was killed in 1942. Ravensbrueck, Germany, 1941. (US Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives)

Nazis used the pink triangle to identify male 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.

“Pink Triangle” by John Bittinger Klomp, 2012

“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.

The pink triangle appears in a variety of monuments that have been built around the world to commemorate LBGT victims of the Nazi regime. In January 2014 Israel'sfirst memorial for LGBT victims of the Holocaust was unveiled in Tel Aviv. 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.

The last surviving man to wear the pink triangle in the concentration camps was Rudolf Brazda, who died in 2011 at age 98. His story is told in the video below and in his obituary at the New York Times.

Another 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.

The award-winning 1979 play “Bent” by Martin Sherman helped increase awareness of Nazi persecution of gays, leading to more historical research and education. A film version of “Bent” was made in 1997 with an all-star British cast including Clive Owen, Mick Jagger and Jude Law. Its title comes from the European slang word “bent” used as a slur for homosexuals.

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 links:

Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-45 (US Holocaust Museum)

Lesbians and the Third Reich (US Holocaust Museum)

Pink Triangle (Qualia Encyclopedia of Gay Folklife)

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.

“Saint Brighid and Darlughdach of Kildare” by Rowan Lewgalon and Tricia Danby (tir-anam.weebly.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 Brigid turned 70, she 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.

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.

Two Celtic Christian artists based in Germany collaborated on the sensuously spiritual portrait of Brigid and Darlughdach at the top of this post. On the left is Darlughdach, painted as a fiery redhead by Rowan Lewgalon, and on the right is fair-haired Brighid, painted by Tricia Danby. Lewgalon and Danby are both clerics in the Old Catholic Apostolic Church as well as spiritual artists whose work is online at tir-anam.weebly.com.

"Saints Brigid and Darlughdach of Kildare"

trinitystores.com

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 in-depth 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

In memory of
Archbishop Mark Shirilau

Founder of Ecumenical Catholic Church,
a global denomination welcoming LGBT people,
proud supporter of Jesus in Love

Dec. 13, 1955 - Jan. 12, 2014

white candle Pictures, Images and Photos

I light a memorial candle for Archbishop Mark Shirilau, head of the Ecumenical Catholic Church and a proud supporter of Jesus in Love. He died on Jan. 12 from heart failure resulting from pneumonia while in Italy to ordain a priest. He was 58.

Mark founded the Ecumenical Catholic Church in 1987 to provide a religious home to gays and lesbians. It grew to include about 3,000 members in the United States, Italy and Latin America.

Mark Shirilau, official church portrait, 1993

His last words to me were posted online with his donation in October: “This should reach your goal. Thanks for your great work, Kitt. It's one of the few blogs and newsletters I actually take time to read. :) + Mark”

Mark contributed to Jesus in Love in many other ways too. He participated in the Queer Nativity Project at the Jesus in Love Blog by submitting a photo of the gay shepherd couple in his outdoor manger scene.

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Queer Nativity 2: Adam and Steve, the gay shepherd couple

“Adam and Steve, the Gay Shepherd Couple” by Archbishop Mark Shirilau

Some of the shepherds in Bethlehem on the first Christmas must have felt same-sex attractions. Archbishop Mark Shirilau reports that the gay shepherd couple in his photo have been part of his family’s Nativity set since before he even knew what a gay couple was. Over the years he gained an extra shepherd and a gay consciousness. The results are reflected in his light-up Christmas lawn ornaments -- updated with energy-efficient light bulbs. More info

__________________________________________

Although Mark is best known for his LGBT religious leadership, I also remember him for his commitment to solar energy and his love for dogs. He wrote an enthusiastic endorsement for the pet portraits offered through Jesus in Love.

Mark always used to send me the ECC calendar of saints around January every year. Last year he was happy that they added John Boswell. Now Mark is with the saints he loved.

In the wake of his death, ECC bishops elected David Kalke as acting primate and archbishop of the denomination.

A memorial service is set for Feb. 15 at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Riverside, California. Burial will be in Kaneohe, Hawaii, next to his late partner, Jeffery Shirilau.

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Related links

Riverside man who led worldwide church dies (pe.com)

More on the death of Archbishop Mark Shirilau (pe.com)

Memorial service for archbishop changed (pe.com)

Remembering Archbishop Mark Steven Shirilau by Bishop James Alan Wilkowski

Mark Shirilau personal website

Ecumenical Catholic Church website

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

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

“De Profundis” by Tony O’Connell

Artists are using spiritual imagery to draw attention to LGBT rights in Russia as the Olympics begins in Sochi tomorrow (Feb. 7).

The holiness of the Russian struggle for LGBT equality is emphasized in two new artworks: “De Profundis” by queer British artist Tony O’Connell and “Postcard to Putin” by gay American artist Stephen Mead.

LGBT rights supporters are using the Sochi Olympics to call worldwide attention to anti-gay laws passed last year under President Vladimir Putin, especially one banning “gay propaganda.” Statements in favor of LGBT rights during the Olympics, including waving rainbow flags and other pride gear, would break the law against discussing LGBT issues in front of children. Homosexuality itself was decriminalized by Russia in 1993.

In “De Profundis” O’Connell bestows a halo upon a gay Russian who is being arrested for protesting laws that oppress LGBT people. Watching in the background are Christ and paired male saints Sergius and Bacchus, who were ancient Christian martyrs and lovers. “They seem appropriate protectors in this situation,” O’Connell said.

The Latin title means “From the Depths.” It comes from Psalm 130, which is quoted in an inscription on O’Connell’s image:

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine;
Domine, exaudi vocem meam.

“The Latin is from the De Profundis which was a Catholic prayer I grew up with,” he explained. He translates it as:

Out from the depths I have cried to thee, Oh Lord;
Lord hear my voice!

“De Profundis” is also the title of an important epistle written by 19th-century gay Irish writer Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment for homosexuality.

O’Connell symbolizes the whole Russian LGBT-rights struggle with a news photo that documents the 2010 arrest of Nikolay Alexeyev, founder and chief organizer of Moscow Pride since 2005. He is considered Russia’s best known LGBT-rights activist.

For more about Tony O’Connell and his art, see my previous post Reclaiming sainthood: Gay artist Tony O’Connell finds holiness in LGBT people and places.

“Postcard to Putin” by Stephen Mead

New York gay artist Stephen Mead also uses his talent and spiritual vision to shed light on human rights abuses in Russia as the Olympics approach. Shortly before the Olympic opening ceremony, he created a new mixed-media collage in his “Postcards to Putin” series.

He superimposes the text of his “Dear Vladimir” letter over candle and a hand raised in blessing the Olympic torch on a computer screen.

“I did this one a couple days before the Olympics are to begin, feeling that safety is the most important message right now, a sort of prayer or energy of hope and protection,” Mead said. “My sentiment is that if we can make art and at least post it online so it is out on the World Wide Web where anyone can see it, maybe that will bring some hope to the LGBT people of Russia (and elsewhere).”

For more about Mead and his art, see my previous post Gay artist links body and spirit.

A gallery with more than 50 images called “Illustrators in Support of Gay Rights in Russia” has been set up by Anna Goodson Illustration Agency.

“We believe that Art Speaks Louder Than Words and we wanted to make a statement and show the world that our agency and illustrators don’t support discrimination or violence of any kind, regardless of religion, race or sexual orientation,” Goodson wrote.

As the Olympics gets underway various LGBT groups are planning protests around the world to denounce the injustice and express support for LGBT Russians. For example, the Human Rights Campaign has organized a variety of actions on “Russia’s anti-LGBT agenda” and is using social media for an initiative called Love Conquers Hate.

While the Olympics rightly puts the spotlight on Russian injustice toward LGBT people, there is no reason to be smug about LGBT rights under U.S. law. Nine American states limit what teachers can say about homosexuality in ways that are similar to Russian law, according to an article at thinkprogress.org.

After creating the “De Profundis” image last summer, O’Connell has had second thoughts about whether Alexeyev deserved a halo. “I felt strongly about how brave he been to stand up the rise of fascism in Russia and the level of violence and legal persecution he had received. Unfortunately he seems to gone off the rails a bit since then as this article suggests his own dangerous tendencies toward misogyny and anti-semetism. Of course that controversy only arose after I had made the image and partly I wonder if it is the Russian state publicity machine slinging mud at him to separate him from allies in the west,” O’Connell said.

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Related links:

Boris and George: Russian saints united in love and death (Jesus in Love)

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This post is part of the Artists series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series profiles artists who use lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spiritual and religious imagery.

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

Detail from Passion
by Doug Blanchard

"Saints Felicity and Perpetua"
by Maria Cristina

An artist’s gay vision of Christ’s Passion was the top LGBT spiritual arts story for 2013 at the Jesus in Love Blog.

Perpetua and Felicity came in second place as patron saints of same-sex couples, followed by the Intimacy with Christ paintings of Richard Stott.

The year’s top 10 LGBT spiritual arts stories were named today by Cherry, founder of the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT Spirituality and the Arts. 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 Cherry. The paintings present Jesus as a contemporary gay man in a modern city. The Passion paintings and commentary are set to be published as a book later in 2014. Click here to sign up for e-mail announcements about the book.

“Jesus in Love has become the go-to place for new and innovative material on queer saints -- in both English and Spanish,” Cherry said. “Readers love the pioneering LGBT Christian art presented here. It is hard to find anywhere else except at Jesus in Love.”

Non-traditional takes on traditional saints attracted more readers than ever before, filling four of the Top 10 spots. Three of the top stories were about contemporary artists creating bold new paintings of Jesus in a queer context.

Another trend was the surging popularity of Jesus in Love articles in Spanish. The Santos Queer Blog was launched in late 2012 to provide translations of the LGBT Saints series throughout the year. In fact, some saints were a bigger hit in Spanish than in the original English. Over at Santos Queer, San Sebastián actually got more hits in 2013 than anything in English with 2,608 pageviews!

Two books tied for the top spot as the bestseller of the year at Jesus in Love: “Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Poems of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication” and “Equal Rites: Lesbian and Gay Worship, Ceremonies, and Celebrations.”

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

1. The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision

Gay Passion paintings on display
(Photo by Dorie Hagler)

Jesus challenges viewers by arriving as a young gay man of today in the “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” by Douglas Blanchard. The artist takes the most important narrative in Western culture and rescues it from fundamentalists and also from over-familiarity. All 24 paintings in the series were posted with expanded commentary and prayers by Kittredge Cherry for Holy Week and Easter last year. The series covers 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 his diverse group of friends. More info

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 again on the Jesus in Love Blog for Holy Week this year. Join the Passion book e-mail list to be notified when the book version is published.

2. Perpetua and Felicity: Patron saints of same-sex couples

Saints Perpetua and Felicity were brave North African woman friends who were executed for their Christian faith in the third century. Some consider them lesbian saints or patrons of same-sex couples. They were arrested for their Christian beliefs, imprisoned together, and held onto each other in the last moments before they died together on March 7, 203. A banner saying “patrons of same sex couples” hangs above Felicity and Perpetua in the colorful icon at the top of this post. It was painted by Maria Cristina, an artist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico. More info

3. Gay artist paints "Intimacy with Christ": Richard Stott reflects on sensual spirituality

Detail from “Intimacy with Christ 3”
by Richard Stott

A gay man’s intimacy with Christ is expressed in new art and writing by Richard Stott, a Methodist minister and art therapist in Sheffield, England. Three large paintings that unite sexuality and spirituality emerged from Stott’s prayer life and meditations on the medieval Christian mystics, especially the poem “The Dark Night of the Soul” by Saint John of the Cross. More info

4. 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 thousand years. This article uses historical images and research to remember and honor all those killed for homosexuality in church- or state-sanctioned executions. Ash Wednesday also made the 2012 Top 10 list. In 2013 the Slacktivist blog sent a lot of extra visitors to the Ash Wednesday post by highlighting a quote from a woman executed for sodomy in 1721: “But even were I to be done away with, those who are like me would remain.” In 2014 Ash Wednesday will be March 5. More info

5. LGBT Stations of the Cross show struggle for equality

Station 3 from LGBT Stations of the Cross
by Mary Button
courtesy of Believe Out Loud

“Stations of the Cross: The Struggle for LGBT Equality” is a new set of 14 paintings that link the suffering of Jesus with the history of LGBT people. Using bold colors and collage, artist Mary Button juxtaposes Christ's journey to Golgotha with milestones from the last 100 years of LGBT history, including Nazi persecution, the Lavender Scare, the Stonewall Rebellion, the assassination of Harvey Milk, the AIDS pandemic, the murder of transgender woman Rita Hester, and LGBT teen suicides. “In the sacrifices of martyrs of the LGBT movement, we can come to a new understanding of the cross, and of what it means to be part of the body of Christ,” Button said. More info

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

Sergius and Bacchus were third-century Roman soldiers, Christian martyrs and men who loved each other. The close bond between Sergius and Bacchus has been emphasized since the earliest accounts, and recent scholarship has revealed their homosexuality. The oldest record of their martyrdom describes them as erastai (Greek for “lovers”). Their story is told here in words and art, including historical works and contemporary art. Sergius and Bacchus are perennial favorites at Jesus in Love, where they also made the Top 10 list in 2011 and 2012. More info

7. New info on Francis of Assisi’s queer side revealed

Historical records revealed a queer side to Saint Francis of Assisi as Pope Francis visited the birthplace of his namesake in October 2013. “It will be interesting to hear Pope Francis’ message while he pilgrimages to Assisi. However, the gender-bending St. Francis has already clearly spoken through the ages to the LGBT community,” Franciscan scholar Kevin Elphick said. Saint Francis is one of the most beloved religious figures of all time, known for embracing poverty, loving animals, hugging lepers, and praying for peace. Elphick continued his research into the queer side of Saint Francis in 2013 with his own trip to Assisi, where he photographed artwork depicting the man he believes may have been the saint’s beloved soulmate: Brother Elias of Cortona. More info

8. Queer religious art resource list: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Paganism

Queer religious art resources from Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Paganism are listed on the Jesus in Love Blog. The list provides dozens of links to art created throughout human history, from ancient cave paintings to the most contemporary images of today. It includes Asian, African / African-American, Australian, Celtic, Latina/o, Native American and others. More info

9. Saint Sebastian: History’s first gay icon

“Saint Sebastian”
by Rick Herold

Saint Sebastian has been called history’s first gay icon and the patron saint of homosexuals. 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. More info

The Spanish translation of this article, San Sebastián: El primer ícono gay de la historia, was the most popular story of the year at the Santos Queer blog

10. Blasphemy debate on queer Nativity

A big blasphemy debate erupted when Believe Out Loud cross-posted a queer Nativity photo and essay by lesbian Christian author Kittredge Cherry in December 2013. "Everyone should be able to see themselves in the Christmas story, including the growing number of LGBT parents and their children," she wrote. Many said it was offensive, blasphemous, ridiculous, stupid, and "makes equality look bad," even though they are a LGBT-affirming Christian group. Others found it inspiring, empowering, and wonderful, providing "instant identity that this story includes me too." The Facebook debate grew to more than 140 comments. The original queer Nativity piece was posted at Jesus in Love in 2009. It is on the Top 10 list now because it was the most controversial content of the year, even though it didn't generate a lot of traffic on the Jesus in Love in 2013. More info

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Related links:

2012’s top 10 LGBT spiritual arts stories

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

Bestselling books of 2013:

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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Marcella Althaus-Reid

Marcella Althaus-Reid was a major queer theologian whose 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 -- five years ago today. Here is a new original reflection on her life and work by a scholar who knew her personally.

Marcella Althaus-Reid : Saint of a sexually embodied spirituality

By Hugo Córdova Quero

It is difficult to speak of someone who has recently pass away as a “saint.” Commonly, the popular belief is that someone who is considered a “saint” lived many centuries in the past. There is a need to “normalize” and “sanitize” the saint’s life in order to make it almost “perfect.” The temporal distance achieves this effect. If this is the rule through which the life and work of Marcella Althaus-Reid should be measured, then we are faced with someone who can hardly be placed inside this closet. If there is anything that Marcella did in her life, it was to come out of the closets that both culture and society as well as religion and theology have imposed on us through centuries of Christian history.
However, there is another kind of “holiness” which is not governed by perfection, but by its opposite, namely, imperfection, fragility and potentiality. The famous words of St. Paul “power made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12.9b); and “we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Cor 4.7) are a guide in this respect. Saints are not super-heroes who can do almost everything; rather, they are individuals who have incarnated and embodied the depths of our humanity. This humanity, nonetheless, is not perfect, and its perfection is fully attainable only when embraced by the divine power. Latin America testifies to countless popular saints who embody precisely this “holiness from the underside.” Marcella is part of that popular tradition.

Marcella was born in Rosario, one of the major cities in the State of Santa Fe, Argentina, on May 11, 1952. Although raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, in her teen years she encountered the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina. Inspired by this tradition, she studied theology at the Instituto Superior Evangélico de Estudios Teologicos (known as ISEDET for its acronym in Spanish), the ecumenical seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She then pursued her doctorate at Saint Andrew’s University in Fife, Scotland.
Marcella is mostly known for her indecent theology, which is also the title of her first book, published in 2000. In that book, she states:

The paradigm is an indecent paradigm, because it undresses and uncovers sexuality and economy at the same time. Not only do we need an Indecent Theology which can reach the core of theological constructions, insofar as they are rooted in sexual constructions, for the sake of understanding our sexuality, we also need it because theological truths are currencies dispensed and acquired in theological economic markets (2000: 19).

This quotation challenges us to face the materiality of theological constructions, which are closely related to bodily, sexual and relational aspects. However, by conceiving theology as an element of decency — understanding decency as control and regulation— it has been used to spiritualize those areas. Nothing is further away from the work of Marcella. For her, holiness does not only come through hearing “the word of Christ” (Ro 10.17), but also from listening to our own experiences, including — or should I say, mostly — our sexual experiences:

Why to do a theology of sexual stories? Is that not too particular, or too concerned with the ‘private realm’ of a person? The answer is no, because sexuality does not stay at home, or in a friend’s bedroom, but permeates our economic, political and societal life. Theology has always been a great theoretical discourse on hetero-normativity, prescribing sexual relations at home and in the public spheres of life (2000: 131).

One way to do this is by highlighting sexual histories either by reading the Bible from a sexual point of view or through listening to the stories of lovers as a divine revelation. The spirituality of Marcella unfolds a theology that embodies all human reality, not only those areas which are socially considered “decent.” In this, Marcella faithfully follows the Cappadocian Fathers, especially Gregory of Nazianzus (330-390 AD) who claims “what [Christ] has not assumed, has not been saved, because he has saved what he has also assumed to his divinity” (Ep. 101). An embodied spirituality must also be sexual. Otherwise, salvation is not completely attainable. Marcella thus guides us towards a spirituality which does not force us to sever our sexuality. On the contrary, she leads us to honor it as a path to holiness. Her indecent theology is a truly queer theology that has opened the doors of the closets of traditions and prejudices and prophetically calls us out to walk towards liberation.

A prolific writer, teacher and lecturer, Marcella penned two books, edited eight collections where she gave the opportunity to new scholars to present their work, and published more than fifty articles and chapters in academic journals and books. However, despite her tireless dedication, Marcella always had time to nurture her spirituality and cultivate her friendships. I had the privilege of knowing her work when I was taking a Masters of Arts at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. After our initial contact, we quickly became friends and I was always surprised that amidst her busy academic life, she devoted a considerable space of time to cultivate our friendship. It was she who invited me to publish my first article in an academic journal. When the article was published and I wrote to thank her support, she replied:

Hugo, when I was studying theology, because of being a woman and thinking differently, many people failed to understand me. It was difficult. It cost me much effort and struggle to progress in my career. I believe in your work, so I support it. When you become well known, promise me that you will do your best to act in solidarity with others who are like us “in the struggle.” Only then will we build community, only in that way will we produce liberation.

These words made me realize that Marcella was not an “armchair theologian,” but someone who sincerely “lived her preaching,” that she embodied each of her words. Her life was always a struggle in the midst of which she never lost the freshness of knowing what it is to be alive and that there is always a possibility of change for the better. Although she did not find her academic space in Argentina — maybe exemplifying that “Prophets are not without honor except in their own in own country” (Mt 13.57) — she never let go of her roots or her happiness. For those who were privileged to know her, in one way or another, the sense that life is worth living — although not without struggle — was a hallmark of her life, faith, spirituality and work, moreover an encouragement in our friendship.

The death of Marcella on February 22, 2009 in Edinburgh, Scotland, left a deep void not only in her family and in those who knew her, but also in the academic world where her prophetic voice emerged as an icon of queer theologies. Marcella was my dear friend and a member of my doctoral committee while I was studying at the Graduate Theological Union. She died a month before I defended my dissertation. It has been five years since she was with us and I really miss her. I miss our conversations, with that mixture of philosophy and laughter, intellectual depth and sensitivity to the most human situations of everyday life. She always has a word of comfort to guide me in my formation as a scholar. I feel that her death evoked the same emotions that I have when I read the testimony of the Gospels on the experience of the disciples in light of the death of Jesus; it makes me question why good people die early. However, quickly I am struck by the connection of death with the event of the resurrection, not as a dogma that has to be believed and repeated because it was just taught to me. On the contrary, the resurrection becomes the hope that I hold dearly that in God, somehow, in some way, we will live again in community. Marcella knew about this when she wrote these words in her book From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology (2004):

The fact is that Jesus’ resurrection was also a community event: women and men witnessed how he came back from death, walked among them and continued the dialogue which existed before his crucifixion. Every death changes the life of the survivors, because some humanity is removed from them, so it is legitimate to think that, starting with Jesus’ resurrection, a whole community of people who suffered his loss when he was crucified came back to life again. Their eyes were opened in the sense that death took on another meaning; the resurrection became the paradigm showing us the durability and indestructibility of life and justice (2004: 113).

In her indecent theology, Marcella ably demonstrated a spirituality that interrupts the dictates of society and its counterparts in religious institutions, while bringing into the conversation our realities and sexual stories. Marcella, our popular Latin American saint, invites us to queer and embody a spirituality that is not surprised to find God in the theological reflection of our sexual histories. Those sexual stories — although imperfect — reveal our full humanity, and — although indecent — they are truly mystical. Saint Marcella’s proposal of a fully sexually embodied spirituality finally seduces us towards embracing our own liberation. I miss you so much, my holy friend!

References
Althaus-Reid, Marcella (2000). Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics. London: Routledge.

Althaus-Reid, Marcella (2004). From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology. London: SCM Press.

Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101.

Hugo Córdova Quero holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies in Religion, Ethnicity and Migration from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He received a Master of Arts in Systematic Theology, Queer Theory and (Post)-Colonial Studies from the Graduate Theological Union (2003) and a Master’s in Divinity from ISEDET University in Buenos Aires (1998). Currently he is Adjunct Faculty at Starr King School for the Ministry (SKSM) at the Graduate Theological Union. His busy schedule includes writing and translating for the Santos Queer blog.

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A Spanish version of this article is posted at the Santos Queer Blog:
Marcella Althaus-Reid: Santa de una espiritualidad sexualmente encarnada

Links to books 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

Prof Marcella Althaus-Reid obituary and memorial page: Light a candle or add your own tribute

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

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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.

Gay visions of Christ are part of a homoerotic interfaith adventure that awaits in “The Daring of Paradise,” the newest poetry book by Toronto teacher Brian Day.

He writes about what he calls “the lust for the holy” across the boundaries of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.

His latest book features several new homoerotic poems about Jesus, including “Pursuing our Pleasure in the Body of Christ” (reprinted with permission below) and “Krishna and Jesus in Algonquin Park.” (reprinted in full in my previous post “What if Christ and Krishna made love?”) The new book also provides a glimpse of Jesus enjoying a naked interlude with Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism.

Day blends gay and religious themes in a way that illuminates both queer experience and all spiritual expression. Visit Lambda Literary Review for my full review of the book.

__________________

Pursuing our Pleasure

in the Body of Christ

By Brian Day

There is no further body of Christ but this smoothed aggregate

of human flesh. We are the athletic limbs

of his swimming through the world, the hands of all

his practical acts. But hands and limbs are not all of a body,

and those parts of Christ we might conceal

must elicit from our mouths a particular esteem.

The body of Christ is built for delight, and not one

of its vivifying organs can be scorned. The kindling sites

of our communal body take part in our sacred

and carnal commission, this ignition of flesh in its knowledge

as flesh. We caress the completeness of our one body, explore it

with palms, alert it with fists. We lick a glistening

array of physiques, knowing the foreign and knowing

ourselves, knowing Christ in each of his tissues and hollows,

straining toward completer knowledge in this keen narcissistic

congregation of flesh. We train each finger, each muscle, each

follicle to take its place in the communion of Christ. And we,

so flooded with desire for the countless strong members

of the body of Christ, what should we in desire

strive for? We would strive to be those zones

of the holy within the common body of Christ, the seats

of pleasure where he excites himself

into vibrant and ever more electric being.

***
Biblical references:

1 Corinthians 12.27 and Romans 12.4-5

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Related links:
Jesus poems: Homoerotic taste of heaven
(review of the book “Conjuring Jesus” by Brian Day)

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

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

“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 three 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. He studied at Bates College (where a chapel was named after him in 2012) , 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

Dutch massacre of sodomites,
detail (Wikimedia Commons)

Today on Ash Wednesday queer martyrs rise from the ashes as we recall the thousands who were executed for homosexuality throughout history.

This is not just a historical issue. Uganda was in the news last week for passing a law that sends people to prison for homosexual acts, but the death penalty for homosexuality continues today in 10 countries (Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and United Arab Emirates).

Christians traditionally put ashes on their foreheads as a sign of repentance on Ash Wednesday. It is an appropriate time to reflect on the sins of the church and state against queer people, including the burning of “sodomites” and thousands of executions 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 images, both new and historical, to remember and honor those whose lives were desecrated and cut short.

“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.")

Sodomy is often considered a male issue, but the facts of history make clear that queer women were persecuted under sodomy laws too. Of course, the meaning of sodomy has changed a lot over the centuries. The “sin of Sodom” in the Bible was described as arrogance and failure to care for travelers and the poor.

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.”

“Catharina aka Anastasius Linck” by Ria Brodell

Genderqueer Boston artist Ria Brodell portrays Linck and several other historical women who were killed for sodomy in her “Butch Heroes” series. They include Katherina Hetzeldorfer of Germany, drowned in 1477 for female sodomy, and Lisbetha Olsdotter aka Mats Ersson of Sweden, who was decapitated in 1679 for cross-dressing and other crimes.

“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 of terror that started 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.

Many more die in attacks fueled by religion-based hate, including those killed in the arson fire at the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans.

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 of us 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)

Here are the 10 countries where homosexuality may be punished by death (Washington Post, Feb. 24, 2014)

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)

Catharina Margaretha Linck, Executed for Sodomy (Queering the Church)

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

International Holocaust Remembrance Day: We all wear the triangle (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.

“Felicity and Perpetua: Patrons of Same-Sex Couples” by Maria Cristina

Saints Perpetua and Felicity were brave North African woman friends who were executed for their Christian faith in the third century. Some consider them lesbian saints or patrons of same-sex couples. Their feast day is March 7.

Perpetua and Felicity were arrested for being Christian, imprisoned together, and held onto each other in the last moments before they died together on March 7, 203.

Perpetua and Felicity are still revered both inside and outside the church. For example, they are named together in the Roman Catholic Canon of the Mass. They are often included in lists of LGBTQ saints because they demonstrate the power of love between two women.

The details of their imprisonment are known because Perpetua kept a journal, the first known written document by a woman in Christian history. In fact, her "Passion of St. Perpetua, St. Felicitas, and their Companions” was so revered in North Africa that St. Augustine warned people not to treat it like the Bible. People loved the story of the two women comforting each other in jail and giving each other the kiss of peace as they met their end in the amphitheater at Carthage, where they were mauled by wild animals before being beheaded.

Perpetua was a 22-year-old noblewoman and a nursing mother. Felicity, her slave, gave birth to a daughter while they were in prison. Although she was married, Perpetua's husband is conspicuously absent from her diary.

A banner saying “patrons of same sex couples” hangs above Felicity and Perpetua in the colorful icon at the top of this post. It was painted by Maria Cristina, an artist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She paints the two women holding hands in an elegant gesture. The skull of a long-horn cow, similar to paintings of famous New Mexico artist Georgia O’Keefe, adds a welcome bit of Southwestern flavor to the image.

Yale history professor John Boswell names Perpetua and Felicity as one of the three primary pairs of same-sex lovers in the early church. (The others are Polyeuct and Nearchus and Sergius and Bacchus.) The love story of Felicity and Perpetua is told with 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 following icon of the loving same-sex pair. It was painted by Brother Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar and world-class iconographer known for his progressive icons.

Saints Perpetua and Felicity

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

The Lentz version of Perpetua and Felicity 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. It is rare to see an icon about the love between women, especially two African women. The rich reds and heart-shaped double-halo make it look like a holy Valentine.

Felicity and Perpetua by Jim Ru

Artist Jim Ru was inspired to paint Felicity and Perpetua as a kissing couple. His version was displayed in his show “Transcendent Faith: Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered Saints” in Bisbee Arizona in the 1990s.

Irish artist St. George Hare, painted an erotic, romanticized vision of Perpetua and Felicity around 1890. His painting “The Victory of Faith” shows the women as an inter-racial couple sleeping together nude on a prison floor.

“The Victory of Faith” by St. George Hare (Wikimedia Commons)

Their lives are the subject of several recent historical novels, including “Perpetua: A Bride, A Martyr, A Passion

” by Amy Peterson and “The Bronze Ladder

” by Malcolm Lyon.

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Related links:

"Eternal Bliss" - SS Felicity and Perpetua, March 7th (Queer Saints and Martyrs - and Others)

Suspect 3rd Century Women Put to Death in Arena: Ancient Hate Crime? (Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT hate crime victims)

Perpetua y Felicitas: santas patronas de parejas del mismo sexo (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.

March is Women's History Month, so women will be especially highlighted this month at the Jesus in Love Blog.

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 Perpetua and Felicity and many others are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at Trinity Stores

“The Resurrection” by Eny Roland (Courtesy of ArtCenter/South Florida)

Queer new visions of Jesus and the saints are explored by Latino artists in two major art exhibits at museums on both coasts in March:

* “In His Own Likeness” illuminates divinity and its relationship with gender, including sexuality “expressed beyond the hetero norm.” It runs through March 16 at ArtCenter/South Florida in Miami Beach. Tonight (Wed., March 12) a conversation with the curator and special guests will be presented there. The exhibit features four artists from Guatemala, Mexico and Cuba.

* “Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners at the Margins of the Americas” examines sacred figures who walk the fine line between sinfulness and sanctity, including Catholic saints reworked from a lesbian Chicana perspective. It will be on display at the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from March 30 to July 20. The show features work by more than 20 artists from Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina, and the United States.

Details about each exhibit are presented below, along with an exclusive interview with the curator of the Florida show.

In His Own Likeness
“In His Own Likeness” aims to reaffirm all existence as equally divine through its diversity. The exhibit uses the concept of a male God to take a fresh look at men’s power, explore male sexuality and eroticize men as objects of desire for both men and women in the sacred union of the body and spirit.

The exhibit draws its name from the creation story in Genesis 1:27: “God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The scripture itself contains complexities about gender and sexuality..

"The photographs, video, painting and sculpture work together -- and individually -- to show how male sexuality can be expressed beyond the hetero norm that has traditionally defined the 'rules' of gender roles," says curator Marivi Véliz, a contemporary art lecturer specializing in Central and Latin American Art who moved to Miami last year. This is her first exhibition in the United States. Véliz is originally from Cuba with experience curating and lecturing throughout Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, El Salvador and Honduras. In recent years, her focus has been gender studies.

In an interview with Jesus in Love, the curator identified the most frankly homoerotic works in the show as “The Resurrection” and the “Sweet Mortification” series by Guatemalan photographer Eny Roland and “Very, Very Light… and Very Dark: A Police Officer with Alzheimer’s” by Cuban painter Rocio Garcia.

“Bleeding Heart (Sangrado Corazon)” by Eny Roland (Courtesy of ArtCenter/South Florida)

In his 2013 “Sweet Mortifications” series, Roland redefines the standard “Sacred Heart” iconography in which Jesus reveals his physical heart burning in his chest. The artist photographs a Christ figure in a business suit, opening his shirt almost seductively to unveil a heart tattooed on his supple skin. The title “Sangrado Corazon” (Bleeding Heart) is a play on the Spanish phrase Sagrado Corazon (Sacred Heart).

Roland eroticizes Christian imagery in line with the exhibit’s stated purpose of revealing the divinity within the sensual side of human nature. He also critiques Catholicism for imposing a culture of death by celebrating Christ’s Passion and suffering instead of his resurrection, thereby inflicting a sense of sinful guilt that serves as spiritual and social control.

The Christ figure in Roland’s “The Resurrection” is embodied, attractive and alive on every level, uniting sexuality and spirituality. The photo comes from his 2013 “Fabrica de Santos” (Factory of Saints) series.

Eny Roland is a self-taught artist who began his career in Guatemala City as a photojournalist and progressively found himself working with portraiture and urban photography. His photos combine kitsch, pop, religion, and eroticism.

“Very, Very Light… and Very Dark: A Police Officer with Alzheimer’s” by Rocio Garcia. (Courtesy of ArtCenter/South Florida)

Rocio Garcia shows male nudes in a style that echoes ancient Greek pottery in “Very, Very Light… and Very Dark: A Police Officer with Alzheimer’s.” García was born in Santa Clara, Cuba. She received a Master in Fine Arts degree at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia. Internationally acclaimed, Garcia began working with erotic themes in the early 1990s and mostly paints men in sexual tensions.

As curator Véliz drew together a variety of art to examine divinity, gender and power. She discusses the exhibit in an exclusive 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: You say that you wanted the exhibit "to show how male sexuality can be expressed beyond the hetero norm." Please explain more. The focus of the Jesus in Love Blog is LGBTQ spirituality and art, so my readers will want to know: How does this exhibit express the homoerotic?

Marivi Véliz: In many ways, especially the work “Very, Very Light… and Very Dark: A Police Officer with Alzheimer’s” by Rocio Garcia, and the photos in the series “Sweet Mortification” and “The Resurrection” by Eny Roland. In Rocio’s case, it’s very clear because there are no women represented, only men in sexual situations. For Roland, the men (chosen as models in the photos) almost always follow Greco-Roman standards of beauty, and seek to puncture the delicate line between sexual ecstasy and religious ecstasy.

KC: How does the exhibit change the traditional image of Jesus Christ to affirm the whole spectrum of human sexuality?

MV: The exhibition uses the concept of God as man (masculine-macho) to discuss the power that has been bestowed upon males in society, the power from which has been constructed a history of what is beautiful and what is erotic. I wanted to steal this primary power and take hold of it, identifying it, and then proceeding to eroticize the males in the imagery as objects of desire not only for women, but also for men, without instilling any sexual labels, but instead in communion between the erotic and the Divine.

KC: Do any of the artists identify as gay or queer?

MV: Yes, some of them are.

KC: What special insights do Latin American artists bring to the theme of sexuality and spirituality, especially the Christian tradition?

MV: A deep Catholic tradition exists at the very foundation of Latin American culture in general, especially as part of the primary education system in the early years of life and as a tool of repression of the body and sexuality in general. This might help explain the various reinterpretations of martyrdom, resurrection, etc., that are most notable in Roland’s artwork.

Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners at the Margins of the Americas
“Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners at the Margins of the Americas” examines a series of crucial and often counter-cultural spirits at the border between sin and sanctity. In worship and artistic representation alike, these entities both reflect and affect the lives of people who regularly struggle with harsh and frequently dangerous economic, political, legal, geographic, gender, and racial realities.

The exhibit includes three paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Alma López from her ongoing series Queer Santas (Queer Saints): Santa Liberata, Saint Wilgefortis and Santa Lucia. All three of these "virgin saints" resorted to extreme methods to avoid heterosexual marriage.

“Santa Wilgefortis” from “Queer Santas” series by Alma Lopez

Power and womanhood are addressed in the exhibit by works such as López’s Queer Santas and Judithe Hernandez’s Luchadores (Mexican female masked wrestlers). They will discuss their artistic practices, their interest in these figures, and feminism at an “Outspoken Conversation” lecture April 5 at the Fowler Museum.

Lopez is married to author Alicia Gaspar de Alba, who contributed an essay to exhibition catalog. The book will be distributed by the University of Washington Press this spring. Gaspar de Alba’s essay focuses on the work of Lopez, Hernandez, Liliana Wilson and Delilah Montoya.
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Special thanks to Terence Weldon of Queering the Church for the news tip about “In His Own Likeness.”

This post is part of the Artists series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series profiles artists who use lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spiritual and religious imagery.

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

“Traces of His Presence” by Eric Martin

Jesus praised a gay soldier as a model of faith and healed his male lover in the gospels, according to many Bible experts. The soldier, a centurion in the Roman army, is highlighted here today (March 15) for the feast day of Longinus, a centurion at the crucifixion of Jesus.

“Centurion”
by Luc Viatour
www.Lucnix.be

Both Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 tell how a 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.

Jesus was willing to go into the centurion’s house to heal his lover, but the centurion stopped him, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.”

Jesus marveled and told the crowd around him, “Not even in Israel have I found such faith!” To the centurion he said, “Go; be it done for you as you have believed.” And his boyfriend was healed at that moment.

Scholars believe that “boy” was the centurion’s sex partner not only due to the word “pais,” but also because it is unlikely that a soldier would care so much about an ordinary slave. It was common in Greco-Roman culture for mature men to pair up with a young man as his lover.

This interpretation is promoted by LGBT-friendly church groups such as WouldJesusDiscriminate.org and WhyWouldWe.org on billboards stating “Jesus affirmed a gay couple.” For more info, see my previous post, Billboards show gay-friendly Jesus.

The centurion’s story has gotten surprisingly little attention throughout history considering that Jesus himself was impressed by his faith. But the Roman soldier has always been an unlikely role model. Jesus’ contemporaries were probably shocked that the great healer would praise a military man who enforced Roman occupation of their land. Today people may find the centurion unappealing because he may have been quuer, or a slave owner, or both. It was just like Jesus to take someone disreputable and praise them as holy.

Detail from “Healing the Centurion’s Servant” in Mother Stories From the New Testament

by Anonymous, 1906

While the faithful centurion himself is rarely mentioned, his words do live on in a prayer used in many Catholic and Protestant eucharistic liturgies. For example, the prayer immediately before communion at Catholic mass paraphrases his words: “Lord I am not worthy to receive you under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

Saint Longinus, whose feast day is today (March 15) is the centurion who pierced Christ’s side at the crucifixion and declared, “Truly this man was the son of God.” It’s possible that he is the same faithful gay centurion whose beloved boyfriend was healed by Jesus.

Jesus’ healing interaction with the same-sex couple has fascinated artist Eric Martin so much that he created two works based on their story. Martin is a gay poet, artist, and church organist in Burlington, North Carolina. He has a Master of Divinity degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC.

“Traces of His Presence” at the top of this post uses fluid lines and bold red to reveal the face of Christ in the holy space between the centurion and his beloved.

“The Visit” by Eric Martin

Martin takes a more realistic approach in “The Visit.” A rainbow arches behind Jesus as he gazes at the centurion and his pais. Their varied expressions draw the viewer deeper into the drama.

Books that explore the homosexuality of the centurion include:

Jonathan Loved David: Homosexuality in Biblical Times

by Tom Horner

Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey to the Fullness of Life for Gays, Lesbians, and Everybody Else

by John McNeill

The Children Are Free: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence on Same-sex Relationships

by Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley

What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality

by Daniel Helminiak

The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament

by Theodore Jennings

“Jesus Heals a Centurion’s Servant” by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) (Wikimedia Commons)

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Related links:

A gay centurion comes out to Jesus (Gay Christian 101)

Jesus and the centurion (Wild Reed)

Gay centurion (My Queer Scripture)

The centurion of great faith (Homosexuality and Scripture by Pharsea)

Jesus, the centurion, and his lover (Jack Clark Robinson at Gay and Lesbian Review)

When Jesus Healed a Same-Sex Partner by Jay Michaelson (Huffington Post)

The Gay Gospel? (The L Stop)

La Biblia y las personas gays: ¿Es un pecado ser gay? ¿Condena Jesús? (Santos Queer)
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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.

“Avalokitishvara” by Tony O’Connell

“Kwan Yin is Coming” by Stephen Mead

Kuan Yin (also known as Avalokitesvara), the androgynous spirit of compassion in Buddhism, is sometimes thought of as a queer Christ figure or LGBT role model. Buddhists celebrate the birth of Kuan Yin today (March 19 this year).

Writers and scholars who have explored the queer side of Kuan Yin / Avalokitesvara include Patrick S. Cheng, theology professor at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge; Hsiao-Lan Hu, religious studies professor at the University of Detroit Mercy; and Toby Johnson, a former Catholic monk turned author and comparative religion scholar.

In the introduction to his 2003 essay “Kuan Yin: Mirror of the Queer Asian Christ,” Cheng explains:

"Kuan Yin, the Asian goddess of compassion, can serve as a mirror of the queer experience. Specifically, Kuan Yin affirms three aspects in the life of queer people that are often missing from traditional images of the divine: (1) queer compassion; (2) queer sexuality; and (3) gender fluidity. In other words, Kuan Yin can be an important means by which gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people can see ourselves as being made in the image of God."

Cheng writes clearly about the connection between Kuan Yin and Christ in the section where he describes his personal search for queer Asian Christ figures:

"I have been intrigued by the possibility of Kuan Yin serving as a christological figure for queer Asian people. For me, it has been difficult to envision the Jesus Christ of the gospels and the Western Christian tradition as being both queer and Asian (although I do recognize that queer theologians and Asian theologians have tried to do so in their respective areas). It is my thesis that Kuan Yin might serve as a symbol of salvation and wholeness for queer Asian people of faith...."

Click for the whole essay “Kuan Yin: Mirror of the Queer Asian Christ” in English or in Spanish.

Cheng's latest book Rainbow Theology: Bridging Race, Sexuality, and Spirit was published in 2013. He is also the author of “From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ

”, “Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology

.” His series on “Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People Today” was one of the most popular stories of 2010 at the Jesus in Love Blog.

Hsiao-Lan Hu presented a paper on “Queering Avalokiteśvara” at the 2012 American Academy of Religion annual meeting. She noted that the Lotus Sutra says that Avalokitesvara will appear to teach different beings in different forms, based on what they can accept.

In the summary of her paper, Hu writes, “Of the 33 forms listed in the Lotus Sutra, 7 are explicitly female, indicating that the Bodhisattva of Compassion transcends gender identity…. What is the theoretical ground in the Buddhadharma (Buddha’s teaching) that justify or even propel such conceptualization? How does that theoretical ground compare to modern-day queer theory?”

She summed up her paper in the 2013 Women’s and Gender Studies Newsletter from the University of Detroit Mercy: “Avalokiteśvara's multi-morphic manifestation affirms different beings in their specific identities, while his/her transformability points to the possibility of moving beyond the confinement of any particular identity. For people of minority identities, the Bodhisattva thus can be both a source of comfort and a model for coping with reality in which they often need to perform different roles.”

Hu is the author of This-Worldly Nibbana: A Buddhist-Feminist Social Ethic for Peacemaking in the Global Community.

Another LGBT perspective on Kuan Yin is provided by Toby Johnson in Kuan Yin: Androgynous spirit of compassion, which he wrote for the Jesus in Love Blog. Johnson begins by retelling the traditional story of Kuan Yin. Then he explains that it is “a nice myth for gay people” because:

"It says we’re really all One, all reflections of one another, that the distinction between male and female is illusory and needs to be transcended and that transcending gender is part and parcel with experiencing heaven now."

A student of Joseph Campbell, Johnson has written 10 books, including the classic Gay Spirituality

and Two Spirits

. He is production manager of Lethe Press and former editor of White Crane Journal. Johnson discusses Kuan Yin as an androgynous figure who embodies compassion in his articles “Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara” and “Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.”

Queer theologian Robert Shore-Goss applies the bodhisattva concept to queer Christian life in “Bodhisattva Christianity: A Case of Multiple Religious Belonging” in the 2013 book “Queering Christianity: Finding a Place at the Table for LGBTQI Christians.” Goss is pastoring Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley (North Hollywood, CA) after serving as chair of the religious studies department at Webster University in St. Louis.

Images of Kuan Yin posted here were created by Tony O’Connell, Stephen Mead and William Hart McNichols. Mead is a gay artist and poet based in New York whose work has appeared internationally in cyberspace, books, and galleries. McNichols is a New Mexico artist and Catholic priest who has been criticized by church leaders for making LGBT-friendly icons of saints not approved by the church. His icons have been commissioned by churches, celebrities and national publications.

O’Connell is a gay artist based in Liverpool. Raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, he has been a practicing Buddhist since 1995. He creates an artwork celebrating Avalokitishvara / Kuan Yin every year on his/her birthday

“There is an amazing statue of him in Liverpool museum with a text that explains how the mustache was painted over to alter his gender as the people who met the monks on the spice routes from India struggled with the idea of a manifestation of compassion being male and wanted to see him as female. It occurs to me that there are subtle ranges of the same personality between Avalokitishvara, Kuan Yin and Tara as one gender ambiguous enlightened mind,” O’Connell said.

For more about Tony O’Connell and his art, see my previous posts Reclaiming sainthood: Gay artist Tony O’Connell finds holiness in LGBT people and places and Olympics: Spiritual art supports Russia’s LGBT rights struggle.

Update: An in-depth discussion of this post is underway on my Facebook page with various people adding valuable background info on Kuan Yin and his/her many incarnations:

Post by Kittredge Cherry.

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Related links:

“Korean Christ” icon by Robert Lentz

“Christ Sophia” by Br. Michael Reyes, OFM (Christ with Chinese characters and lotus blossom)

Art by He Qi

Kuan Yin: Espejo del Cristo queer asiático by Patrick Cheng

_________
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.

Epiphany: Queer eye for the Magi

Jeanne Manford: PFLAG founder who loved her gay son

Remembering Otis Charles, first mainstream bishop to come out as gay

Aelred of Rievaulx: Gay saint of friendship

Saint Sebastian: History’s first gay icon

David Kato: Ugandan LGBT rights activist

Holocaust Remembrance: We all wear the triangle

Brigid and Darlughdach: Celtic saint loved her female soulmate

RIP Archbishop Mark Shirilau: Founder of global church welcoming LGBTs

Olympics: Spiritual art supports Russia’s LGBT rights struggle

Top 10 LGBT spiritual arts stories of 2013 named

Brothers by affection: Saints Polyeuct and Nearchus

Marcella Althaus-Reid : Saint of a sexually embodied spirituality

Homoerotic interfaith poetry book explores “lust for the holy”

Peter Gomes: Gay black Harvard minister preached "scandalous gospel"

Ash Wednesday: Queer martyrs rise from the ashes

Perpetua and Felicity: Patron saints of same-sex couples

Art museums explore queer Christian themes in new exhibits

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

Kuan Yin: A queer Buddhist Christ figure