The Reformation Project and Queer Theology
We are all working for liberation right? ...Right?
I am not a Professional Theologian (TM) but I do write about and engage with theology a lot and I do that work as a queer woman. In that capacity I have now co-authored and had published, three journal articles at the intersection of psychology and theology, one of which is titled Queering as Eucontaminant Reorganization1 and which draws heavily on Queer Theology and Queer Theory together with other theological traditions.
I was therefore, somewhat concerned Wednesday when a friend brought my attention to a recent statement from The Reformation Project that works to sharply distinguish their theology and project from “Queer Theology”.
This was particularly alarming to me because I have a lot of respect for Matthew Vines (the founder and primary voice behind The Reformation Project) even though I know that he and I don’t see eye to eye on everything theologically. His book God and the Gay Christian is one that I recommend regularly to people who are Evangelical and are looking for ways to explore the possibility of affirming their lesbian, gay, or bi/pan loved ones. It is accessible and makes the argument in favor of same sex marriage in clear and compelling ways. I deeply appreciated his scholarship back when I was writing responses to people like Preston Sprinkle on the subject of same-sex marriage. I have known for a while now that Vines and I have somewhat different approaches to theology but our core spiritual commitments (I am Anabaptist, basically orthodox in my Christian beliefs, and fully affirm the Nicaean and Apostles’ Creeds) remain the same. Further I know that The Reformation Project has done a lot of really good work helping LGBT Christians and their families and I am grateful for that work. So this statement took me aback.
I do encourage you to go read the statement but I also hope you will come back so that I can talk about it.
Before I get into my concerns with The Reformation Project's statement, let me paint a broad picture of how I do theology:
What is Theology?
Theology is pretty basically “thinking or reasoning about God”. And there are a lot of ways to go about it, from working as a Professional Theologian within certain specific schools of Theology, to what pastor Trey Fergusun has helpfully called theologizin’ which he defines as:
[T]o value the art of speculation. Theologizin’ is theorizing about theological subjects. It’s to wrestle with the attributes of God and God’s relation to the universe and creation. It’s the pursuit of a truth you’re confident you’ll never fully capture. When you theologize, you give religious significance to the stories you share and prioritize.
You should probably go buy that book and then come back.
When I go about doing theology I find it helpful to draw from a number of different approaches and traditions. I am personally a huge fan of Womanist and Black Liberation Theologies as well as Latin American Liberation Theologies and I read those thinkers and work to integrate their insights into my understanding of God, the Church, and Christian Tradition. I believe that both the post-colonial and disability theological traditions have a lot to offer us. I find Feminist Theologies to be incredibly helpful and I still draw a lot on my own training in the “cannon” of Western civilization and love to draw on the reflections and insights of some of those classic theologians as well as more recent Protestant and Evangelical Theologies. I am not personally much of a fan of the 19th century Liberal Theological tradition but I have definitely read and appreciated insights from some of it’s practitioners. And I appreciate and draw on Queer Theologies2.
In short, there are a lot of tools and a lot of methods for doing Theology (and for theologizin’) and I am a big big fan of using as many as are helpful and can offer insights and can demolish barriers that set themselves up between us and God. And using those theological traditions, systems, or frameworks doesn’t mean subscribing to every single tenet of the theories, dogmas, or frameworks that they emerged from. As a matter of fact I have specific and sometimes pointed disagreements with the total philosophies behind each of those theological traditions. Some regular people and some academic or popular theologians work predominantly within a particular tradition and that can be good and worthy work. Other people, like me, finding no one theological tradition to be adequate, chose to draw on the insights and methods of a broad swath of theological schools and traditions.
What Problem do they have with Queer Theology?
In the short piece and in the longer talk that it links to, The Reformation Project takes aim at Queer Theology in ways that go beyond simply saying it isn’t a tool that they are drawn to or that they find particularly useful.
In the following I am going to work more from Matthew Vine’s presentation Expressive Individualism, Queer Theology, and Our Identity in Christ which is embedded in the post because it is more comprehensive than the statement from The Reformation Project.
Vines is not a fan of revolution. He makes a point of arguing that queer theory (and thus queer theology which is based in queer theory) seeks not to improve existing systems but to overturn them. Vines contrasts this “revolution” (which he seems to read as something akin to Nietzsche's transvaluation of values) with his own organization’s “Reformation” saying that a reformation seeks to change (either significantly or slightly) the existing system while revolution seeks to burn down the existing system in order to start again. In this he is both accurate in one way and mistaken in another, and in both cases I find I have to take issue with him.
Starting with where Vines is mistaken, he is (I believe unknowingly) equivocating between “normal” and “normative” and, to be fair to Vines, that does likely seem like a ridiculous difference to make anything out of. Unfortunately the difference in use and deployment of those terms within the academic philosophical conversation and within queer theory specifically really does matter.3 Whereas “normal” is used in queer theology and queer theory in pretty much the standard way—though it is viewed with suspicion—“normative” on the other hand, brings in a sense of (oppressive) power over those who are not included within “the normative”. For that reason Queer Theory’s rejection of the “normative” is honestly somewhat indifferent to the “normal”4. Queer Theory and Theology set themselves against the normative as an oppressive power which harms people by destroying their particularities and forcing conformity to “norms” which exist to perpetuate exiting power structures.
This mistake—conflating “normativity” and “normal”—I think exaggerates my frustration with Vines on this point but it is a frustration that likely would still exist even if he corrected this mistake. I am uncomfortable with Vine’s sense that “the system” is necessarily worth protecting and his choice in presenting and posting this piece to set himself squarely on the side of preservation (albeit with some important liberative changes) of the system. Now I get where a person could be justifiably uncomfortable with a demand to “burn it down” but ruling out a total revolution if reformation turns out to have been inadequate is, by my lights, too hasty. And that is something I say a fully creedal and orthodox Christian. It seems to me that reformation is grand so long as, at the end of the day, if it turns out that the system simply will not expand to include all that are unjustly marginalized and excluded, revolution has to be on the table. After all, the line between reformation and revolution are not as clear cut as Vines makes them out to be. The two exist along a spectrum of resistance to what currently exist and the degree to which the old is preserved in the emergence of the new is going to be a matter of degrees and will not always be clear. But to take revolution permanently off the table is—I don’t see how to avoid this conclusion—to chose the system over the wellbeing of individual marginalized people and that strikes me as contrary to the Way of Jesus.
It Comes Down To Respectability
And here is where I, in turn, do actually have a real concern with Matthew Vines and what he had to say in his post and presentation. It comes through a little in the piece from The Reformation Project but is hard to miss in Vines’ talk: the idea that the Queer Theology people are actually making the work of The Reformation Project harder and that if we are just talking about Queer Theology folks, then the non-affirming Christians have some pretty valid concerns and the problem is that they keep conflating the good Affirming Theology Gay* Christians with the troublesome Queer Theology Queer Christians. In short, Matthew dipped into respectability politics. And he didn’t have to do that.
Cards on the table: I am not a respectability kinda girl
A dear, dear friend of mine (he/they) who was out long before I was made a profound impact on the way I think about myself and my work as a queer Christian when they responded to someone at their Church whom he was confronting over homophobic statements and who had tried to console them by saying that they weren’t talking about him and that he was one of the good ones. He responded directly and immediately with “I am not one of the ‘good ones’”, refusing to be counted among the “righteous”. I have witnessed few such acts of Jesus-likeness.
These days I am nearly always read as queer in some way (until I start talking people have trouble deciding what gender bucket to put me in). I have friends who describe my look as “anarcho-queer mom vibes” and I honestly love that. At the personal level, respectability doesn’t work for me because who I am just doesn’t tend to fit in very well with normative—there’s that word again—social conventions. Even when I dress up fancy for a formal occasion—It isn’t a matter of training, I know which spoon to use for the sorbet course—I just don’t come across as a “person who respects cultural binary expectations around femininity and decorum.”
Without shutting down modes of expression which are deeply embedded in who I am, respectability just isn’t an option to me. So on one level this critique is a little fraught since it comes from someone for whom “respectability politics” really isn’t a temptation. Still, when experienced, it is a temptation and not a virtue. In fact respectability is a temptation that Jesus regularly resisted while disrupting the social and cultural expectations of his peers is something he seems to have delighted in. From washing his disciple’s feet himself, to eating with people he wasn’t supposed to, to welcoming a “sinful woman” into the house of a religious leader, to telling parables about a King inviting beggars and riff-raff to his banquet, Jesus was a big practitioner of normativity-disruption.
Granted (and Matthew Vines recognizes this in his talk) Jesus disrupted norms when and as those norms served to oppress those who ought to be included. Vines seems to be of the opinion that he is able to know who those people are, that the structures which enforce exclusion and marginalization are not fundamentally bad so much as they merely need new, more Jesus-y boundaries. I have written recently about centered-set vs. bounded-set churches both in this essay and in this paper for the Journal of Psychology and Theology, and the distinction between them is at issue here. Whereas center-set Christiatnities focus on drawing closer to Jesus as their driving characteristic, bounded-set Christianities focus on determining and defending the border between “us” and “them”. Vines’ presentation and statements here would seem to put him solidly in what we might call a “generous bounded set” camp. He is professedly unwilling to commit to a revolution in model (i.e. switching from bounded to centered sets) but does want to see the boundary expanded to include more types of people (in this case LGBT Christians). And that leaves each of us with a choice in how we are going to understand Jesus’ actions, and our own approach to church. When Jesus violated the normative was he saying that the system that creates that normativity was itself a problem or was he just telling people in his particular cultural and historical context that their norms needed to be broadened? I am convinced that the former is the case; from what I have read, Vines would say the latter.
On a very very pragmatic and grounded level this is concerning because it makes it hard to know where The Reformation Project actually stands as regards those of us who are further from the Evangelical boundary than Vines is. Vines does mention trans people in an affirming way at least once in his talk but, well, some trans people are a lot closer to acceptable to cis-hetero-amato-normative society than others are. Despite their use of the LGBTQ+ acronym on their website and in their material there are a lot of queer people today who might reasonable wonder whether The Reformation Project is actually in support of them5: non-binary people, gender fluid and agender folx, asexual and aromantic people, and even pansexual people for instance might all be reasonably more cautious towards them today than they might have been a week ago.
For me this is, and should be, a problem. If I am “not a respectability kind of girl” my intersex and non-binary friends don’t even have the option of forcing themselves into a mold that would be acceptable to a society built around the illusion of binary sex and gender. My asexual and aromantic friends will continue to be erased and implicitly (or explicitly) shamed for not doing family and community in amatonormative ways. And that is heartbreaking.
And again, this is a theological disagreement. Granted it is a significant disagreement but why am I saying that this one is a problem for me? Because it is a matter of posture and of disappointed expectation. I had thought that The Reformation Project and I had basically the same goal: The freedom for which Christ has set us free i.e. liberation. By situating The Reformation Project as fundamentally bounded set—even generous bounded set—and by notably excluding those who are even greater violators of the Evangelical non-affirming normative that Vines and his cohort are, The Reformation Project is setting itself against the liberation of…well..me and the people I care about: those who are experienced as subversive just by being ourselves in a cis-hetero-allo-normative society. They didn’t have to do that. The Reformation Project has a beautiful ministry to people who are theologically and culturally conservative helping them to tear down the boundaries they have set up between themselves and God’s precious queer children. If they would have just focused on that and not turned around to those same boundary makers with “and of course you should let us in but we need to keep them out” then they would have continued as welcome partners in this work.
The long term and historic tendency of boundaries is not that they expand but that they contract.
And, calling to mind C.S. Lewis’ “law of first and second things” (we only get second things when we put first things first, putting second things first inevitably leads to the loss of both first and second things) while this approach is likely to work in a limited way in the short term, buying The Reformation Project more positive attention from other bounded set Christians and maybe even convincing them to expand their boundaries a bit, in the long term it is going to fail. LGBT Christians will always be in the minority and by reaffirming the sense that these conservative Christians have that the boundary is an important focal point, Vines and The Reformation Project are only strengthening the preconditions for their own eventual re-exclusion. The long term and historic tendency of boundaries is not that they expand but that they contract. Progress and liberation happen when boundaries are dismantled.
Some Concluding Fragments
I want to conclude by stating or restating a few loosely connected thoughts to help clarify where I am coming from and decrease misunderstanding.
What do I personally think about Queer Theology and Queer Theory?
I think that both are useful analytic frameworks and that, like all frameworks, they have their limitations but are just right in certain contexts. To get specific, I am not a big fan of the poststructuralist tendency of both of them to reduce everything to a power-dynamic because I don’t like totalizing narratives. But since power dynamics are routinely overlooked I also think they provide us is vital insight into issues of abuse, oppression, and embedded power structures as regards question of sexuality and gender.
I do think that The Sacred is a meaningful category and I think that it is generally appropriate to show respect in the context of The Sacred. For that reason I am occasionally deeply uncomfortable with some of the transgressive statements made and actions taken by hard-core queer theology folx. At the same time I am also in agreement with C.S. Lewis that “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses”6 and that there can be a time and place for distressing the comfortable by violating Sacred spaces in order to overthrow unjust systems which seek to deny the dignity and sacredness of Persons. I don’t think Queer Theorists or Queer Theologians always get this right but I do want to ask people to explore the context of some of their more troubling statements before coming to a conclusion. Risk eucontamination by what might seem to you to be profane.
You have said that you are basically orthodox and creedal, what do yo mean?
I affirm both the Nicaean and Apostles’ Creeds without any reservation. I am a thoroughgoing supernaturalist; I believe in miracles, a historical Jesus and that His death and resurrection really occurred at a particular moment in space time. I also believe that “God is queer” is a more accurate statement than “God is straight/allo/cis”, I believe that queerness is a blessing that God has given to humanity, and I am a Christian Universalist. So I am great on the basics but admittedly I am non-standard beyond the “basics”.
Do you want people to cancel Matthew Vines or The Reformation Project?
No.
I do hope that LGBTQIA+ reaction to their statement opens up space for them to reconsider and engage in dialogue with those of us whose vision for the community is more liberative.
Then what do you want for Matthew Vines?
I want Matthew Vines to flourish. Insofar as Vines is doing phenomenal work against the boundaries of the non-affirming church, I support him and I would encourage anyone else to support him. And at the same time I want Matthew Vines to reconsider a lot of what (I hope) are his hasty conclusions about Queer Theology, to recognize that his material at the least gives the strong impression that he has embraced a version of respectability politics that has the effect of deepening the oppression of those more marginalized than Vines himself, and to retract and clarify his position. I don’t know Vines personally but we do have several mutual friends and I want to remind everyone that stigma is generally bad and that spreading stigma to people who choose to retain relationships is not a healthy practice. Don’t go hating on people who boost and share the good elements of Vines’ work. And at the same time, please be aware of the fact that people who are currently deeply hurt by Vines and The Reformation Project have good reason for feeling that way. That degree of nuance and tension are difficult but you can do it!
I will get into this more later in the essay but many of these theological traditions are better described not in the singular (e.g. Liberation Theology) but in the plural (Liberation Theologies) as there are many variations and conversations that are always going on within each tradition. This is especially true of Queer theologies due to the nature of that tradition.
And here again I am sympathetic to Vines. As a product of the larger structuralist and then poststructuralist project, Queer theory is almost hopelessly arcane. It likes to play with puns, and word play, and delights in repurposing the ordinary use of terms in specialized ways, and while that can be really frustrating “from the outside” it is actually very much in line with the overall philosophical project—they aren’t so much being intentionally obtuse as obtuseness is a fundamental ingredient in what they are doing. To make things even worse, theorists will often equivocate between “normal” and “normative” as well such that it can require pretty extensive familiarity with the writer and the “conversation” they see their work as contributing to to understand which of the two they are referring to in any given instance.
albeit a queer theorist will very much want to deconstruct your idea of what is “normal” and why you think of it as “normal” and what value you attach to something’s being “normal” but it is not necessarily at odds with the things you happen to have classified as normal unless they are oppressive.
Communities that are still marginalized and which might be viewed as “LGBTQIA+ adjacent” insofar as their liberation is closely and historically linked such as polyamorous people and sex workers had already been defined out of The Reformation Project’s range of interest and advocacy.
From The Weight of Glory
I always learn so much from your writing! In addition to absorbing new information I saw a celebration of respectful dialogue.
Yes all of this. When I talk about destroying things, I mean systems like amatonormativity. The inner constraints. But I say it from a rootedness in my tradition, connection to my spiritual ancestors and with deep reverence for their steps that brought me here.