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Since 1994, I have served as a teaching assistant, and later as a
teaching fellow, at the University of Pittsburgh. These appointments
have enabled me to teach a variety of courses in the English Department
while completing my Master's degree and beginning work on my PhD in the
field.
In these days of intense debate over multiculturalism, "political
correctness," and canon formation, teaching any kind of literature or
composition course involves navigating minefields of controversy. I
tackled my most explosive minefield when I requested a position as grader,
and later as sole instructor, for the department's "Bible as Literature"
course.
As someone with a longstanding commitment both to lesbian and gay
rights in the civil sphere and to lesbian and gay studies in the academic
sphere, I decided to address such issues in the context of this
assignment. I felt that this was appropriate--and indeed, necessary--for
two main reasons. First, the fundamentalist religious right has been
vigorous in its attempts to use the Bible as a tool with which to oppose
lesbian and gay civil rights. I felt that it would be impossible to
ignore this current cultural phenomenon in the context of the Bible as
literature. Secondly, my research had led me to realize that some of the
most provocative and insightful work in contemporary biblical scholarship
has been produced by openly gay, or gay-friendly, writers. Scholars and
activists such as Letha Dawson Scanzoni, Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Tom
Horner, Nancy Wilson, Peter Gomes, Rebecca Alpert, and Gary David Comstock
have produced a wealth of compelling perspectives on the Bible; to ignore
this rich branch of scholarship seemed to me to be cheating my students.
In this paper I will review both the strategies I used and the
lessons I learned over the course of my three semesters teaching "Bible as
Literature." First, I will describe the "three worlds of the Bible"
concept which provided a framework for my gay-positive approach. Next, I
will discuss how theories of difference, privilege, and marginalization
informed my presentation of both the Bible and the secondary texts which I
shared with my students. I will then explain my interrogation of the
hermeneutics of those who have historically sought to use the Bible as a
tool of oppression. Next, I will discuss my presentation of those "tribal
texts" within the Bible that have played a role in the cultural lives of
marginalized groups. In the next section of the paper I will consider
some of the alternative ways of reading the Bible which have been employed
by members of oppressed communities. Following this, I will explain how
the readings of various marginalized groups are often suppressed or
ignored by those privileged groups who often control the production of
knowledge about the Bible. Next, I will consider both student responses
to my approach and the lessons which I learned over the course of three
semesters. Finally, I will explain how two brutal murders moved me to
renew my commitment to progressive biblical studies.
In so reflecting upon my experiences as a teacher, I am very much
indebted to the insights made by biblical scholar Phyllis Trible in her
classic 1984 study Texts of Terror. In that work, Trible focused on four
"texts of terror" in which women suffered rape, torture, and even death at
the hands of patriarchal males. [1] [Please note: Clicking on footnotes will open another page so you can keep the notes handy as you read] Of these brutal stories Trible
observes, "To tell and hear tales of terror is to wrestle with demons in
the night. . . . We struggle mightily, only to be wounded. But yet we
hold on seeking a blessing: the healing of wounds, and the restoration of
health" (4, 5). For me as a teacher, that quest for healing and
restoration entails dealing honestly and unflinchingly with biblical texts
of terror such as those which Trible confronts. But I found that terror
was only one aspect of the Bible; in that vast anthology of writings, I
also sought out texts of hope. This essay details that journey along the
paths of both terror and hope which I undertook with my fellow instructors
and my students.
Although I was eager to share gay and lesbian critical
perspectives on the Bible with my students, I realized I needed to place
this material in a meaningful scholarly context. Furthermore, I was
determined not to let the course mutate from "The Bible as Literature"
into "Gay and Lesbian Perspectives on the Bible." Although such a course
would be valuable, it was not the course which the students had registered
for. Furthermore, I did not want to teach a course on the Bible with so
narrow a focus; I wanted to address a wide variety of scholarly and
political issues relevant to biblical studies. "Lesbian and Gay
Perspectives on the Bible" may beckon me to teach it in the future, but
for the 1997-98 academic cycle I was working within different intellectual
parameters.
The approach I ultimately took to teaching the Bible was one I
called "the three worlds of the Bible." Inspired by the work of the Bible
and Culture Collective, this approach looked at three areas of inquiry.
The first of the three worlds of the Bible is the world behind the Bible.
This I defined on the final version of my syllabus as being "made up of
the various writers, editors, institutions, and communities which have
contributed towards shaping the texts as we have them today." It was
under this rubric that I discussed such topics as theories about biblical
authorship, the histories of the communities that produced the texts, and
the relationship of such pre-biblical texts as the Gilgamesh Epic to the
Bible. The second "world" was the world inside the Bible, by which I
referred to the "characters, themes, rhetorical devices, poetic
structures, and examples of figurative language" that my students would
encounter in the process of reading the text. In this context the class
considered such phenomena as plot, dialogue, and character development
within biblical narratives. Understanding these two worlds of the Bible
helped prepare my students to explore the third world of the Bible--the
world in front of the Bible.
In my final syllabus I described this world in front of the Bible
thus:
This was the rubric under which I dealt with much of the gay-positive
biblical scholars mentioned above. Implicit in my approach was the
acknowledgment of a lesbian and gay culture, or cultures. Those scholars
and activists who have reclaimed the Bible from the right, and have
re-imagined it as a vital sourcebook for lesbian and gay culture and
spirituality, are part of the diverse world in front of the Bible.
A core idea undergirding my gay-friendly approach to the Bible was
an exploration of concepts of difference, marginalization, and dominance.
Each time I taught the Bible as Literature I raised these issues on the
first day of class. Drawing on the work of political theorists such as
Audre Lorde and Iris Marion Young, I explained to my students that in
situations where some form of difference --differences in gender,
ethnicity, sexuality, national origin, religious background, etc.--exist
between two or more groups, that difference can be turned into a tool by
which one group is privileged over others. The privileged, or dominant
group, may enjoy numerical superiority, access to greater weapons
technology, economic power, or greater political prestige; these or other
factors may enable them to maintain a position of dominance. Those groups
which are "pushed to the margins"--denied political rights, stripped of
their land, or even targeted for mass murder--are often defined as
inferior or deviant by the ideologues of the dominant group. As I
discussed these concepts with my students, I invited them to name some
concrete examples of this process in action. Such examples discussed
included the attempted genocide against Jews under the Nazi regime, the
Apartheid system of South Africa, American slavery, and the fight against
women's suffrage in the United States.
Concepts such as difference, privilege, and marginalization were,
I asserted, integral to understanding a key aspect of the world in front
of the Bible. In my research for the course, I discovered that the Bible
has been used as a tool to augment numerous systems of dominant and
oppression. In fact, virtually every such system in the Western world for
the last two thousand years has, at some point, had the Bible wedded to
it. American anti-Catholic bigotry, South African Apartheid, genocidal
wars against Native Americans, American racial segregation, attacks on the
Equal Rights Amendment, anti-Semitism, the fight against lesbian and gay
rights--all these and other causes have enjoyed the services of biblical
interpreters. [2]
While acknowledging the power of biblical interpretation to
support systems of domination, I also noted that the Bible has been
reclaimed by many marginalized communities as a powerful tool with which
to overcome oppression. The Bible has always been such a double-edged
sword in struggles between dominant and marginalized groups; during the
course I frequently shared with my students examples of the biblical
rhetoric of both sides.
From an ethical standpoint, I did not feel it was enough merely to
inform my students that the Bible has been used to establish systems of
domination; I felt I needed to dissect the method by which the ideologues
of domination read and used the texts. Essentially, the method used by
slave masters, segregationists, gay bashers, and all other oppressive
interpreters is selective literalism. Each of these ideological camps
posits their particular version of the Bible as the authoritative,
infallible Word of God; they virtually ignore the presence of the human
element -- including human prejudice and other cultural baggage -- in the
writing and editing of the texts. Claiming to take this authoritative,
divine word absolutely literally, each group selectively chooses the
prooftexts which further a particular course. Of course, this method of
selective literalism entails ignoring, or creatively reinterpreting, those
scriptures which may seem to contradict a given ideology.
A striking example of selective literalism which I shared with
each of my classes on our first meetings involved the underground
snake-handling sects of Appalachia. Elliot Wigginton's excellent study,
"The People Who Take Up Serpents," was my primary source for this
material. Although, to be fair, the snake-handlers are not apparently
employing the Bible to attack a particular marginalized group --
in fact, one could look at them as a persecuted minority within American
society -- their method of reading the Bible nonetheless echoes that of
various hegemonic groups.
The snake-handling churches base their unique style of worship on
two verses from the New Testament: "And these signs shall follow them that
believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new
tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing,
it shall not hurt them. . ." (Mark 16: 17, 18). Their literal reading of
this pronouncement leads the members of these underground, rural
congregations to handle various species of venomous snakes during their
worship services. Although this activity may be seen as extreme by
outsiders, to members of these fellowships this ritual is an integral part
of their Christian identity. As one snake-handling preacher declared, "I
can't understand why th'people can't see it. Right there it is in
th'Bible" (Wigginton 373).
These snake-handlers literally risk their lives for their
hermeneutics; in that sense the Bible is dangerous to them. However, even
more serious is the use of the Bible by privileged groups to either
suppress knowledge or to oppress marginalized communities. A prime
example of this phenomenon is the Vatican response to the work of Galileo
Galilei. Galileo was convicted of heresy in 1633 for advocating a
heliocentric model of the solar system: a model which depicted the earth
revolving around the sun. This theory brought Galileo into conflict with
those selective literalists who advocated geocentrism: the model
which placed the earth at the center of the universe.
Geocentrists based their argument on such passages as Joshua 10:
12-13, in which Joshua commands the sun and moon to temporarily halt their
revolution around the earth. They also cited such verses as Psalm 93:1--
"[T]he world also is established, that it cannot be moved." Cardinal
Robert Bellarmine, who was Galileo's chief accuser, commented thus on
these and other passages: "If [you] want to read not only the Holy
Fathers, but also the modern commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms,
Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will find all agreeing in the literal
interpretation that the sun is in heaven and turns around the earth with
great speed, and that the earth is very far from heaven and sits at the
center of the world [system]" (Fantoli 175). As do the snake-handlers
today, Cardinal Bellarmine relied on a literal reading of selected
biblical verses. [3]
Galileo found himself facing the wrath of biblical literalists
because of his challenge to orthodox doctrine. In contrast, members of
various marginalized groups have, throughout Christian history, been
victimized by biblical literalists because of their very identities. An
example of such abuse which I shared with my classes was the appropriation
of the Bible as a tool to support the institution of American slavery.
Biblical literalists cited verses such as Leviticus 25:44--"Both thy
bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of
the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen
and bondmaids"--and Ephesians 6:5--"Servants, be obedient to them that are
your masters according to the flesh"--in order to argue that the Bible
both authorized the institution of slavery and condemned those who
resisted the institution. Indeed, a literal interpretation and
application of such passages led W.G. Brownlow, in his debate with
abolitionist Abram Pryne, to declare, "American slavery is not only not
sinful, but especially commanded by God through Moses, and approved
through the Apostles by Christ" (91).
I made clear to my students that the use of the Bible as such a
tool of dominance and oppression has had tragic results throughout
Christian history. To make my point, I shared with them an excerpt from
the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Douglass, a
nineteenth-century African-American man who escaped from slavery and
eventually wrote a series of important autobiographies, graphically
reported the results of this pro-slavery biblical interpretation.
Regarding one master who "found religious sanction for his cruelty,"
Douglass wrote the following: "I have seen him tie up a lame young woman,
and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the
warm red blood to drip; and in justification of the bloody deed, he would
quote this passage of scripture--'He that knoweth his master's will, and
doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes'"--a paraphrase of Luke
12:47 (98, 99). By sharing Douglass' record of this sickening image--a
privileged white Christian male violently abusing a disabled Black slave
woman--I hoped to offer my students a concrete example of my concept of
the "dangerous Bible."
One of the greatest pleasures I derived from teaching the Bible as
literature was pointing out to my students those biblical texts which have
inspired and strengthened oppressed communities. Nancy Wilson, a minister
with the Metropolitan Community Church, calls such texts of the Lesbian
and Gay community "tribal texts." I reflected with my students not only
on the tribal texts of lesbians and gay men, but also on those texts that
have been particularly important in the history of other "tribes," such as
women and African-Americans.
One early "tribal text" involved Dina, daughter of Jacob. One of
the Bible's first rape survivors, she was the inspiration for the title of
a pioneering Jewish feminist anthology, The Tribe of Dina, edited by
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz and Irena Klepfisz. While lecturing on her story
I read to my class the moving preface to that anthology:
The editors of The Tribe of Dina raise questions left unanswered by the
patriarchal text; they note that these verses narrate "[o]nly what the men
thought and felt." Nevertheless, they continue their search for
redemptive meaning when confronted by this narrative: "And Dina: Did she
want something away from the father, away from the brothers? Did she need
her mother? Did she long for sisters, for daughters to gather a Tribe of
Dina?" The example of Dina helped me to drive home an important lesson to
my students: members of marginalized communities seeking liberation will
often see aspects of the Bible which those allied with systems of
dominance overlook. For those invested in patriarchy, Dina is merely a
voiceless catalyst for conflict between male characters; it is the male
progeny of Jacob who are truly important. But for those seeking to
understand and oppose the oppression of women, Dina becomes a far more
significant figure.
Despite my careful construction of an intellectual framework for
the discovery of various tribal texts, some students felt uncomfortable
with gay and lesbian perspectives on such relationships as that between
David and Jonathan, or between Ruth and Naomi. To help ease them into
this new way of reading the Bible, I approached this material with the
following attitude: I was not trying to convince my students that the
historical figures on whom these characters may have been based were gay.
Neither was I trying to convince them that the biblical authors intended
for the reader to interpret these characters as gay. Indeed, I pointed
out that "gay" and "lesbian" were fairly modern concepts. My essential
point about these and other lesbian and gay tribal texts was this: These
characters have played, and continue to play, important roles in modern
lesbian and gay cultural history. Just as nineteenth century
African-Americans saw in the figure of Moses a character who inflamed
their imaginations and embodied their dreams of freedom, so to have gay
men and lesbians claimed a number of biblical figures as part of their
heritage. This approach helped keep the class discussion from
degenerating into a debate as to whether or not David and Jonathan were
"gay."
I made sure to do my own homework before I discussed lesbian and
gay tribal texts with my students. I pointed out that Raphael Patai
(171-72) had pointed out the homoerotic nature of the story of David and
Jonathan in 1959, and that Jeannette Foster (22-23) had placed the book of
Ruth in a lesbian literary context as early as 1956. I wanted my students
to understand that lesbian and gay perspectives on biblical texts were not
something that I was making up off the top of my head; this type of
scholarship has, rather, been going on for decades.
One of my goals in teaching the Bible as Literature was to expose
my students to different ways of reading the Bible. In doing so, I
realized that I would be demonstrating hermeneutical methods that
radically differ from those used in most churches and Sunday schools.
This traditional, uncritical hermeneutic generally assumes that a given
version of the Bible is an internally consistent, monovocal source of
propositional truths to which the reader is obliged to defer. Knowing
that many--if not most--of my students had been exposed to this
hermeneutic at some point, I shared with them the work of critics who
engaged in alternative hermeneutics. One such strategy was that of
resistant reading, whereby a reader challenges authorial assumptions and
ideology; a second strategy looks for discordant voices at work within the
biblical texts. It is significant that whereas the uncritical hermeneutic
is often used to support ideologies of domination, these alternative
hermeneutics are frequently employed by members of marginalized groups as
part of a liberationist strategy.
A good example of resistant reading is offered by Native American
journalist Robert Allen Warrior. His work was crucial to my lectures on
the books of Numbers through Joshua. In these narratives, the Israelites
invade the "promised land." Finding other nations already present, they
proceed to either enslave or commit acts of genocide against the
indigenous peoples. Consider, for example, the fate of the king of Bashan
and his people:
An uncritical reading of stories such as this one assumes that the
Israelites were justified in their actions against these idolatrous,
unclean peoples. Indeed, such readings by Christians of European heritage
have played a tragic role in the Native American experience. Puritan
writer Increase Mather, for example, saw in these narratives of conquest
and genocide a biblical model for the encounter between European colonists
and the indigenous peoples of the New World. In his 1676 book A Brief
History of the Warr with the Indians in Newe-England, Mather declared,
"That the Heathen People amongst whom we live, and whose land the Lord God
of our Fathers hath given to us for a rightful Possession, have at sundry
times been plotting mischievous devices against that part of the English
Israel which is seated in these goings down of the sun, no man. . . can be
ignorant" (86). As Israel was apparently justified in slaughtering the
Canaanites and confiscating their land, so too did Mather believe that he
and his fellow Christian colonists--"the English Israel"-- were justified
in their genocidal campaign against the first inhabitants of the New
World.
Robert Allen Warrior offers a contemporary Native American
response to the deadly hermeneutics of Increase Mather. In a rebuke to
liberation theologians and others who insist upon a noncritical reading of
these problematic biblical passages, Warrior writes:
His reading was a powerful classroom example of my teacherly suggestion
that sometimes a resistant reading of a given text is both intellectually
and morally valid. Moreover, Warrior's comments served as a good
introduction to resistant readings from a variety of perspectives--Jewish,
feminist, African-American, lesbian and gay, and others.
Another alternative hermeneutic involved an active search for
ideological conflicts between various biblical authors. By so
highlighting the polyvocality of the Bible, this alternative hermeneutic
challenges the authoritarian assertion that the Bible "speaks" with a
single, unambiguous voice. And like the practice of resistant reading,
the search for biblical polyvocality is a way of reading historically
favored by those against whom biblical texts have been deployed as
rhetorical agents of oppression.
Consider the classic nineteenth century text The Woman's Bible.
Co-written by a collective of women led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The
Woman's Bible was an anthology of biblical passages juxtaposed with biting
commentary by these female critics. Writing in an era during which
opponents of women's suffrage turned to the Bible for intellectual
ammunition, Stanton's project boldly explored the polyvocality of this
text. For example, Stanton herself uses biblical precedent to undercut
the Pauline commands regarding wifely submission:
Stanton thus privileges several authorial voices over that of Paul in
Ephesians 5:22.
This attention to the polyvocality of the Bible figured
prominently in my lesson on the Book of Ruth. In this narrative, the
author not only presents Ruth, a non-Israelite character, in a positive
light, but also writes approvingly of her interethnic marriage with the
Israelite Boaz. For an illuminating comparison, I read to my class some
excerpts from the Book of Ezra: "And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel. . .
said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange
wives of the people of the land. . . . Now therefore let us make a
covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of
them" (Ezra 10:2, 3). In contrast with the Book of Ruth, the Book of Ezra
maintains an inflexibly negative attitude towards interethnic marriage.[4]
These juxtaposed readings demonstrated the polyvocality of the Bible; the
contrasting views of one author often form a counterpoint to those of
another. As I told my students, for every violent, dehumanizing, or
divisive passage in the Bible, one can find at least one liberating,
humane, and inclusive countertext; we as moral beings have to choose which
texts we will privilege.
An important theme of my class was that any and all readings of
the Bible are politically motivated. This observation is particularly
true with regard to the conflict of interpretation between marginalized
and dominant reading communities. Whereas the marginalized readers often
highlight biblical characters and motifs which can augment their
liberationist agenda, conservative readers of the dominant group often
either ignore or actively suppress such readings of those same passages.
A complex example of this hermeneutical tension involves the eunuch of the
Ethiopian Candace (Acts 8:26-40). This character, a gentile student of the
Hebrew Bible, is baptized by the apostle Philip. Of this eunuch the
editors of The Original African Heritage Study Bible declare:
I found this condemnation of Eurocentric white scholarship to be quite
compelling. Out of curiosity, I looked at this same passage in The New
Scofield Reference Bible, a Eurocentric study Bible. Amazingly, the
editors, despite voluminous footnotes on other passages and topics,
completely ignore this character. Racially insensitive "scholarship"
essentially suppresses a Black Liberationist reading of this story.
The Eunuch is a figure of interest not only to all people of
African heritage, but also to lesbians and gay men of all ethnic groups.
Many scholars have noted his significance as a "sexual minority" in the
Biblical text. Indeed, this character is the culmination of a series of
biblical passages about eunuchs that encompass both the Hebrew Bible and
the Old Testament. From their initial exclusion from the Mosaic covenant,
the eunuchs ultimately, in the person of this Ethiopian pilgrim, are
welcomed into a new community of faith. [5] As Nancy Wilson observes,
however, status quo scholarship ignores the significance of the Ethiopian
Eunuch for lesbian and gay liberation much as it ignores his significance
in the cultural heritage of people of African descent. Noting her dismay
at the fact that the editors of "mainstream" (i.e. heterosexist) biblical
commentaries regularly fail to cross-reference passages about biblical
eunuchs, Wilson observes, "These are the politics of biblical
interpretation at their most subtle and at their worst. Such gross
omission and silence obscure the possible relationship of these passages"
(128).
Both the racist and heterosexist readings of the story of the
Ethiopian eunuch exemplify what Iris Marion Young calls cultural
imperialism: "the universalization of a dominant group's experience and
culture, and its establishment as the norm" (59). Because white
heterosexuals have traditionally controlled the institutions which produce
and disseminate biblical scholarship, much of this material has either
ignored or marginalized the readings of people of other sexual and racial
categories. Despite this cultural hegemony, progressive biblical scholars
such as David Tracy have emphasized the value of marginalized communities'
readings of the Bible. Tracy declares, "[T]he readings of the
oppressed--however different and even uncivil by some tired standards of
what can count as civil discourse--must be heard, and preferably heard
first. . . . Through their interpretations and actions, we can finally
read these texts with new eyes" (104). Indeed, encouraging my students to
read the Bible with such "new eyes" was one of the main goals of my
overall approach.
Many of the ideas I discussed during my Bible as Literature class
were disturbing, and even shocking, to some students. Late in the term
during my second semester teaching the course, one young women tried to
explain her frustration with my choice of material during the class
discussion period. Claiming that I was "beating a dead horse" with my
emphasis on the role of the Bible in the lives of marginalized
communities, she declared, "There's more to studying the Bible than this."
Her complaint was valid in that an overemphasis on this material is too
narrow a focus in a broadly defined "Bible as Literature" class; her
comments led me to further refine my "three worlds of the Bible" approach.
However, I do believe that addressing issues of difference and privilege
is essential to any class on the Bible as literature, and I stressed this
point to the dissenting student.
Other students responded to my approach much more positively. One
young women even "came out" to me and introduced me to her girlfriend.
Other students wrote with great insight and sensitivity about issues of
difference, privilege, and marginality in their optional papers and in the
essays from the comprehensive final examination. One of the most
rewarding examples of student response, however, occurred during my final
semester teaching the course. The week before we discussed the letter to
the Ephesians, the Southern Baptist Convention issued its controversial
edict on wifely submission to husbands within marriage [6] --an edict
largely inspired by Ephesians 5:22. My students eagerly tackled this very
current controversy, noting that this same biblical book contained
passages which past generations had used to justify slavery. My students'
ability to see the connections between these issues truly excited me as a
teacher.
My decision to teach the Bible as literature in an explicitly
gay-positive context proved to be as educational for me as it was for my
students. First and foremost, I realized that the challenge of raising
lesbian and gay issues in courses like this one is well worth the risk.
I'll never forget my mixed feelings during the first recitation period in
which I raised these issues during my first semester with the course: I
was nervous and unsure of the effectiveness of my presentation. Over the
course of three semesters, however, I grew quite comfortable--and,
hopefully, more skillful--with handling lesbian and gay issues in the
classroom.
I also came to appreciate the value of looking at lesbian and gay
issues--political liberation, cultural autonomy, and other issues--in a
broader context. This broader context took into account many
interlocking axes of difference, privilege, and marginalization. Over the
course of the semester I shared with my class perspectives on the Bible
from a wide range of marginalized perspectives. Rather than isolating
these approaches from each other, I tried to show both their contrasts and
their common ground. I have come to believe that lesbian and gay
theologians and religious activists must, in order to fully participate in
a truly universal struggle for human liberation, also educate themselves
regarding these other revolutionary, liberationist traditions of biblical
hermeneutics. Feminist hermeneutics, Jewish approaches to the New
Testament, African-American hermeneutics, Korean minjung theology--an
understanding of these and other approaches to the Bible can
equip each scholar to better resist those ideologies which seek
to use the Bible as a tool of oppression.
Towards the end of my last semester teaching "The Bible
as Literature," a brutal murder occurred in Texas. James Byrd,
an African-American man, was chained to a pickup truck and
dragged to death by three white men. What struck me in
particular about this crime was the fact that all three men were
reported to have had ties to the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations--two
of America's most notorious white supremacist groups. I knew from my
own research that both of these groups used biblical verses to justify
their sick racial theology. [7] Indeed, the murder of James Byrd
represented a logical extension of the racist theology pioneered be white
slave owners in preceding centuries. I reproduced Carrie Hedges' article
on the tragedy for my class, and together we discussed the significance of
this murder to our own work for the course.
James' murder reinforced an already held belief of mine: biblical
interpretation is not merely a matter of scholarship;
rather, it is a matter of life and death for marginalized persons in
predominantly Judeo-Christian cultures. A second reminder of this fact
came more recently, with the murder of Matthew Shepherd. Matthew, a
student at the University of Wyoming, was lured from a bar by two men who
savagely beat him and tied him to a fence, leaving him to die. Matthew
slipped into a coma; after being discovered, he was taken to a hospital,
where he died.
Like the murder of James Byrd, the murder of Matthew Shepard can
be linked to the ugly heritage of hatreds justified by selective use of
the Bible. Consider the observations of Mark Potok, a spokesman for the
Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes. Mr. Potok noted
that, in a society in which gay men and lesbians are routinely condemned
from the pulpit, "it's not surprising that a certain percentage of people
feel like it's all right to physically attack gays and lesbians." He
added, "I think mainstream leaders, religious and political, have to bear
some responsibility for these types of crimes" (Jones 2A). It is no
coincidence that Matthew's funeral was picketed by nominal "Christians"
who held up signs with messages like "No Fags in Heaven" and "No Tears for
Queers" (Kenworthy); even in death, the forces that helped to kill Matthew
continued to cruelly attack him and his loved ones.
Against prejudice, against discrimination, against bias-related
violence--against these and other evils must progressive people of faith
fight. As I try to contribute to this ongoing struggle, I am both
challenged and inspired by the words of the late Audre Lorde. An
African-American lesbian feminist, poet, and political activist, Lorde
knew what it meant to be marginalized along many interlocking axes of
difference. She also testified that language is a potentially powerful
force both in the oppression and liberation of marginalized peoples:
A key element in our struggle against injustice--whether we struggle as
pastors, as academics, as political activists, or as private individuals
in our daily lives--must be a revolutionary, liberatory approach to the
scriptures of our particular faith traditions. Indeed, these scriptures
constitute a significant manifestation of that powerful, double-edged
language of which Audre Lorde wrote. In so reclaiming these texts--these
texts of both terror and hope--we accept the challenge to be agents
of positive societal transformation. Teaching the Bible as literature in
a gay-positive context has been one aspect of my own personal struggle
against the powers of marginalization, domination, and hatred in our
world. As I reflect upon the lives and deaths of Matthew Shepard and
James Byrd, I renew my own commitment to the struggle.
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The Case for Same-Sex Marriage : From Sexual Liberty to Civilized Commitment William N., Jr Eskridge
Peter J. Gomes
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