Queer Movements and Christianity: Beyond the Mainline

In recent years, more and more historians of Christianity have come to acknowledge that queer subjects belong in their narratives—and not just as adversaries. Beyond merely adding to the cast of characters, the inclusion of queer subjects within histories of Christianity has the potential to remake the stage, alter the script, and upset the plot. This panel contributes to the still-young field of the history of queerness and Christianity by asking: What subjects and sites have we overlooked thus far? And how might centering queer subjects challenge assumptions and perspectives dominant in the field? 

Because so much of the historical scholarship on queer movements and Christianity has focused on Mainline Protestantism, this panel turns its focus elsewhere: global evangelism in the Metropolitan Community Churches, the religious politics of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, contentious collaboration between a Jewish lesbian feminist and women leaders of the Christian Right, and the movement for trans affirmation in the Roman Catholic Church. Introducing a diversity of queer and trans religious subjects from the 1970s to the present, primarily though not exclusively based in the United States, these four papers point to the geopolitical entanglements of religion and sexuality; the pervasive anxieties around sex, gender, and the body that have shaped Christian engagements with the state; and the responses of LGBTQ communities to their marginalization, including their religious production and advocacy.

The panel consists of four junior scholars from different institutions: a Ph.D. candidate, two non-tenure-track faculty members, and one tenure-track faculty member. Our approaches to queerness and Christianity are informed by the intersections of American religious history with queer studies, gay and lesbian studies, feminist studies, and critical theories of religion, race, sexuality, and the state. The respondent to these four papers will be Heather R. White, author of Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights (University of North Carolina Press, 2014) and co-editor of Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018).

Paper #1 — Good Gay News: Global Evangelism in the Metropolitan Community Churches 

This paper examines the role of evangelism in the meteoric rise of the Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), a largely LGBTQ+ Christian denomination. By 1977, the MCC was the largest grassroots LGBTQ+ organization in the world. By 1982, just before the AIDS epidemic began to ravage the denomination, there were 144 churches in 41 U.S. states and thirty other churches in eight countries outside the U.S.: Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Paying particular attention to the MCC’s evangelistic efforts in Mexico, Nigeria, and Australia, this paper will illuminate evangelical and pentecostal influences on the MCC, which challenge the widespread assumption that LGBTQ/anti-LGBTQ religious subjects will fit neatly into our molds of theological liberalism and conservatism. Additionally, the paper intervenes in scholarly conversations about global LGBTQ+ activism in the wake of Jasbir Puar’s “homonationalism” and Joseph Massad’s “the gay international” (e.g., Kristopher Velasco 2023; Rahul Rao 2020; Nour Abu Assab 2017).

Paper #2 — “As Proud of Our Gayness as We Are of Our Blackness”: A History of “Third World” Gay and Lesbian Christian Activism, 1978-1986 

On October 14, 1979, over a thousand queer and trans people of color gathered at Harambee House near Howard University for the Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference, organized by the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLG). Widely recognized as a moment marking a new chapter in gay and lesbian politics, one in which LGBTQ people of color organized around their views and priorities independent of the mainstream gay rights movement, less frequently discussed is the religious nature of this shift—illustrated, for instance, by the fact that many of the NCBLG’s founders were themselves clergy in the Metropolitan Community Churches. Drawing on the history of the NCBLG, this paper gestures towards the strategies LGBTQ communities of color employed to negotiate the neoliberalization of gay and lesbian politics in the late twentieth century—and the ways they articulated modes of resistance to it through their religio-political engagements.

Paper #3 — Letters to Right-Wing Women: Andrea Dworkin, Jewish Lesbian Feminism, and the Christian Right

How is it that Andrea Dworkin—a Jewish lesbian feminist—came to testify alongside conservative Christians at the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography? To answer this question, this paper first revisits Dworkin’s 1983 book Right-Wing Women, which critically analyzed conservative Christian writers (Anita Bryant, Phyllis Schlafly, Marabel Morgan, Ruth Carter Stapleton) and their appeal to Catholic, mainline Protestant, and white evangelical women. Dworkin emphasized the antisemitism and homophobia of these writers but also suggested they offered relatively accurate diagnoses of misogyny that were neglected by gay, lesbian, and Left movements. Second, this paper examines how Dworkin discussed these right-wing women in her letters to other feminists as well as her personal correspondence with Schlafly about the 1986 Commission. This paper’s turn to Dworkin to answer this question extends Janet Jakobsen’s work, drawing out the contradictory ways that Christianity crossed paths with lesbian feminist movements—Christian, Jewish, and otherwise—of the 1970s-1980s.

Paper #4 — Widening the Bridge: The Movement for Trans Inclusion and Affirmation in the Roman Catholic Church

This paper traces the movement for trans affirmation and pastoral care in the Roman Catholic Church. It begins with a review of current church policies, which most often reject trans experiences and scientific research in favor of rigid complementarian ideologies. Then, it highlights luminaries such as Mother Nancy Ledins, the first Roman Catholic priest to come out as a trans woman, Sr. Luisa Derouen, a Dominican Sister of Peace who has ministered to the trans community, and Kori Pacyniak, a scholar and trans, non-binary member of the Women Priests Movement. Third, it examines current trends in LGBTQ Catholic groups such as DignityUSA, New Ways Ministry, and Fortunate Families. How have these organizations’ advocacy grown to include trans people? The paper concludes with a brief reflection on the lessons that the movement for trans affirmation and inclusion can offer for the church’s relationship to other marginalized communities.