Moving Beyond Affirmative Ministry with Queer Theology: Brent Saccucci Interview of Brian

Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast. I'm Brian G. Murphy. And I'm Father Shannon T. L. Kearns. We're the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and your hosts. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people and we want to show you how. Tune in each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness and how they can enrich one another. We're glad you're here. So we are here with Brian Murphy who has been the co-founder of Queer Theology, QueerTheology.com, like this giant resource hub and community network for so many queer, trans and two-spirit folks to find faith. Not only after like deconstruction, but also across the world thinking of queer theology across cultures. I came across your work from Canada. We're in Lethbridge, Alberta, which is like the Bible Belt of the province and Alberta is like the Texas of Canada. But we also have the most trans people per capita in our center in Lethbridge than any other spot in the province. And so like there's a lot of overlap here between queerness and faith. And I have been so taken aback by your work and your thinking and your podcast, especially as we like continue to wrestle with like gay white nationalist narratives of like Matthew Bynes and that sort of thing. But it feels so pressing. Right. It feels so pressing now, but never to ask how can theology be turned on its head. So I am so thrilled to have you. Did I miss anything from your intro? I think it's about it. I wrote a book called Love Beyond Monogamy that's already out and we wrote a book together called Reading the Bible Through Queer Eyes, which delves a lot of these topics that's coming out later this year. I love it. That's fantastic. And then at the end, we'll give you a chance to say where they can continue to learn more and that sort of thing. So I'm going to set our timer for five minutes per question. But that is like show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But it's okay if we go over and they're my first question for you. Brian is this. So tell us a bit about that difference between queer theology and affirmative faith. How are they different or similar? And what makes queer theology queer, like queer as verb, disruptive? Yeah. So to use like this language, right, affirmative ministry work, affirmative faith seeks to like ask and answer the question, like, is it okay to be LGBTQ and a person of faith, a Christian, Jewish, a more academic word for that might be apologetics. And it's sort of making the biblical case for why it's okay to be queer in some way. This work has been around for like decades and decades. John Shelby Spong, Mollincott, what is her name? Give me one second. There's a huge tradition of like Virginia Raven Mollincott. Virginia Raven Mollincott who wrote Is It Homosexual? My Neighbor? So these are questions that we've been wrestling with since like the 60s at least, right? And so when I say like, you know, is it okay to be gay and Christians? Like, yeah, that question has been like asked and answered a long, long, long time ago. And also, you know, as folks like come into their queerness or as folks come up into a conservative church and encounter a queer person, like they're asking those questions for the, a new for themselves for the first time. But historic, it's, I think it's important that we recognize that like these are like old conversations and those anti LGBTQ arguments have been like thoroughly like rebutted. And so it feels important to name also that there's not a like sort of magic spell of like, if we just have like the perfect argument that that will convince anti LGBTQ people to like get on board with us, all of the arguments are out there. And so I think it takes more than just an academic argument to move hearts and minds humans for as long as we've existed back to, you know, cave by paintings on cave walls, we tell stories as ways to make sense of ourselves and to transmit what is like most important to us. And so we find that stories are ultimately what change hearts and minds. So queer theology sort of jumps builds off of apologetics and says, well, what if we bring a queer to lens to faith? What new insights does that open up? Like Patrick Chang wrote radical love, Marcel Alpsos read the queer God, like one of my favorite like passages from that is like, what if the Trinity was an orgy, right? And the sort of imagine you have faith from that perspective. It's sort of like what you get in like, what does it mean like for Jesus to be trans or just to be gay or Jesus to be asexual? Like a few years ago, I made a video called Jesus is polyamorous. It's like a present times theological claim rather than like a historical claim right to say like, well, if we like look at the divine through a lens of polyamory, like what new insights open up and sort of playing with that to subvert it to go looking for the ways in which like the marginalized and the outsiders and the oppressed like have always been a part of religious traditions and especially coming from like, I was raised Christian, I'm now Jewish, like both those traditions really, there's a strong emphasis on like justice and taking care of the vulnerable. And also like institutional religion sometimes like pushes out a side, including we see like the evolution of scripture that gets baked into scripture as well. And so queer theology is really about looking for the stories and the people and the messages like that might have been missed along the way. And then like, I would add on one more that like what we do at queertheology.com, Shannon and I, Shannon will call it like narrative theology, I call it queer sacred storytelling. And which is sort of merging our your sort of present reality with the stories of scripture to see like what does like how might scripture or faith or tradition speak a good word to you as a queer person or as a woman or as a marginalized person. And then also how can our queer experiences like teach us something new about what was going on there. So like, I love to contrast like the entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday with like act up demonstrations. And in particular this like March that act up did from the White from the National Mall where the eighth Memorial Court was carrying the ashes of people that they love that had died at HIV AIDS and like brought those like marched those ashes to the White House lawn and like toss the ashes onto the lawn. Well, you know, they had rather than Christ and talking points. And so I think like for those of us who are familiar with Palm Sunday, it often feels it's like little kids and their Sunday bests in like little Palm fronds and it's like cute and calm, but actually this was like a really subversive and confrontational political action that Jesus and his followers were doing mocking Roman military might as they were like entering into Jerusalem. And so like it makes both Palm Sunday come alive and also it like adds it's sort of even deeper meaning to the work that we're doing in the here and now. Yes. And is it then a poll, also a part of apologetics in so far that it is trying to make a biblical case for what has gone on said or is it a complete refusal of trying to justify existence and takes that baseline? No, this like is a queer story. This is subversive or is it? I think it's a yes and searching. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very queer view. Yeah, I know it's very queer. So I think it's a yes and in that I think that there's something powerful about saying like we're not even going to like debase the humanity of LGBTQ people or polyamorous people or immigrants or women by like acting like there are like two sides to this question. And also the process of engaging in whether it's like queer theology or like narrative theology sort of makes that goodness and that power self evident and it brings people along for the ride. I remember years ago, Father Shannon, my creative partner, korthyology.com, we were at a like progressive ish Christian festival, wild goose here in the States. And we met some there were no openly LGBT speakers on the main stages. And we met some folks from I don't know where they were like the Bible Belt of America. And yeah, they were, you know, friendly and like one into like a lot of LGBT people, but I think theologically were not affirming. And I think that a traditional approach maybe maybe like a Matthew Vines approach would be like we have to like lay out the case about Leviticus and Sodom yet Sodom and Gomorrah. And we were like, fuck all that. And we skipped right over it. And we're like, Shannon talked about being trans and like his top surgery scars and seeing that reflected in the Caravaggio paintings of Jesus and doubting Thomas and like the invasive questions that Jesus got about his body and the invasive questions he got about his trans body and like what if we could just trust each other to like be who we say we are who we are. And he thought that like previously he had thought that like resurrection was about sort of like becoming like perfect and so like maybe he wouldn't be trans anymore. Or like if you were had scars or if you were even sometimes like in his theology was like, well, if you were like overweight, if you were fat, like you would like not be fat anymore. I think bad about you would be like fix and Jesus and his reservoirs of active bodies still had his scars. And so it was this revelation of like maybe resurrection isn't about making your scars go away. It's about realizing that your scars are holy. And I told the story about like my first boyfriend and this like park that we used to go to and sort of seen parallels to the Garden of Eden. And these like four or five people were like, yep, like we're on board. Like sign us up. Like where do we like they don't actually need. Yes, like a scholarly explanation of like Leviticus. And in fact, I think we're probably like more bought into the work in the movement because they have this sort of like personal latch into it as opposed to like, let's just sort of like debate the definition of this word or this translation, right? Right. Like this is not a cerebral tennis court match, which is fun. And like that can be good, but racially, but I don't know that it does much because they're it does tell people about something about we're in transness to say like coming out as a sacrament and like these things are all mirror a queer way of knowing. Okay, that's kind of actually leads us into our next question, which is that like so far already naturally and I think probably a lot of the conversation goes towards Christian roots. Queer theology be understood outside Christianity like already our conversation naturally went there. That's my background. And you know, hearing yours too is like, right? Yeah, naturally land here. How does that look different outside of Christianity? And can spiritual but not religious queers claim a queer theology outside scripture? That is my jam right now. But so the answer is yes. I think understanding like the majority of Americans are Christian, I would imagine the majority of Canadians are Christian. Christianity really dominates like American and Canadian politics by extension like global politics that has like a really big impact. And so like, we kind of can't escape wrestling with Christianity. It's like one of like a major world religion like Islam being another like major world religion that maybe Americans would do better to to engage with. But like, yes, queer theology exists. But Christianity within Judaism. But like certainly with Islam or the ones like that I'm most familiar with a lot of Native American like nations and religious traditions here in the US and I'm pretty also in Canada, like there's a really like queer band, Koreanists exists in in like Shintoism. So yes, it's all over the place. And I think that I have like a real heart for spiritual but not religious queers claiming a cret theology or even people who are like maybe not even spiritual or religious or just sort of like queer that like sort of like one of my big feces are one of our big feces at mythology.com. And I will say like Father Shannon is like, he's a ordained priest. But we're like, you don't have to go into a church or some of that go or mosque to find the divine like queerness is already holy. And so like communion is a sacred ritual. And like so is like drag brunch and making a pilgrimage to Mecca is a pilgrimage and making a pilgrimage to Palm Springs or Fire Island or Provincetown. I don't know the Canadian beach gay destinations. Like those are also queer pilgrimages. And and we are part of these like sacred lineages and like naming our place in that. And I think for LGBT people who have had words like six and full perverted like thrown at us, it's like important that we know not just is it like okay to be gay, not just is it like even like good to be gay, but it's like it's very good and it's deeply meaningful and it's worthy of celebration. And there's a word that people use to describe that and that word is like holy and sacred. And so like we should like name that for ourselves, like regardless of what we believe about like, if there's a man in the sky or like whether like there's the vibrations of the universe we're tapping into or your chakra is like whatever it like, if that's your jam, awesome, like and also like your jam can just be like, for people are awesome. And like, I like I'm descended from like a really incredible legacy that has allowed me to like be the person that who I am. And I'll just like quickly rattle off like within Judy isn't even more familiar with J. Mickelson wrote God Riscay and he wrote everything is is God. Joy Layton an incredible trans poet, author, scholar, she was the first maybe only like openly transgender professor at Yashiba University and Orthodox like university here in New York City. She transitioned like wow on faculty at Yashiba University, like absolutely incredible. She has her new book like Shekinah Speaks Delightful. Robyniki DeBloisie is an openly polyamorous with the queer rabbi and then not Judas Plasco, like a like a force in like feminist Jewish literature and writing but also like she wrote Standing Again at Sinai, but also like queer herself. And so there's a lot of people doing lots of really interesting work across across the spectrum. So cool. It's like I remember my Google search is always being like, can you be a Christian and blank? And I am reminded frequently, especially when I got into like mysticism, that like we actually can construct these theologies and religions like these are are made and like we it's not about justifying into a box. I think it's also like expanding that box to which is queer, but I struggle a bit with this like next question, which is okay, then why would we ever explore religiosity? Why would we ever even come back to it? Because I agree then that queerness is divine and sacred and all of these beautiful things. In fact, it's like the earliest indication of a goddess or knowing her. But I think that it's also reasonable to be like, I'm not going to touch that. But I just I see so many queer and trans people who are activists. I'm like, you're talking about faith babe, like you have no reason to believe things are getting better. In fact, all the evidence to suggest that here you are still creating queer disruption. And so I I like what you know, Shannon says to around like, it doesn't have to be that. But is there a way that we can like gently begin to touch this incredibly prickly thing that feels so scary? Yeah, so my first response would be like, if you don't want to, like, that's okay, you don't have to. And our earlier conversation like, Korean is going to be wholly outside of like organized faith. And like, even if that language doesn't buy it for you, like, OK, cool. Like that said, I think there's two reasons like why we might want to explore. One is for those of us who have been harmed in some way by faith or a particular expression of faith, whether that is like we are personally involved with like, say Christianity, or we just sort of like live in a world where like conservative Christianity dominates like American politics, right? And sort of infuses our idea about like right and wrong and and God and like what we deserve or don't deserve, right? Like punishment. And like, it's really important that we like address those wounds like head on and heal from them. In my work, I encounter folks sometimes that that like, I would describe it as like, still scared of a God they don't believe in that it's like, and I remember even like, I had come out and I decided it was okay to be gay. I was like, how to pop like a boyfriend. And sometimes that night, I would just be like, be like lying about anything like what if I'm wrong, like what if they're like what if, quote, like, they're right. Totally. And in my like, in my day to day, like it didn't like, I wasn't going to church, it didn't really matter. But like that was like nagging in there somewhere. And I probably like upon reflection years later, it would be like, oh, that might have to do like that might be also in some way connected to like ideas I have about sex and like what sex is good, what sex is bad, like this like, can I talk about like like, like, like, yeah, well, like anal sex, like, is that like a bad thing or a nominogamous sex or a feeling like should I clamp down on my sexual I know that I'm in a relationship and being like a good gay. And like America, like, I would imagine Canada like we got the pure tens right. So like it's just sort of it's like seeped into our culture. And so you kind of can't escape it. And so, no, you can see you can sort of like substitute like your values for faith, right. And so it's important that we have a strong anchor and like really believe like in our like deep in our body that queerness is good and not just intellectually have decided or intellectually rejected faith. So that's one part of it. Or another part of it so much. Another part of it is that there's just I asked I asked on the on the podcasts we had a brush up here who's a cohen it sort of the feminist version of like a priest in Judaism. Like why bother with all of like the bullshit that comes along with Christianity or in their case, Judaism. And they were like, well, there's like something about like tapping into a specific sort of practices that people have done for a long time and continue to do for a long time that like they were like, you know, when I like Shabbat candles, like I am part of a people that has been doing that for like 3000 years. Right. And so we're like connects us like forward and backwards in time. And then it also connects us like across space that like I am one of millions of people who are doing that today. And so it just like taps us into something bigger. And so like that could be Christianity that could be Judaism, like that could be the Star Trek fandom. But like being a part of something right that helps you like orient is powerful and religion and faith do that well. And then the third part would be like my experience doing this now for like 15 years is that people just sort of like wander their way back. Like there's just sort of this like nagging question of like, I'm just sort of curious, maybe like as I age, like, and sometimes it's, it's like, you know, like, how should I raise my kids? But sometimes it's more of a sense of like this used to be important to me. And now it's not or like, what's my purpose? My like my one of my partners, he said he was at his like LGBT running group and someone came up and he was like, Oh, I just I just started listening to a new podcast. And I think, you know, the co-host, it's like the queer theology podcast. And he was like, Oh, yeah, that's my husband. But this friend was saying, I don't know, I just sort of like, I haven't been religious since I was a kid, maybe.