Radical Love. Patrick S. Cheng
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href="#litres_trial_promo">Last Things: Horizon of Radical Love
This book could not have been written without the help and encouragement of many people. I would like to thank my doctoral adviser and mentor, James H. Cone, who believed in me and helped me find my theological voice. I would also like to thank my other theological mentors over the last decade: Kwok Pui-lan, Mark D. Jordan, and Christopher L. Morse.
I would like to thank all members of the Episcopal Divinity School community for their support, especially my faculty colleagues. It is difficult to imagine a more talented and passionate group of scholars-pastors-activists than Angela Bauer-Levesque, Clarence Butler, Christopher Duraisingh, Bill Kondrath, Kwok Pui-lan, Julie Lytle, Joan Martin, Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, Ed Rodman, Susie Snyder, Fredrica Harris Thompsett, Larry Wills, and Gale Yee. I am also grateful for Aura Fluett, our wonderful reference librarian.
I am grateful for my past and—in some instances—present colleagues and friends at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, the Church Pension Group, the Metropolitan Community Churches, the American Academy of Religion (in particular, the Asian North American Religions, Cultures, and Society Group and the Gay Men and Religion Group), Christ Church Cambridge, the Gay Asian and Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY), Queer Asian Spirit, and Easton Mountain Retreat Center, many of whom are cited in this book.
I am grateful for the participants in the 2010 Emory University Summer Seminar on Religion and Sexuality, the participants in the 2010 Human Rights Campaign Summer Institute, and my colleagues in the Emerging Queer API Religion Scholars (EQARS) group.
I am grateful for my theological “family” and other conversation partners, colleagues, and friends over the years, including Byron Au Yong, Roy Birchard, Pat Bumgardner, Mike Campos, Faith Cantor, George Chien, Arnie Chin, Susie Chin, Conrad Chu, Hugo Córdova Quero, Ned Coughlin, Thomas Eoyang, Diane Fisher, Vicky Furio, K. David Harrison, Sharon Hwang Colligan, Barton T. Jones, Michael Kelly, Jonipher Kwong, Wendell Laurent, Debbie Lee, Elizabeth Leung, Benny Liew, Leng Lim, Sister Linda Julian, Mary McKinney, Jay Michaelson, Kyle Miura, Tim Nevits, Hung Nguyen, Su Pak, Christine Pao, Pauline Park, Sung Park, Ed Paul, Paul Raushenbush, Joe Robinson, Michael Shernoff, David Siegenthaler, Miak Siew, Scot Simon, John Stasio, Pressley Sutherland, Dave Swinarski, Jonathan Tan, Josh Thomas, Weiben Wang, and Lai Shan Yip. There are many, many others—the names of whom would fill many books in the world—and I am thankful for all of them.
I have appreciated the thoughtful comments of my editor at Seabury Books, Davis Perkins, and those of my friends and colleagues Rich McCarty, Catherine Owens, Bob Shore-Goss, Sue Spilecki, and Linn Tonstad who graciously agreed to review the manuscript. Of course, all errors and omissions in the manuscript remain my sole responsibility.
I am grateful to my network of family and friends in both cyberspace (for example, on Facebook) and the real world, including my mom, Deanna Cheng; my brother, Andrew Cheng; and his family, Abi Karlin-Resnick, Jordan Cheng, and Noah Cheng. I give thanks for the life of my late father, Richard H.Y. Cheng. Most of all, I am grateful to my husband, Michael Boothroyd, who has been radical love incarnate for me over the last two decades, and our dog, Chartres, who has brought much joy into our lives.
December 1, 2010World AIDS DayCambridge, Massachusetts
When I met and fell in love with my husband, Michael, almost two decades ago, something radical happened. I experienced the boundaries between myself and the outside world dissolving in a way that I had never experienced before. The boundaries that had separated me from other people in the past—intellectually, emotionally, and physically—became fluid. Michael and I were no longer two separate and distinct persons, but rather two connected human beings with permeable borders.
Other boundaries within me dissolved as well. For example, the boundaries that had previously kept the categories of male and female separate and distinct also became fluid. As a gay man in a same-sex relationship, my standard definitions of who a “man” was allowed to fall in love with (that is, traditionally only with a “woman” and not with another “man”) no longer held true.
But most importantly, the boundaries between God and me began to dissolve. My early childhood love for God, which had evaporated in the face of the hatred and intolerance of anti-gay Christians after I realized that I was gay and started to come out of the closet, was rekindled as I understood what it meant to experience embodied love. Indeed, we know that God is love1—a love so extreme that it is described in superlative terms such as ploutos (extreme wealth)2 and huperperisseuō (superabundance).3 Not surprisingly, those who love one another deeply have passed through the boundaries between death and life.4
Radical love, I contend, is a love so extreme that it dissolves our existing boundaries, whether they are boundaries that separate us from other people, that separate us from preconceived notions of sexuality and gender identity, or that separate us from God. It is the thesis of this book that the connections between Christian theology and queer theory are actually much closer than one would think. That is, radical love lies at the heart of both Christian theology and queer theory.
Radical love is at the heart of Christian theology because we Christians believe in a God who, through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, has dissolved the boundaries between death and life, time and eternity, and the human and the divine. Similarly, radical love is also at the heart of queer theory because it challenges our existing boundaries with respect to sexuality and gender identity (for example, “gay” vs. “straight,” or “male” vs. “female”) as social constructions and not essentialist, or fixed, concepts.
It should be noted that radical love is not about abolishing all rules or justifying an antinomian existence, sexual or otherwise. Radical love is ultimately about love, which, as St. Paul teaches us, is patient and kind, and not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude.5 As such, radical love is premised upon safe, sane, and consensual behavior. Thus, nonconsensual behavior—such as rape or sexual exploitation—is by definition excluded from radical love.
Thus, queer theology—that is, the place where Christian theology and queer theory meet—is all about radical love. Some skeptics may paraphrase the second-century theologian Tertullian by asking: What does queerness have to do with theology? (Tertullian, of course, famously resisted the merging of secular philosophy with the gospel message by asking what Athens had to do with Jerusalem.) The answer: Everything! I believe that, at its heart, Christian theology is a fundamentally queer enterprise, and this book is an attempt to demonstrate this truth.
Queer theology has enjoyed a remarkable surge in popularity. There have been a number of significant works published recently that relate in whole or in part to queer theology. These books include Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots: Essays in Honour of Marcella Althaus-Reid; The Embrace of Eros: Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity; Seducing Augustine: Bodies, Desires, Confessions; Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection (2nd edition); and Trans/formations.6
However, to date there have not been many easily accessible introductions or surveys of the field for individuals who are not familiar with queer theory, on the one hand, or the traditional doctrines of Christian theology, on the other.7 This book seeks to fill that gap in the discourse. It