Adriaan van Klinken - Sacred Queer Stories: Ugandan LGBTQ+ Refugee Lives & the Bible

Sacred Queer Stories

RELIGION IN TRANSFORMING AFRICA

ISSN 2398-8673

Series Editors

Barbara Bompani, Joseph Hellweg, Ousmane Kane and Emma Wild-Wood

Editorial Reading Panel

Robert Baum (Dartmouth College)

Dianna Bell (University of Cape Town)

Ezra Chitando (University of Zimbabwe)

Martha Frederiks (Utrecht University)

Paul Gifford (SOAS)

David M. Gordon (Bowdoin College)

Jrg Haustein (University of Cambridge)

Paul Lubeck (Johns Hopkins University-SAIS)

Philomena Mwaura (Kenyatta University, Nairobi)

Hassan Ndzovu (Moi University)

Ebenezer Obadare (University of Kansas)

Abdulkader I. Tayob (University of Cape Town)

M. Sani Umar (Northwestern University)

Stephen Wooten (University of Oregon)

Series description

The series is open to submissions that examine local or regional realities on the complexities of religion and spirituality in Africa. Religion in Transforming Africa will showcase cutting-edge research into continent-wide issues on Christianity, Islam and other religions of Africa; Traditional beliefs and witchcraft; Religion, culture & society; History of religion, politics and power; Global networks and new missions; Religion in conflict and peace-building processes; Religion and development; Religious rituals and texts and their role in shaping religious ideologies and theologies. Innovative, and challenging current perspectives, the series provides an indispensable resource on this key area of African Studies for academics, students, international policy-makers and development practitioners.

Please contact the Series Editors with an outline or download the proposal form at

www.jamescurrey.com.

Dr Barbara Bompani, Reader in Africa and International Development, University of

Edinburgh: b.bompani@ed.ac.uk

Dr Joseph Hellweg, Associate Professor of Religion, Department of Religion, Florida State University: jhellweg@fsu.edu

Professor Ousmane Kane, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion & Society, Harvard Divinity School: okane@hds.harvard.edu

Dr Emma Wild-Wood, Senior Lecturer, African Christianity and African Indigenous Religions, University of Edinburgh: emma.wildwood@ed.ac.uk

Previously published titles in the series are listed at the back of this volume.

Sacred Queer Stories

Ugandan LGBTQ+ Refugee Lives and the Bible

Adriaan van Klinken and Johanna Stiebert with Sebyala Brian and Fredrick Hudson

James Currey

is an imprint of

Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge

Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB)

www.jamescurrey.com

and of

Boydell & Brewer Inc.

668 Mt Hope Avenue

Rochester, NY 146202731 (US)

www.boydellandbrewer.com

Adriaan van Klinken, Johanna Stiebert, Sebyala Brian and Fredrick Hudson 2021

First published in hardback 2021

The right of Adriaan van Klinken, Johanna Stiebert, Sebyala Brian and Fredrick Hudson to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,

published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,

recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the

prior permission of the copyright owner

The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-84701-283-8 (James Currey hardback)

ISBN 978-1-80010-288-0 (James Currey ePub)

Cross references refer to page numbers in the print edition

Cover photo: Performance of Daniel in the Homophobic Lions Den ( The Nature Network)

Illustrations

Figure 1. Group work during a Contextual Bible Study session

Figure 2. Video still from Daniel in the Homophobic Lions Den

Figure 3. Video still from Jesus and the Guys Charged with Indecency

Figure 4. Mother Nature presenting at an online panel of the Changing the Story film festival

Images The Nature Network, Nairobi

Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The editors, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Notes on Authors and Contributors

Sebyala Brian (also known as Raymond Brian and as Mother Nature) is an LGBTQ+ community advocate from Uganda. They are co-founder of The Nature Network, a community-based organisation of LGBTQ+ refugees in Nairobi, Kenya, and served as its Executive Director until their resettlement in the US in June 2020. They were a local research coordinator of the Sacred Queer Stories project.

Fredrick Hudson is a Ugandan LGBTQ+ refugee community activist based in Kenya. He currently serves as Executive Director of The Nature Network, a community-based organisation of LGBTQ+ refugees in Nairobi. He was a local research coordinator of the Sacred Queer Stories project.

Tom Rogers Muyunga-Mukasa originates from Uganda and now resides in the United States, where he is a Political Science Major with a bias in medical/health/social justice at St Marys College in California. Tom is a refugee community health and development activist, an advocate for LGBTQ+ persons, and a co-founding member of The Nature Network.

Stella Nyanzi is a radical queer feminist activist and medical anthropologist with a doctoral degree from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has twenty years of academic research and publishing experience focused on the study of human sexualities in Uganda and The Gambia.

Johanna Stiebert is Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Leeds (UK). Her work focuses on ideological- and gender-critical readings and applications of Hebrew Bible texts. She co-edited, together with Musa W. Dube, The Bible, Centres and Margins: Dialogues Between Postcolonial African and British Biblical Scholars (T&T Clark, 2018). Her most recent monograph is Rape Myths, the Bible, and #MeToo (Routledge Focus, 2020).

Adriaan van Klinken is Professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds (UK) and Extraordinary Professor at the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice, University of the Western Cape (South Africa). His work focuses on issues of religion, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Africa. Among his recent publications is the monograph Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism, and Arts of Resistance in Africa (Penn State University Press, 2019).

Glossary and Abbreviations

AHA Anti-Homosexuality Act (Uganda, 2014)