Who has the right to theologize?

All theology is sexual, said Marcella Althaus-Reid. Theologian-men are afraid of sexuality, afraid of the body. In the words of Rubem Alves: the body cries out! Then all run in fear, dreading what the body can do to theology.

The body tears the veil between us and the Divine. In the body we are the Divine, we penetrate and we are penetrated by God’s sensuality, we become one flesh, we grab God’s butt-cheeks and we enjoy the mystical pleasure of christhood.

Can the body speak? The subaltern body? The body that is sexuality? The body that comes with pleasure? Does that body have the right to do theology? Or is theology this dry thing, without the lubrication of affect, love, and pleasure?

We go round and round and end up in the same errors! A Christianity called progressive putting bodies and desires in closets. I am really sorry, Marcella, if your work seems to have been in vain. Rubem Alves, I also apologize to you, for they have eyes but do not see, they have ears but do not hear!

The body cries for liberty! Yet they insist that bodies and the plurality of sexuality do not have the right to “influence theology”. The body dies for liberty! Yet they insist in reducing the body to a biological experience, denying the multiplicity of experiences and possibilities of the body, discourses that testify the deaths of trans  -men and -women, — “god made a man and a woman”, that theology is “very clear when stating there are only two genders” — discourses that deny a whole life to anyone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, non-binary, trans, or intersex. The body lives liberty! The body will no longer be shackled by non-libertarian theological categories. Our body transgresses, rebels and theologizes without panties, without underwear or bras. Our bodies do theology naked before the queer Divine, honoring corporeality and sexuality!

The body is sexual, it is sensual, it desires! Bodies that are oppressed by a capitalist system also desire! To exclude sexuality, my dear, is far from having the title of progressive. “Revolutionizing” while denying the body is yet another way to perpetuate a theology of violence. To say who can and who cannot do theology is a colonizing, excluding, conservative attitude. All bodies can and should mess with this dry, un-lubricated theology, which kills, excludes, and abuses marginalized bodies.

Deus não rejeita a obra de suas mãos

God does not reject their handwork

É inutil o batismo para o corpo

It is useless to baptize the body

O esforço da doutrina para ungir-nos,

Doctrine’s effort to anoint us,

Não coma, não beba, mantenha os quadris imóveis,

Do not eat, do not drink, do not move your hips,

Porque estes não são pecados do corpo.

Because these are not sins for the body.

A alma, sim, a ela batizai, crismai.

The soul, indeed, baptize her, chrism her.

Escrevei para ela a imitação de Cristo.

Write her the imitation of Christ.

O corpo não tem desvãos,

The body has no lack,

Só inocência e beleza,

Only innocence and beauty,

Tanta que Deus imita

Such that God will imitate it

E quer casar com sua igreja

wanting to marry his church

E declara que os peitos da sua amada

declaring the breasts of his lover

São como filhotes gêmeos de gazela.

the twin pups of a gazelle.

É inútil o batismo para o corpo.

It is useless to baptize the body.

O que tem suas leis as cumprirá.

The one with laws will fulfill them.

Os olhos verão a Deus

The eyes will see God.

(Adélia Prado)


The Author: Angelica Tostes is a Latin-American Feminist theologian with a master’s degree in Religious Studies (UMESP). She is part of the Ecumenical Youth Network (REJU) and collaborates with the Collective for Libertarian Spirituality, in Brazil. She writes on her blog Angeliquisses (Theology, Art and Poetry), dedicating herself to the themes of feminist theology, body, and interfaith dialogue. //Original Post in Portuguese

 

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Autophagy #5 – On Love, Sex, Marriage

This is a long text. I build on different concepts and I suggest reading one thing at a time. You can jump to each section clicking here: Ritual and Myth, Sex and Marriage, Marriage and Sin, Early Christian Marriage, Love, Imago Dei/Imitatio Christi, and The Law of Love. I hope that after reading you will understand in a deeper level what the bible means by marriage, and how the gospel of Jesus radically changes our relationship to one another: even our sexual relationships.

Ritual and Myth

The work of theology is, always, to assign meaning and symbolism to things that were already there from the beginning – or if you prefer, not to assign it, but to reveal it. Theologians are mythical storytellers, not inventors. In telling stories that communicate who we are, where we are from, and what our purpose is, theologians form, inform, or challenge, the symbols and the imaginary of people’s relationship to God and to their own lives; our image of God, after all, shapes our own image.

The process from a spontaneous thing or event to a systematic ritual and theory is organic: as people ask “why do we do this?”, the leaders explain things the best they can, often with a good amount of imagination and best-guesses, and that process slowly shapes a community’s theology and symbols. That is exactly what the author of Exodus tells us Moses instructed the elders of Israel to do when he established the ritual of Passover (Easter):

…You shall observe this rite as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this observance?’ you shall say, ‘It is the passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.’… (Exodus 12)

This ritual, Passover, defined the people of Israel and still defines modern Jews, as they celebrate it every year, retelling the story and remembering that day of liberation. Passover was central to Christianity because on the year Jesus died, on Passover, he was having the special supper with his disciples and he asked them to continue doing what they were doing, but in his memory (he was not specific about how often), presenting them with bread – something everyone eats – and wine – something most people drink. He said the bread was his flesh, and the wine was his blood, and they ate and drank. In a few centuries of Christianity developing, between Jesus’ Passover supper with his friends and his friends doing the same thing over and over again, teaching their own disciples to do the same, and then their disciples asking new questions, and they coming up with answers, we found ourselves a thousand years later debating whether the bread in communion is literally Jesus with the accidents of bread or just sort-of-Jesus united to the bread, or just a symbol, getting complicated in philosophical terms Jesus never used. Not only did we get complicated on defining what was once the simplest of rituals, we actually persecuted and killed each other because of it.

There we have it: an event (Exodus), then a story and a ritual that gives meaning to it (Passover). Then again, a new event (Jesus’ last supper) that changes the original meaning of the first, and establishes a new story and a new ritual (Eucharist/Lord’s Supper) that gives new meaning not just to Passover, but to eating bread and drinking wine with your friends.

One of the main questions studying the bible, for theologians, is whether these stories, which are called myths – like reading 1 Corinthians 11:23-34 – tell how something new started, or if they were simply adding new meaning to something old. For example, baptism was a Jewish tradition: Gentiles who wanted to enter the Jewish community were baptized, Jews have several different washing rituals for different reasons, and John the Baptist, a popular Jewish prophet, had started a movement of purification asking all Jews to baptize themselves. Then came Jesus and asked his disciples to baptize both Jews and Gentiles, once and for all, “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”, promising a mysterious new baptism “with fire”. This was a scandalous and new, subversive addition to an old ritual. Now the idea of baptism is associated mainly with Christianity, even though Jews still practice Mikveh.

Thinking back on the Eucharist, it would be ridiculous to read the gospels and think Jesus instituted the eating of bread and the drinking of wine, or that bread and wine are God-given things that humans should not be allowed to enjoy outside Christian guidelines. We very much understand that celebrating communion is one thing, and drinking some wine while enjoying a French baguette with a friend is another, even though the only real difference is what we think we are doing. The difference is not in the bread, or the wine, but in our own thoughts, words, and feelings.

Similar is the question of sex/marriage: how do we distinguish the lines between what has happened in human history, what is told in the bible, and what we tell ourselves through theology and culture?

Continue reading Autophagy #5 – On Love, Sex, Marriage

Christian Responsibility and The Hope of Another World: On Politics

The world has seen the inauguration of an American president whose online supporting community proudly calls “the absolute madman”. The world has also seen, in the past decades, the same country engaging in vicious forms of capitalism that subjugate and exploit poorer countries’ workers, accompanied with more bombing and killing than any other country, terrorizing and decimating families across the globe. The world has seen this country’s public debate overtaken by questions of police violence, constant shootings and gun control, racial struggles, LGBTQ movements, feminism, privilege, and revolts against the acclaimed 1% richest of the world in times of economical unrest. With all this struggle, being “politically correct” became pejorative, and increasingly labels like “liberal” and “conservative” are tossed back and forth in a constant polarization. All of it with the USA as some sort of symbol for several other countries, with its liberal and conservative, left and right dichotomy being reflected back by them, with a rising tension everywhere between those who push for one side and the other: the stereotypical religious white fascist defending traditional family and good values, versus the colored women and queer socialists who attempt to claim their rights for choice and equality. All of it being led by smart educated people on both sides, who are followed by uneducated, unquestioning parroting masses unable to break the dichotomy, unable to think that maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to agree with one point and disagree with another without defending indefensible party positions.

Amidst this global chaos, of which America is the eye of the storm, I see some Christians affirm each other by saying it is all going to be OK. That their citizenship is in heaven alone, so none of this is their business, they can sit back and mind their lives.

It makes me want to cuss, badly. Continue reading Christian Responsibility and The Hope of Another World: On Politics

Who Wants To Live Forever?

What is this thing that builds our dreams / Yet slips away from us / Who wants to live forever? / Who wants to live forever? / There’s no chance for us / It’s all decided for us / This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us.

Who wants to live forever? / Who dares to love forever, when love must die?

If you know good rock music, then you know Freddie Mercury and his band, Queen. The other day I was listening to their album Live at Wembley ’86, where they performed the song Who Wants To Live Forever (listen to it here). Amazing song, amazing lyrics. Right after, they perform I Want To Break Free (here), and I can’t be sure if they put some deep thought in the order of the songs or not, but these two in sequence surely brought a strong meaning to the performance. It made me think a lot, and this post here is me trying to digest those thoughts. It was so beautifully… human. I guess that is what art is about, right?

I never met Freddie, and all I know of him is from his music, and yet I have the feeling that I know him better than many people I have small talk with everyday. To me that is what makes a great artist: when you can see his soul through his art. Transparency.  Continue reading Who Wants To Live Forever?