Indecent Theology brings liberation theology up to date by introducing the radical critical approaches of gender, postcolonial, and queer theory. Grounded in actual examples from Latin America, Marcella Althaus-Reid's highly provocative, but immaculately researched book reworks three distinct areas of theology - sexual, political and systematic. It exposes the connections between theology, sexuality and politics, whilst initiating a dramatic sexual rereading of systematic theology. Groundbreaking, intriguing and scholarly, Indecent Theology broadens the debate on sexuality and theology as never before.
The work of Marcella Maria Althaus-Reid is both groundbreaking and notoriously difficult to read, as it blends theories from post-colonial studies, queer studies, gender and sexuality studies, and feminist and liberation theologies. Offering a much needed introduction to the work of the theologian, Queer and Indecent shows the development of Althaus-Reid’s core concepts - indigeneity, economic oppression, the body, indecency, heterosexuality, and sex, as well as setting her life in context with an overview of her stance on feminist teaching and activism, and her critique of Latin American liberation theology. Designed to introduce a new generation to her work, the book serves as both an indispensable guidebook and a launchpad for students to explore her extraordinary writing for themselves.
Aiming to clarify concepts and make the authors' arguments easy to understand, this title is broken down into three sections, each with an introduction to the subject and a list of further reading. The text maps onto courses concerned with Gender Studies, Body Theology, Political Theology and Liberation Theology.
Examines some of the most extreme approaches to the body that our society engages with. This book embraces the difficult and challenging areas of the body and society, as an embodied resource for the ever-expanding task of considering the nature of incarnation through the lens of body theology.
Trans/formations is a new addition to "SCM's Controversies in Contextual Theology" series. Like anything coming from Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood, it is controversial and challenging as well as highly original. The book will: make visible a range of trans lived experience [transgendered and transsexual], offer theological reflection on these experiences, create challenging theology from this experiential base, and provide a resource for churches and theology students not to date available. It includes an excellent range of contributors, including Elizabeth Stuart and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. This is a valuable addition to reading lists of courses on religion, gender and the body.
Marcella Althaus-Reid was one of the most fascinating and controversial theologians of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Her strong personality and her iconoclastic work inspired a whole generation of theologians in the UK and worldwide. Marcella's creative life was cut short by her death from cancer in 2009. Yet she lives on, not least in those who have been inspired by her work and continue to engage with it. "Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots" draws together a number of world-class scholars and others who engage with the main themes of Marcella's work and show how the critical and controversial conversations which Marcella has begun can and do continue. It is therefore far more than a Festschrift, but a celebration of an intellectual life Marcella-style.
There are those who go to gay bars and salsa clubs with rosaries in their pockets, and who make camp chapels of their living rooms. Others enter churches with love letters hidden in their bags, because their need for God and their need for love refuse to fit into different compartments. But what goodness and righteousness can prevail if you are in love with someone whom you are ecclesiastically not supposed to love? Where is God in a salsa bar? The Queer God introduces a new theology from the margins of sexual deviance and economic exclusion. Its chapters on Bisexual Theology, Sadean holiness, gay worship in Brazil and Queer sainthood mark the search for a different face of God - the Queer God who challenges the oppressive powers of heterosexual orthodoxy, whiteness and global capitalism. Inspired by the transgressive spaces of Latin American spirituality, where the experiences of slum children merge with Queer interpretations of grace and holiness, The Queer God seeks to liberate God from the closet of traditional Christian thought, and to embrace God's part in the lives of gays, lesbians and the poor. Only a theology that dares to be radical can show us the presence of God in our times. The Queer God creates a concept of holiness that overcomes sexual and colonial prejudices and shows how Queer Theology is ultimately the search for God's own deliverance. Using Liberation Theology and Queer Theory, it exposes the sexual roots that underlie all theology, and takes the search for God to new depths of social and sexual exclusion.
This book celebrates the legacy of theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid (1952‐2009), and her particular influence in Asia and South America. Her work has served as a significant source of inspiration to many scholars, ministers, and activists challenging heteronormative theologies, but her sudden death in 2009 cut short the nascent and elegant theological thought for which she so valued. Contributors to this book succinctly investigate aspects of the vast work of Althaus-Reid by discussing issues of gender, race, and sexuality in Asia and South America, utilising the liberation, queer and indecent theologies she espoused. Each chapter demonstrates how her legacy is alive and thriving today, but also points towards to the potential future impact of her prolific theological output. By highlighting the ground-breaking work of Althaus-Reid, this book will serve as a key reference for scholars of Liberation, Queer and Indecent Theology, as well as Asian and Latinx religions.
Rita M. Gross offers an engaging survey of the changes feminism has wrought in religious ideas, beliefs, and practices around the world, as well as in the study and understanding of religion itself. "This book will be an important resource for all ongoing work in feminist teaching and research in religion."-Rosemary Radford Ruether
What do Christianity and queerness have to do with each other? Can Christianity be queered? Queer Theology offers a readable introduction to a difficult debate. Summarizing the various apologetic arguments for the inclusion of queer people in Christianity, Tonstad moves beyond inclusion to argue for a queer theology that builds on the interconnection of theology with sex and money. Thoroughly grounded in queer theory as well as in Christian theology, Queer Theology grapples with the fundamental challenges of the body, sex, and death, as these are where queerness and Christianity find (and, maybe, lose) each other.
