Loraine Hutchins - Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred: Bisexual, Pansexual and Polysexual Perspectives

Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred is a thoughtful collection of bisexual, polysexual and pansexual scholarship on religion and spirituality. It examines how religious and spiritual traditions address sexuality, whilst also exploring the ways in which bisexually-, polysexually-, and pansexually-active people embrace religious and spiritual practice. The volume offers a comprehensive analysis of these prevalent themes by focusing on five main areas of discussion: Christian and Unitarian Discourses; Indigenous and Decolonizing Spiritual Discourses; Feminist Spiritual Discourses; Buddhist Discourses; and Neo/Pagan Discourses.

Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred offers an accessible yet scholarly treatment of these topics through a collection of critical essays by academics of theology, humanities, cultural studies and social sciences, as well as sexology professionals and clergy from various faith and spiritual traditions. It gives readers an insight into the intersection of sexualities and spiritualities, and attempts to disrupt this very dichotomy through its careful consideration of a wide variety of discourses.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.

Loraine Hutchins teaches inter-disciplinary sexuality studies. Her 2001 Cultural Studies doctoral dissertation documented contemporary U.S. sacred sexualities, particularly those with a queer feminist focus. She co-edited Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, which was awarded a 100 Best LGBT Books of the 20th century award by Lambda Book Review. She is a national leader in the U.S. bisexual movement, as well as an independent scholar writing on sexuality and spirituality issues.

H. Sharif Williams is a Clinical Sociologist, Sexologist, Educator, and Cultural Theorist, and is the Founder of Black Funk: The Center for Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, USA. Under his spiritual name Herukhuti, he is the author of Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1. He is a faculty member at Goddard College, USA. An initiate and practitioner of African wisdom traditions since the age of fourteen, he is spiritual godfather, advisor and teacher to various practitioners around the world and keeper of the Shrine of Sekhmet and Heruhet, USA.

First published 2012

by Routledge

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2012 Taylor & Francis

This book is a reproduction of the Journal of Bisexuality, volume 10, issues 1-2. The Publisher requests to those authors who may be citing this book to state, also, the bibliographical details of the special issue on which the book was based.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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

ISBN13: 978-0-415-78304-0

Typeset in Garamond

by Taylor & Francis Books

Disclaimer

The publisher would like to make readers aware that the chapters in this book are referred to as articles as they had been in the special issue. The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen in the course of preparing this volume for print.

Jonathan Alexander , PhD, is Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He has worked over fifteen years as an educator, writer, and activist. He co-wrote Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others with Dr. Karen Yescavage, and they are currently at work on a new book, The Future of Sex .

Ifalade TaShia Asanti is an award-winning writer, poet and journalist. TaShia is the Founder and Director of the World Pride & Power Organization, the National Institute for Indigenous Cultural Studies, the Director of the STAIRS Research Project and Presiding Priestess of Ile Ori Ogbe Egun (I TEACH), a Yoruba/Ifa temple in Denver, Colorado.

Phillip A. Bernhardt-House , PhD, has taught Religious Studies courses at Chapman University and Columbia College, and has also been a Guest Professor in the History Department at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Phillip holds a PhD in Celtic Studies and an M.A. in Religious Studies, and has published widely in academic and non-academic venues, including Parabola, Journal for the Academic Study of Magic, Celtic Studies Association of North America Yearbook, and the anthologies, Queering the Non/Human, ed. Giffney and Hird, and Getting Bi , ed. Ochs and Rowley. His monograph, on werewolves and dogheads in Celtic cultures will be published soon.

Martha Daniels has served as Pastor of MCC Windsor (Ontario) since 2005. She is co-chair of the Service Alliance for Equality (SAFE), a professional gay-straight alliance serving youth in Windsor/Essex County; she is also active in the Windsor Pride Community, serving on the Education/Research Committee and the 50+ Proud support group. Martha enjoys gender theory, both in study and application; theology, and conducting same-gender weddings north of the border. Her favorite book of all time (so far) is a toss-up between Stone Butch Blues (Leslie Feinberg) , Soul Mates (Thomas Moore), and Coming Out Spiritually (Christian de la Huerta).

Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajaj is Provost and Professor of Cultural Studies and Islamic Studies at the Starr King School for the Ministry, a seminary whose emphasis is multi-modal/multi-vocational counter-oppressive, multi-religious and Unitarian Universalist thea/ological education in a context of building just and sustainable communities; it is a member school of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Professor Farajaj serves on the Graduate Theological Unions Core Doctoral Faculty in the area of Cultural and Historical Studies of Religions and serves as Senior Research Analyst in the GTUs Center for Islamic Studies. Professor Farajaj is the architect of a highly innovative anti-colonial/anti-imperialist intersectional epistemology which continues to help provide religious and thea/ological responses to the multiple interlocking oppressions substanding, amongst other things, the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Performance artist, scholar, author and video- and ritual artist, he works in giving birth to trans-global/trans-religious communities of resistance and is an activist in the realm of bringing burial practices into greater alignment with respect for the body and for the Earth.