Queer Prophets - mostly of the Christian kind.

The Book of Queer Prophets: 21 Writers on Sexuality and Religion by Ruth Hunt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Edited by (Baroness) Ruth Hunt, 'The Book Of Queer Prophets' brings together the testimonies of twenty-four LGBTQ people of faith (or in a couple of cases, of lost faith) in the form of short essays.

I should say at the outset that it's very Christian-heavy - I'd like to have seen a greater variety of faiths represented - there's one Muslim, one Jew, and one Indian Christian with a love of Hindu Goddesses, but that's your lot out of the twenty-four.

However if one can accept that this is basically a critique of the Christian LGBTQ experience (and probably should have been presented as such), it's a very eloquent and insightful one, with solid theological scholarship presented alongside moving personal testimony. Christians of varied denominations, both lay and clergy - some of whom have changed denomination in their quest for acceptance as a Queer follower of Jesus Christ - recount their struggle for recognition within a Church which is at worst openly hostile and condemnatory and at best placatory and prevaricating. Their persistence in claiming their right to both a sexual and a spiritual identity (and after all, the search for spiritual fulfilment is one of humanity's 'givens', along with sex, food and community) is admirable and inspiring as well as illuminating and instructive. There is no hesitation, for instance, in putting that oft-quoted passage from Leviticus 20:13, which states that it is 'an abomination for a man to lie with a man as with a woman' in context alongside the similarly proscribed 'abominations' of eating shellfish or getting a tattoo.

This book is a wake-up call to the Church, calling it to account for its failure to fully recognise and accept on equal terms the lives, loves and spiritual needs of LGBTQ Christians; a call endorsed by (heterosexual) celebrity priest Rev Kate Bottley in a humble but eloquent Afterword. Progress has undoubtedly been made over the last decade or so, but there's still a long way to go. Every would-be priest or Christian minister should read 'The Book Of Queer Prophets!



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