Out of the Tomb: The Black Queer Jesus & the Easter Vigil, Part 1
Written in the spring of 2018, “Out of the Tomb: The Black Queer Jesus and the Easter Vigil” was produced for the completion of my Masters of Divinity Degree at Vanderbilt University. It is an offering that seeks to reflect upon the intersections of embodiment, theology, and ritual practice. As I prepared to share this, I found myself surprised by how much has remained the same and changed within me since then. I offer this three part series in honor of Holy Week, the time in which the Christian/Jesus Following Community honors The Anointed One’s entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday leading up to his resurrection on Easter Sunday.
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Raised in Roanoke, Virginia, a small southern city nestled in the heart of Appalachia, Christianity served as the water to what would become the sweet tea spirituality that I hold dear today. It was through the community of First Christian Church and the tender melodies of my grandmother that this age-old tradition washed over my spirit and claimed me in some odd way as its own. Twenty years later, I now look back on those early moments of my emerging spiritual life and think of the pomp and circumstance this community attributed to the Easter event. Memories of a sanctuary filled with white lilies, the singing of the Lord’s Prayer, and a rugged cross adorned with brightly colored flowers centrally located before the altar all sharply stand out in my mind. The congregation’s Easter Service culminated in the procession of the cross into the streets while those assembled would sing Amazing Grace as if to harmonically profess their faith in the complex event as the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
Yet the flowers, tunes, and bitter taste of communion wine all these years later remind me of an otherness that set me apart, differentiated me from those around me. Maybe it was due to my mother’s unfavorable reputation or the rumors of my grandfather’s infidelity, or maybe it was because of the brown hue of my skin and the budding realization of my “difference” in comparison to the other boys around me. Nevertheless, I proceeded on in hopes that I too would be named and claimed as one of God’s own. Charged with a divine mission that would somehow make the whirling chaos around me, and inside me, all make sense somehow. But it never came. No voice from on high rang out, the Spirit remained still, and no familiar friend in Jesus did I know, or at least, no friend that looked like me came forward. And so I left when I became old enough, departing from the community that I strived so hard to feel a part of in a tradition that I worked so earnestly to agree with. No longer could I bear the weight of being not only one of a few brown-skinned people in a pew on any given Sunday, but I could no longer hide that which I came to name as divine, my queerness.
Though I have long given up the resentment that I once held towards the tradition of my childhood faith, it has only been in these last few years that I have come to intimately know Jesus the Christ. A strange Jewish man born under the weight of an empire that sought to confine the exuberance of his people and the mission that he would ultimately give his life for. In this knowing I have come to understand my own placement within God’s unending revelation to and for creation. A revelation that washes us anew and seals our hearts with fire. A covenant between the Creator and the created that calls us into relation, not just for the sake of ourselves, but for the wellbeing of the least of these. It is a divine mandate that calls us first to love God with all of our mind, body, and spirit and secondly, to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mk 12: 30–31). And it is in this understanding of God’s giving that we, queer black men, find ourselves within the divine economy.
Through an embodied reading and participation in the early church’s Easter Vigil vis-à-vis the Black Queer Jesus, queer black men may locate a theological and pastoral source of fortification that radically aligns Jesus’s death and resurrection with the ongoing coming out experience. In so doing this paper will take upon the task of placing black and queer liberation theologies in conversation with one another as to formulate a basis for understanding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ as one who aligns himself with the suffering of queer black men. The next step will be to apply this intersectional theological understanding to the ancient Easter vigil of the Early Church that will take into account both the historical use and a contemporary understanding of such a ritual. This is done as to anchor the intersectional theology of black queerness in the life of the Church, and to ensure an overall practicality between the theology and ritual. The final turn will be to establish a means by which pastoral care might be attained through one’s participation in the Easter Vigil with a theological lens centering the Black, Queer Jesus. This project ultimately reminds me, and other queer black men I am sure, of the reasons why we walked away from Christianity but could never leave the convoluted path that Jesus journeyed down before us. Every word composing this project harkens to a bible verse etched within our hearts, to the hymns recorded in our memories, and silent prayers uttered for deliverance from a thing we couldn’t understand at the time and were told to suppress with all of our might.
Black
As the only child of a white mother and a black father, growing up in a small southern city was a complicatedly beautiful experience. Born just days before the notorious Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles in 1992, racial tension shaped the early years of my life and marred the remaining years of my parent’s relationship with one another. The first of only two bi-racial children in my paternal family and the only non-white child in my maternal family, the rearing of a mixed-race child did not come easy to either side. Beyond the awkward shared custody granted by the courts, my parents struggled to assimilate me fully into their family lines, a true marker of identity in southern culture. But as I grew older, the grotesqueness of my racial ambiguity became apparent. This caused my families to war with and without words. My maternal grandmother would often repeat, “you are mixed, white and black” and my father would do whatever he could to expose me, even if just for an hour, to his family all in hopes that I would somehow “pick a side.” Literally stuck between a rock and a hard place I struggled to make sense of my blackness. Yet even if I could locate such a treasure, what does it mean to be black in our current socio-political context?
The process of identifying and defining blackness has been an intensely debated endeavor since enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas in the 16th century. Culture thus formed in the United States as a means for Europeans to define and confine their identity versus enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples. In particular, this gave way to white culture being positioned as one of civilized superiority over and against the brutishness of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Yet due to the complexity of living in a multicultural society in the 21st century, culture is now defined in a variety of ways. Within Critical Terms for Literature Study, Stephen Greenblatt tackles the challenge of culture and how such is understood by saying, “Culture is a term that is repeatedly used without meaning much of anything at all, a vague gesture toward a dimly perceived ethos…”[1] Meaning, when one speaks of culture, they ultimately fail to present an easily recognizable system of a people’s expression within a greater community. “Culture” in and of itself is not a source of one’s textured lived experience but is instead “the ensemble of beliefs and practices that form a given culture function as a pervasive technology of… a repertoire of models…”[2] Beyond a person’s culture being purely performative, it is an identity formed by history, given voice by narrative, and lived out through a plethora of actions like dance, food, and clothing.
In light of discussions surrounding the performative nature of culture, race is often centralized as a defining marker. This is the case most in point for communities of color in light of a society shaped by a predominant class that has deep reserves of various forms of power. In particular, black culture is often times defined by an essentialized perception of race rooted in pseudo-science. Though those who champion such a notion do so in the efforts of uplifting black people in general. Such a definition and motion is faulty and lacks a full analysis of history and power in the American context. Furthermore, and most particular to this project, an essentialized notion of blackness sets the precedent for a narrowly defined understanding of what blackness is and who can identify as such, oftentimes excluding those of mixed race African ancestry.
While the conversation concerning black identity and what it means to “be black” will continue to evolve. I present the parameters of blackness for this project to refer to those of African descent in the United States, particularly in relation to those who are descendants of enslaved Africans. I use this definition as it acknowledges the cultural multiplicity within the greater black community and it is one that includes my personal experience as a mixed race black person. Additionally, I uplift the struggles of the descendants of enslaved Africans, as we are the inheritors of race-based traumas that intersect with other aspects of our fleshy embodiments. While vast, it is important that such a definition remain broad, as race is a construct, and the limits of racial identity based on complexion is an invention of white supremacy.
Queer
The work towards depathologizing, decriminalizing, and destigmatizing members of the LGBT community has been a hard fought battle since the inception of the movement in 1969 with the Stonewall Riots in New York City. Similar to once common approaches concerning race and culture, sexuality as experienced and expressed between two people of opposite sexes has served as the standard for defining normative sexuality — between one man and one woman. Yet as Patricia Collins Hill points out, “Sexuality is not simply a biological function; rather, it is a system of ideas and social practices that is deeply implicated in shaping American social inequalities.”[3] This is significant to understand as to reveal the truth behind human sexuality as being both fluid and having real implications for those who love outside of the box, particularly so if those individuals are black.
This is the case as blackness is often found to be in negotiation with non-heteronormative sexual identities due to white supremacy in the forms of homophobia and racism. Collins makes this observation by saying,
“If racism relied on assumptions of Black promiscuity that in turn enabled Black people to “breed like animals,” then Black sexual practices that did not adhere to these assumptions challenged racism at its very core. Either Black people could not be homosexual or those Blacks who were homosexual were not “authentically” Black.”[4]
I have personally found this to be true upon coming out as a senior in high school in the spring of 2010. My communities’ response was one where pointed side-eye was meet with deafening silence of judgment and disapproval. My bisexuality was seen as a nuisance, a disorder acquired from “wypipo” and was unimaginable within proper black southern society.
As the approach taken by many within the black community who prioritize the public-private sphere as a means to create safety and respectability in a society which gives little credence to black existence, “sweeping it under the rug” is a common response to queerness. Collins expands on this notion of heteronormativity and silence by stating,
“African Americans typically think that gender relations are a private concern, mainly reflecting the love relationships between heterosexual men and women. Those who see the harmful effects of gender oppression on African Americas still wish to define issues of gender and sexuality solely within the context of Black community politics, a domestic issues among Black people.”[5]
Such an approach enables the private to remain hidden, buried, locked in the chains of disapproval and misunderstanding. This creates a vacuum of silence concerning the existence of sexual diversity within the black community across generations. Leaving younger folks to feel othered, left as cultural refugees, simultaneously ostracized from both the predominantly white queer community and heteronormative black families that they might come from. While simultaneously disregarding the lived experience, struggle, and triumph of older queer black elders.
Things are changing, and this can be seen in the creation and reclaiming of language. Within recent decades, language has seen a rapid evolution as it relates to non-heteronormative culture and identity. What was once simply the “gay community” comprised of both men and women has since morphed into the familiar LGBTQ(+/IA+/*) acronym. This has given way to the addition of other letters as to acknowledge the presence of a variety of gender and sexual identities and expressions. However, the greater LGBTQ community has begun the self-defining action of either creating or reclaiming terms that were once hurled at us in derogatory ways. Though many LGBT elders within the movement have bucked at the idea of reclaiming such hateful words, wondering why younger generations would do such a thing. The act of reclaiming and redefining within the LGBTQ community has in fact been occurring since the inception of the movement with the Stonewall Riots.
One such example of both a change in and reclaiming of language is the adoption of “queer” as a positive identity for non-heteronormative individuals. Holding a variety of definitions for any one person who identifies as such, queer simply means “uncommon,” “out of the ordinary,” and “non-conforming to the dominant culture.” In Thomas Bohache’s Christology from the Margins he lifts up this point in saying, “Queer theorists and activists like the double meaning of this term because they are indeed out of the ordinary in not conforming to gender expectations, and — perhaps more importantly — they are seeking to spoil, disrupt and thoroughly confound traditional hetero-patriarchal categories.”[6] In my own case, the acceptance of this term is to note my sexual and gender identities as fluid, and to uplift the embodied politic that I hold as to push against the edges of societal standards and assumptions. This speaks against the norms of white supremacy in its various forms and the standards of acceptable gender and sexual performance within the black community, which have been shaped by white supremacy. Thus queer serves as the basis for establishing the sanctity of a fluid black sexuality, one that is both self-defined and able to speak against the confines of normativity that has been placed upon me and other black, non-heteronormative siblings. It is a fulfillment of our own self-discovery and embodied motion towards breaking down barriers that say that we should be someone other than who we are.
Christian, White Supremacy (Homophobia & Toxic Masculinity)
A conversation concerning race, gender, sexuality, and religion would be incomplete without discussing the intersections of Christianity and white supremacy as the causation of death-dealing normativity manifested in heteronormativity. The act of converting enslaved Africans from their respected faith traditions, indigenous or otherwise, was one of the earliest instances denoting the formation of White Christian supremacy in North America.[7] Christianity up to this point was understood within the minds of Europeans to be the civilizing religion of the world in comparison to the “hedonistic practices” of non-Christians. As such, the act of converting enslaved Africans required the formation of an understanding of Jesus as one rooted purely in the supremacy of the white mind that ultimately fossilized Jesus as being white. As Kelly Brown Douglas states, “In general, an interpretation of Christianity that focuses on God’s coming from heaven and becoming incarnate in Jesus, while sacrificing Jesus’ ministry, unleashes the possibility for the emergence of the White Christ.”[8] This White Christ is defined by the use of his mission to perpetuate systems of violence in the forms of chattel slavery while allowing his white followers to fear no retribution for the harm they caused.[9]
The formation of the White Jesus ultimately served the church as the unadulterated means by which to craft an empire of their choosing in North America that we have thus inherited today. This empire sets at its core the inherent importance of white heteronormative masculinity which worships at the feet of the White Jesus who rules with a rod and whip in hand. As the object of white masculinity, Jesus becomes the mirror that shapes their self-understanding; he is both their fetish and their idol. To fall outside of this system is to be seen as antithetical to the divine order, an apostate who deserves eternal damnation, or at least, a subjugated life. Herein lies the root of racism and homophobia: to be both black and queer pushes against the approved structures of existence as consecrated by White Jesus in the eyes of his devotees. This creates an intellectual and theological imperative to wage war on the mind, body, and spirit of any who manifest beyond this white, heteronormative regime. This can easily be seen today in the cultural wars enacted by the far right, and to some extent, moderates, as shown in the election of Donald Trump and the publishing of the Nashville Statement. In an analysis of political tactics used by political, and often times, religious conservatives, Didi Herman notes a similarity between the historical persecution of Catholics, Jews, and homosexuals in the United States.[10] Furthermore, Herman states that the Christian Right has a meticulous program directed towards publicly demonizing gays and lesbians.[11] Such a fact requires that we not solely problematize the role of theology in creating and perpetuating heteronomy rooted in white supremacy, but to look to the ways theology can be a source of life-giving sustenance over and against the evils of this world.
Analysis
The basis of liberation theology begins with understanding a divine encounter with the human condition through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Popularized through the writings of the Dominican priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez in the 1960s and 70s. Liberation theology, rooted in Catholic social teaching, proclaims the good news of Jesus as one that holds a “preferential option for the poor” as demonstrated through Jesus’ ministry within the canonical gospels. Unbeknownst to theologians in Latin America, similar conversations began to occur in North America at the same time through the likes of James Cone, Malcolm X, and Albert Cleage in response to the Black Power Movement and the seemingly apathetic stance of the Black Church. Since then, a variety of liberation theologies have emerged in the United States which seek to say something meaningful about God, Jesus, and the plight of oppressed people in their contexts as being poor, black, queer, female, differently abled, and so forth.
However, liberation theologies have received and continue to receive a number of critiques concerning their approaches to God’s preferential concern for the oppressed. For many, the specific nature of Jesus’ ministry as understood by liberation theologians seems overly political and contrary to the notion that in God’s eyes all are equally sinful. Some propose that such an approach to understanding Jesus’s mission lacks a message of universal hope for all as demonstrated through more conventional readings of the bible. Lastly, many argue that liberation theologies, no matter the lens they take, lack basis in traditional theological reflection and discourse. Yet as Patrick S. Cheng denotes in his analysis of liberation theology and its relation to traditional modes of theological reflection (Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience), he states,
“On the one hand, theology has never been simply about reading the Bible literally nor simply about what the church authorities have taught. On the other hand, theology has never been simply a matter of drawing upon philosophy nor has it simply been equated with the human experience of the divine… Rather, theology is a synthesis of all four sources, and each of these sources acts as a “check and balance” for the other three.”[12]
Ultimately, as Cheng points out, the above critiques of liberation theology fall short in actually addressing any plausible shortcoming of said theologies. And I would propose, that such critiques are solely the result of being uncomfortable, in some regard, in response to the notion that we might be participating in, or at least complicit to, death-dealing systems. Yet there does exist significant shortcomings within both Black and Queer theologies that must be addressed if they are to serve any use in supporting queer black men in their spiritual journeys towards understanding a Jesus who walks alongside us.
Black Theology
James Cone’s groundbreaking works, A Black Theology of Liberation and God of the Oppressed, serves as the foundation to understanding the Black Queer Jesus in our pursuit for liberation and spiritual fulfillment as black queer men. The starting point of this theology, like all liberation theologies, is the internal knowledge of God’s motion towards us as Her creation. Cone states, “to know God is to know God’s work of liberation [on] behalf of the oppressed. God’s revelation means liberation, an emancipation from death-dealing political, economic, and social structures of society. This is the essence of biblical revelation.”[13] It is through an understanding of the biblical texts that we see God’s mandate of revolutionary liberation whether it be for the ancient Israelites or those who are socially ostracized today. This provocative proclamation calls out those who uphold such societal standards as contrary to God’s will and decree for liberation.
God’s inclination towards liberation from death-dealing systems of sin is known through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. “His death,” Cone states, “is the revelation of the freedom of God, taking upon himself the totality of human oppression; his resurrection is the disclosure that God is not defeated by oppression but transforms it into the possibility of freedom.”[14] Meaning while society might say that we are not good enough, not rich enough, not skinny enough, not white enough, God’s love through Jesus is made manifest and overturns the standards of society in a radically unprecedented way. It is here that we encounter the Anointed One fully as he who was born under the oppression of Roman rule, was persecuted, and rose against even death as placed against him by the empire. In our context in the 21st century, we encounter the Black Jesus as one who actively subverts the mission of white supremacy, proclaiming the mission of God who states a completely different mission. Through Jesus’ way of being and relating to the world, we see our example of resistance and resilience in participating with that mission. As Cone boldly proclaims, “liberation is not an object but the project of freedom wherein the oppressed realize that their fight for freedom is a divine right of creation.”[15] God in Jesus shows that not only is there a triumphant plan over the snares of this world but that She is making moves within that project to realize the Beloved Kindom now. And as such, we find comfort midst the turmoil, reprieve in the midst of death, and life when death seems all consuming.
While Cone’s presentation is significant to understanding the Black Queer Jesus, his work has faced a great deal of push back. While some of these critiques are similar to those posed against liberation theology in general, Kelly Brown Douglas’ work The Black Christ not only takes Cone’s shortcomings seriously but also she sees them as essential places which to grow our understanding of God’s liberating mission. Most pressing for Douglas is Cone’s, and other forefathers of Black Theology, limiting presentation of the Black Christ as one that is exclusively concerned with issues of racism.[16] Such a proposition, especially as it is taken up in the Black Church, limits God’s mission to liberate whole persons from the snares of death and destruction. Furthermore, this limitation rejects the other avenues of oppression black people face: the lack of socio-economic resources, gender violence, queerphobia, and inadequate healthcare.[17]
Douglas’ efforts to address these shortcomings are significant as effective black theology must acknowledge and “reflect the complexities of black reality.”[18] A Black Jesus who does not move amongst black femme, queer, poor, and differently abled peoples offers no freedom but leaves them stranded in hell as heteronormative, cis-gendered men are liberated as set up by the likes of Cone’s work. Furthermore, Douglas takes issue with the emphasis Cone places on suffering as a form of faithfulness in the midst of struggle. This critique demonstrates Douglas’s womanist approach that stands to alleviate the suffering of black woman as “suffering in silence” has often been the standard to subjugate woman and other disenfranchised subgroups within the greater black community. Redemption known in Christ is one that is experienced within humanity, no matter the gender, in the here and now. It is one that does not emphasize suffering or establish a scapegoat, for such is about death, whereas God’s mission known through Jesus the Christ is life-oriented.
While Douglas agrees with the various means of resistance the black community has acquired and internalized as reflected in our theologies, she ultimately concludes by honestly noting that not everything that we hold dear as black people is life-giving or liberating for us.[19] Among the critiques of Black Theology already stated, the womanist ethic presented within The Black Christ gifts us with one final component that must be acknowledged as to locate the liberating mission of the Black Queer Jesus — wholeness. This component is a necessary tool that calls us to participate in God’s Kindom in the here in now as to acknowledge the hurt and to act towards lessening such within our communities.[20]
Queer Theology
Queer Theology, like other forms of Liberation Theology, begins with the encounter of the divine in the bodily experience. Yet what is unique to queer theology in particular is the approach that we may come to know God via our gendered and sexual experiences. Rooted in the work of scholars such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Marcella Althaus-Reid, queer theology takes as its primary task to push against the boundaries of sanctioned theology in heretical ways. As theologian Thomas Bohache states, “[Queer] theology becomes truly ‘queer’ in the verbal sense of that word; it seeks to ‘stir up’ and to ‘spoil’ heteronormative and hetero-patriarchal theology through imagination, outrageousness, questioning, playfulness, and the intersection of religious consciousness and the personal experience of homophobia and queer bashing.”[21] Through such an approach the standards of heteronormative theology, that which works within a binary of right and wrong, sinner and saint, is blurred and expanded to include those who have historically been left out.
An essential voice within queer theology is Rev. Patrick S. Cheng, an ordained Metropolitan Community Church minister. In his work Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology, Cheng establishes sin simply as the “rejection of radical love.”[22] In so doing, Cheng positions God as the source of this radical love over and against those who uphold death-dealing systems which alienate queer people from God’s liberating motion in Jesus. Yet most importantly, this radical love as expressed by the Good Gift-Giver eradicates the lines of divisions that exist in our world that prevents the fulfillment of God’s diverse Kindgom from materializing.[23] Such boundary crossing, gender-bending theology gets at the motion of liberation that God has and is enacting through Christ.
In Jesus the Christ, the human perception of the sacred and profane is blurred as to demonstrate to humanity God’s ongoing work of love and liberation as a means to create anew. As Thomas Bohache says,
“The incarnation of God in human body (whether it is Jesus’ alone or that of every human person) demonstrates that the Divine and the physical intersect in a powerful and mystical way, that the physical is important and can never be divorced from the spiritual, and that the Divine yearns to become one with the human over and over again, resulting in the eternal cycle of birth and rebirth, death and resurrection, creation and salvation.”[24]
Bohache’s contribution is significant in the fact that theology within the west has often taken the perspective that the body (the profane) should be repressed as to achieve a “rightful” place of holiness (the sacred). Yet in the incarnation, literally meaning in flesh, God’s relation to the fleshy human experience is not one of disapproval but one of interest, love, and care. As such, God does not separate Herself from creation but takes an everlasting investment towards liberation, saying that we are holy and worthy. In this move, God Herself gifts life eternal, hope everlasting, fortifying strength in the midst of chaos that often maligns the perception of the human experience because of our finiteness.
Yet like black theology, queer theology also presents a number of shortcomings that must be addressed as to understand the liberating role of God in the Black Queer Christ. First is the fact that we must acknowledge as Bohache lifts up, “not everything we could call queer or gay or lesbian is healthy or productive or wholeness.”[25] Such is exemplified in the various destructive behaviors and ideologies queer black men enact on ourselves as a result of racist heteronormativity which seeks to force us into the mold of white masculinity. This manifests in our limited self-esteem, rampant drug use, risky sex practices, and spiritual isolation. While I would argue that we as a community innately hold sources of spiritual resistance and resilience within us as a result of living in a hateful world. Not all coping mechanisms have shown to be beneficial to our wholeness.
Throughout many of the foundational texts within queer theology, scholars lack a consideration for race in their constructions of life-giving theologies. Such a misstep demonstrates an utter disregard in consideration of how race impacts gender and/or sexuality. Such an approach only sets the foundation for the continued creation of silo theologies; theologies created in relation to singular identities without considering others carried within a particular person. As embodied people, we see life through a variety of lenses, so our theological constructions must reflect that richness, for to do anything else is a disservice to the Divine Source that crafted those intersecting identities.
In an attempt to “queer” many of the traditional theologies that have shown to be death dealing, some scholars have inadvertently constructed responses that either negate or place undue burden on the body. For example, Elizabeth Stuart attempts to “queer death” as a Christian eschatological approach that overturns the confines of sex and gender in this life so that in God’s Kindom such categories will not be the causation of pain and sorrow.[26] This is problematic because to wish away our gender and sexual diversity in the Eschaton only theologizes the heteronormative systems of white supremacy in our world. This further perpetuates violence and retroactively applauds those who would do such as doing the work of God in the here and now. It goes without saying that such a motion completely disregards our embodiment as being good. Another example of faulty theology appears in Patrick Cheng’s placement of coming out as being the source of material liberation.[27] This dangerous claim sets the precedent for forcing people out of the closet for the “greater good” without acknowledging the reasons that they have not shared with others their sexual and/or gender identities. Furthermore, such a statement can be read backwards as to state that those who remain closeted are not worthy or do not receive God’s grace. This perpetuates spiritual violence that has historically been catapulted at queer people for centuries in the United States, and most likely, for millennia in the context of the greater world.
While pitfalls exist within both theological approaches, each provides the fundamental and necessary foundation as to locate spiritual resistance and resilience for queer black men in our current political climate. If Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection do not speak to the oppressed, to queer black men in particular, then the mission of Jesus is null and void. If Jesus is neither black and queer, his mission does nothing but stand idle to the ongoing subjection of black men who are debased by white, Christian supremacy as it enacts death-dealing blows in the forms of racism, heteronormativity, poverty, and so forth. Ultimately when put in conversation with one another, black and queer liberation theologies pose the question as Bohache articulates it, “what Jesus’ Christ-ness says” and will say to queer black men?[28]
Link to Part 2: https://faithandliberation.medium.com/out-of-the-tomb-the-black-queer-jesus-the-easter-vigil-part-2-75bd855afb01
[1] Stephen Greenblat, “Culture,” in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 225.
[2] Stephen Greenblat, “Culture,” 225.
[3] Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2004), 6.
[4] Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 105–106.
[5] Collins, Black Sexual Politics, 44.
[6] Bohache, Thomas. Christology From the Margins (London: SCM Press, 2008), 157.
[7] Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ (New York: Orbis Book, 1994), 13.
[8] Douglas, The Black Christ, 13.
[9] Ibid., 19.
[10] Didi Herman, The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 42–44.
[11] Herman, The Antigay Agenda, 84.
[12] Patrick S. Cheng, Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology (New York: Seabury Books, 2011), 11.
[13] James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 2010), 48.
[14] Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 124–125.
[15] James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (New York: Orbis Books, 1997), 127.
[16] Douglas, The Black Christ, 3.
[17] Douglas, The Black Christ, 4.
[18] Ibid., 16.
[19] Ibid., 84.
[20] Douglas, The Black Christ, 104.
[21] Bohache, Christology From the Margins, 204.
[22] Cheng, Radical Love, 71.
[23] Cheng, Radical Love, 71.
[24] Bohache, Christology From the Margins, 213.
[25] Bohache, Christology From the Margins, 224.
[26] Elizabeth Stuart, “Queering Death,” in The Sexual Theologian: Essays on God, Sex, and Politics, ed. Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood (London: T&T Clark, 2004) 62.
[27] Cheng, Radical Love, 73.
[28] Bohache, Christology From the Margins, 213.
