Deryn Guest - The Queer Bible Commentary

The Queer Bible Commentary

Edited by

Deryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West and Thomas Bohache

Copyright information

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, SCM Press.

Deryn Guest, Robert E. Goss, Mona West and Thomas Bohache 2006

The Authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Authors of this Work

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

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

0 334 04021 3/978 0 334 04021 7

First published in 2006 by SCM Press

917 St Albans Place,

London N1 0NX

www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk

SCM Press is a division of SCM-Canterbury Press Ltd

Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

William Clowes Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk

Contents

(Ronald E. Long)

(Michael Carden)

(Rebecca Alpert)

(David Tabb Stewart)

(Sue Levi Elwell)

(Deryn Guest)

(Michael Carden)

(Deryn Guest)

(Mona West)

(Ken Stone)

(Ken Stone)

(Roland Boer)

(Ron L. Stanley)

(Mona West)

(Ken Stone)

(S. Tamar Kamionkowski)

(Elizabeth Stuart)

(Jennifer L. Koosed)

(Christopher King)

(Timothy Koch)

(Angela Bauer-Levesque)

(Deryn Guest)

(Teresa Hornsby)

(Mona West)

(Michael Carden)

(Thomas Bohache)

(Marcella Althaus-Reid)

(Robert E. Goss)

(Robert E. Goss)

(Thomas Bohache, Robert E. Goss, Deryn Guest and Mona West)

(Thomas Hanks)

(Holly E. Hearon)

(Patrick S. Cheng)

(Robert E. Goss)

(Justin Tanis)

(Thomas Bohache)

(Theodore Jennings)

(Robert E. Goss and Deborah Krause)

(Stephen J. Moore)

(Thomas Hanks)

(L. William Countryman)

(Robin Hawley Gorsline)

(L. William Countryman)

(L. William Countryman)

(Tina Pippin and J. Michael Clark)

The Contributors

Rebecca T. Alpert is Chair of the Department of Religion and Associate Professor of Religion and Womens Studies at Temple University. She is the co-author of Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach , with Jacob Staub; author of Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition ; editor of Voices of the Religious Left: A Contemporary Sourcebook and co-editor of Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation with Sue Elwell and Shirley Idelson. She is currently at work on a volume about Jews, race and sports. She teaches religion and sexuality, the politics of race and gender, and religion in American public life.

Marcella Althaus-Reid is Reader in Christian Ethics, Practical Theology, and Systematic Theology at the University of Edinburgh Divinity School, Scotland. She is a Latin American theologian and author of Indecent Theology: Theological Per/versions in Sex, Gender and Politics , The Queer God and From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology . She writes, I call my style of doing theology Indecent because it denounces the status quo and the complacency with power that theologies had in the past, while claiming to be proper or decent. Meanwhile, they ignored that the only decency in theology comes from honesty and a pursuit of justice in all orders of life. If we call theologies in alliance with systems of exploitation decent, then I want to be an indecent theologian.

Angela Bauer-Levesque has served on the faculty of Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, since 1994. She received her PhD from Union Theological Seminary, and holds the MDiv from the Universitt Hamburg. In Gender in the Book of Jeremiah: A Feminist-Literary Reading , in Seeing God in Diversity: Exodus and Acts and in her teaching, she has emphasized various aspects of social location (gender, race, sexual identity) and their impact on hermeneutics. She is currently working on a book titled Reading While White: Strategies toward Antiracist Biblical Interpretations . Angela and her spouse Irma live in Ogunquit, Maine.

Roland Boer is Logan Research Fellow in the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology at Monash University, Australia. He completed his PhD at McGill University. He has served on the steering committee for Gender, Sexuality and the Bible for the Society of Biblical Literature, and for Critical Theory and Discourses of Religion at the American Academy of Religion. His recent publications include Knockin on Heavens Door and Last Stop Before Antarctica . His great passions are Marxism and bicycles.

The Revd Thomas Bohache has been clergy in the Metropolitan Community Churches since 1988, pastoring congregations in California, Virginia and Delaware. He has undergraduate degrees in classical languages and theology and two Master of Arts degrees in religion from the University of Virginia and Georgetown University. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Among his publications are an essay queering Galatians in Take Back the Word , a queer view of incarnation in Theology and Sexuality , and a book on contextual Christologies, forthcoming from SCM Press.

Michael Carden received his PhD in 2002 from the University of Queensland in Australia. His dissertation was a study of the reception of the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah and the outrage at Gibeah in both Christian and Jewish traditions up to the time of the Reformation. Michael has taught in the area of biblical studies and comparative religion at the University of Queensland and introduced a course there on Religion and Sexuality. Michael has also had many years of involvement in LGBT and HIV/Aids community organizations.

The Revd Patrick S. Cheng is an ordained minister with the Metropolitan Community Church. He holds degrees from Yale College, Harvard Law School and Union Theological Seminary. Patrick Cheng is currently a doctoral student in Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary. He is the founder and co-ordinator of Queer Asian Spirit, www.queerasianspirit.org, an online ministry by and for LGBT people of Asian descent.

J. Michael Clark is a theologian who has taught at Emory University and Georgia State University. He currently teaches at Warren Wilson College. Michael Clark is founder and later Co-Chair of the Gay Mens Issues in Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion. He is author of A Defiant Celebration: Theological Ethics and Gay Spirituality ; Beyond Our Ghetto: Gay Theology in Ecological Perspective and A Place to Start: Towards an Unapologetic Gay Liberation Theology . Dr Clark is co-editor of A Rainbow of Religious Studies ; Aids, God, and Faith and Homophobia and the Judaeo-Christian Tradition .

The Revd L. William Countryman is the Sherman E. Johnson Professor of Biblical Studies at Church Divinity School (Berkeley). He received an STB from General Theological Seminary and PhD from the University of Chicago. He is co-author of Gifted by Otherness: Gay and Lesbian Christians in the Church . He is author of Love Human and Divine: Reflections on Love, Sexuality, and Friendship ; Interpreting the Truth: Changing the Paradigm of Biblical Studies ; The Poetic Imagination: An Anglican Spiritual Tradition ; Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All ; Forgiven and Forgiving ; The Mystical Way According to John: Crossing Over into God ; Good News of Jesus: Reintroducing the Gospel and Dirt, Greed, and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and their Implications for Today . Revd Countryman is an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church.