The Indecent Theologies of Marcella Althaus-Reid

Voices from Asia and Latin America

Lisa Isherwood, Hugo Córdova Quero, Lisa Isherwood, Hugo Córdova Quero

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000335385
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Theology & Religion
• Categoria: Christian Theology

This book celebrates the legacy of theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid (1952?2009), and her particular influence in Asia and South America. Her work has served as a significant source of inspiration to many scholars, ministers, and activists challenging heteronormative theologies, but her sudden death in 2009 cut short the nascent and elegant theological thought for which she so valued.

Contributors to this book succinctly investigate aspects of the vast work of Althaus-Reid by discussing issues of gender, race, and sexuality in Asia and South America, utilising the liberation, queer and indecent theologies she espoused. Each chapter demonstrates how her legacy is alive and thriving today, but also points towards to the potential future impact of her prolific theological output.

By highlighting the ground-breaking work of Althaus-Reid, this book will serve as a key reference for scholars of Liberation, Queer and Indecent Theology, as well as Asian and Latinx religions.

1 Dirty Martini

Toasting with Marcella Althaus-Reid

Ana Ester Pádua Freire

Introduction: Separating the ingredients¹

A bar is a place for meetings; and also for avoidances. There are upscale bars, which have their audience very restricted. On the other hand, there are tacky bars where anyone can enter. This paper is about the latter: a communal space for everyone, where when you do not have money for a drink, there is always someone to help you pay the bill. In that type of bar—where friends meet and there is the possibility of meeting new people—one can also find some lonely people who prefer to drink alone. However, in those places, they are never really alone. There is always a festive mood, where loud music mingles with the exalted conversations from people at the next table. Among all these people, there is one person that stands out: the bartender. S/he stays there all night, making drinks, listening to the conversations, and earning tips. Making a drink requires not only knowledge but also intuition. Creating a cocktail can be considered as an art—the same with doing theology.

Marcella Althaus-Reid's understanding of theology is of an “incoherent art.” Art is the creative manifestation of human beings. Coming from the Latin term ars, art is the ability to create something. Althaus-Reid creates—or recreates—her image of God and she allows God to be found incarnated and full of desires. The desires of the God-human meet the human-God, who, through its corporeality, understands the world. The incoherent art of Althaus-Reid is created amid moral tension. To dare to toast with God is the invocation of an intimacy that touches the limits established by hegemonic Christianity. The hegemonic Christian tradition places God on a throne, and a theological artistic boldness drinks with that God.

Between the bartender's drink and the theology of Althaus-Reid lays the intimate desire of an encounter with the queer theologian who marked her generation. This chapter is the celebration of that desire. Finding in the theology of Althaus-Reid the foundations for a legitimate experience of faith is one of the pleasures that the research provides. In this way, through the analysis of the first queer worship service of the Metropolitan Community Church of Belo Horizonte—hereinafter cited as “MCC BH”—I seek to understand how Althaus-Readian theology continues to live not only in theory but also finds practical spaces of decolonial resistance in Latin America.

To do so, I first present a brief account of the foundation of MCC BH and the journey that led the denomination to a queer experience that transformed the church space into a bar. Then, through an analysis of the “principle of the theological perversion” of Althaus-Reid, I provide grounds that substantiate the experience proposed by that community. Cheers!

Metropolitan Community Church of Belo Horizonte: Preparing the drink

Founded in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, in 2006 (Rossetti, 2016), MCC BH is part of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC) initiated by Reverend Troy Perry in 1968 in the city of Los Angeles, California. With more than 50 years of existence, UFMCC is present in 33 countries, and its history of inclusion has consolidated the denomination as a reference for the fight of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights.

In Brazil, the history of the foundation of the denomination is full of obstacles, especially if it is perceived from the point of view of the denomination in Rio de Janeiro, which went through some processes of rupture and discontinuity. According to Rossetti (2016), the first aspirations for the formation of an MCC group on Brazilian soil occurred in the 1980s. However, the first date appointed by the historians for the implantation of an MCC in Brazil was 1991, when Isabel Pires de Amorim, a diplomat, and pastor ordained by the MCC of Los Angeles, began organizing a group in Brasilia, the capital of the country. This group, however, soon dissolved.

In 2003, a group of young people from Rio de Janeiro proposed to organize an MCC meeting in that city. Led by Rev. Marcos Gladstone—currently Senior Pastor of Contemporary Christian Church²—the group contacted international MCC leaders to facilitate the holding of the First MCC Conference in Brazil. The conference took place in Rio de Janeiro in 2003, and the denomination established interim pastoral leaders.³ In 2006, motivated by the Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, in Porto Alegre, the then Regional Elder for Latin America, Darlene Garner, and the Moderator of the denomination, Nancy Wilson, traveled to Brazil. The presence of the two leaders in Brazil made possible the First Conference of Formation of Leadership of the Metropolitan Community Churches in Brazil, held in São Paulo.

This period marked the foundation of five MCC local churches: Bettel in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Fortaleza, Vitória, and Belo Horizonte. It is noteworthy that this is the official date for the presence of the denomination in the country, because—despite several attempts of implantations before that date—only since 2006 has the denomination existed without discontinuities.⁴

Among the Brazilian churches, MCC BH—object of this paper—stands out. I chose that church because I have been a member of that community since 2015. At the time, from my initial visits, I was overwhelmed by the liturgical practices that subverted the logic expected in any other Christian church. MCC BH self-identifies as a church affirming diversity, with all of its members being sexual dissidents. Although a small church—around twenty members—it has already achieved a good reputation in the city throughout its 13 years of existence. The church has created solidarity networks with civil society through representative groups of LGBTI people.

Queer worship: Filling the cup

The understanding of Christianity by the MCC BH goes through moments of openness that make its liturgical experience unique. One example is the questioning of gender issues by the so-called “MCC Delas” program.⁵ Considering that Christian spaces are predominantly masculine, in the attempt to subvert an ideology in which women do not have space to play key leadership roles, MCC Brazil has created a project of feminine leadership. The “MCC Delas” program was a national project of the MCCs, started on April 7, 2012, as a suggestion by the Moderator, Reverend Elder Nancy Wilson, in São Paulo. Initially, it would be a worship service that would happen once a month in which the leadership would be in the hands of the women. The project sought to make possible not only the discussion of gender but also the insertion of women in spaces to which they would not be traditionally visible.

Gender, as a category of analysis, seeks to recount the stories of women, under the bias of patriarchal oppression. Therefore, the importance of this perspective is clear when dealing with patriarchy, since the use of gender as a category of analysis seeks to unmask the patriarchal structures present in religions. The relationship between feminism and patriarchy is so intertwined that it is possible to find the concept of patriarchy in the very definition of feminism, as bell hooks (2000) states. According to that author, “feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. […] The movement is not about being anti-male. It makes it clear that the problem is sexism” (hooks, 2000: 8–9). For hooks, the best definition of sexism, when institutionalized, is patriarchy.

According to Schüssler-Fiorenza (2009), “man is the paradigmatic human being who is the center of androcentric societies, cultures, and religions; the woman is the Other” (p. 132). The author explains that:

patriarchy builds structural and institutional relations of domination. […] This concept is developed as an instrument to identify and challenge the social and ideological structures that allowed men to dominate and exploit women throughout recorded history. (Schüssler-Fiorenza, 2009: 133)

However, it is necessary to clarify that women are not only the objects and the victims of male domination, they are also to some extent “complacent” agents of God's will, wishing to live in the service of men's well-being (Schüssler-Fiorenza, 2009). In this sense, women could mean a place of conflicting discourses.

Schüssler-Fiorenza (2009) points out some questions that must be taken into account when thinking about patriarchy. First, patriarchy does not concern only the relations of subordination established between men and women. Men also occupy unequal positions of domination, for example, white men over black men. On the other side, women also exert power over women, as white women over black women, or white women over black men. Thus, an analysis of patriarchy from the category of gender is only one of many dimensions of a complex system of domination marked by intersectionality.

Gender discussions allowed the “MCC Delas” program to take place every last Sunday of the month, between the years 2012 and 2018. Although the proposal was to create spaces for a more prominent role for women, it was later perceived that—due to queer theology and new individuals joining the group—the original project needed some adjustments. The binarism “man/woman” did not meet the demands of the church members. Some of them came to regard themselves as non-binary people and, therefore, claimed space in that worship service because they understood that they could transit in a realm dedicated to women. Other people who dressed as drag queens also demanded a space among women. It is noteworthy that drag queens do not relate to a specific identity, but the construction of a character. In other words, they inscribe within the art realm, configuring themselves as part of theater shows or performances (Amanajás, 2018).

Within that environment of tension, the church proposed an innovative worship service—markedly plural and interconfessional—through which they sought to break away with gender binarisms. The movement that took the community to create that suitable experience of spirituality was not only based on the emergence of new theological subjects who did not fit into the binary “man/woman” but also on the intellectual formation lived by that community. Through the use of books, films, and talks, the community appropriated queer studies to the point of wanting to experience “the queer” as a theological possibility. Thus, on August 30, 2015, an innovative worship service took place that vindicated the insertion of new theological subjects in the liturgy of the church. I transcribe below a text read during that ceremony:

At that time, Jesus was walking between Trianon Park and the MASP Museum, and crowds were all over the street, gays, lesbians, transgender people, bisexuals, blacks, heterosexuals, a fluid diversity celebrating the pride of their identities. Jesus was happy; it was the first time he had walked among the people with his bare chest, feeling the wind on his skin and the vibration of the music. Something caught his attention, a transgender woman, her name Viviany, stood on top of a float, crucified, half-naked, her body marked by blood, and in the background a blue sky. At that moment, he breathed deeply, feeling the air fill his lungs, and exhaled full of contentment and abundance. He put his hand on his chest and smoothed the scar of the surgery that removed his breast, with which he could not identify himself. Then, still overflowing with love for everyone there, gently smoothed his beard that could already be perceived, after having started intakes of T hormone. Identification and joy with his body. Once more, he looked at the crucified transwoman, and a glance recalled another crucifixion that occurred more than two thousand years ago. At that moment—just like the one people say goes through our minds recalling our whole life at moments of death—he was invaded by an avalanche of feelings and images of his people coming his way. He remembered the last words resounding and melting in the air. It is done. And he said: It was worth it. It was worth it. It is worth it. These are for us words that can save. Glory be to you, Lord! (MCC BH, 2015)

The suggested reading for that innovative worship service represented a challenge based on the reflections of what happened at the 19th LGBT Pride Parade in São Paulo on June 7, 2015. In that parade, Viviany Beleboni, a transgender woman, like Christ, appeared crucified.

The transgender woman marched during the Parade on a float. Crucified, she kept her arms wide open like those of the Christ. Her hair covered her breasts. Instead of “INRI” displayed on the cross, the sign read the words “enough,” “homophobia,” and “GLBT.” Tainted with blood, she had on h...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: In memory of her: Marcella Althaus-Reid and her legacy among queer theologians in Asia and Latin America
• 1. Dirty Martini: Toasting with Marcella Althaus-Reid
• 2. Perversion as surplus value to protecting “family value” in Hong Kong
• 3. Whatever happened to the lemon vendors? West African im/migrants and the (re)ethnization/(re)sexualization of erotoscapes in the streets of Buenos Aires
• 4. Manang Bali, indecent interweavings and healing spaces in contemporary Malaysian trans and queer theo-pastoralities
• 5. Taking Marcella Althaus-Reid into the alleys: Towards an incarnated indecent theology in La Rioja, Argentina
• 6. Queer body bounded: Can we take off the uniform of the nation-body?
• 7. The sexual subject in queer theologies: Implications for a queer Latin American liberation theology?
• 8. Longing for liberation: Towards a spiritual path of queer Christians in non-affirming churches in Indonesia
• 9. Reclaiming queer seeds of theological agriculture
• Afterword
• Index