Rainbow Theology. Patrick S. Cheng
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Reclaiming Black Lesbian Voices
The second thematic strand in queer Black theologies relates to reclaiming of Black lesbian voices in womanist theologies—that is, theologies by and for African American women.
A foundational work in this area is another essay in the 1993 Cone and Wilmore volume entitled “Who Are We for Each Other?: Sexism, Sexuality and Womanist Theology.” The essay was written by Renée L. Hill, a “self-identified lesbian” and doctoral student at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.31 In contrast to Farajajé’s essay (which focuses primarily on gay and bisexual men), Hill focuses on Black lesbians and their exclusion from womanist theological reflection.
Despite the fact that womanist theology was founded by Black women in response to the failure of Black liberation and white feminist theologies to address Black women’s experiences, Hill argues that the “lesbian voice is silenced in Christian womanist theology.”32 For Hill, womanist theologies must confront and critique the homophobia and heterosexism within African American communities and listen to Black lesbian voices.
The debate about the inclusivity of womanist theologies with respect to issues of lesbianism and bisexuality has continued in the two decades since the publication of Hill’s essay. In 2006, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion published an important roundtable discussion, “Must I Be Womanist?”33 Among other things, the roundtable addressed whether Black feminism was more open and accepting than womanism with respect to issues of Black women’s sexuality.
In that roundtable, a number of Black women theologians and ethicists responded to an essay by Monica A. Coleman, a professor at Claremont School of Theology,34 that critiqued the “heteronormativity” of womanist theology and its failure to take seriously Alice Walker’s definition of a womanist as one who “loves other women sexually and/or nonsexually.”35 At least two of the respondents in the roundtable—Irene Monroe and Traci C. West, a professor at Drew University Theological School—agreed with Coleman’s position.36
Also in 2006, Traci West published her book Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women’s Lives Matter. In that book, West dedicated an entire chapter to Black Christian leaders who challenge heterosexism in church and society.37 And in 2008, Monica Coleman published her book, Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology, which also contained a section about GSN Ministries, an LGBTIQ-affirming ministry in Atlanta, Georgia, that has challenged homophobia in the Black Church.38
In 2009, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal, Canada, there was a groundbreaking panel on the intersections of lesbianism and womanist theologies called “Hidden and Invisible in Plain Sight: Queer and Lesbian in the Black Church and Community.”39 Five papers from lesbian womanist scholars Malu Fairley, Pamela Lightsey, Raedorah Stewart, Elonda Clay, and Thelathia “Nikki” Young were presented at the panel. The panel was jointly sponsored by the Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society Group and the Lesbian-Feminist Issues and Religion Group.40 The panel was chaired by professor Joan M. Martin of the Episcopal Divinity School,41 and Renée Hill served as the respondent.
Finally, in 2011, Emilie M. Townes, a lesbian womanist ethicist and the Academic Dean and Andrew W. Mellon Professor of African American Religion and Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivered the 2011 Gilberto Castañeda Lecture at Chicago Theological Seminary.42 The lecture, entitled “The Dancing Mind: Queer Black Bodies in Academy and Church,” critiqued the silences in the Black academy and church about LGBTIQ African Americans in general and Black lesbians in particular. Townes writes: “I am bone weary pissed at the way black folk continue to be pathologized, fetishized, hypersexualized, demonized and the fact that we are now getting comfortable with doing it to ourselves / and to make matters worse, religious institutions like churches and seminaries are often of little help in calling us to account on this.”43
The conversation with respect to womanist theologies and Black lesbians continues with a new generation of lesbian womanist theologians. Thelathia “Nikki” Young, a participant on the 2009 AAR panel and the Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Religion at Bucknell University, has published a number of works on queer Black theology and ethics.44 Young is the co-chair of the queer ethics group of the Society of Christian Ethics, and she is working on a book manuscript entitled Imagining New Relationships: Black Queers and Family Values.
c. Challenging Black Liberation Theologies
The third thematic strand relates to challenges by LGBTIQ Black theologians to the traditional Black liberation theology paradigm of the 1960s and 1970s. In that paradigm, African Americans—like the ancient Israelites—are liberated by God from the slavery of white racism through an Exodus moment.
One critique leveled by LGBTIQ Black theologians against the traditional Black liberation theology paradigm is that it does not go far enough with respect to sexuality issues. This point is made by a number of essays in the 2004 anthology Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic.45 Irene Monroe—the African American lesbian ordained minister—contributed an essay to that anthology entitled “When and Where I Enter, Then the Whole Race Enters with Me: Que(e)rying Exodus.”46 In that essay, Monroe writes: “The Exodus narrative calls us all to come out of whatever bondage enslaves us. For African Americans, our bodies and sexualities are in as much need for freedom as our skin color is.”47
Horace Griffin—the gay Black seminary professor—made a similar point in his anthology contribution, “Toward a True Black Liberation Theology: Affirming Homoeroticism, Black Gay Christians, and Their Love Relationships.”48 In that essay, Griffin argues that African Americans must “engage seriously and critically the relationship between Christianity and homosexuality” in the same “faithful way” in which they have offered a “critical engagement” of Christianity and race in traditional Black liberation theologies.49
Some queer Black religious studies scholars have gone even further than Monroe and Griffin in their critique of the traditional Black liberation theology paradigm. In 2010, Roger A. Sneed, an openly-gay Black professor of religion at Furman University, published his book Representations of Homosexuality: Black Liberation Theology and Cultural Criticism.50 This book is significant not only because it is the second book-length theological treatment of LGBTIQ African Americans by a gay Black person, but also because it critiques Black liberation theology for its failure to address adequately the complexities of queer Black lives.
Sneed argues that the focus of Black liberationist paradigms on homophobia and white supremacy leads to an “essentializing” and “binary” notion of race that ignores the culpability of straight African Americans with respect to homophobic discourse.51 Instead, Sneed proposes an “ethics of openness” and an affirmation of human flourishing as an alternative to the traditional liberation model.52 For Sneed, the traditional liberation model of the oppressor vs. the oppressed requires gay Black men to be victims and does not recognize the complexity—including the joys—of the gay Black male experience.
Sneed uses a number of nontraditional sources in constructing his ethics, including queer Black literature and online personal ads. One such source is his use of Black gay men’s writing. Specifically, Sneed cites the anthology Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction,53 and he draws upon the works of Langston Hughes, Samuel R. Delany, Essex Hemphill, and E. Lynn Harris.54 Sneed argues that Black queer literature not only serves to “retrieve black queer experience from the periphery of black existence,” but also to “destabilize stable, steady readings of black identity.”55 Sneed’s turn to literature makes sense in light of his critique of Black liberation and womanist theologies for their failure to adequately portray the complexity and fullness of the Black gay experience.
Another source used by Sneed is that of personal ads and internet profiles on gay hookup