Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity by the Reverend Elizabeth M. Edman; Beacon Press, $25.95
Usually when authors pen books about homosexuality and Christianity, it's written from the angle of how to reconcile their differences or suggest a truce in a long-standing conflict. In her new book Queer Virtue, openly lesbian Episcopal pastor Elizabeth Edman offers a distinctly different approach, namely what queer experience can teach Christianity. She urges Christians to "queer" lines that pit people against each other. When people ask her how she reconciles her sexuality with her faith, she sees no division since both aspects of her identity are resonant with each other. Being queer is not morally problematic; rather, it has a moral center that is not at odds with the core tenants of Judeo-Christian belief.
By queer, Edman is referring to the disrupting of binary thinking about gender and sexual identity, especially male and female. Christianity also ruptures simplistic dualisms like life/death, human/divine, and self/other. So she can then say authentic Christianity is and must be queer. By authentic Christianity, she is referencing progressive Christianity, the Christian left, essentially mainline Protestant denominations and liberal Roman Catholics. Her book is a meditation inviting progressive Christians to learn from queer virtues and to realize that not only is the divine alive in LGBT people, but many are deeply attuned to its presence.
Born in Arkansas the granddaughter of the former president of the evangelical Wheaton College, Edman sensed she was on a different path when she developed a crush on a girl. Called to be a priest, she worked as a chaplain for the AIDS Health Services unit at Jersey City Medical Center in the early 1990s. Her comment that her queer identity has taught her more about being a good Christian than has the Church both shocks and titillates the reader, especially because she bravely uses a personal, scandalous incident as chaplain at Northwestern University, which caused harm to her family and the Episcopal community, to show the challenging intersections of both of her worlds.
Part one of her book discusses the nuances of queer virtue using the themes of identity, risk, touch, scandal, and adoption, which she views as common to both traditions. This section occasionally seems abstract, academic, and stifling in its paean to political correctness, but she skillfully uses examples from Orange Is the New Black , Hedwig and the Angry Inch , and the novels of Leslie Feinberg to illustrate queer virtues.
Part two shows how practical aspects of everyday experiences of queer people such as pride, coming out, authenticity, and hospitality might invigorate contemporary Christian practice. She is more successful in this section, especially in the pride and coming out chapters. Traditionally, pride as excessive self-esteem or isolating self-sufficiency, which keeps one from engaging with other people, has been seen as a negative (one of the seven deadly sins) in Christianity. But Edman makes a convincing case for its rehabilitation by using it in its gay context as a sense of self-worth and personal affirmation that connects people to each other, creating community. Edman is tired of the way the Christian church has been turned into a weapon by the right to become the face of intolerance, so she urges progressive Christians to reclaim the tradition from conservatives. She blames the Christian Left for not appreciating the strengths of their own gospel, especially its prophetic social justice stances and addressing the needs of the marginalized. She condemns her own church for not doing more for the queer community in light of deadly homophobic African laws, as well as high suicide rates of young transgender adults. It is not enough to preach against this violence; one must explain why it is wrong and anti-Christian.
Edman's approach is both intellectual and provocative, challenging progressive Christianity to deepen its core message by appreciating queerness in all its giftedness. Perhaps it would be another book, but Edman doesn't discuss what values and questions progressive Christians might pose to today's queer people. Edman has just touched the tip of the iceberg and might inspire other scholars, lay members, and clergy people to use this fresh perspective to reconcile sexuality with Christianity.