This is a test
- 208 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
To date, no book has systematically examined the theological writings of LGBT people of color. Nor has any book explored how such writings might actually transform contemporary theological reflections on race and sexuality. This book remedies these gaps by constructing a rainbow theology around the theme of bridging or mediation. Rainbow Theology is the first book to reflect upon the theological significance of the intersections of race and queer sexuality across multiple ethnic and cultural groups. This is particularly important in light of the current polarizing debates over issues of race, sexuality, and religion within churches and communities of faith around the world.
Frequently asked questions
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoâs features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youâll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weâve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes, you can access Rainbow Theology by Patrick S. Cheng in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & Theology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Topic
Theology & ReligionSubtopic
TheologyPart I
Race, Sexuality, and Spirit
Chapter 1
Queer of Color Theologies
For the last three years, Iâve had the privilege of serving as a mentor at the Human Rights Campaign Summer Institute at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. Each summer, the HRC Summer Institute brings together fifteen talented doctoral and advanced masterâs degree students who do work in LGBTIQ theology and religious studies. The students live and study together for a week, and they have a chance to network among themselves as well as with prominent scholars from across the country who are doing similar work in LGBTIQ theology and religious studies.
For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of serving as a mentor at the HRC Summer Institute has been working with queer students of color who are interested in the intersections of race, sexuality, and spirituality. Over the years, Iâve had the chance to work closely with many LGBTIQ and allied Black, Asian American, and Latina/o students, and itâs been interesting to observe how many similaritiesâand differencesâthere are in terms of our research agendas.
For example, in 2012 the LGBTIQ and allied scholars of color at the HRC Summer Institute worked on a dizzying variety of projects, including the reclaiming of queer Black voices in the Civil Rights Movement, examining how LGBTIQ Asian Americans use religion as a means for decolonization and healing, studying the religious lives of LGBTIQ Muslims, examining methods of Latin American queer biblical interpretation, rethinking sexual ethics in Korean American churches, recording and archiving oral histories from queer spiritual leaders, analyzing the practices of radically welcoming spiritual communities with respect to race and sexuality, studying the work of North American Two-Spirit activists, and examining notions of sexual purity in the context of global sex trafficking.
This experience of working with younger queer scholars of color across different racial and ethnic groups has led me to think deeply about whether it is possibleâor even desirableâto construct a queer of color theology.1 On the one hand, all of us share an acute awareness of the ways in which issues of race and sexuality mutually reinforce each other with respect to oppression. On the other hand, these scholars each have very different research topics, methodologies, faith traditions, and communities of accountability. So is it possible to construct a queer of color theology? It is to this question that we now turn.
1. Is âQueer of Colorâ a Valid Category?
Is it even possible to talk about a queer of color theology? On the one hand, the very notion of queer is to âdenaturalize or de-essentialize formerly stable identities such as homosexuality, heterosexuality, race, nationality, woman, and man.â2 In other words, the term âqueerââat least in the academic discipline of queer theoryâchallenges notions of fixed identity. It would seem, therefore, that using a term such as âqueer of colorâ is to reinforce ânaturalâ identity categories, and not to further the understanding that such categories are socially constructed. As such, it would seem that the term âqueer of colorâ is highly problematic.
Furthermore, it could be argued that the use of the term âqueer of colorâ as an umbrella term for LGBTIQ people of color does violenceâmetaphorically speakingâto the particular social contexts for each subgroup (for example, queer Asian Americans) within the umbrella. That is, it is important for any given marginalized group to name itself and come to voice about its own particular experiences. Take, for example, the parallel example of womanist theology. Womanist theology arose out of the fact that neither Black (male) liberation theology nor (white) feminist theology spoke to the experiences of African American women. Thus, to use the broader categories of âBlack theologyâ or âfeminist theologyâ would fail to honor the womanist experience.
In my view, the âqueer of colorâ category is an important one, and I believe that the above objections to its use can be addressed in a number of ways. First, Gayatri Spivakâs notion of strategic essentialism can be helpful with respect to the issue of fixed identity. That is, it is possible to speak about âqueers of colorâ for strategic purposesâsuch as in the context of âstruggles for liberation from the effects of colonial and neocolonial oppressionââwithout reinscribing essentialist notions of identity.3 For example, an April 2012 report by the Center for American Progress shows that LGBTIQ people of color are often the very ones who are âleft behindâ with respect to educational attainment, economic insecurity, and health disparities.4 Thus, it is vitally important to speak about âqueers of color,â as long as we do so in a strategic manner.
Second, with respect to the umbrella term issue (that is, whether the category of âqueer of colorâ does violence to its subgroups), it can be argued that âqueer of colorâ does in fact serve a useful function while also honoring the experiences of its various subgroups. There are in fact important similarities among the work done by LGBTIQ scholars of color across racial and ethnic boundaries. For example, there is a deep âfamily resemblance,â to cite the philosopher Ludwig Wittgensteinâs work on language theory, with respect to this scholarship.5 This can be seen in the secular academy in which a âqueer of color critiqueâ movement has arisen among LGBTIQ scholars of color. This movement has recognized the importance of bringing together similar voices while also preserving their differences.6 Thus, it makes sense to look more closely at queer of color work as its own category.
Third, it may be the case that âqueer of colorâ is less about an identityâthat is, constructing yet another identity-based theologyâand more about positionality. That is, LGBTIQ people of color share a unique âin betweenâ position with respect to both the queer community and communities of color, and thus may actually require a unique signifier that discusses the specific issues that arise out of this social location. For all of these reasons, I believe that âqueer of colorâ is a valid category that canâand mustâbe used.
2. Shared Scholarly Heritage
In addition to the above theoretical issues, LGBTIQ people of color also share a common genealogy, or heritage, with respect to scholarly writings about living at the intersections of race and sexuality. Although this genealogy is not as widely known as the more âcanonicalâ works in queer theory by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and David M. Halperin, this history of queer of color scholarship does in fact exist and can help LGBTIQ people of color find a sense of community and belonging.
In the 1970s, there were few, if any, writings by LGBTIQ people of color about their experiences. As Barbara Smith wrote in her groundbreaking 1977 essay, âToward a Black Feminist Criticism,â it was âunprecedentedâ and âdangerousâ to write about the Black lesbian experience because âthese things have not been doneâ by Black men, by white feminists, or even by Black women.7 Smith writes poignantly: âI finally want to express how much easier both my waking and my sleeping hours would be if there were one book in existence that would tell me something specific about my life.â8
In the thirty-five years following the publication of Smithâs essay, however, there have been many books written about the queer of color experience. These books include anthologies on the queer Asian American experience such as Q&A: Queer in Asian America (1998);9 the queer Black experience such as The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality in Black Communities (2000);10 the queer Latina/o experience such as Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader (2011);11 and the Two-Spirit Indigenous experience such as Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Litera...
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part IâRace, Sexuality, and Spirit
- Part IIâRainbow Theology
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author