Queer Theology

Queer Theology

By Queer Theology / Brian G. Murphy & Shannon T.L. KearnsReligion & SpiritualityChristianity
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Queer Theology episodes

  • Reclaiming the Wisdom That Christian Patriarchy Tried to Bury with Angela Herrington

    We’re excited to welcome @angelajherrington back to the podcast to talk about her new book and overcoming Christian patriarchy. For over a decade, Angela has helped women break free from the grip of Christian patriarchy and reconnect with the wisdom they were taught to silence. She is a trauma-informed coach, strategist, and author, who has walked alongside thousands through deconstruction, spiritual burnout, and the messy, beautiful work of building a life that feels whole and true. Her work brings together spiritual insight, nervous system awareness, and grounded practices that create lasting change. In this episode, Fr. Shay talks with Angela about her new book, “Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods: Liberating Feminine Wisdom from Christian Patriarchy” and how it is building on her first book about faith deconstruction. Angela explores how Christian patriarchy and nationalism shape our inner lives, limit our sense of self, and disconnect us from embodied wisdom. She discusses archetypal feminine wisdom beyond gender binaries, the power of intuition and embodiment after high-control religion, grief over missed developmental stages, and the healing potential of reconnecting with these feminine archetypes. This conversation offers a compassionate invitation to self-nurturing, wholeness, and reclaiming wisdom that was never meant to be lost.

    Resources:

    • Learn more about Angela Herrington at https://angelajherrington.com/ 
    • Buy Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods: Liberating Feminine Wisdom from Christian Patriarchy by Angela Herrington
    • Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community/

      •  

      This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

      1 (10s):

      Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy.

      2 (13s):

      And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from

      1 (17s):

      Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how

      2 (23s):

      Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello and welcome back to the Queer Theology Podcast. Today we have a special guest in Angela Harrington. I’m really excited for you to hear this conversation. So, here’s a little bit about Angela before we jump in. For over a decade, Angela Harrington has helped women break free from the grip of Christian patriarchy and reconnect with the wisdom they were taught to silence. She is a trauma informed coach, strategist, and author who has walked alongside thousands through deconstruction, spiritual burnout, and the messy beautiful work of building a life that feels whole and true.

      2 (1m 3s):

      Her work brings together spiritual insight, nervous system awareness, and grounded practices that create lasting change. So let’s get into it. Welcome, Angela. Well, Angela, welcome back to the podcast. I’m so thrilled to have you back to talk about your new book. Thanks for being here.

      3 (1m 19s):

      Yeah, thanks for having me.

      2 (1m 21s):

      So it’s been, it’s been, I think, probably at least a year, maybe even more since we had you on to, to talk about your first book. And I, I’m wondering for, for folks who missed that interview, we’re gonna link it in the show notes, but would you just tell us just a brief, brief bit about your first book and maybe anything that you’ve noticed in, in the time since that book came out?

      3 (1m 47s):

      Yeah. So the first book really honed in on supporting people who already constructing, deconstructing your faith without losing yourself was just really timely and, and really important for me. And I think that it served, I think it served as a guide for a lot of people who weren’t sure if, if they wanted to hang onto their faith or not hang onto their faith, but they were sure that they were tired of people telling them what they should and shouldn’t believe. Right? Like, there’s just a lot of, yeah, deconstruction is fine as long as you don’t lose your faith or you don’t give up these core tenants. And so when I wrote that book, my, my goal was really to provide a container and some really valuable questions for people just to sit with and chew on.

      3 (2m 35s):

      So it, it, it helps people with deconstruction. It talks about sort of some steps that you can take, maybe some stages that you can go through, but it’s not a Google Map 12 step program, because that’s not what deconstruction is. So really, really rooted in curiosity. Lots of questions I joke about, you know, this is the kind of book you may wanna throw across the room a couple times, and that’s fine. Go ahead, do what you gotta do, but I’m here to support you, not to give you all the answers that I think you should have. And that’s, that’s kind of the, the Tldr r version of the book.

      2 (3m 11s):

      Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. And now, now you’ve written your second book, which is Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods, Liberating Feminine Wisdom from Christian Patriarchy. It came out in October for, yeah. And before we even dive into what that book is, I, I’m curious for you why that felt, why this book felt like the next thing to write after, after your book about deconstruction. Like, what was the journey that led you from writing about deconstruction to really diving into this, to this next topic?

      3 (3m 50s):

      Yeah, so this book really, I, I don’t wanna say it’s part two of the first book, but it, it does feel like it’s on a continuum. It does feel like it’s time to go deeper with these conversations about Christian patriarchy, because I think that we can only deconstruct so far without really getting into this sort of Christian nationalism, Christian patriarchy. I mean, those are, you know, practically twins, right? Really getting into that conversation about how it has shaped culture, but more importantly, how it, it has shaped us internally. So a lot of my clients who were going through safety construction or who were just, you know, trying to sort out who they were and, and how to get over some limiting beliefs we’re always shocked to, to really dig into how much of the, the negativity and the doubt and everything was learned.

      3 (4m 44s):

      And, and that’s really one of the things that I think everybody in deconstruction, I think goes through those conversations of like, okay, what have I learned? What have I unlearn? This book goes much, much deeper into talking about feminine wisdom and, and women in general and kind of, you know, historically how femininity has been seen in the church and how it has been corrupted and twisted in ways that then just, I mean, we’re, we’re literally holding ourselves back because of what we believe. And when I say we, you know, men, women, queer folks, non-binary folks, all of us are, are exposed to these tropes and these horrible stereotypes about gender.

      3 (5m 30s):

      And there’s so much that’s wrong with to that’s wrong with society today that is really rooted in this idea that, that masculinity is valuable and strong and powerful, and femininity is weak and dangerous and needs to be colonized. It needs to be controlled and co-opted, and that’s what’s holy. Rather than saying no, actually there, the, it’s not binary. It’s not that forced binary. There’s good in all of us, there is messiness in all of us. There is strength and weakness in all of us, and really tapping into what it actually means to lean on feminine wisdom outside of this sort of co-opted view of, you know, sitting quietly raising kids, like kind of the proverbs.

      3 (6m 16s):

      Even Proverbs 31 is a little, you know, that gets a little twisted into kind of a trad wifes type thing. But we just saying, okay, if we, if we can pull back a little bit from the mythology of, of Christian patriarchy, what’s actually true and, and how would we have lived had we not been swimming in that pond of this toxic religious system? And that sort of, so again, it’s, it’s not necessarily like book one, book two sort of chapters or, or volumes, but it’s very deeply connected to the work that I’ve done over the last decade or so as a coach and just saying, where are we getting stuck and, and what do we need to call out from inside of us that is learned behavior?

      3 (7m 3s):

      But it just has happened for so long that it feels natural and it feels like it’s part of us.

      2 (7m 8s):

      Hmm. Yeah, man, there’s so much I wanna dive in. I, but I, I feel like, I feel like the first question I have to ask, you know, this podcast of mostly probably queer listeners, probably lots of trans and non-binary folks who might be feeling nervous, right? About talking about femininity and feminine wisdom as opposed to masculinity and masculine wisdom. So like, how do you, can you maybe just define how are you talking and thinking about those terms? You mentioned it’s not a binary, but I feel like anytime we talk about feminine masculine, people are already like, but it, you’re talking about it in a binary way, And I know that you are not doing that, but like, you know Yeah.

      2 (7m 55s):

      For anyone who might be feeling nervous about that, can you just talk about that a little bit?

      3 (7m 60s):

      Yeah, absolutely. First of all, that nervousness is totally valid. Like our society kind of crap right now, having conversations that are nuanced and that are fluid. So I, so first of all, yeah, like, just take a deep breath and know that you’re not overreacting. Like you’re not overreacting at all. That’s a, that’s a natural valid response to the world that we live in. For me, when I talk about mothering, when I talk about feminine wisdom, when I talk about these terms that are, you know, Christian patriarchy, typically genders in a certain way kind of skews in a certain way. I’m talking about feminine wisdom from an archetypal perspective.

      3 (8m 40s):

      And so if that’s, if that’s something that’s new, we’ll talk, I’m sure we’ll talk about a little bit here, But we go into the book a little bit more about what that means. And it’s, it’s more, it’s so funny because I think, I think that that talking about feminine wisdom is probably one of the most egalitarian conversations we can have if we can get back to its truest self. So when I talk about women, you are who you say you are, right? Like you, you know, it’s not, I’m not gatekeeping that, And I, I hope that anyone who hears this feels safe enough that they’re not trying to justify who they are or, you know, where they fit into some sort of manmade spectrum as far as gender goes.

      3 (9m 28s):

      Because feminine wisdom’s in all of us, you know, even, even even the most masked people walking around in our life right now, there is feminine wisdom that’s there too. And I think part of the, part of the nervousness, part of that uncertainty and that question of, you know, is this a safe space to, to talk about gender comes from the hate of all things feminine, right? Because this hyper false idol of some sort of, you know, unattainable masculinity is like the thing that we’re told is the most powerful, the most sacred, the most godly, like yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, anything that’s not, that kind of gets looked down on.

      3 (10m 14s):

      And there are different degrees, right? Intersectionality is real. We can talk about lots of different overlapping layers, but there’s like, you fit that, like you’re inside the circle of Christian patriarchy’s definition of men, or you’re outside. And from my perspective, that is, that’s just, that’s a method of control more than observation of people. It’s not rooted in science. It’s not even really ru rooted in Theology or, or philosophy or ancient wisdom. So wisdom, I’m, I hope that there’s no pressure coming from me when I say women or when I say feminine to, to fit into somebody else’s box of what that means.

      2 (10m 58s):

      Hmm. Yeah. And I wonder, yeah. Talk. Can you talk a little bit more about the idea of archetypes? I I think that the archetypal language, it’s so fascinating to me, and it’s so interesting. Yeah. You know, like your book is so much of an echo of, of my, no one taught me how to be a man. And, and in that I’m talking about like Iron John and Robert Bly, which is also like, so much about the archetypes. And, And I, and we have so much, I think, inherited wisdom around gendered expectations that are, that are both like, can be really beautiful and also like really weird. So I wondering if you can talk about that.

      3 (11m 39s):

      Yeah. I think for me, the big difference between sort of the, the framework that most of us know and the archetypal frameworks is that there’s not these hard delineated containers, right? There’s not these hard lines. So for example, with women, a lot of times we sort of have this, we talk about feminine archetypes. We sort of have this arc that’s age related, but it’s, it, it’s not like, oh, it’s not like in Christianity where you’re like, oh, you’re a maiden, you’re a virgin, you haven’t had sex, you’re not married. You’re a completely different human being with different value than people who have had sex that are the same age, right?

      3 (12m 20s):

      It’s not, it’s, it’s not, it’s just not as judgy as that, right? It’s not as controlled as some of these really tight-fisted conversations that, that are driven by unhealthy religious systems. So the archetypes, we have the mother, we have the maiden, the crone, which the, the old witch in the Woods, we talk in the book, the Crone, that’s who she is, right? She’s the, the older woman who a lot of times is full, full of wisdom, but not necessarily valued by our society, and is therefore a little bit of an outcast. An outcast. But she’s also kind of okay with being an outcast. And she’s ornery and she’s like, you know what?

      3 (13m 1s):

      I don’t have to chase your approval. I am who I am. And like, I think there’s so much beauty and strength in that that is really, I don’t know it right now. The world is just bonkers, like, just irrational, right? Like, I, like they, there’s just so much that doesn’t make sense. And for me, I think looking at these archetypes and saying, okay, these seasons have existed for as long as people have existed, and these, these archetypes, both the, the masculine and the feminine have been woven throughout all of our stories throughout all time. So no matter how hard the church, the unhealthy aspects of the church are trying to obliterate them, they’re still there.

      3 (13m 47s):

      Which means we can still tap into the pieces that, that give us strength. And not just the grown, but you know, there’s a wild woman, you know, sometimes she’s called the sorceress. There’s a wild woman, there’s a maiden. There’s a lot of different stages. And I especially think people who’ve grown up in these really cult like high control religious spaces, you can go back and tap into the stages that you missed. Especially doing some inner child work and, and doing some, you know, just navigating things again that you would’ve had access to stages of, of archetypal femininity that you would’ve had access to, had that oppression not been there.

      3 (14m 28s):

      So it’s a, it’s fascinating. It’s really easy to nerd out. I’m actually having a really hard time like cring it down because you And I always have such deep conversations, I’m like, oh, we could talk about this for three days. But there’s other stuff to talk about too. So

      2 (14m 44s):

      I, what about like, going back And I that experienced in my own life both as like someone who grew up in a high control religious space, but also as someone who like grew up queer and trans in that space without language for it, and who then transitioned a little bit later, right? Is this real deep sense often of feeling like I’m behind, I’m behind other people, I’m behind where I should be Yeah. And, or that I’ve like missed out, right? I missed out on, I don’t know, the normal high school experience, not that looking back I’m like, I don’t think I would’ve wanted that.

      2 (15m 26s):

      But, but there is this sense sometimes of like, oh, I, I feel like I, I feel like I missed out. And I, I feel like that’s probably an experience that a lot of the people that you talk with and work with have also experienced. Yeah. And so I’m wondering it, can you just riff on that, that experience a little bit more and, and what, how you’ve kind of coached people through that?

      3 (15m 51s):

      Yeah. I, I think what I think right now, when we talk about resilience and we talk about navigating the world today, it is really, really, really important to be aware of those pieces that we missed. Because nourishment that we missed creates usually creates tender spaces. And tender spaces are scary, right? Tender spaces, especially when, when they’re getting stepped on. But we don’t know why, and we don’t know why they hurt so bad. And like how many times have we said, oh, I’m overreacting, or, oh, I just wish I could not be so emotional or not be whatever.

      3 (16m 33s):

      A lot of times those are the tender spaces where we needed nurturing and we didn’t get it. Or where, you know, certain normal, like you said, normal experiences, air quotes, where those listed on the podcast, normal experiences didn’t happen. And we didn’t get that learning from those experiences that maybe our peers got, or, you know, maybe people who had a different support system got. And the reason that that’s important to resilience is because we are in a season where most of us aren’t gonna get our needs met. And I hate saying that I wish to God it wasn’t true, but I, I think that that is a fair statement, especially for people in, in marginalized groups.

      3 (17m 19s):

      I have a but ton of privilege And I will absolutely acknowledge that. I also live in the Midwest in a really conservative, lots of fundamentalist religion around me in that kind of space. So, you know, I, I don’t have a, a progressive coffee shop with a bookstore that I could go sit at and find like-minded people. There’s, you know, there’s one an hour or two away, but I’m not gonna be able to just go have that community that nourishes me and, and, you know, helps anchor me in hard times. So what that means is I’m gonna have to be really conscientious about caring for my tender spaces in ways that maybe in a less crazy time I would be able to lean on community more.

      3 (18m 7s):

      ’cause a lot of us are really tapped out, right? My friends who are activists, we’ve had this conversation all year long. Like, there’s just so much. There are so many needs. And so if, especially if we we’re kind of in a place of privilege where we have some resources, it may not feel good to, to lean on people and to ask for support from people who are caring a lot more than us. And so our activism is figuring out what we missed, figuring out those tender spaces and learning how to nurture and care for ourselves in a way that allows us to, to self sustain so that we can shoulder things for other people.

      3 (18m 50s):

      And we have to be really careful, right? Like, I, I, if we’re doing work on ourselves for other people, we’re probably still tangled up in some of that. Oh, it has to be productive to be worth time. Otherwise it’s just selfish. But healing is not selfish. It’s not, you know, it’s essential. And if we’re in a place where growing up we, we didn’t get some of the things that we needed, or maybe we did, maybe we had a fantastic childhood, but then we had a couple years that were just catastrophic and, and created a lot of trauma in our life. And we have a lot of tenderness from that.

      3 (19m 30s):

      Okay, well let’s, let’s figure out how to go back and connect with the us in that moment that just needs some love. And again, just doing it from a place of I deserve this, doing this from a place of healing and presence rather than like, oh, I gotta heal these things that are negative at me. ’cause then I can go save the world. You know? That’s that internalized, like, gotta be productive all the time, white saviorism kind of thing. And we just have to learn how to check out from that because it’s exhausting.

      2 (20m 7s):

      Mm. Yeah. Yeah. I know that for a lot of folks, again, who grew up in kind of high control religious spaces, the idea of, of intuition, right? Of trusting ourselves Yeah. Is something that we’re very much encouraged against, right? Yeah. Trusting yourself is the, you know, the root of everything, evil and bad. And so as we start to do this healing work as, or as we deepen in this healing work, what, how, how, how would you talk about intuition and this idea, you know, in your book is wisdom, I think often talked about as a, as a more bodily intuitive wisdom Yeah.

      2 (20m 54s):

      As opposed to an external wisdom. Can, can you just talk a little bit about, about that and also like how folks maybe start to get over the fear of, of leaning into that, that wisdom as opposed to a wisdom that comes from outside of us?

      3 (21m 12s):

      Yeah, and you absolutely hit the nail on the head. Feminine wisdom is embodied, right? It, it’s, it’s very, very challenging to stay connected to all the different aspects. To stay connected to your, to your physical body, to stay connected to your curiosity, to those, those tender emotions that a lot of times we’re told are junk. And we need to just get over it. Your intuition, your soul, like all of these different parts, they’re, they’re more connected than, than what we’re led to believe. And so when we’re taught in these religious spaces to just shut off that part of us and shut off this part over here, and well, if you’re a dude, you can trust that part.

      3 (21m 54s):

      But if you’re a woman, you better put it away. And you know, the people who are saying that, like, in their mind, non-binary folks don’t even exist. So that, again, it goes back to this very rigid, like, here’s the parts of you that are valuable and productive. Here’s the parts that aren’t, and you need to do something about it. But in all actuality, you can’t separate us out that way. Like, you can’t separate your brain and your heart. It doesn’t work. Like, I mean, maybe in some sci-fi movies it works, but when we’re talking about day-to-day living, I had a therapist a long time ago who I was actually my therapist, and she said, you can absolutely shut out the bad stuff.

      3 (22m 36s):

      You can repress the old stuff that hurt. You can, like, you can do all of that, but you need to know that when you do that, you’re also blocking out the good. And not just memories, but like feelings, emotions, levels of connectedness with, with people. So when we’re thinking about all of these different pieces, anytime that we’re separated from our body, anytime that we’re separated can be complicated. Anytime we’re disconnected, anytime we’re disregarding our body, we’re easier to control and to confuse and to exploit. Because those, the intuition, those gut sense of like, Hmm, maybe something’s wrong here.

      3 (23m 17s):

      Or maybe, maybe that, I dunno, that I like what that person is saying. Maybe I should take a step back. Like those voices get shut down when we’re not embodied, when our nervous system is activated. Think of a fight flight, and there’s a whole bunch of other words that go in there. But for simplicity’s sake, fight, fight, fawn and freeze. Right? If you’re being chased by a bear, honest to goodness, your emotions in that moment don’t really matter. We need all of the energy pumping. We need all the adrenaline, we need our oxygen flowing, like all those things. ’cause we need to get away from the bear. But if we’re walking down the street and we see somebody in a, you know, in a hat or something that has slurs on it, that’s probably not the same as the bear.

      3 (24m 7s):

      And so we, it’s good to have a reaction, but if we’re always walking around like we’re running from a bear, then there’s like 75% of our brain and our intuition and the rest of our body that we’re just ignoring like it’s offline because our nervous system is so activated. And I, I, I wanna put a little asterisk by this, because the more marginalized you are, the, you know, the, the more of the, the Venn diagram of marginalization, the more circles that you’re within, the less safe the world is, and the more likely you are going to need to be, your nervous system’s gonna need to react a little faster and be a little edgier.

      3 (24m 54s):

      And, and that’s not overreacting. Okay? So what I’m talking about is there are safe spaces and there are sometimes things that, that are learned behaviors so that even in safe spaces we’re not fully embodied, right? Our nervous system being activated in some ways is kind of a disembodied process because again, our body’s like trying to save us from the bear. So what happens if most of the time we are not in safe spaces, and maybe we’re not running from the bear, but we’re like, Ooh, the bear was here before, I need to be careful.

      3 (25m 35s):

      We’re spend, that just means we’re spending the majority of our time in this hyper arousal and we’re not fully connected to all of our bodies. So reclaiming feminine wisdom, again, not, not within gender boundaries, but like just all of us, a big part of reclaiming feminine wisdom is understanding that those feminine aspects of our body, those parts of us that we’ve been told, were the fall of mankind, right? Like, all of those things, like those parts of us are sacred too. And even if no one else in the entire world is going to hold space for us embodied, and in our most full self, we can learn how to, and for some people, you, your body might be the only safe place you have in the entire world.

      3 (26m 24s):

      And it breaks my heart to say that, but I think it’s, I think it’s that level of brutal honesty that we really need to be talking about and, and really understanding what’s at stake if we can’t figure out how to be embodied and how to reclaim these things that we’ve always been told are bad, but are just as sacred as, as the things we’ve been told are good.

      2 (26m 48s):

      Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna go back to the archetypes for a minute. Yeah. Unless you maybe nerd out a little bit more. I, I’m wondering if you can talk us through each of the archetypes, obviously with like, not giving away your whole book because people should go and buy it, but like, what is maybe one, one thing from each of the archetypes that we could learn or should be paying attention to, or, you know, like for, for folks who are just totally new to archetypes, right? I think that a lot of that feels a little like, what, what are we even talking about? So like yeah. If you just really bring it down to something tangible.

      3 (27m 28s):

      Yeah. So the, the archetypes, so here’s what’s interesting is the archetypes are a little bit different depending on your source, depending on what you’re looking at. There are slightly different names and they’re slightly different. I mean, there’s not like, it’s kinda like the Bible, right? Like, there’s not just like one translation. So I’m gonna take a little bit of a step back and what I, what I think is the most helpful, rather than getting too overly nerdy on like what each of them are and what we can draw is, is to think of them as a continuum, right? So we have, you know, you have the maiden, you have the child, you have these kind of young, innocent, playful, curious seasons, if you will, you know, there archetypes, But we could also talk about them as seasons of life in a way.

      3 (28m 14s):

      Mm. And all of the archetypes are always present, but there are just some seasons where, you know, different ones come to the forefront. And so if maybe you’re one of those people who just didn’t have play as a child, and especially women in, in high control religions, like you might’ve been seven years old and taking on the role of raising your siblings and doing all these things where you are being treated like an adult, reconnecting with that child is gonna be really, really essential because you’ll be able to love on yourself in ways that you always should have been loved on. And you’re like, well, how do I do that? Well, maybe for you it’s blowing bubbles.

      3 (28m 56s):

      Maybe for you it is. Gosh, I had a client once who, it had been, she lived in Florida and it was thunderstorming the day we had our appointment. And she was, she’s like, you never gonna guess what happened. And I was like, oh my gosh, what is everything okay? And she said, I was just out there stomping in the mud puddles, And I came in And I didn’t even wipe my feet. I just tracked metal over the kitchen And I don’t actually care. That was healing, right? Something that simple was healing because that was not a space she was able ever able to be in. There’s also different stages of, like, we talk about mothering a lot, so I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come back to mothering. There’s a wild woman stage.

      3 (29m 36s):

      Like, who, like worry. Did you actually have permission to just, just be a little off the wall and try things that felt a little risky and like, you know, feel sexy and feel flirtatious and, and all of those things? Or was that off limits? Right? So in that case, maybe, maybe things need to get a little spicy. Maybe that’s the piece of the archetypes that you really wanna draw into your life. And again, it’s, it’s, it’s tapping into these, it’s reconnecting to these without shame. That is really kind of the secret sauce. Because a lot of us know that these are out there and we think about these desires, But we’ve been taught that they’re shameful. So we’re like, oh, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t listen to that spicy book.

      3 (30m 20s):

      I’ll, you know, that’ll ruin me. Or I can’t, you know, get like a little frisky and try, you know, ask my partner about trying new things because you know, I, the last thing I wanna do is I wanna let that evil into our bedroom. Like, there’s so much baggage, right? So that, I mean, that wild woman is another one. Mothering whoof. There’s a lot in this book about mothering and, and for me, again, mothering in the archetypal sense, it’s kind of like when we talk about feminine wisdom in the archetype sense, we’re not talking about like fundamentalist baptist culty mothering, okay, yeah. Christian patriarchy.

      3 (31m 1s):

      The more fun you go, the worse this is. Christian patriarchy doesn’t value mothers. It values what mothers produce. Hmm. And there are gonna be people that are like, whoa, that’s it. I gotta, I gotta shut the podcast off and chew on that for a little bit, right? When I’m talking about archetypal motherhood, the archetypal mother is the creator, is the nurturer. There’s so much junk. There’s just so I, there’s like probably a list of 500 things, all this baggage that we carry around, but the mother will not tolerate that, right?

      3 (31m 44s):

      Like, when, when we can tap into that mother archetype, we can be tender and compassionate with ourselves and also, you know, be a little firm and, and, you know, it’s, it’s not just like willy-nilly do whatever you want, but like, there’s that, that sense. The mother creates a sense of safety a lot of times that we didn’t have growing up. Or again, you know, maybe we had a growing up, But we didn’t have it in young adulthood. And so even for people who will have zero desire to carry children or are are unable to carry children or just aren’t even sure mothering is essential. It is, it is a, it is a love and a nourishing on a soul level and it’s fully embodied.

      3 (32m 31s):

      When you think about some of the matriarchs, you think about some of the activists that you see out there, there’s probably some, there’s probably some really strong, wise nurturing women who are in your community who are mothering even if they didn’t birth or raise children. So that one I think is really, really powerful right now. And then, you know, there’s others, but, but again, the, the old wish in the Woods, the crone, she knows who she is. She knows who she is. And, And I think that there’s a real fear of being ostracized that keeps a lot of us holding on to some of these old just toxic religious mythology of who we’re supposed to be.

      3 (33m 18s):

      And I am seeing a lot of people who are just over it. They’re like, you know what? I am I, they’re not gonna be happy with me anyway, so why am I trying? Right? And I think that again, for, for the most marginalized people groups, same thing. Like they’re, they’re oppressors aren’t gonna be your friends just because you try harder. That’s not a thing. But that’s what we’re taught, right? Like, just be better, try harder, all those things. The old witch in the Woods is like, screw it, I’m gonna go live in the Woods. And some of the best, like ba yaga, if you’ve never looked at ba yaga, ba yaga, iss a hoot dude.

      3 (33m 58s):

      She doesn’t give a crap. She’s usually ugly. She’s usually smelly. She lives in a house that has chicken legs. She’s kind of mischievous, And I wouldn’t say a trickster, but like, nobody’s gonna pull one over on her. I think that sounds pretty good. I dunno about the chicken legs. I’m a little weirded out by the house on chicken legs. But, but like, that’s who, that’s who you go to when you need something that’s like above and beyond what the average human can do. And to go with the metaphor again of the, the witch, like the beginning of the book, we start with this, this conversation about the witch trials never ended because it was never about witches.

      3 (34m 39s):

      It was about wise, powerful women who anchored their community. And if you wanna take over community and strip away all its resources and have absolute power, you go for the strongest people. You go for the healers, you go for people who were a threat to whatever it is that you were trying to indoctrinate. And, and it was, it was, you know, Protestant church, the Catholic church, like that’s where that panic came from. It’s powerful people who saw people who are powerful in a different way, who were able to resist. And holy moly, don’t we need that now?

      3 (35m 19s):

      Don’t, don’t we like, we can’t play the game of the powerful people because the deck is so far stacked against us. Like yeah, like you, you can’t, you’re not gonna be able to, to, to bet and win against the house. So what do you do? Well, you, you, you play a different game and you find resilience in ways that they can’t strip away. And that’s really what all of the archetypes are there. There are little pockets of strength and hope and compassion and all these other things that seem so rare right now that we can tap into and nurture in ourselves. And I promise they will spill out to others.

      3 (36m 2s):

      I agree. I still say that should not be our number one goal, But we can only give out what we have in us. And so that’s why the archetypes are so important to me.

      2 (36m 12s):

      Yeah. And I just wanna underline something that, that I think you’ve been saying throughout this and, and you say in the book too is like that these, these qualities are good for all of us no matter what your gender or how you identify, right? I think that so often, And I mean this, we talk about this all the time at Queer Theology, right? That that queerness and the lessons of queerness and transness are like good news and good for straight and cis people too, right? That there’s something deeply important about these things that isn’t just for women or queer folks or trans folks. Right? You know, I don’t, I don’t wanna center like men in this conversation, but I, but I am curious like what you think is the most vital tool or thing for people to kind of who are, who are interested in doing this work to grab onto who maybe like, don’t identify with the feminine or for for whom?

      2 (37m 16s):

      And, And I I think that’s not just men, right? Like I think that there are probably some women who are like, I dunno if I identify with like the idea of the feminine or femininity or whatever, which is like, not exactly what you’re talking about, but I’m just curious how you would answer that, that question for someone who’s like, I I I’m not sure quite yet where I’m finding myself in this and, and what, what is in there for me, I guess.

      3 (37m 51s):

      Yeah, no, that’s a great question because I, again, there’s so many definitions and stereotypes and, and, and things that are baked into our conversations that some of this is probably going to feel like it’s off limits or it’s not useful. Not that, not that anybody’s gatekeeping, but like, oh, I don’t actually wanna be more feminine. Okay. That defining it, that that way is rooted in that binary thinking. It’s rooted in that, that Christian patriarchal teaching of like, you’re either masculine or you’re feminine, but no, actually there, all of us, every single one of us has access to these different archetypes and these different energies.

      3 (38m 36s):

      And maybe even thinking about it as as masculine energy versus feminine energy, sometimes that’s helpful. I, I wrestle with using that language because that’s like the opposite end of the spectrum from the toxic Christian patriarchy type thing. It’s like this just toxic spirituality that is just like, well, you gotta be in your masculine energy. Like it’s still toxic, right? Yeah. ’cause it’s pushing us to, to the polar opposites, right? It’s like, you know, A is good, B is bad, that’s how we live. You gotta embrace your A and ignore the B and like, you know, fill, fill in the blanks there, depending on which motivational speaker you’re listening to at the time.

      3 (39m 19s):

      But really like, okay, so this is kind of a cheesy example, but what I, what I want you to think about is the, the archetypes that we’re talking about, I want you to think about it like air, okay, air is made up of a whole bunch of different components. And some of them we need, and some of them we don’t, But we still, we’re still swimming in it, like it’s still around us at all times. And so there are, that, that’s a better way to think about these different energies and these different archetypes is, you know, they’re always present. We all have access to them. There are times when I walk into a meeting where I’m definitely leaning more into some of my, what’s considered my masculine energy and attributes.

      3 (40m 5s):

      And that doesn’t mean that I’m less feminine right in, in the way that we talk about how I’m presenting because I’m still me, I might have a dress on, I, you know, I probably have shiny earrings and crazy hair and you know, really presenting as feminine because I am. But I can draw from these, these different molecules of, of who I am And I can, you know, I can just lean different directions and, and it’s, it’s actually really similar to gender fluid, but I just want people to be really careful about discounting the value of things because it’s not how they present.

      3 (40m 47s):

      Because you can present very masculine and still deeply be connected to feminine wisdom. It doesn’t show up externally. Like when we talk about presenting, it doesn’t show up that way In the same way, the opposite is also true. You can have someone who presents very femme, like loves, loves all the things, but, but walks in deep connection with the masculine energy and the masculine archetypes. So I, it’s, it’s, I don’t know, I’m really weird. I always use way too many metaphors, but it’s more of a salad bar than like a cut and dry.

      3 (41m 29s):

      You’re either this or you’re that. Well, some, some days I’m not. And what happens for me is sometimes when I get dysregulated, I lean, I lean way too hard into some of those sort of masculine traits. But that, like, I lean too far into what the, the Christian patriarchy says is masculine because that’s how I survived during some traumatic times. But that doesn’t mean I’m actually leaning into masculine energy, right? I’m still leaning, I’m still chasing that safety that the, the false system always told me would be there if I just found the right mix, right?

      3 (42m 10s):

      If I just suppressed my femininity enough, then I would be worthy of X, Y, z, trust, love, whatever it is. So it’s, it’s really challenging ’cause you’ve gotta hold like what you learned in one hand and then you, you hold what this new information is in the other hand, and sometimes they mash up a little bit and sometimes you’re just using the same words to describe two totally different things. Hmm. And that’s what happens with, with feminine and masculine a lot.

      2 (42m 42s):

      Yeah. Yeah. I, I’m wondering, as we’re getting close to wrapping up, up, what is your, if you had to pick your biggest hope or dream for this book and the message in this book, what, what would it be?

      3 (43m 1s):

      I think there’s, I think there’s two. Okay. The first is for the people who it is not for, okay. The people who don’t value the idea of equity and of healing. I hope it scares you off.

      2 (43m 22s):

      Like

      3 (43m 23s):

      I, I hope it, i, I hope that it is like something you turn off and walk away. Cool. Great. Maybe someday you’ll get there and that’s what I want for you. But today, isn’t it? So stay out of the communities that are ready, right? Like do less harm by going away. So there’s that, but you know, probably see that’s a little, this is a little spicy, but that’s the gen xer in me who still, still goes a little mama bear sometimes for the people who are reading it, for the people who are hungry. Like, I think my biggest hope is that it provides a container for you to learn how to care for you first to learn how to mother, whatever needs mothered.

      3 (44m 13s):

      Because even if you don’t ever go out and change the world, the world is better if you have figured out how to heal and to love those parts that maybe nobody else is loving right now. And I think that that is more than enough, especially in times like these, like love that if you can, like, you think about, think about, you know, maybe the stereotypical sitcom where the, the mom is tucking the kiddo in at bed, or the dad is tucking the kiddo in, and there’s just that sweet tender moment and, and you know that if it was real life, that kiddo is drifting off to sleep, feeling safe and loved and connected and embodied.

      3 (44m 60s):

      Like, I want you to learn how to do that for yourself and just be able to care for yourself that way so you get a good night’s sleep. ’cause God, we all need a good night’s sleep right now.

      2 (45m 13s):

      Yes. Amen. Amen.

      3 (45m 14s):

      Right.

      2 (45m 18s):

      Well, Angela, thank you so much for this conversation. Everyone needs to go out and get Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods, Liberating Feminine Wisdom from Christian Patriarchy. It is available now. You can get it wherever you buy your books. And Angela, if people wanna know more about you, dive deeper into your work, get more connected, where is the best place for them to do that?

      3 (45m 39s):

      Yeah, the best place is on my website, angela j harrington.com. I’m sure you’ll have it in the show notes. We’ll, I, I think if you’re finding yourself really curious about some of these topics, there’s a lot of blog posts that I’ve written that talk about ancestral healing. We didn’t even really get to talk about that, but like, ancestral healing, feminine wisdom, there’s just lots of good resources there and they don’t cost a penny and you can access ’em on your phone. So if, you know, maybe some of these topics aren’t safe at, at work or at home, like you can take the phone in the bathroom and read some of these articles and get some of the support that you need and just hopefully find that little, that little seed of hope that just tells you that maybe things are gonna be okay.

      2 (46m 24s):

      Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. It was always a pleasure to talk with you.

      1 (46m 28s):

      The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for BTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.

      2 (46m 37s):

      To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

      1 (46m 44s):

      We’ll see you next week.

      The post Reclaiming the Wisdom That Christian Patriarchy Tried to Bury with Angela Herrington appeared first on Queer Theology.

      47 min
    • Building Routines That Actually Serve Us

      It’s a New Year and in this first episode of 2026, we reflect on highlights from 2025. From book releases and big life transitions, to moves, new jobs, and shifting rhythms. What has kept us grounded has been our approach to goals and intentions that have evolved as needed. It’s why we keep saying rituals and intentions are important, y’all! Going into this year we feel that community matters more than ever. We also feel that it’s important to build more meaningful lives and one of the ways to start doing that is by naming our longings and goals. If you want some help with that, we’re bringing back the Queerness Every Day Challenge, a simple, daily practice to help you start the year with greater intention around spirituality, queerness, and connection.

       

      Takeaways

      • Shannon released two books in 2025, marking a significant achievement.
      • Brian also published his first book, focusing on relationships and spirituality.
      • Shannon transitioned to a full-time job, requiring adjustments in her routine.
      • Both hosts emphasize the importance of setting intentions for the new year.
      • They discuss the challenges of maintaining personal well-being amidst professional demands.
      • Brian reflects on the importance of community and local connections.
      • Shannon is focusing on improving her local community involvement in 2026.
      • They explore different approaches to goal setting and personal growth.
      • The conversation highlights the need for intentionality in daily life.
      • The Queerness Every Day Challenge offers a way to reflect on spirituality and identity.

        •  

        Chapters

        00:00 Reflecting on 2025: Personal Highlights

        02:27 Navigating New Beginnings: Career Changes and Adjustments

        05:30 Intentions for 2026: Setting Goals and Priorities

        08:12 Rituals and Reflections: New Year Practices

        10:46 Community and Connection: Building Local Relationships

        13:32 Creative Pursuits: Balancing Work and Passion

        16:31 The Importance of Intentionality: Aligning Goals with Values

        19:18 Embracing Change: Acknowledging Longings and Desires

        21:59 The Queerness Every Day Challenge: A New Year Initiative

        24:56 Looking Ahead: Future Plans and Community Engagement

         

        Resources:

        • Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community/
          • This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

          Grow Therapy (5s):

          If you are feeling bogged down by the impossible expectations or the noise of New Year, new me, take a second to pause. Grow Therapy gives you space to slow down, check in, and start the new year from a more grounded place. Whether it’s your first time in therapy or your 50th grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability, and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time, whatever challenges you’re facing. Grow Therapy is here to help grow. Accepts over a hundred insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states sessions average about $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit grow therapy.com/book now today to get started. That’s grow therapy.com/book now. Grow therapy.com/book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

          0 (1m 25s):

          Welcome

          2 (1m 25s):

          To the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy.

          3 (1m 28s):

          And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis,

          2 (1m 33s):

          Revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how

          3 (1m 38s):

          Tuning 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.

          2 (1m 48s):

          Hello. Hello, hello. And happy New Year. It’s officially the first Sunday of 2026 and we are so excited to be back on the pod with you, Shannon. I don’t even know where to begin, but like I feel like so much has happened in the past year. I know, right? I guess like, for those listening at home, we’re gonna talk, we’re just gonna give like some highlights from our past year. We would love to hear some highlights from your past year. We’re gonna talk a little bit about like our intention, personal intentions, spiritual intentions, professional Intentions for the year ahead, those, and like then share some way, share a way that you might kick off the new year with some more intentionality. So Shannon, like highlights, it’s in 2025 for you.

          2 (2m 29s):

          Wow.

          3 (2m 29s):

          Yeah, it, it, it has been quite the year I had two books come out, which just feels kind of

          2 (2m 36s):

          The nuts to say.

          3 (2m 37s):

          Yeah. Right. And and some of that is, is funny because right by the time a book comes out you’ve been done working on it for forever and ever. So actually the bulk of the year was spent working on our book together, which of course will, will come out sometime this year. But I was really thrilled to release both. No one taught me how to be a man, what a trans man’s experience reveals about masculinity and also come and see, which is a young adult devotional in 2025. And, and both of those have been really fun. I had a great book launch for No one taught me how to be a man in Minneapolis at one of my favorite bookstores there called Moon Palace. And so all of that was, was really great.

          3 (3m 17s):

          And then, you know, something I haven’t really talked about publicly and can’t say too much about, but as I took a full time job and that has been quite an adjustment as you might imagine. I went from working primarily for myself for four or five years to working, well, it’s not quite a nine to five, but working, you know, a 40 hour a week for someone else. And so that, that has been a huge adjustment and just kind of getting used to what does that look like and, and how do I be intentional with my time? You know, as we’re talking about intentions, it’s, it’s been a real adjustment to figure out how do I not lose sight of the things that are important to me while I’m also doing this job That’s really important to me.

          3 (4m 5s):

          How do I like make sure that I’m making time to take care of myself? It’s, it’s been a journey of like learning how to sleep better and have a bedtime and cook for myself, right? Like all of these different things that have for the previous couple of years I haven’t really had to think about. And so, so that’s been a huge adjustment, but also it’s been, I, I’m doing some, some work that I’m really passionate about and that’s really beautiful. And so I’m, I’m grateful for that. And it feels now as we’re entering into a new year to be a little bit more settled. And so I, I’m excited to, to think more broadly about what my life and work and creative life looks like moving into 2026.

          3 (4m 45s):

          So that’s just a little bit of, of my 2025. What about for you? Yeah,

          2 (4m 49s):

          I mean I, it’s, I, it’s funny ’cause I, I also released a book, but until you said your book, so I guess I had kind of forgotten about, I mean at this point it was like three or four months ago, which doesn’t seem like that long ago. But like to your point, I finished writing it like over a year ago and it came out a year later. So that was like really exciting. It’s my first book. It’s, it’s about, it’s called Love Beyond Monogamy, what polyamory can teach you about or the wisdom of polyamory teach you about I don’t faith, relationships, spirituality, I, those three things in some order. The publisher changed in at the last minute and so I kinda quite remember it. So that was really exciting. And I, you know, obviously I’ve been talking about spirituality and sex and spirituality and polyamory for like, many, many years here.

          2 (5m 34s):

          And I just know that like for so many of us, like, like, I don’t know, like being a sexual person is like already fraught and then like being a queer person and having sex is like an extra level of like fraught. And for those of us who are like some version non non-monogamous, that’s an additional level of frt and you like put all of that through the meat grinder that is conservative Christianity or like even just sort of American culture, pop culture, purity culture. There’s just like levels of levels of levels of sort of like muck to wade through. But also I think on the other side, like so much, I don’t know, beauty, joy, connection, inspiration, grace, healing. And so I I, it was really cool to put that out into the world. Yeah. I also having like, you know, juggling this work with my relationship coaching practice, work with some part-time work and always trying to take care of myself, I, I think that, like I’ve, I’ve been in New York City now for over a whole year.

          2 (6m 28s):

          Wow. We’re back on the East coast and, and splitting our time between New York and Maryland. And so it’s, it’s wild to be back. It feels like some of our friends were like, it feels like you’ve been here for back for years. And that is true. And sometimes it also feels like we moved back like a few months ago. I’m not quite settled into my apartment, but, so there’s a lot of it sort of like finding routines, finding rhythms, like figuring out like where the trash can goes in the kitchen and like, we’re gonna reorganize our front closet and put shelves in instead of having stuff that’s like hanging and like what size would to buy and how do you cut the wood? And so there’s lots of sort of like logistics and like making a home. And I like, I I, I think that there’s like, it’s so easy to sort of like get swb up in the day to day of life that it, it’s sometimes hard for me to sort of like carve out the times to like figure out my sleep schedule and like set an alarm and go to bed on time.

          2 (7m 19s):

          Even it means like watching one less episode of, you know, Abbott Elementary to tonight. But I also know that like when I do have some intentionality, I get more fulfillment out of my life. And so I’m always sort of like struggling with this, not struggling, but trying to balance like planning and intentionality with like actually like living my life. And so I feel like I’m finding a good groove and I’m excited like to see what the year ahead holds ahead holds. And one big change is now that our book is finished being written, I’ve been able to sort of take on more and more relationship coaching clients because I’ve had some more time now. And so that’s been really exciting to get in the weeds and in the trenches with folks on a one-on-one basis and really help people, you know, build right fit relationships and sizzling sex lives that are like in line with our deepest values.

          2 (8m 2s):

          And so yeah, it’s been fun. That’s my 2025. Yeah,

          3 (8m 6s):

          It, it feels like, you know, both of us have had pretty big transitional moments this year, which of course I, I think are natural inflection points to, to rethink and reimagine what life could look like. And I, And I think, you know, when you go through something big, like starting a new job, moving to a new place, moving to a new city, right? And you, you get invited into that, but it, it does remind me how, you know, just like you were talking about, it’s like it’s easy to get into a rut or routine and have to like really be intentional about carving out time. I I think outside of major transition points, it can also be hard to like stop and take stock of are the things that I’m doing working, are the routines that I’m in like actually serving me?

          3 (8m 56s):

          Are they leading into the places that I wanna go? And I, And I know that like, I don’t know, people have all sorts of feelings about New year’s resolutions and goal setting and all of that stuff, but it does feel like no matter what your feelings about it, the new year is kind of a natural moment to at least take a breath and say, what do, what do I want out of my life? What do I want out of my year? What is working and what’s not working? And I know you And I have had various approaches to asking that question to Reflecting on that question, like end of year rituals, new year rituals, I like, where are you at with that these days?

          3 (9m 36s):

          Like how are you approaching asking those questions? What are your rituals around that and what are you kind of thinking about for 2026?

          2 (9m 45s):

          Yeah, I mean I think like historically for like most of my life up through like my, like early twenties, I somehow managed to dodge the, like lose 20 pounds, give up chocolate and soda, like make a million dollars, like New Year’s resolutions. And so probably like as I was like entering my adult post-college life and becoming a professional, I think at some point I started thinking through like goals for like the year or goals for like the next six months or for the season or whatever it might be. And I went through a period of having like, kind of like specific goals around like my career, whatever that meant, and friends and family and sex and partners and stuff like that.

          2 (10m 29s):

          And then at some point I was like, oh, this just feels like I’m productivity my life And I don’t like it. So I chucked that out the window. Like in my like mid to late twenties. My roommate at the time, she was like, she did this thing where she picked a word for the year, which I think now lots of people do it, but I had never heard of it before. What was my, I think my first word of the year might have been edit. So I sort of like pick a guiding word for the year. And I did that for a few years And I wanna say in like 2018 or 2019, I, I picked four, I picked structure, strength, structure, space, strength and stride. And then I, the next year I was like, I’m just gonna keep those. I don’t feel like I’ve quite gotten those, but those feel like good.

          2 (11m 9s):

          And I actually, I realized the other day I was like, well, I haven’t picked words of the year since then. Then the pandemic happened And I was like, survive. That’s like the word of, of the, that is like both the word of the year and the entirety of my new New Year’s resolutions, right? And also like going through like the death, the death of my friend and like another sort of like the second phase of my like breakup. Like there was just like, I don’t know, I, I just like maxed out of thinking about things. And over the past few years I’ve sort of like returned to, okay, I was noticing that I was going to work, I was doing the thing, I had friends, I was like seeing the people and like it was good. Like I have good friends. I enjoy, I enjoy the times I would go on a vacation once a year.

          2 (11m 51s):

          And also there was a sense of like, I, I think my friendships could be deeper. I’m like not feeling as connected with my spirituality as I would like maybe like, I think there could be like some more depth there. Like I’m not really exactly sure what I’m doing with like work. Like I really love our work at Queer Theology, but I feel like it could be better, we could reach more people, we could be more effective or efficient or like, whatever it might be. And so I started coming back to like, well what have I just like picked a few things to sort of like orient my life around. And I tried to really make sure that they weren’t all like, save this much, make this much like run a a 5K and under whatever, whatever.

          2 (12m 31s):

          Like one year I did have a goal to like run a 5K and under whatever, whatever time. And I like didn’t make it. I, I think I had on there for three years And I didn’t, I didn’t make it. And then like, go figure. Last year I just decided to run a half marathon and in the process of training for that, I ended up beating that like 5K time that I had set like, like so sometimes the goals come to you later, right? And so now I have like a few, like a few work related things, a few like deepening my relationships with friends and family things, a few spiritual things, a few like taking care of my like physical and mental health things to just to sort of like orient me as I like move through the year end. And I, I try to like keep an eye on it, but also not like, it’s not like a pass fail, it’s like a how close or far away from these did I hue?

          2 (13m 15s):

          And like, I dunno, like if I, if if for instance, like my goal was to like meditate every day, which is, it’s not, but like I did it 80% of the day. Like, great, that’s a success, right? Yeah. So there’s, there’s sort of like goals and intentions, but like loosely held, but like, but routine brought, like regularly returned to and like taken seriously, if that makes sense.

          3 (13m 36s):

          Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I, for a couple of years, like really honed in on numeric goals, right? Like I, I was very much like, I want every goal that I set to be something that I can measure because I was realizing that prior to that I was kind of setting some really like vague goals and it, and then at the end of the year I was like, well, I don’t, I don’t even have a sense of if I was close for far right, because like, I don’t have, there was no way to measure it. So, so then I decided, I like went the other way And I was like, oh, everything I do is gonna be measurable. Everything’s gonna have a number on it. And I did that for a couple of years and, and was really happy with that.

          3 (14m 17s):

          But then I had a year or a couple of years where like things drastically changed midyear either like I got an opportunity that I wasn’t expecting to get, or I started something new that took up a ton of time or whatever. And, And I realized that like my whole plan then got thrown out of out whack. And so the last couple of years I’ve shifted more towards thinking about quarters. Like I’ll, I’ll kind of plan the first three months of the year knowing that probably nothing too wild is gonna come up. Like obviously something can always happen. But, but last year again, I, you know, I ha I ended up getting a job that I was not expecting to get and like threw everything outta whack.

          3 (15m 5s):

          So this year I’m thinking a lot about like, what are the kind of buckets of my life? Like what are the kind of, like you were saying, you know, there’s relationships, there’s my mental health, there’s my body, right? And so thinking about what are some things in each of those kind of buckets that I wanna pay attention to less about, like, I wanna run a 5K more about like, oh, I eat really crappy lunches. Like, so my, my Q1 goal is like, find out some better lunch solutions that you can like take to work that are not gonna be a giant plate of pasta in the middle of the day.

          3 (15m 48s):

          Not that there’s anything wrong with a giant plate of pasta, but, you know, five days a week is probably not best for my 45-year-old body. And so trying to be a little bit more intentional about like, paying attention. I, I’m just noticing like as I’m aging, there are certain things that I haven’t done because I haven’t had access to healthcare. And so now I’m like, now that I do have access to healthcare, like I should probably go to the dentist, right? So there’s some things about that being more intentional about my body. But then I’m also, you know, I I I’ve been thinking a lot over the last several years, so much of, of our work, of my work has been really focused on, on a more public scale, right?

          3 (16m 31s):

          Of like, we’re writing books, we’re on social media, we’re traveling and doing speaking. And I, I’ve been thinking a lot about like, what would it look like to get more deeply connected where I am, like in person, local community, like who are the people and organizations doing work here where I am that I am like really passionate about how, what might it look like to get more involved with them? What might it look like to partner with those organizations? And so that’s, that’s one of the big things I’m thinking about in 2026 of like being a little bit more hyper-local, really getting rooted in community and place.

          3 (17m 14s):

          And also like, some of that is also about relationships. I have amazing friends all over the country and I’m realizing that I have very few friends like where I am. And so what does it look like to invest in those relationships, to put myself in places where I might be able to make new friends and find new community where I am. You know, I’m, I’m in rural communities in the deep, deep Midwest, and so it’s complicated, right? Yeah. And also I know that there are people here and so how can I put, put myself in places where I can find the like-minded people? So those are just some of the things that are on my mind.

          3 (17m 55s):

          And then also I, I think the last thing is like, I, I mentioned earlier trying to be intentional about making sure that I’m, I’m carving out time for the work that I am most passionate about. And, and for me, a lot of that is creative work. So like, how can I go to work all day and still come home and have enough mental bandwidth to like do creative work? What does that look like? What guide rails need to be in place in the rest of my life to like, make it possible for me to do that creative work? What does it look like to prioritize that? Maybe on the weekend, right? Like, however that looks like I’m, I’m still feeling like I’m trying to figure that out, but that feels really important to me.

          2 (18m 33s):

          Yeah, I love you so much. We’re such soulmates because I just love that we both like, we talk a lot, but I don’t think either one of us explicitly was like, we should make local community a priority. But both of us came to that. Yeah. Like in back in November, I was like, I, I remember I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Like, oh, I wanna do something more local, more local, more local. And so then finally at some point, one of my coaching clients, like is here in New York, happens to be here in New York City and was like, wanting to find a new church because like they realized there wasn’t affirming and didn’t know where to get started on how to look. And so I was like, I’ll, I’ll take you to church. And so like I put out on social media, I was like, anyone wanna go? Like any queer people wanna go find an affirming church together? We’ll like do a little group.

          2 (19m 14s):

          And like, that was really special. And I was like, oh, I, like, we, we might, I might do another, another one in like later this month or next month for folks who are in New York City looking for affirming churches. We might hop around to different churches, but I was like, there’s something here about community in person and organizing in person and, and sharing stories in person. And so yeah, I’m, I’m really like jazzed about that in the new year as well. And like, on a meta level, I think that there’s something about having some intentions, whether it’s for like your week ahead, that’s something that I do with my co my coaching clients. I’m always like, you gotta make a plan for your week if nothing else, a week, a quarter, a year. Especially like, especially if you’re in any sort of relationship, a a really like deep friend relationship, a roommate relationship, a business relationship, a romantic relationship.

          2 (20m 1s):

          Like, because it, like I can have all these intentions, right? But like, if I have a set of Intentions for our business that are wildly different than yours, like, we’re gonna have some problems, right? And so we have to, we have to, you And I Shay like have to like align on that and, And I can say like, oh, I wanna like go on a European vacation this year. And if my husband is like, no, I wanna like, I wanna like save money to pay off my student loans or like, whatever the course the case may be. Like, so, so sometimes there’s a, there’s like a using this moment of like, whether it’s planning or intention setting or goal setting as like a way to sort of align with some of the important people in your life.

          2 (20m 41s):

          And in doing so, like you create a shared vision for your future. And that like is one of the things that like brings you closer together. And so even if you don’t like, set a bunch of goals, just like having a check in with a partner of yours to say like, what’s one thing we wanna get outta this year ahead, I think could be like a really useful practice.

          3 (21m 2s):

          Yeah. And I, And I think that, you know, there’s been a lot of kind of negative talk around goals and, and goal setting and, And I totally get that. And also I think that you are really onto something by saying like, setting intentions is really important, right? Because I think so many of us, it’s so easy to go on autopilot all the time and to just be like, yeah, whatever happens this week happens. And then you get to the end of the week and you’re like, I have no idea what I did this week. I don’t think I like did anything that I wanted to do. And I feel like bummed out about it. Whereas setting its an attention again, isn’t about like failing, right?

          3 (21m 47s):

          It’s not about failure, but it’s about like, how can we, how can we get ourselves a little closer to the life that we’re dreaming of and that we wanna live? And I think that also asks us to ask the question, what kind of life do we want to live, right? Yeah. Like, what do we want our spiritual life to look like? What does community mean to us? What does friendship mean? What does it look like to have a deep relationship? And I think that sometimes I think sometimes we avoid those questions because we maybe don’t wanna face how far we are from the ideal that is in our mind. And also what I’ve known in my own life is like, it’s not until I face how far I am that I can actually take any steps to close the gap, right?

          3 (22m 35s):

          So that’s been really important to me to be able to look at something and be like, I’m, I actually am unhappy with how this goes. Or, or maybe not even unhappy, but like, I think this could be better. I’m discontented, right? I think that there’s more here.

          2 (22m 51s):

          Yeah. Like the one for more Yeah.

          3 (22m 52s):

          Yeah. By saying, by admitting that, then it’s like, oh, okay, well then what does it look like to have more? Or like, what is it, what what can I do to get me closer to that? And, and, and so that acknowledging the longing, I think is, is one of the first steps and can also be something that’s really hard, right? If if it feels like we’re really far from where we wanna be.

          2 (23m 16s):

          Yeah. And like this sort of like figuring it all out work, like for some folks it comes like really quick and easy. They’re like, I know exactly what I want. And, and for some folks it’s like, you’re not sure how to even figure that out or how to pay attention to what you actually want, or you’re scared to give yourself permission to want some things, or you have a sense of what you want, but you’re not exactly sure how to go, go get there. And so if you’d like some like intensive support in figuring all that out, we have spiritual direction and coaching available at Queer Theology dot com slash coaching. That’s like a really high touch, one-on-one long-term experience. But if you’re just like, wanna start the new year with some lighter intentions, we have a much lower touch, but still like a more accessible way of getting involved with that.

          2 (24m 3s):

          And that’s The Queerness Every Day Challenge. So Shea, can you tell us like a little bit about who the Queerness Everyday Challenge is for and, and what, like how it might enrich folks as they start their year?

          3 (24m 13s):

          Yeah, so we’ve been doing The Queerness Every Day Challenge for a little while now. We started it as a kind of a pride thing of for folks that wanted to better integrate their sexuality and their spirituality or their gender identity and their spirituality. And what we found is that like folks were so engaged with it and it became this really fun both individual process, but also a, a community building tool. And so we thought it would be fun to revisit it for the beginning of the year. And so each day there’s like a super easy challenge that you can do in 10 minutes or less that invites you to kind of reflect on some aspect of your spirituality and your queerness.

          3 (24m 58s):

          And we try to have things that are that kind of range in quote unquote difficulty level, right? So that if you’re like, just kind of starting to figure this out, there is one level at which you can do the challenge. And if you are like deep into your queer and spiritual journey, there’s like another level to that. So some things to reflect on, but each each day is like something to actually do. And for this kind of new year thing, it, it’s also an invitation for you to use the challenge as a jumping off point to ask these questions of like, what do I want these aspects and areas of my life to look like and what are maybe some of the first things I can do to start to make that reality happen?

          3 (25m 47s):

          Then we also have a communal element so you can come and kind of share what you did and get ideas from other people. And it’s a really fun way to both like do these intention settings on your own, but then also to join together in community and celebrate each other’s wins.

          2 (26m 2s):

          Yeah, when I think about The Queerness Every Day Challenge, it’s an opportunity to like bring closer together queerness and spirituality and faith, whatever it looks like for you. And also to bring yourself closer to both of those. So there’s just like, like you were saying, like more and so whether you’re like really discontented or you’re like, life is good, but like I just, like, I I, I know that there could be more. And so I, I I think there’s like lots of spheres where this can really like pay off in your interpersonal relationships, your romantic relationships, your community, like your Fr like friend and wider community, your sex life, your connection to the divine, your connection with spiritual communities.

          2 (26m 44s):

          If you’re like wanting to like, make changes or improvements in any of those areas, I think this is like a really great way to, to sort of dive into that. And if you’ve done it before, or if you’ve considered doing it before this year, we’re like expanding it a little bit and also adding some new stuff to it. And what we’re really excited about is taking a like a, a page out of our querying advent experience. There will be a like private audio feed that you can put in any podcast player of your choice so you can get the prompts and the like adventures and even some inspiration with you wherever you are. There’s like, there’s no apps to download, no logins to remember. So if you want to just sort of like have like Brian Shea coaches in your ear almost to sort of bring some new queer faithful energy into your year, we would love to sort of be in your ear at the start of this year.

          2 (27m 39s):

          And of course, if you would like to go deeper, there’s a whole community. You get access to all sanctuary collective and spiritual study hall as well. So it’s sort of like a choose your own adventure for how deeper, how shallow you wanna go.

          3 (27m 49s):

          We’re gonna get started on January the 12th, so if you would like some more information about it, go to Queer Theology dot com slash challenge. You can find all of the details and sign up there. And then I think I also wanna just say, you know, as we head into 2026, we’re excited to a release our book this year that’s like a super excited, exciting thing that is gonna be coming later in the year, but also, you know, continue to be in community and providing resources for folks around all of these issues around gender identity, around sexuality, around spirituality and, and how, how these things can inform and enlighten and enrich one another. And we’re gonna keep this very long running podcast going even longer.

          3 (28m 32s):

          And so if you have ideas of things that you want us to cover on the podcast, if you’ve got questions that you want us to answer, we would love to tackle those. You can send us an email to connect at Queer Theology com and we’ll be happy to entertain your suggestions for the podcast this year. We’ve got some great interviews already lined up and some other ideas that we’re noodling on, But we would love to hear your input as

          2 (28m 56s):

          Well. Thanks for being here and talk to you soon. The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.

          4 (29m 7s):

          To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

          2 (29m 15s):

          We’ll see you next week.

          The post Building Routines That Actually Serve Us appeared first on Queer Theology.

          29 min
        • Queering the 10 Commandments

          In this episode, we respond to a listener question about how to challenge harmful uses of the Hebrew Scriptures without falling into anti-Semitism or Christian supersessionism. As Christians, we can’t rely on the New Testament to “fix” or dismiss the Old Testament and we unpack common misunderstandings about Judaism and the Hebrew Bible. We also queer the Ten Commandments by reading this foundational text through lenses of justice, liberation, and community rather than control or exclusion. Despite how we have been taught, the commandments can function as a framework for loving God and loving our neighbor. That doesn’t mean we get to ignore the fact that we need to wrestle honestly with the parts that feel troubling to us in modern times, to engage the text critically, contextually, and faithfully. Rather than discarding the Ten Commandments as outdated or weaponizing them against marginalized people, we show how lingering with the tension can open up richer, more life-giving interpretations that support the queer community flourishing. 

           

          Resources:

          • Learn more and join the Community at https://www.queertheology.com/community/

            •  

            The post Queering the 10 Commandments appeared first on Queer Theology.

            20 min
          • The Lamp the Light the Path, Psalms 119:105-112

            This week, we respond to a thoughtful listener question from Tumblr about whether progressive Christians can understand the Bible as uniquely authoritative, or whether it should be treated as inspired work alongside other great works of literature and poetry. We look at how different Christian traditions approach scripture, why “authority” depends on community and context, and how revelation can be understood without requiring inerrancy or literalism. We have to have a more nuanced engagement with scripture that challenges false dichotomies between taking the Bible seriously and reading it critically. In the second half of the episode, we queer Psalm 119:105-112, unpacking how poetry, song, and metaphor function within the Bible. We invite you to consider what it means for God’s word to be “a lamp to our feet and a light for our journey,” not as the path itself, but as something that illuminates the way as we navigate faith, queerness, relationships, and life.

             

            Resources:

            Our resources have moved! You can find the workshop contents within our free resources at my.queertheology.com

             

            This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

            1 (9s):

            Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy.

            2 (13s):

            And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from

            1 (17s):

            Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how

            2 (23s):

            Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here.

            1 (33s):

            Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the Queer Theology of Podcast.

            2 (36s):

            This week we’ve got a listener question from Tumblr and they ask, are there progressive non literalist ways of talking about the Bible as uniquely authoritative and communicative of revelation? Or are the scriptures only inspired in a relativized sense alongside great works of literature, poetry, et cetera?

            1 (57s):

            Oh, I love this question. So this

            2 (1m 1s):

            Is a great

            1 (1m 2s):

            Question. Yeah, it get really gets at the heart of what we’re talking about on this podcast and in our work. I think it’s important to first name that there are gonna be a bunch of different answers to this question. Certainly if you survey all Christians, like conservative fundamentalist Christians are gonna have a different idea than other folks. Like there’s a whole range, like if you, if you survey fundamentalist Christians, if you survey Mormons, if you survey Catholics, if you survey progressive Christians, if you survey, you know, black preachers, if you survey whoever, we’re all gonna have different ideas about this. And also then, like, I think within each of those people are gonna have different ideas that there will probably be other L-G-B-T-Q, progressive Christians who think differently about this.

            1 (1m 55s):

            And Shay And I actually think slightly differently about this, you know, or we might not. So I just wanna name that. And there’s not, so it’s not about like trying to find like the objective truth of this is gonna be impossible, which I know is an unsatisfying or might be an unsatisfying answer, especially as someone who comes from a, from a tradition that taught that there was always one correct answer for everything about God and religion and faith. And as someone from just sort of like a secular perspective, like really math and science just like gets me going. And so like there’s a formula, like a squared plus B squared equals C squared, right? Like you can like add things up or divide things out and get, get like the answer.

            1 (2m 37s):

            And so figuring out like what the answer to this is is gonna be tricky. There’s always gonna be some nuance and some, some room for personal interpretation. Shay, where would you start? Yeah,

            2 (2m 47s):

            I think the phrase to me that is, there’s an interesting in this question is uniquely authoritative. And so my, my very first question would be to ask back, like, for whom? So I think that, like that to me is where we start this conversation of like, is the Bible uniquely authoritative? Like are you asking if it’s uniquely authoritative to everyone in the world? Is it uniquely authoritative to Christians, to progressive Christians? Like who are you asking about? And for? And so for me it’s like, I would say that because of the history of Christian tradition that has used this collection of scriptures as a text that has guided and whatever, that it is uniquely authoritative for the Christian community when understood in its proper context.

            2 (3m 51s):

            And I think when used well, and that also like that because so many people have used it because it’s been kind of a communal agreement that we are going to guide ourselves by this particular text that we can say it’s authoritative for those communities. But also, like, like you were saying, Brian, you know, the Catholics have like a bunch of extra books that are authoritative to them that Protestants don’t use or recognize. So like even within that question there is nuance. And then for me, I think it’s, it’s like there is also this sense of, of like, it is one of the great works of literature.

            2 (4m 38s):

            It has shaped culture and cultural traditions and norms for good and for ill over the centuries. And so like it also holds up in, in that respect and that avenue. But I think if we talk about it being uniquely authoritative for groups outside of the ones who have claimed it, then I think we’re in tricky, potentially problematic or colonialist territory.

            1 (5m 15s):

            I agree actually, like pretty, pretty to the t you know, as someone who has a, I wouldn’t say like a, I was gonna say like a lot of doubts about God, but I think at this point that’s like not even true. I just like don’t believe in God in the way that many religious folks seem to believe in God, whether they like, so, so maybe I am, maybe I have, I’m not as lonely as I think that I am, but, and so, so that, and also I definitely think that you like don’t need to be a Christian to be a good person to experience like an abundant life or salvation that like other religions are equally valid and being non-religious is also a great way to live your life.

            1 (5m 56s):

            And so and so all that said I do, but like you were saying, I do think that like for folks who claim Christianity, there is something uniquely authoritative about the Bible. Is it like the only source of authority in our lives? No, you know, we talk a lot about, this is like a very Wesley idea, but like scripture reason, experience, tradition, all being important. And so there’s many ways that we experience God, the movement of God, the people of God. The Bible is one of those ways. And then I think also like getting into this communicative of revelation, like what does revelation mean to you?

            1 (6m 43s):

            Is it there’s like a person in the sky with a Dictaphone that is dictating every, every jot and tittle, every word of the Bible to the authors? No, I definitely don’t, don’t think that, did the people who wrote and compiled the book experience something bigger than themselves that they like perhaps couldn’t quite put their figure on? And that seemed to be pointing towards a greater truth. Truth, yeah. Absolutely. And so is that also found in other scriptures, in other religious traditions, even in like literature and poetry, like Yes, absolutely.

            1 (7m 26s):

            And so I think like getting in on this like revelation thing is also tricky. It’s, it’s perhaps like more comforting to think like there’s a person or like an entity that has all of these answers and objective truth and like, they have given us this one thing, but that’s just like, not how I understand the world or revelation or scripture working. And then I think also this, this relativized sense alongside great works of literature, poetry, et cetera, is again, going back to your, to your question of like, who are we talking about and, and what is this for?

            1 (8m 6s):

            And so like in the scheme of all of humanity and all history, it’s, it’s one of many, for Christians, it might be a primary sense also, you know, literature, poetry, our experiences can help us understand God and even understand the Bible better. But like what poetry that really speaks to me isn’t necessarily going to really speak to you. Shea or parts of the Bible that speak to you aren’t necessarily gonna speak to me or vice versa. You know, there’s this quote by Carl Sagan’s wife that I like could be a bio passage for me that it just like really speaks to my heart and like helps me see God.

            1 (8m 50s):

            And like your shea is like, whenever I sent it Shea, he was like, I’m glad that like means something to you, but it doesn’t really do anything for me. And you know, like, but that’s just like the, the Bible is also a collection of stuff. And so like, we don’t all encounter even the Bible in the same way. And so like, I wanna challenge the notion that relativized, And I know that you are not saying this, but like that relative is like an inherently inferior position that like, even within the Bible, things have relative importance to each other. Both. Like, I think that Paul would be shocked and perhaps like mortified that many people hold his rambly letters on the same level as what was his, like sacred like Torah scripture.

            1 (9m 45s):

            And even within the Bible, some parts are given more or less relative importance, sort of like within the text itself. And then like all sort of Christians place more or less emphasis on different parts of the Bible. And so even the Bible itself is a collection of multiple texts that include literature and poetry that have relatively different importances to different people. And so I think that is also an important thing to remember

            2 (10m 14s):

            For sure. I think the key for me is like you’re setting up this false dichotomy. If you talk about like, scripture is only meaningful or important if it’s in errand and literal and like has primacy of place. And like, I I, I think that there are ways that you can take scripture really seriously, that it can be a guiding principle in your life that you can think of it as sacred without it needing to be anything more than what it is, right? Like, And I think, And I think that it’s, it’s, it can be a problem to like elevate scripture higher than it needs to be.

            2 (11m 4s):

            Or, or to say that like, if you don’t have it up on some kind of pedestal that you therefore don’t take it seriously. That’s something that I think gets thrown at liberal and progressive Christians all the time. And I, And I think that that’s like an unfair accusation.

            1 (11m 22s):

            Yeah, there’s so much more that we could say about this, both why we think this and then also how to go about the process of figuring this out for yourself and approaching the Bible in serious and faithful ways. And so we’re gonna put together an more extended workshop, online workshop about this. We don’t know exactly when it’s gonna drop.

            2 (11m 47s):

            Okay, let’s open up our Bibles and queer this text. Our text today is from Psalm 119 verses 1 0 5 through one 12. I’m gonna go ahead and read it for us. This is from the common English Bible. Your word is a lamp before my feet and a light for my journey. I have sworn And I fully mean it. I will keep your righteous rules. I have been suffering so much, Lord, make me live again according to your promise. Please Lord, accept my spontaneous gifts of praise. Teach me your rules though my life is constantly in danger. I won’t forget your instruction, though the wicked have set a trap for me.

            2 (12m 28s):

            I won’t stray from your precepts. Your laws are my possession forever because they are my heart’s joy. I have decided to keep your statutes forever. Every last one.

            1 (12m 39s):

            Hmm. When you started reading, I could just hear the song in my head. Yes. And I damn song, yo, what I’m gonna, I’m gonna wear you down and we’re gonna have music on this podcast eventually, but so I I love this text for This week, and one of the reasons why we picked it was because of the question earlier in the episode. And so this is an example of a part of scripture that is, you know, poetry or song depending on how you look at it or define those terms, right? And so like the Bible contains poetry and other types of literature. And I think that if you try and make the entire Bible a direct word for word revelation from God, that it cheapens it and distorts it.

            1 (13m 34s):

            And that when you read this passage, it’s like just not poss like clearly the author of this passage didn’t in that wasn’t this person’s experience of them writing this song, the author of this, of this psalm writing about God and about God’s word and what that means to this person. And so it’s like, it’s written almost to and about God rather than from God. And if you’re gonna like take the Bible seriously, just like a, a quick cursory reading of that, of this text, like shows that God is the, the subject of this piece, not the author of it.

            1 (14m 17s):

            So just wanna name that And I think that’s really beautiful thing to be included in the collection of, of sacred scripture. What about you Shay?

            2 (14m 26s):

            Yeah, I just, I remember so distinctly how I was taught about this passage and about the Bible growing up, right? That, that it was the iner infallible word of God that we, it could answer all of our questions. That anything we needed to know about God was in the Bible. That all of that, and like this passage in particular was often used in reference to like the whole, the whole of scripture. Even that even though when this passage was written like the Christian scriptures did not exist yet, and actually probably a lot of the Hebrew scriptures did not exist yet either.

            2 (15m 8s):

            And so this idea that, like your word is a lamp before my feet, the way that I was taught and a light unto my path was this, was this idea that we were supposed to memorize the Bible and use it to like guide everything in our lives. And, and so now reading back on this passage, I’m like, that is not what this is about. Like this poem is not about the Bible at all as a, as a whole. And it’s, it’s also more about like this poet reflecting upon the word that they’ve heard from their community, probably from their oral tradition, maybe from some of their sacred scriptures as like a guiding principle for their own lives.

            2 (15m 53s):

            And like I think we can look at this text then and say, okay, well what are the lights for our own journey? What are the words that point us to God, point us to community? But like to read this passage as if it’s about the Bible is, is really is not a good reading.

            1 (16m 17s):

            What I appreciate about this is your word is a lamp before my feet and a light for my journey. And I think about like, I imagine that image of a lamp and a light and what do lamps before your feet or lights for your journey do they illuminate the path. They aren’t the path itself. It’s not like the object. They help you see where you are and where you’re heading and like make sense of the world around you. But it isn’t like it helps you see things. It isn’t the thing at which you are looking. And that just like reminds me of the work that we do that we just wrapped up with this query in the Bible course, which we’re definitely gonna do.

            1 (17m 2s):

            Again, it was super popular. And even that we’ve done in the Faithful Sexuality course or the Christianity polyamory course, that the word of God can help us. It can like illuminate our journey through our queerness, through our relationships, through our polyamory. And when we bring like the word of God, the Bible Christian traditions, our sort of like experience of our faith community to bear on all of those parts of our life, our queerness, our sexuality, our bodies, even polyamory, that we can see all of that in a new and holy and sacred light and realize our inherent holiness and goodness.

            1 (17m 46s):

            And that also that as we illuminate that, those parts of us, those sort of like trees or bushes on the side of the road or the stepping stones across the creek, can then teach us about our faith. Also, it becomes this circle. And so we, we like need it all, we need like the lamp to guide us, but then we also need to look at the path outside of us to to see, to see where to go, and to notice that there’s a rocker that we’ve gotta step up, step over, or that if we keep going in this direction, we’re gonna hit a wall. And so we’ve gotta turn,

            2 (18m 20s):

            If you’re interested in going deeper into conversations like this, this is the type of stuff that we talk about all the time in Sanctuary Collective, our online community stuff about how our views of the Bible have changed over time. Stuff about how to read the Bible now from wrestling with relationships and coming out and churches and family and all that stuff. If you’re interested in learning more, you can go to Queer Theology dot com slash sanctuary collective and we would love to have you in the community.

            1 (18m 48s):

            The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.

            2 (18m 57s):

            To dive

            4 (18m 58s):

            Into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

            1 (19m 5s):

            We’ll see you next week.

            The post The Lamp the Light the Path, Psalms 119:105-112 appeared first on Queer Theology.

            20 min
          • Queering Hanukkah

            As we come to the beginning of Hanukkah, Brian invites us to reimagine the Festival of Lights as a celebration of resistance, resilience, and the sacred spark within every queer body. When queering Hanukkah, we can explore how the Hanukkah story itself is rooted in defiance against erasure, and how its rituals can be reclaimed as affirming practices that honor queer joy, creativity, and survival.

            Resources:

            • Learn more about Rituals for Resistance & Resilience here
            • Join us and be part of Queering Advent! Find more info here.
              • This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

              1 (9s):

              Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy,

              2 (13s):

              And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts from Genesis,

              1 (18s):

              Revelation. The Bible declares good news, LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how

              2 (23s):

              Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here.

              1 (33s):

              A few days ago, I texted one of my friends who was also Jewish and asked if he wanted to come over for a lot ’cause and food and candles on the first native Hanukkah with some other friends. Wait, when does Hanukkah start? He asked, yes, I’m terrible for not knowing. He added, but you know what? Not knowing when Hanukkah starts is also a quintessentially Jewish experience for many Jews. It, it starts tonight, by the way, now if you know me, you know that I’m a big fan of counting holidays. I like to count the days of land count, the days of the Ooma count, the days of Advent, and of course, count the Knights of Hanukkah. It might be that that soothes some part of my A DHD brain, but for me, there’s also something deeply grounding about the practice of paying attention to the passing of time.

              1 (1m 13s):

              Maybe you count the days since a partner or friend or a family members passing. Maybe you count the days of your sobriety. Maybe you count the days until your gender affirming surgery. I’m a bit obsessed with the idea that everything can be spiritual, that the divine is already at your fingertips. In our rituals for resistance and resilience workshop, I outline seven steps to transform a routine into ritual. Sure, you can pray the rosary or go to Shabbat services, but if that’s, but if those don’t resonate with you, perhaps you could take some inspiration from counting the days of Advent or Hanukkah and create your own sacred countdown or other type of spiritual practice. In Hanukkah, we remember two things. The more feel good story that we remember is that after the temple in Jerusalem was taken back by the Jews from occupation under this lucid empire in the second century, b, c, E, there was hardly any oil left that could be used to light the menorah, which is a seven branched candelabra that burned daily in the temple.

              1 (2m 9s):

              Out of all the oil that was left, there was only enough for one night, but it would take seven more days to make and sanctify more oil. Still, they lit the menorah anyway, and somehow miraculously it burned for eight nights long enough to replenish the oil and keep it burning. A few years ago, my rabbi gave a talk on Hanukah. She shared how she started her rabbinet in the midst of the AIDS crisis and as a lesbian rabbi, she was one of the few clergy who would visit many gay men, sick or dying of aids. While we lost a devastating number of L-G-B-T-Q people to the AIDS epidemic, many survived against incredible odds. There’s a clip that I can’t get out of my head of Peter Staley organizing with Act Up in the 1990s where he says, I’m going to die from this, and yet over 30 years later, he’s still here.

              1 (2m 59s):

              The world has tried over and over and over again to snuff out queer people, neglect our healthcare conversion therapy, shame us into silence. Burn books about us in the 1930s in Germany, rewrite history about us in the 2020s in the United States of America, legislate our rights away, deny our genders, pretend our relationships didn’t exist or don’t count. And yet here we are. Here you are still burning just as bright. Each night of Hanukkah, we light one additional candle, starting with a mish that help our candle and one regular candle on the first night, and then all the way up to the mish and eight regular candles on the final night.

              1 (3m 40s):

              Each night, the light grows and grows and grows from a faint flicker in the beginning to a glorious roaring beacon. At the end, you might have started your queer journey small and timid, but you need not stay that way. Each day, the divine pours more light into you. May you grow stronger and brighter with each passing night. There is another reason we celebrate Hanukkah. In addition to the miracle of the oil, Hanukkah also celebrates a military victory. The reason why most of the oil has been destroyed and how the temple came to be your reclaimed by the Jews in the first place. Now, Jews have been occupied in and exiles from Israel countless times over our history and the second century, BCE was one of those times the saluted empire wanted to outlaw Jewish practice to destroy Jewish distinctiveness, to coerce assimilation into a hellenized society.

              1 (4m 28s):

              Worship, and the temple became a mashup of Jewish and pagan cult worship. Eventually, a group of Jewish rebels led by Judas Maccabee revolted to oust the occupiers and restore Jewish cultural and religious practices in the land and in the temple. Right now, in our present day, there are people who want to stamp out queer distinctiveness. If they cannot erase or destroy us, perhaps they can coerce us into being imitations of them. Make your queerness smaller. They say, blend in, dull your glittery rainbow distinctiveness, and exchange it for khakis and sundresses. Give up your chosen families and retreat to insulated and isolated nuclear families. Bottle up your expansive love and force it into marriages that mirror straightness as much as possible.

              1 (5m 13s):

              Assimilate, conform. Hanukkah reminds us to resist the temptation of assimilation. Queerness is holy, and in a world that is still unjust. As we wait for Alam Haba, as we say in Judaism, as we wait for the world to come, as we work, as Christians would say, for the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, we need queerness now more than ever. Your queerness is a light like the timid flames of Hanukkah that somehow miraculously burned and burned and burned. May your light never go out. May you burn and burn and burn, and in doing so, may you light up the whole world. Can you hear Raton? May it be God’s will.

              1 (5m 53s):

              If you want to take better care of yourself, connect more deeply with the divine fuel, more integration with your queerness work for a better world, and yet it all just seems so hard. Shannon and I would like to invite you to take our rituals for Resistance and resilience workshop. You’ll learn about the revolutionary origins of some historic religious rituals while also being guided into crafting your own sacred practices that nourish and inspire you, so that you can go through the day with more joy, so you can feel more confident in your queerness, so you can be more bold in your words and actions. We would be so honored to support you. Learn more and [email protected] slash rituals. The Queer Theology Podcast is just one of many things that we [email protected], which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q Christians and straight cisgender supporters.

              2 (6m 38s):

              To dive into more of the action, visit [email protected]. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

              1 (6m 46s):

              We’ll see you next week.

              The post Queering Hanukkah  appeared first on Queer Theology.

              7 min
            • Moving Past Terrible Theology

              In this episode, we dig into why leaving harmful churches isn’t enough, you also have to unlearn the bad theology you absorbed along the way.  We talk about how lingering fear, shame, reactivity, or discomfort around sex, Scripture, or Christian community can reveal where old beliefs are still running the show, even for folks who’ve left evangelicalism, Catholicism, or grew up in progressive spaces without learning how to engage the Bible for themselves. We get into what unlearning actually looks like and why arguing on evangelical terms keeps you stuck. You gotta be able to rebuild your faith (or recognize when to walk away from it) with grounding, nuance, and liberation. We also answer listener questions about the 1946 documentary and where to begin when returning to faith after fear.

              Resources:

              • Join us and be part of Queering Advent! Find more info here.
                • This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

                1 (9s):

                Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy.

                2 (13s):

                And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts from

                1 (17s):

                Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news, LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how

                2 (23s):

                Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here.

                1 (33s):

                Hello. Hello. Hello. So good to be back in your eras with you today. On today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about the importance of not just leaving bad churches or leaving bad faith entirely, but also unlearning your path theology and this like danger of what could happen if you don’t take the time to un unload, unlearn. And you just sort of like try and pat it aside and pat it set aside and for, and forget about it for a while. We’ll also have a listener question that we will get to at the end of the episode. If you would like to have your question featured on the podcast, you can go to cardiology.com/listen. You can also leave us a voice message or send us a text message to 2 4 0 2 0 0 0 9 2 2.

                1 (1m 19s):

                That’s 2 4 0 2 0 0 0 9 2 2. Okay, and with that said, Shea, what are we talking about this episode and why?

                3 (1m 30s):

                Yeah, so I mean, I think one of the things that we see really, really often, and it’s especially prevalent among former evangelicals or folks who grew up in kind of evangelical or Catholic spaces, but it’s also, we see it in kind of a different way in folks that grew up in progressive and mainline spaces. So we can maybe talk about both of those things, but is folks who you know, are pretty sure that they know what they don’t believe and they have left homophobic or transphobic churches, maybe they’ve even left the church entirely, and yet they haven’t actually unpacked or unlearned the things that they internalized growing up.

                3 (2m 13s):

                And so what happens often is that their faith then becomes either a response to those things of like, well, I don’t believe that, right? Like, I’m just, I don’t believe in hell, I don’t believe whatever. And yet underneath kind of all of those feelings, there is still a sense of fear or shame or anxiety. And so I just talk about like why it’s so, so, so important that not only you leave those spaces, but that you also unlearn the theology, right? Like you have to unpack what is it that I was taught? What are other ways to understand that?

                3 (2m 54s):

                And you don’t have to necessarily stay a Christian or stay in the church or like even believe any of those other ways, but you have to do the work of understanding them so that those hard emotions don’t keep acting out in your life.

                1 (3m 12s):

                Yeah, I sometimes say it’s like you seem scared of a God that you don’t believe in, and I, I’m sure I’m not the first person to say that. And so I wanna find up, I think it was start by talking about like some ways that you might be able to notice that you have still got some like unlearning to do. And then we’ll sort of get into, well then what do you do with, what do you do with that? If you’re like, that’s me. And so I think like one, a one clear sign that you’ve got some unlearning to do is if you find yourself like being reactive in like any sort of discussion of God or religion comes up.

                1 (3m 59s):

                Obviously if like someone is using Christianity to like legislate against your body, you’re like allowed to be angry at that, right? Like that is a very like reasonable response. So it’s, we’re not saying that you have to like have like an absence of any emotion when it comes to religion or God or spirituality. Absolutely not. But like, you know, if you are, if you find out that someone you’re, you know, doing like abortion clinic escorting with like, also happens to be a Christian and you’re like, oh my God, how could you possibly believe in that? That’s all bullshit without knowing anything about the content of what she believes or he believes or they believe, and otherwise they seem like a thoughtful, justice centered kindhearted, you know, person doing good in the world.

                1 (4m 54s):

                Like it’s like, oh, like what is going on there? Because it sounds like you both don’t believe in the same God, but so that, that’s like some, that’s like, that might be like an indicator that there’s something going on there. Another indicator is that if you like in theory believe that it’s okay to be L-G-B-T-Q, it’s okay to have queer sex, but you find yourself like in your body feeling weird about it after you have sex. If you find yourself feeling shame about the type of sex that you’re having, the type of relationships that you’re having, and like maybe you like hook up and then like immediately ghost someone, or you start dating someone for a few weeks or a few dates and then like, it’s all going well on the surface, but like for some reason you like, you can’t quite put your pan finger on, you just sort of like it fizzles out.

                1 (5m 45s):

                This is, that was, this was my mo for the first, like I, I don’t know, five to seven years after I came out, probably if you asked me like, is it a sin to be gay? I was just like, absolutely not. It’s like not a sin to be gay. Like, and also like the way that I showed up in the world was, I didn’t notice this until my, one of my friends was away for a while and he came back and he was like, oh, whatever happened to that guy that Brian was dating. But like, when I left and, and my other friend told him like, oh, you know, like it was going really well. He was a great guy and like Brian did that thing that Brian does and like freaked out. And then it was over. And like when my friend told me like, this is what our other friend had said, I was like, oh, is that a, is that a pattern of, is that a pattern of mine?

                1 (6m 28s):

                Shit, I’ve like really gotta like pay attention to this. I used to like hook up with people, feel bad, block them, I’ll just sit back on Facebook. I blocked them on Facebook. Then like two months later, like the, it was like, I was like in less crisis and I would, I start to get more horny so then I would like unblock them and then I would like hook up with ’em again and then feel bad like all over again. This like this cycle repeated of like, I don’t know why, in my mind I believe that it’s an okay thing to be queer and I wouldn’t necessarily judge my friends who were doing it, but like in my body I was having some sort of response which was different than like, this person isn’t right for you, or like, this situation isn’t safe or you don’t enjoy this thing.

                1 (7m 12s):

                It was like they were good people that we had a good connection with and I was enjoying what I was doing. It was like the aftermath was like bringing up all of this weird shame or I thought that like I had to wait until I was in a certain type of relationship before having sex or progressed my sexual relationship like at a certain pace that was like, I was noticing was like not necessarily based on my like own comfort level of what was comfortable for me, but was like in response to like what I thought like I should do or what was appropriate. And so then when I started paying attention to like, well, why do I think that which we’ll get into later, like it was the, the shoulds. So if you find yourself like thinking that you like should do something or shouldn’t do something as opposed to being drawn towards wanting to do something or wanting to not do something.

                1 (7m 59s):

                Those are some indicators. What other indicators that there’s like some more unlearning and relearning to be done, to be done. Would you, would you add?

                3 (8m 8s):

                Yeah, so I think, you know, some other examples of folks who, who it’s clear, like they haven’t done some unlearning. I I wanna talk about like mainline folks for a second. So folks who maybe grew up in progressive spaces but they like, haven’t actually learned how to read the Bible on their own. And so what they’ve absorbed about Christianity is coming really from culture, right? From what they’re seeing on the news, what they’re hearing about Christianity. And so they have this sense of like, well, I don’t believe that, but I don’t actually know what it is I believe or like how to understand or think about those things. I saw this in with in a lot of folks in churches that I’ve worked at who like were were like dedicated churchgoers, we’re progressive people, but like wanted to throw out the Bible because they didn’t actually know how to read it, right?

                3 (9m 5s):

                And like they would say things like, we, I, we just need to like get rid of the Bible. And it’s like, well I think it’s actually kind of important that as a church that is centered around this book that we maybe grapple with it and learn how to read it and deal with it. And, and I know that like they weren’t hearing those messages from the pulpit of the church that they were in, but they had gotten that information from somewhere, from their Christian bookstore, from other people that they ran into that were part of more conservative churches and they hadn’t quite learned how to parse it. And so, I mean, I think this goes a little bit back to what you were saying about, you know, folks being reactive, but I think that it’s also a real indication of like, of some unlearning that needs to happen about how we understand and think through certain things

                1 (9m 58s):

                That, that, that made me, that made me think of just the other day in Sanctuary Collective, our online community, someone posted and they were like, I don’t know, they were, they were trying to like, like find new meaning in this story of Saddam and Gamo and like parsing through it. And then they just were like made this authentic comment of like, I just dunno, I find a lot of the like older testaments to be like really troubling to me. I’m like down with Jesus, but like, it’s just like hard to read the, the older testament that just seems like there’s like a lot of judgment in there. And I was like, oh, that, like, that is like not my experience of the older testament or the Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible. Those are kind of all different things, but like, if you like, but they sort of absorb this cultural message, right?

                1 (10m 41s):

                That like parts of the bible are like bad or scary or irreconcilable and the sort of like way to deal with that is to like wanna cut it out, want to throw it out, want to avoid it. And so like if you find yourself avoiding parts of the Bible, like that also might be an indicator that there’s sort of like more like unlearning and relearning to do like, not, like, not that like every part of the Bible is glorious. Like I think like parts of the Bible are troubling, but like I don’t, you don’t have to be like intimidated by the troubling parts. You can be empowered to say like, yeah, that shit’s fucked up. But also like if you find yourself painting like in broad strokes like all of the Old Testament is hard, you’re like, probably that’s probably coming from a place like you were saying Shea of like either reactivity or just like a lack of understanding about how folks actually engage with those texts because oh my goodness in the Hebrew Bible is all sorts of love and justice and like embodied connection with God and care and concern and all that good stuff.

                3 (11m 41s):

                Yeah. Yeah. And then I, I think the other piece is if you are in a space where fear keeps coming up for you, and again, I think that this is like right there is a, there is a world in which you actually have done some work and intellectually, you know, for instance like that there are lots of ways to believe about salvation or hell or the rapture or that the rapture isn’t real like any of those things and you still feel fear coming up sometimes that is just a, you’re still in a process of learning how to comfort and soothe your body and like convince your body that your head is right.

                3 (12m 23s):

                And so like that is one thing and we can, we’ll probably talk in a, in a future episode about like how we work on that mind body connection. But there’s another piece of that where if you are someone who just like continuously feels afraid, afraid of God, afraid to read the bible, afraid to go into a church, it, there’s probably something in there that that is saying like, there’s still some more unlearning to do and this is different than a trauma response, right? Like I, I wanna also name that for some folks there is like a, a complex trauma or A-P-T-S-D because of harm that has happened in churches. And so like you should maybe avoid those spaces or, or like seek out some therapy to, to figure out how to navigate that this is something different.

                3 (13m 12s):

                This is like a, just a sense of, I don’t know, doom or dread. Like this isn’t something where you’re, you’re talking about you’re having a panic response, but this is like a, I’m like afraid to read the bible because what if I read something that upsets me or sends me spiraling, I’m afraid to pray, I’m afraid to engage with Christian community because like I, I don’t want it to, to send me off the rails. And I think that all of that is, is usually a pretty good indication that you haven’t unlearned the theology and learned something new to take its place.

                3 (13m 53s):

                And I think that this is, this is a moment to say again like, you don’t have to stay Christian or stay in the church or have faith. And also I think it’s really important if you grew up hearing certain things that you understand and learn the counterpoints to that right? That that is what gets us out of fear and whether or not you like choose to continue to engage in that is totally in many ways irrelevant.

                1 (14m 26s):

                Yes. I think, I think like one of the things that we come across in our work is folks that are no longer Christian, either like explicitly no longer Christian or like kind of Christian, vaguely Christian, but it’s like not super important to them and they don’t wanna like do a lot of work around it but that have these like lingering beliefs about maybe they wouldn’t call it god anymore, but like the way the universe is gonna like get them back or fear or like just sort of like disconnected from their bodies, like shame, right? And that like actually sometimes like if it’s like if, if you want to stop being a Christian, sometimes like the best thing that you can do is like spend four to eight to 12 weeks like studying Christianity so that you like excise all of that from you and so that you can then like leave while we talk all the time about like, we wanna help folks who want to stay Christian, like do that really well and we wanna help folks that want to like leave Christianity, like do that well as well or who folks want to like do something else or reimagine their, their faith that like, but you gotta, in order to move on to like the best version of what’s next, you gotta make sure that you like leave all of the bullshit behind.

                3 (15m 39s):

                Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is also like, it’s more in depth than just learning the like progressive counter to evangelicals talking points, right? I see this a lot too of folks who have left evangelicalism, but they’re still arguing against evangelicals using the rules and the terms that evangelicals have set up about like what the Bible is and what it means and how to read it. And I think that too gets us stuck in a cycle of being reactive, of being influenced and informed by evangelical theology and thinking, right?

                3 (16m 20s):

                There’s this idea that, that they somehow hold all of the power in the conversations and that we’re like just responding to them and that we have to respond in that way. And, and one of the biggest things for me was, was learning that like, oh actually the rules of they rigged the rules of the game. So like me continuing to engage with them in that way actually helps to elevate how they’re thinking about scripture and how they’re thinking about theology and like, I’m not willing to do that anymore. And that was when I started to like get free because it was like, oh, there’s actually a whole other way to read the bible, to understand theology that doesn’t at all even give credence or any elevation to evangelical thinking and theology and like that’s where we need to be spending our time.

                1 (17m 12s):

                Yeah, it reminds me of those passages and I know Matthew and Mark maybe at somewhere else also where Jesus is telling his disciples, like if you go somewhere and they like won’t listen to you, like leave and shake the dust off your sandals. I know we’ve covered that in my podcast a number of times. He isn’t like, if they don’t listen to you well then try to like meet them where they are or like try to like put them in like language that they’ll understand or like argue on their terms. He’s like, no man, like come preach the gospel like on our terms and they won’t hear it like peace. And I think like there is some power in in doing that so that we don’t, like you were saying by it’s kind also when I was doing media training from glad they were, were like you, if someone asks you like a problematic question you like don’t, you’d like don’t answer it on their terms, you respond, you don’t answer, you don’t like repeat problematic framings of things.

                1 (17m 59s):

                Yeah. ’cause like sometimes like really like messy or problematic or harmful assumptions are like baked into the questions that you’re asked or the like the ways in which that scripture or theology is engaged with. And so like it is impossible not to affirm harmful theology if you answer on those terms. And so you just gotta like jet us in all of that together. Yeah. So if you’re

                3 (18m 23s):

                Hearing all of this and you’re thinking, yeah, that sounds great and I’ve got some stuff to do and like, where the hell do I start? We’ve got you covered. You can go to cariology.com/resources and find resources on all sorts of things. Whether your biggest thing is that you’re still feeling shame around sex or you are wondering how to read the bible better and you know, starting to, to get some progressive theology in there, we’ve got you covered. So go to queer theology.com/resources if there’s something in particular that you’re looking for, you can always send us an email connect at queer theology com. We’d love to point you in the right direction.

                1 (19m 2s):

                Alright, and now let us turn to our listener question. Just a reminder, if you have a question that you would like answered, you can send us a text message or leave us a voicemail at 2 4 0 200 0 9 2 2. That’s 2 4 0 2 0 0 0 9 2 2. If you prefer, if you’re international or you prefer to do it on the web, you can go to queer theology com slash listen and you can leave us a voice note or send us a text-based message there as well. So with that, let’s take a listen to our first question.

                4 (19m 38s):

                It was a Brent, she I was just wondering, so I wanna say like a year or so ago, I ended up watching that 1946 movie, the documentary that was like posted online. They had it like circling at like, like movie festivals and stuff and I watched it and it was really good and then I commented on somebody’s page on like TikTok and stuff and they were saying that that actually is all false and that it’s really just like progressive Christian stuff and that like everything that they said in there was not true and all that stuff. So I just wanted to ask you all and because you actually like, you know, studied the bible and like the history and stuff and I just wanted to get your take on it.

                4 (20m 26s):

                I know that this is probably a big thing and I’m sure you’ve maybe even have mentioned it before, but I just wanted to put it out here suggests that other people can also know too. And yeah, so thank you so much for your time and I hope you and everybody out there have a really blessed day. Thank you peace. Much love.

                3 (20m 43s):

                Yeah, I love this question. I think it’s so, so important and interesting and the like short answer is it doesn’t matter slash you’re both right and the longer answer is a little bit more complicated. So the, the first thing to notice is that the folks who made the 1946 documentary are correct that, you know, in the English translations of the Bible, we didn’t have the word homosexuality inserted until 1946. The problem with that is that like, that doesn’t suddenly make the Bible homophobic, right? Like people were using the bible to be antique well before the insertion of that word.

                3 (21m 29s):

                And so like the, the idea that like that was suddenly how we got homophobia in our churches is like just not true. And so I think that the, this, this leads to a more nuanced conversation about like what do we do with both those verses and with the understanding of like a progressive view of sexuality. Like how do we make sense of that? And then even further than that is also like how do we deal with the kind of the rhetoric that’s like, no, that’s just like wishful thinking, it’s actually wrong and like they’re just making it up and, and that kind of what you’ve called many times Brian, like the hamster wheel of Yeah, I was thinking that and, and of like reading theology.

                3 (22m 18s):

                And so like I think that that is actually a more important place to sit and wrestle with anything you would add to what I’ve said.

                1 (22m 26s):

                Yeah, when, when I was listening to this question, I immediately got a flashback to when I was figuring out that I was queer and like researching like what does the bible say? And obviously like however long ago, everybody, like 20 years ago this movie didn’t exist yet, but a lot of the same arguments were were being made there about like, this is a mistranslation of this word. And, and so then I would just go back and forth. So like I would, I would read about how these words were mistranslated, how the translation changed, how the word homosexual didn’t appear until the forties. Then I would, I then I would read some other article about saying like, all those, all of those arguments are like bs. And then I would read a third one about how the, the anti-gay argument was actually incorrect and the the original one was correct and I was just, it felt like I could, like never, I was just like, I could never get a, had a spy answer on either from either side.

                1 (23m 16s):

                And I think that gets back to what we were talking about earlier in this episode that it’s like about more than just like, what does this one word mean? Because I baked into the question, right? Is that if this word means homosexual, then definitively homosexual is like not a sin, it like is a sin. And it’s like, well a like it was written Greek, so like we don’t even, I’m like homosexuality as a concept didn’t exist. And so I think think like we, we, what you find yourselves getting into is like you get into the weeds, right? About like, well homosexuality is a concept didn’t exist. So of course like, it’s not an exact translation, but it’s like it’s a close enough translation and it, you know, we have to update our translations to modern times, which is like not wrong, right?

                1 (24m 1s):

                To your point, even if the translation didn’t mean homosexual, like there’s other verses that people can point to, right? Or there’s just more like a general sense of like, well there aren’t queer people in the Bible at all. So, so then what? And I think like if you, if your sense of it’s okay to be queer hangs on like a definitive reading of these seven passages and or of like David and Jonathan being gay, this ur and his like servant slash slave being gay, that’s like a really fragile thing to hang your, the love of yourself on. And it, it is just as fragile I would say as like evangelicalism, like you shay you all for years and years have been saying like it’s a house of cards.

                1 (24m 46s):

                Like, and so if you, if you just blow on it, it all comes tumbling down. And I think like you, we want you to have a stronger faith foundation than like, I just hope that this translation of this like 2000 year old made up word is correct. Like, ooh, like that is a shaky foundation. And we, we have found over and over and over again is that like, that is like an unfulfilling argument for queer people that leaves us sort of like in a shaky place and it like is generally not gonna move homophobes who like are committed to believing that queer people are living in sin, that we gotta find some other way to move those, these like highly academic arguments are not the thing that moves the needle.

                1 (25m 29s):

                And so I wanna pull back and say like, how do we read the Bible in totality? What are the messages that are trying that are being told? How does scripture like speak in a, like where does speak, where does scripture agree with itself? Where does scripture disagree with itself, contradict itself, wrestle with itself, argue with itself for, for folks who are Christian, like what does Jesus like say, what does Jesus do? How does like the early church in scripture understand Jesus? How does the church beyond like the, the Bible understand Jesus? And this is like that all what I just said, just explaining the process, let alone actually doing the process takes more time than like the homosexual and the fornicator shall not inherit the kingdom, right?

                1 (26m 17s):

                It’s like not a soundbite, right? Yeah. But I do think that like you are made in the image of God that like God desires right relationship with you that like there’s, you have some internal sense of like the divine speaking to you and working with you, whether that is like still small voice from the Hebrew Bible, whether that’s the Holy Spirit from the Christian Bible that like the fruits of our theology manifest themselves like in our lives and in our world that like we can trust ourselves in some way. All of those things like come together to, we make a really beautiful and profound case, not just for, for like queer acceptance, but for like the importance of like justice work in general.

                1 (27m 7s):

                Which is not to say that like there aren’t problematic passages or hard passages or passages like worth wrestling with in the Bible, but like this idea that we just have to accept passages that trouble us at face value is like a very modern understanding of how we’re supposed to engage with scripture and with God. And like, just ’cause like some people, some types of Christians are like saying it very loudly does like not actually mean that that is a faithful way to engage with a bible.

                3 (27m 40s):

                Yeah. I I I think that also goes back to what we were saying earlier about like this argument about the, this word being added in 1946 is very much like predicated on on the idea of the Bible as infallible and in errand, right? Like it’s, it’s an argument designed to hold up how evangelicals understand scripture, which I would, I would say is like not the way that we want to engage, that we instead wanna be saying, no, actually infallibility and inerrancy are really, really new and modern inventions. And like there’s a, a more faithful way of reading all scripture.

                3 (28m 24s):

                And that like, all scripture becomes much more interesting when you read it with nuance and with and and, and as in conversation with itself as opposed to this text that is clear and tells us what to do and is this like, you know, checklist for how to be, how to believe and behave.

                1 (28m 47s):

                Yeah. And like it’s this word in particular, it’s like a 2000 year old word, it is like a made up word that is like an amalgamation of like two other words that were like everyone doing a translation is trying to like discern what it means from like how it was constructed and like this scam other places it was used. And so it’s like, that’s just like an unsatisfying response. It’s like that is like always going to be unsatisfying for queer people and for anti LGBT people. Like, they’re like man bigotry is a hell of a drug, right? So like if they’re coming into it already thinking that like queerness is like sick and sinful, like of course they’re not going to trust like this sort of like really nuanced academic arguments about this word.

                1 (29m 33s):

                We’ve got to figure out how to move them like on a systems level, on a heart level so that they can then get to a point where they can like actually look at the data and be like, oh yeah, it probably doesn’t mean that. And like even if it does, like that’s like, that’s wrong. And so like if, if this sort of stuff is resonances to you, either you’re like a queer person and you’re like wanting some more affirmation and assurance about the Bible and whether or not it condemns queerness or you’re someone who wants to figure out how to like engage with others more effectively, definitely check out our resources page as Shea was saying earlier, queer theology.com/resources. I wanna flag two workshops I think would be particularly helpful for you collaborating the collabor passages, which is all about the passages that have historically been used against LGBT people and how you can sort of like unlearn and relearn around those we share, you know, not just the sort of like traditional arguments as you would hear in the, in the movie, but also our sort of take on how you can really, truly want and for all, like let go of the power that they have over you.

                1 (30m 41s):

                And then also active advocacy if you wanna definitely for straight cisgender folks to like be a better advocate and ally for LGBT LGBTQ people folk. But also if you are a queer person yourself, you might get something out of that just in terms of like how to effectively organize and some like pitfalls and obstacles to avoid.

                3 (30m 58s):

                Yeah. Alright, we got one more question. This person writes, hi, I’m a bi latina person. She, they wanting to return to my Christian roots and embrace what I felt scared to do growing up. I feel stumped over where to start and what resources to use. How can I overcome this fear to revisit God? What are the steps to start?

                1 (31m 18s):

                This is a great question. Like you said, Shea, I, there, I’ve got like two high level places that I think you, you would start. One is, I guess kind of more like advice to the journey. And that is I think to make things like, make whatever it is that you’re doing, very small and very simple. This was something that came up for us when we were running our queerness everyday challenge a little while ago. The tasks were like super small, unachievable. This is also inside of Ox Up Your Faith program. We break things down into like this, into like the smallest, simplest chunks so that you can, so that you can actually like, make movement If you’re feeling fear, if you’re feeling resistance, if you’ve like been watching this for a while and you haven’t been able to figure how to get started, it’s probably because like the task feels too big.

                1 (32m 11s):

                So rather than trying to go from this like place of fear right now to like next week feeling like a thriving prayer life and a like a community where you feel totally connected with and like nothing but like joy, no fear all joy, right? That’s like a huge, that’s like a huge chasm to to, to jump over. And so like, how can you make things smaller? It might be that like the first step is to like, you know, we always say this, it’s like journal and meditation, but like, it might be that the first step is to like, pay attention to the questions that you’re asking yourself to figure out like what exactly are you afraid of?

                1 (32m 50s):

                It might be to like figure out like what you are like most excited about and what you are most like hesitant about. And like, I think like if ever you feel like I can’t do that, figure out a way to make it even make the step even smaller. Obviously, like if you want help breaking all this down, we can go into more depth via email and also inside of Flip Your Faith, which is currently close registration, but it’s coming back soon. So go to queer theology.com/waitlist to get on the wait list for that. But so like, my thing, my first step is like just like smaller and simpler. I have a second idea, but I’d also, I’ve been talking for a minute, so I I can hold that back while if you’ve got something to say Shey.

                3 (33m 28s):

                Yeah, I mean I think, I think for me it’s, it’s making sure that as you’re restarting this journey, that you are restarting it in community and being resourced by folks who are progressive. That the way to restart this journey isn’t to like, go back to the evangelical church or conservative church that you grew up in. It’s not to like dig out your old daily devotional and restart that, right? It’s to get new resources that are gonna speak truth into your life and that are gonna help you understand in a new way.

                3 (34m 8s):

                My biggest concern would be that you would jump back in with all of the resources that you started with. And so figuring out like, what is it that you need, whether it’s like, I need to start with reading a book about how to read the Bible and I’m gonna, I’m gonna go there, or I need to find an LGBTQ plus affirming church so that I can attend a worship service there. Or even just like watch some sermons online to dip back in. But just making sure that you are surrounding yourself with progressive people and progressive theology, which isn’t to say that like you only listen to what you wanna hear, which I know is gonna be the, the pushback to that.

                3 (34m 49s):

                But it’s saying like, you’re in a space where you’re just starting on a journey where your faith is a bit fragile, where you’re relearning in some ways like how to walk in this space. And so you need to make sure that you are listening to voices that you can trust and that you’re not get overly confuse yourself or put yourself in harm’s way because you’re trying to like listen to a multiplicity of voices right off the bat.

                1 (35m 16s):

                Amen to that. So as we’ve already said a few times, we have a bunch of those [email protected] slash resources. If you would like to hear from folks other than us, we think that’s a great idea. We, and if you’re a reader, we put together a bunch a a bunch of different book recommendations on our bookshop at bookshop.org/shop/ology. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes from all different sorts of perspectives, right? Like Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Re like liberation, like liberation work from like the Latin American perspective. Juliet takes a Breath, which is like a beautiful fiction book, Latina and queer. We’ve got a bunch of nonfiction recommendations, the black, you know, trans prayer book, all sorts of like really great stuff to sort of like start feeding you from a, like a queer perspective, a liberation perspective.

                1 (36m 7s):

                And so resources, I think like, and, and starting to revisit your faith as like an important part of that process. And then I would also encourage you along the way to like pay attention to your body, how your body is reacting, and also how you can like, take care of your body, be gentle with your body and how you can not just like think about things or read about things, but also start to embody your beliefs and practices that is like way more than we can go into here, but in, in the time allotted. But we’ll, you know, I’m sure we’ll be doing like a ance everyday challenge again or something similar in the future and sharing more in depth by email.

                1 (36m 47s):

                So make sure you hop on our email list if you have not already, so that you can go, we go like deeper with you around this because this is like a really important question and hopefully that can help get you started.

                3 (36m 59s):

                Yeah. And so that is it for today. As a reminder, if you want to leave a question for us to answer in a future podcast episode, you can go to queer theology.com/listen and and do a video or text or you can call the Google Voice number. We would love to answer any of your questions, whether they’re about faith and theology or particular bible passages or something else entirely. Hit us with what you got. We would love to, to chat with you more. And that is it for this week. We will see you next week with another episode.

                1 (37m 34s):

                See you soon.

                5 (37m 35s):

                The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we [email protected], which provides resources, community, and inspiration for BTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.

                2 (37m 44s):

                To dive into more of the actions, visit [email protected]. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

                5 (37m 51s):

                We’ll see you next week.

                The post Moving Past Terrible Theology appeared first on Queer Theology.

                38 min
              • Preview: Queering Advent

                Queering Advent is a guided audio experience for this time of waiting, dreaming, and preparing as we hope for and work toward liberation and salvation.

                Rituals and liturgical seasons like Advent are invitations for us to re-center on what is most important to us.

                This winter, journey with us through Advent to deepen your awareness of and commitment to the connections between queerness and faith.

                Learn more and register at queertheology.com/advent

                An Advent practices that enriches your December, rather than stresses you out

                Brian & Shannon will offer a deeper reflection each Sunday of Advent—a mix of teaching, queer insights, and questions to consider.

                Then, during the week, you’ll get a short audio guide—shorter readings, reflections, prompts, and experiments— delivered right to your podcast app or available in our community hub.

                So that you move through this season with intentionality and contemplation. Feel steadied and reassured in these trying times. And a greater inspiration for how our faith can speak a good word to your personal life and our communal systems.

                All for $25 — that’s just one dollar for each day of Advent.

                Register here: queertheology.com/advent

                 

                This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

                0 (0s):

                Hello. Hello. We are just a few days into Advent, and I wanted to make sure that you knew about Queering Advent, a daily guided audio exploration of Advent so that in this time of winter waiting, you might be able to draw closer to the Divine, also to draw your queerness and your faith closer to one another as part of Queering Advent. Each day there are short audio reflections on weekdays, they’re five minutes or less, and then on Sundays it’s a little bit longer of a conversation between myself and Shannon on the different themes of Advent. You get them in a private audio feed that you can put in the podcast player of your choice.

                0 (41s):

                So if you’re listening to this podcast, you already know how that works. You don’t have to remember any logins. You don’t have to sit at your computer. There are no screens to stare at. Just a daily dose of queer Faithful Reflections, meditations, and even some challenges and inspirations. We would love to have you be part of it. It’s just $25. That’s $1 for each day of Advent. You can learn more at queer theology.com/advent. And now I would like to share with you a preview of what you’ll find inside of Queering Advent.

                1 (1m 12s):

                Welcome to Queering Advent.

                0 (1m 21s):

                After I came out, it took my parents many years for them to come around and be affirming, and in those in-between years, I spent a lot of time waiting, waiting for them to accept me, waiting for them to say the right things, waiting for them to ask meaningful questions about who I am and the life that I’m really living. When I think about it, I also spent some time waiting on myself before I even came out waiting to be sure that this was true, waiting on the right explanation to confirm for myself that it was okay to be queer, waiting for the right time to tell my friends and families and coworkers and people that I knew from church waiting to feel comfortable being perceived as queer out in public, and even since I’ve been out as queer for over half my life at this point, which is wild to think about, and even still, I find myself in these periods of waiting to settle into my identity, to feel comfortable as a polyamorous person of faith to uncover new areas of shame that I still carry in my body to weight.

                0 (2m 29s):

                For those to be excised and to feel completely comfortable. Psalm one 30 says, I cry out to you from the depths, Lord, my Lord, listen to my voice. Let your ears pay close attention to my request for mercy. If you kept track of sins, Lord, my Lord, who would stand a chance, but forgiveness is with you. That’s why you are honored. I hope, Lord, my whole being hopes and I wait for God’s promise. My whole being waits for my Lord more than the night Watch waits for morning. Yes, more than the night. Watch waits for Morning Israel. Wait for the Lord because faithful love is with the Lord, because great redemption is with our God.

                0 (3m 12s):

                He’s the one who redeem Israel from all its sin. Shannon and I are wondering today what you might be waiting for, and that is your prompt today. Take a few minutes right now to think on a time when you’ve been waiting for something. What were you waiting on? How did you feel while you were waiting, and then what did you do? As always, we invite you to not just reflect on these in your head, but to jot them down pen to paper or in a Notes app. If you feel comfortable, pop on over to Sanctuary Collective community to the querying Advent thread and share with us one of your experiences of waiting.

                1 (3m 54s):

                That’s

                0 (3m 55s):

                All for now. We’ll see you tomorrow, Shannon and I would love to have you be part of Queering Advent. In addition to the daily audio reflections, you also get access to the entire Sanctuary collective community, as well as the spiritual study hall library of resources already inside a sanctuary collective. We’re having some really interesting discussions about the themes and the questions and the reflections that have come up over acquiring Advent. We would love to get to know you and grow deeper in faith with you, so come on in queer theology.com/advent.

                The post Preview: Queering Advent appeared first on Queer Theology.

                5 min
              • An Advent Reflection for Uncertain Times

                Father Shannon kicks off the Advent season with a solo episode where he reflects on the meaning of Advent as both a spiritual and practical season of preparation. During this time of rising threats for trans, non-binary folks, and immigrants, uncertainty and fear hangs over us. Fr. Shannon offers some grounding reflections about community, care, safety, resistance, and showing up for one another. You’re encouraged to bring your journal to this one! The Christian story calls us to co-create a more just and compassionate world, and we encourage listeners not only to reflect, but to take action in their communities. 

                 

                Takeaways:

                • We’re asking this question not out of a sense of doomsday prepper.
                • What do I need to do right now, right where I am?
                • Creating the kind of community I long to live in.
                • Building a world that will protect the most at risk.
                • The importance of personal responsibility in community building.
                • Resilience is key in facing challenges.
                • Safe spaces are essential for vulnerable populations.
                • Community building requires active participation.
                • We must think about our actions in the present moment.
                • Creating supportive environments is a collective effort.

                  •  

                  Resources:

                  • Join us and be part of Queering Advent! Find more info here.

                    •  

                    This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

                    Amazon Music (1s):

                    Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer’s identity is about to be revealed? During that perfect meditation flow on Amazon music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That’s why we’ve got millions of ad-free podcast episodes, so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon music app and start listening to your favorite podcast, ad free, included with Prime.

                    2 (43s):

                    Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy.

                    3 (46s):

                    And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts

                    2 (51s):

                    From Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how tuning

                    3 (57s):

                    Each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello. Hello and welcome back to the Queer Theology Podcast Today, you’ve got a solo Father Shannon episode. It is the beginning of Advent, and I just have a couple of thoughts and reflections that I wanted to share with you as we get this Christian season started. Advent has arrived. I kind of can’t believe that we are already at this point in the year. Hopefully you are already ready to go with your advent practice and that you’re raring to, to kick it off.

                    3 (1m 39s):

                    I know for me, it sometimes takes me a bit to, to get into the season, but I, I find that advent is a, is a really important and reflective time. A time when we prepare, not only for Christmas of course, but also we reenter the Christian story. You know, advent is the beginning of the Christian calendar, and we begin anew to replay this ancient story, the story of Jesus, the story of the Christian people, a story that still resonates and resounds today, and, and whether or not you still consider yourself a Christian, whether or not you’ve ever celebrated or observed Advent before.

                    3 (2m 25s):

                    I think that there’s a lot that we can get out of the themes of Advent and thinking through kind of this cycle of the Christian life, the cycle of the spiritual life, the cycle of the stories that we tell about ourselves and our communities. And I’ve been thinking a lot about the themes of advent, particularly in these days. You know, advent is often thought of as a time of preparation. And you know, right now, as I am recording this, we’re, we’re getting ready to enter into this season. And, you know, the threats against trans and non-binary people in particular continue to rise.

                    3 (3m 7s):

                    So do prices and potentially healthcare costs if we can even get healthcare at all. And there’s so much violence and fear and anxiety the way that immigrants are being treated in this country. The political rhetoric all over, you know, it feels really scary sometimes, and it also feels often, I think with the 24 7 news media, like things are getting a lot worse. And, and I know for me as a trans person, I’ve been thinking a lot about what can I do to prepare? And I know a lot of other trans people are, are thinking about this as well.

                    3 (3m 47s):

                    And we’re asking this question not out of a sense of pessimism or like a doomsday prepper, but we’re thinking about it, or at least I’m thinking about it, of, you know, what do I need to do right now, right where I am right in these moments in order to create the kind of community that I long to live in. What do I need to do right now, right here, right in this moment in order to keep building a world that will protect the most at risk? And so in this advent season, I am thinking both theologically and practically about these questions, about this theme of preparation.

                    3 (4m 31s):

                    And I’m working to answer these questions for myself. And, and I thought that today it, it might be interesting to offer them as reflections for you too, if these questions feel useful. And so I’m, I’m gonna ask the question and pause just for a couple of seconds. If you wanted to use this as an exercise, as journaling prompts, as time to think, you could simply hit pause on the podcast after each question. If it’s more helpful for you to hear all the questions and then spend some time to reflect, feel free to do that. But here are the questions that, that I’m reflecting on, and then I offer to you as a reflection as well. The first is simply who is in my community?

                    3 (5m 15s):

                    And you can think of this as narrowly or as broadly as you want. I encourage you to think about it, especially concretely, both like who is in your community, right, in your location and lo locality, like who around you is in your community. But you can also think more broadly of who is in your community. What does community care look like? What matters to me when it comes to my health? And how can I put measures in place to protect that health?

                    3 (5m 60s):

                    What might I need to think about when it comes to legal documents moving forward? Who are the people I trust who can inform me about what I need to do to keep myself safe? How did my elders make it through similar times? What can I learn from strategies of resistance and strategies of care from the past? How am I giving back to my community?

                    3 (6m 41s):

                    What can I offer my community? And after you’ve spent some time reflecting, I invite you to not just leave these as answers on paper or a screen, don’t just leave them in a journal, but use these answers to start to inform how you’re showing up. Maybe you wanna show up in some new ways. I am particularly using this advent to prepare and answer these questions so that I can begin to act so that I, I can begin to show up in my community in new ways. I think that the story of Jesus wasn’t just about a miraculous intervention into human history.

                    3 (7m 26s):

                    You know, often we talk about the advent story and the Jesus story as you know, the people were waiting and then Jesus came and, and it was all fixed, right? ’cause, ’cause Jesus came. I think that instead the story of Advent is a reminder that there are always prophets who are pointing out what’s wrong in the world. There are always prophets who are looking around and saying, we don’t have to live like this. And then those same prophets are inviting us to be a part of the solution. And so in this advent time, I think it’s a time for us to look around and point out what’s wrong. It’s a time for us to uplift the voices of the prophets and to echo the voices of the prophets.

                    3 (8m 13s):

                    But it’s also a time for all of us to remember the invitation, to be a part of the solution, to remember the invitation, to continue to build a new world together, to continue to look out for the most marginalized and the most at risk in our midst. And to do whatever we can to make the world safer for them and for all of us. And so I offer this as an advent reflection for you. If you want some extra support throughout this advent season, you can join Sanctuary Collective. We would love to have you as a member of the community. This

                    2 (8m 50s):

                    Is Brian popping in as we edit. To let you know that inside of Sanctuary Collective during Advent, we have a guided audio advent experience for you called queering Advent. It’s a mix of bible readings, queer reflections, prompts for you to reflect on, and even a few suggestions for adventures and experiments to put your faith into an action. A new prompt drops every day of Advent, so you can learn more in [email protected] slash advent. It’s just $1 per day. And you also get access to the entire Sanctuary Collective community and spiritual study hall resources collection. Again, that’s queer theology.com/advent, and it’s happening all advent long. I hope to see you inside.

                    3 (9m 28s):

                    We would love to support you through Advent and this holiday season. Be well and we’ll see you next time.

                    2 (9m 35s):

                    The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we [email protected], which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q, Christians and straight cisgender supporters.

                    3 (9m 44s):

                    To dive into more of the action, visit [email protected]. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

                    2 (9m 51s):

                    We’ll see you next week.

                    Libsyn Ads (9m 55s):

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                    The post An Advent Reflection for Uncertain Times appeared first on Queer Theology.

                    10 min
                  • Called to Treason, Matthew Chapters 14-16

                    This episode dives into Matthew Chapters 14-16 and the rich political, communal, and spiritual tensions woven throughout. We unpack the death of John the Baptist, the feeding miracles, Jesus walking on water, debates about purity, the encounter with the Canaanite woman, and Peter’s declaration of Jesus as Messiah. These stories are especially revealing as they challenge Empire, center outsiders, and call followers into risky, justice-oriented solidarity. We get into what treasonous acts we may be called to take up when confronting power, and what it really means to “take up your cross” today.

                     

                    Resources:

                    • Join our online community at  Sanctuary Collective Community

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                      This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

                      Mochi Health (1s):

                      A mochi moment from Sadie who writes, I’m not crying, you’re crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn’t have to convince him I needed a GLP one, he understood and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks, Sadie. I’m Myra Ammo, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit join mochi.com. Sadie is A mochi member compensated for her story.

                      2 (40s):

                      Well,

                      3 (40s):

                      To the Queer Theology podcast, I’m Brian G. Murphy.

                      4 (43s):

                      And I’m father Shannon, TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts

                      3 (47s):

                      From Genesis to Revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how tuning

                      4 (53s):

                      Each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here.

                      3 (1m 2s):

                      Today we’re doing a deep dive on three chapters of Matthew, Matthew 14, 15 and 16. This episode feels particularly important right now as it talks about confronting the powers that be in the places we live. And spoiler alert contains a bit of a call to treason in these charged political times. How our faith calls us to engage with society, community, government, and the world around us feels especially important. This episode originally aired as part of a larger series looking at the entire book of Matthew. If you’re interested in checking out more of that, the first episode of the series does a lot of context setting for the whole book of Matthew.

                      3 (1m 48s):

                      That episode re aired just a few episodes ago, so you could scroll back for that. The whole series was episodes 4 72 through 4 79. So if you’re looking for those in the podcast app, scroll back to find those. And with that, let’s dive into Matthew chapter 14, 15, and 16. We are back and we are officially entering the second half of this eight part, eight week series on the gospel of Matthew. I hope that you are loving it and not sick of it yet. We’ve covered a lot of ground and there’s still so much to go. Shea and I, Shea was in Los Angeles for a few weeks, so we were in the same place at the same time.

                      3 (2m 28s):

                      And we were chatting after recording last week’s episode that like even eight weeks, it feels like not enough time. Like last week’s episode, we walked away being like, oh, there was like 25 more things that we wanted to say about just those passages. And so thankfully inside of Sanctuary Collective, we have some space to discuss, discuss some more and go into, into more detail. So if you are digging the series and you want more of it, join us in Sanctuary collective community to find out all about that. And now let’s dig into part five. Shea, what, what the heck’s going on? Yeah. So today we are gonna take a look at chapters 14 through 16.

                      3 (3m 12s):

                      Once again, not enough time. We’re gonna have to go really broad strokes. And I think that this is the fact that we’re talking about going in depth, but also like that there’s so much more to uncover is to me, the really exciting thing about doing Bible study and doing it well, right, is that there is always more to uncover that there’s always so much going on under the surface and, and that each time you encounter these texts, like you’re encountering something different because you’ve changed, because the world has changed because your understanding has changed. And that to me just feels like continually an exciting process.

                      3 (3m 55s):

                      And so as we dive in, we start out with the death of John the Baptist. And this is another moment where Matthew takes some from Mark, but changes it significantly. It’s also this really weird passage because like he starts out with a story and then is like, after John was dead, oh wait, I haven’t actually told you any, anything of that happened. And then we like go back in time. He tells that story and then it’s like back to the present. It’s just this like weird, weird little thing. But I do think that the, the important piece about why the author of Matthew is talking about the death of John the Baptist is that he is really linking Jesus to John, that he’s really linking Jesus in the line of prophets and the prophetic tradition.

                      3 (4m 52s):

                      And also he’s naming again that like these are prophets who are going up against the politically powerful, that it’s not just about spirituality or belief that it’s actually a direct confrontation of the political powers. And so that’s why we get this kind of strange and misplaced John the Baptist story. Anything about that story that that co that sticks out for you, Brian? Well, it reminds me of reading like my a DHD fused journal where I’m like, oh, wait, hold on. I’m like, I’m skipping all around. One thing that comes up for me is, you know, I know that like James Cohen talks a lot about sort of like the cross and the lynching tree and like Jesus as a, as a, a lynched black man and sort of like drawing parallels between the Jesus story and the experience of like violent, racist, anti-black racism in the us.

                      3 (5m 47s):

                      But I’m also thinking about like, sort of like with that in the background, the death of John the Baptist and the deaths of many people over the past, I mean like millennia, like centuries, but also in the past like decade or so of, of Trayvon Martin and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and sort of like these moments where people dying become part of like ca like capitalisms to social to more aggressive or more infused social movements, or they become sort of like a rallying point. And I like, I don’t wanna say that like either like John the Baptist or like any of the black people that are killed by police in the US like need quote unquote like needed to die in order to sort of like fulfill some like weird manuscript of like divine manuscript.

                      3 (6m 35s):

                      But I’m just like noting that like, just descriptively, this is like something that has happened in the past and continues to have echoes today of like the state is violent. Like the state was, like the state was violent, then the state is violent now. The state kills people, the state then like the state kills people now. And in response to those deaths, people, you know, rise up and cry out to demand a more just world. So that is one thing that that pops up for me. And that is very clear in one of the other gospels. It it’s different in Matthew’s narrative, but in, i, I can’t remember if it’s Mark or if it’s Luke, but where the death or where, where the arrest of John the Baptist is really the thing that like pushes Jesus into public ministry that before that he had been kind of on the sidelines still preparing.

                      3 (7m 25s):

                      And so I think that your point is, is really right and, and it’s both, I think that like there are these moments that radicalize us and others, and then there is also a, like a mantle has been dropped and it needs to be picked up. And I think that that that is both like the, the trauma of, of needing to continually be in activism work and also like how deeply we are connected to one another that that the pa that that kind of passing of a torch matters and, and is important. Amen.

                      3 (8m 5s):

                      And so we, we run from the death of John the Baptist into the feeding of the 5,000. And this is such a fascinating story because again, we have the author of Matthew who’s trying to make really, really specific points about this story. This isn’t just a miracle story. This is, there are all of these references to things that happened in the story of the Israelites that, that the author of Matthew was trying to say that like, again, Jesus is continuing in this tradition. And so we have echoes of when Eisha provided food after the death of Elijah.

                      3 (8m 51s):

                      And so here we have Jesus providing food after the death of John. Again, this sense of picking up the prophetic mantle. Yeah, we have a, a counter picture of the, the story of the manna and the wilderness when the, when the folks were fed in the wilderness, but the then the rule was like, you can’t take more than that day share, right? If you take more than what you need for that day, it’s gonna go bad. But here we have a story where all of these leftovers are collected and saved. And so it seems to be saying like in the new world, in this new world order, hunger is replaced by extravagance. That daily sustenance is replaced by everyone having enough all the time.

                      3 (9m 36s):

                      And that there’s an abundance, which I think is just really beautiful. And there have also been people who talked about how, you know, when, when the people were arranged in, in groups of 500, that these, that that number is really important and that Jesus is arranging the people in military companies, which is definitely not something I was taught no. In my evangelical church growing up. Yeah. And so that was a moment for me when I read that and I read that in a commentary and I was like, oh, well that changes things, right? Like again, we have this sense of Rome, the political powers, they’re the ones that are supposed to be providing bread for the people and they’re not.

                      3 (10m 22s):

                      And so we are gonna step up and do it. And I think about it makes me think about how often like mutual aid movements have stepped in where government agencies, where politicians, where, you know, quote unquote safety nets that are really never safety nets have failed and, and how much of a responsibility we have to take care of one another. Yeah, that reminds me of like the Black Panthers like a, you know, the way that they organize and also like, not just like, I think for many of us, the image of Black Panthers is like a sort of like militaristic presence, but also like, like providing community safety, providing, you know, food, lunches, meal breakfast for, for kids, like a huge social services network that I was not taught.

                      3 (11m 18s):

                      And so I, I sort of like see echos of that also, you know, we are constantly talking about like, you like just picking up the Bible and trying to read a passage that it is like trying to pick up Shakespeare. Like you can understand the, the words on the page, but like you’re gonna be missing so much of the context and the nuance. And actually sometimes you might totally misunderstand things because like you don’t understand that the, like the the such and structure or the, that actually like, this is a, this is a sort of coded language or a coded joke about something. And I, you know, I I was at a Shabbat morning service a few, a few months ago and the Hto portion was about this, this scene from Alicia and I, I came home and I took, I think I texted you and I was like, oh my God, did you know that in the Hebrew Bible there’s also this story?

                      3 (12m 2s):

                      And you were like, yes, Brian, obviously I need that. But it was even news to me that I’m still, you know, I I been, I studied religion undergrad, I had been like, you know, doing this work at re com for almost a decade now, and I’m still learning more stuff. And so this is a, like an is something that you like need to like put some time and effort to sort of like pick apart what you’re reading and also like b an ongoing practice, which I think rather than feeling like, oh my God, it takes so much work, like this is so hard. I look at it as like, oh my God, this is like so exciting. There’s always more to learn. There’s always sort of like more juice to squeeze out of the orange. You can continue sort of like coming back and discovering new stuff.

                      3 (12m 43s):

                      And so I, I really sort of like dig this, this work of like finding like, what more can I learn the more that I learn about the historical context or these sort of echoes of the Hebrew Bible or these parallels to Rome, it just sort of makes it come alive that much more for me.

                      Queer Sociology (13m 1s):

                      And I can quickly plug, if you’re sort of like digging this podcast series and like, you know, digging these sort of like things are pointing out and you like wanna be able to do this with some other passage, some other book that’s not the gospel of Matthew. We have a, a workshop called Digging the Details that is all about how to sort of like do this process yourself. We walk you through that and you get to sort of like pick pick your own passage. You can find more about that at queer sociology.com/digging.

                      3 (13m 25s):

                      Yeah. So with that session, Shane, like, teach me more. Yeah. And I, and I think that your point is, is really well made Brian in that like it’s, it, there’s always more to uncover. It’s a lot of fun. We always encourage people to follow your curiosity. Like this doesn’t have to be a dry, academic burdensome homework assignment, right. That you could like follow the things that that spark your curiosity. But I do think that like approaching the Bible in this way is a fundamental shift for those of us who grew up thinking that, you know, it’s all just gonna make sense, right? We’re just gonna open up the text and it’s gonna speak to exactly where we are today.

                      3 (14m 9s):

                      And I just don’t think that that’s the, a good way to read the Bible, which isn’t to say that, that you might not, which isn’t to say that it, that will never happen, right? Like you might open up the text and find a word of encouragement that does seem to speak exactly to where you are at the moment. But it is like a, this is a different posture towards wrestling with texts and it, it is a little bit more work and also I find it to be a lot more fun and a lot more rich than like hoping that some passage is gonna speak to me. That it, it feels more, I don’t know, it just, there’s just more like there’s more meat to it, right?

                      3 (14m 53s):

                      Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is really important. And I would also add that like when I do this work, it makes it so that like basically any passage has like something to say about like the present moment and where I’m at because like there’s just like, they’re actually so rich and there’s like so much going on and when you approach them as sort of like three dimensional stories with context and different characters in them in depth, like there’s always a way in. And so actually doing a little bit of work, I think if you’re, if you want the Bible to sort of be like, I don’t know, like a love letter to you or inspiration to you, I actually think that like doing this work makes it more of that, not less of that.

                      3 (15m 35s):

                      Yeah. So we moved then from the feeding the 5,000 to Jesus walking on the water, which is kind of a fascinating little snippet. And some of the things that commentators have said is that this is one of the first times that Jesus sends the disciples on ahead of him. Like he tells them to get in a boat and they go and, and then there is, you know, this big piece about Jesus having, being able to walk on water, which again is, is kind of a, a callback to Rome and to power that it was considered that the gods were the ones who had control over nature. And so for Jesus to be able to walk on water is putting him in that place with the gods.

                      3 (16m 20s):

                      Yeah. Yes. And that then this, this sense of like, that like Peter’s lack of faith that he got out on the water and sank. One of the commentaries I was reading was like if Peter had actually had faith, like it wasn’t that Peter didn’t have faith and so he sank, it’s that Peter should have had faith before getting outta the boat that he should have just stayed in the boat and like recognized the divinity of Jesus and that Jesus was gonna walk toward him, which I thought was kind of funny. And also like shows how differently you can interpret these texts, these passages, that this is just a small snippet that, that commentators have been like arguing about and coming up with different ideas around for like forever.

                      3 (17m 8s):

                      Yeah. ’cause mine was, the way that I was taught was definitely like, you might have, you might have faith in Jesus now, but if you take your eyes off of the prize for like one second, you are in danger of like sinking and drowning into the ocean. Right? Right. But even if you do that, like if you, if Jesus will like, still wants to save you, so like, you know, be careful. Right. Okay. Yeah. So we moved then from Jesus walking on the water to again, a really important but also fraught story where it’s basically a giant argument between Jesus and his disciples and the Pharisees all about ritual purity.

                      3 (17m 52s):

                      And again, we just wanna keep driving this home over and over again. So this is an intercommunal argument that this particular community, these Jesus followers were breaking off of the tradition that they had once held. And so it’s really important that we not continue to feed into antisemitism by, for instance, making the Pharisees bad guys in all of our stories or in complaining about other Christian groups by calling them pharisees. Like that is just not helpful. It’s not good and it’s not the best practice for this because we’re Christians and like we’re, we like descend from that heritage.

                      3 (18m 33s):

                      Like that is the story, those are the stories that we get told. But like the Pharisees, like both now, like rabbinic Judaism now and also the Pharisees at the time of Jesus we’re also like wrestling with a lot of these same questions and answering them in like sometimes similar ways, sometimes different ways. Like I’m thinking back just to earlier the story of the feeding the 5,000 and you were sort of like, it’s a counter picture to the manna that couldn’t be saved. And like Farris said, Judaism and Rabbi Judaism has also wrestled with that story from the Torah of like, what does it mean that like we can’t save up enough and that it spoils and like what type of God does that depict? And, and coming up with new understandings of that as well.

                      3 (19m 17s):

                      So there also like if there’s something that like Jesus is annoyed act, it’s also sometimes the case that like the Pharisees were also annoyed in that same thing. They just like were answering it in different ways. It’s also sometimes the case that they’re very true and distinct differences between, between the two of them that are, and that are important not to gloss over, but just like to remember that like we are only told part of the story. Yeah. And I think that brings up the, the, the thing that I wanna discuss, which is like, what does it look like to hold in good tension, differing beliefs? Yeah. And how do we disagree well without demonizing others. And I think that like there’s, there’s a little bit of both ands here, right?

                      3 (20m 2s):

                      Yeah. As we’re recording this, the New York Times is coming under fire for it’s like ridiculously months and months and months of transphobic reporting. And their response to op-ed that, or the response to an open letter that was calling them out on their transphobic reporting was to basically say like, I don’t know, we’re just trying to like both sides this thing, right? Like we’re trying to give equal, equal side to trans people and to people that should say that say trans people don’t, shouldn’t exist. And then of course the also the very next day they post an op-ed in defense of JK rally.

                      3 (20m 43s):

                      So we can see Yeah, they’re not actually like both sizing it and also on some issues. There are not two sides, right? There is like Right, and there is genocide and, and then there are times when like we are in a religious tradition where we believe one thing and that another tradition, another thing, and that those beliefs are fundamentally incompatible, right? Either you believe that Jesus’, that that the Eucharist becomes Jesus’s body and blood or you don’t like both of those things can’t really be true at the same time.

                      3 (21m 25s):

                      And also like we can be in relationship with people who believe different things about the Eucharist without it being like turning violent. So how, how do you wrestle with, with those things? How do you decide what’s a like deal breaker and where, where you can be in conversation with people and how do we do this? Well? Oh man, what a question. I think that that is a question that has been on my heart probably for like, for as long as queer theology.com has existed. I think like the, the sort of, you know, ongoing question that I think that I personally have within myself that we also sometimes hopefully have is sort of like what, like what makes someone a Christian?

                      3 (22m 10s):

                      Like what does it mean to be a Christian? And like how do we draw our lines? And I think also this relates to to queerness too, right? Like what does it mean to be queer? How do we draw our lines? Like what is sort of like an essential part of queerness? What is an essential part of Christianity? And also like that like changes over time perhaps that like we understand queerness differently now than we did 10 years, 20 years ago, a hundred years ago. Like certainly the range of sort of like mainstream Christian believes in practice has evolved over time, especially as that sort of has become democratized and moved away from like a central authority in Rome to, you know, the process of affirmation and sort of becoming an individual religion.

                      3 (22m 56s):

                      And so I, I think that like, there’s an element of, for me, an element of like, I don’t know everything and I can’t know everything. There’s an element of like, this feels right and true for me. This is something that I want to, like, I like, I wanna act as if this is true and orient my life in this manner. And I think part of it also comes down to sort of like with all that said, like listening to when someone else says, well that’s all well and good, but like the way that you’re living out that belief about what you believe to be true, like is impacting me and causing me harm.

                      3 (23m 46s):

                      And so like then what do you do? Like I’m thinking about right? Like evangelical Christians, like really, truly, some of them really truly believe that if you don’t say the prayer and you don’t stop having gay sex, you are going to like burn in hell for all eternity. So it like on some level like makes sense that they then evangelize people and try to get people to stop having gay sex because like they are some people, I think more so people on the pews than the political leaders who are manipulating these causes for power and money and control and prestige. But like, you know, like your grandma might earnestly believe or your grandfather like might earnestly believe or your, your, your brother might earnestly believe just to be true, right?

                      3 (24m 35s):

                      And so like then like then what do you do with that? And where do you go from there? Like do you, and so there’s a little bit of like, I think for me, like, like listening to people when they say like, this is harming me. And also like an informed consent model of like, yeah, I hear that you are concerned about the state of my eternal soul. I relinquish responsibility. You don’t, you don’t have to worry about that any longer. So I think that’s perhaps like part of the equation. What would you, what would you add to that Jay? Yeah, I, I think all of what you said is really important and I think too that, that there is something to be learned from often, like the differences that feel incompatible, that teach me something.

                      3 (25m 24s):

                      And I’m thinking specifically of like religious differences. And this is both like within denominations of Christianity, but also like in interfaith work that there’s something I I can really learn from learn the ways in which someone else doesn’t believe the things that I do. And that doesn’t mean that I have to like stop believing them necessarily unless you, like you said, they’re harmful. But it does mean that, that it helps me to articulate why about this thing is so important to me and also like what, how it shapes my life and orients my life differently. And I think that that’s really important. Yeah. Like I, you know, I, I know a amongst many progressive Christians like universal salvation, like is an important component of that faith.

                      3 (26m 12s):

                      And I on Twitter, someone who is not, who is not Christian, I tweeted something to the effect of like, no, I don’t think that everyone gets to like live in paradise wherever. I, I do think that there is some people who like, like deserve to be and will be sort of like burning in hell thinking about sort of like war criminals, leaders of genocides, et cetera. Like you don’t get off the hook for that. And I, like, in that moment I sort of had to like sit with like, what do I, I don’t have to like, oh, well this other person who’s not a Christian said this, so now I have to believe that. But it did sort of like, it wa it was sort of a moment to sort of like sit with that uncomfortability. And I think the times in which someone has said something that wildly diverges from what I believe are how I think has been really meaningful for me, sometimes it helps me to sort of clarify what I do believe and to articulate that better.

                      3 (27m 6s):

                      And sometimes it sort of becomes like a conversion moment. You know, many, many, many years ago, like a, a friend said to me like, you know, like all cops are bastards and police are sites of violence that like, are like a net site of net sources of violence in our communities. And I was like, what? And over time I’m like, like that is a moment where I like did change. But there have been other times when people have said things and it’s like, oh, I hear you. I can unappreciate that perspective. Like that may might add some more nuance to what I believe and I might articulate it slightly differently. But ultimately the kernel of what I, this just sort of clarifies that for me at least, this is, is what I believe. And there are some things right where like, I don’t know if you believe someone goes to hell or you don’t believe someone goes to hell, like, especially someone who’s already dead, right?

                      3 (27m 50s):

                      Like they can’t, it’s too late for ’em to get saved. Our thoughts about that doesn’t actually change that. But then how do we like live that out in the world? What, how does that sort of like infuse how we then move through the world? And I think like paying attention like Jesus talked about in Matthew seven, like the fruits of the fruits of your theology. How does that play out in the real world? Alright, so we move from this, we’re we’re Trek and Ray Long to a story that has, we’ve talked about in the podcast before. It’s one where Jesus basically calls a Canaanite woman a dog. And there have been lots and lots of, again, this is a passage where hundreds of thousands of people have been debating upon its meeting over the years.

                      3 (28m 34s):

                      I I do think that this is a moment where we see Jesus kind of growing in his own understanding of his mission. And also it’s a moment once again where the author of Matthew is highlighting that outsiders are welcome in this new movement, right through all of Matthew, we have this series of outsiders, the the women who are mentioned in the genealogy, several of whom were outsiders, who who are grafted in to the Jewish community. We have the magi who are the ones who come to see the infant Jesus again, outsiders.

                      3 (29m 14s):

                      Now we have this, this moment where Jesus is praising, it takes him a while to get there, but eventually praising the faith of a Canaanite woman. And I, and I think that again that that this arc of towards more inclusion is, is really important to the author of Matthew and should be important to us as, as followers of Jesus. That, that this is a, a moment to pay attention to the people who are normally considered outsiders, who Jesus centers. Yeah. When I first heard about this story, it was very much like, well of course I don’t know, like Jesus could obviously do no wrong. And then I heard sort of a more liberal interpretation of this, where it was like this became a moment where Jesus like learns and grows.

                      3 (30m 3s):

                      And then I heard an additional commentary that was sort of speculating that there’s like a little bit of a, like a setup here that like perhaps like that Jesus was always about inclusion and that this exchange between the two of them, like you said, it took them a while to get there, but was like a setup, sort of like setting her up to sort of make the point and sort of that it was like partially for the benefit, not for the benefit of, but it was sort of like, like a little like a dog and pony show for the audience that was there, which I don’t know what to make of that, but just sort of like, it’s got, it’s got me noodling. Yeah, for sure. So after this encounter with the Canaanite woman, we have another feeding story feeding up the 4,000 this time.

                      3 (30m 50s):

                      And we’re, I’m gonna gloss over the next couple of things because many of the things that we talked about earlier are repeated. So we have this feeding of the 4,000, we have then a bunch of people who come to Jesus looking for a sign. And then we have Jesus kind of pushing back against the people who are looking for a sign. And he said something to his followers about, about yeast, like, don’t, don’t concentrate on the yeast. And the disciples misunderstand what he’s saying to them. They don’t take it as a metaphor, they take it literally and they say to him like, but we didn’t bring any bread.

                      3 (31m 34s):

                      We forgot the bread. And I’m just like so struck by this passage because it, for me, it’s, it’s a, it’s like hysterical, but it’s also like, can you imagine Jesus’s annoyance? He’s like, I just fed a total of 9,000 people and you ding-dongs are like, we forgot the bread. Like, are you not paying attention? Yeah. And I, but I think that also, like that’s kind of the point, right? Of like, there are all of these moments where things have worked out, when things have been good, where we’ve been provided for, and then we immediately go back into that kind of scarcity mindset of oh shit, we forgot the bread.

                      3 (32m 20s):

                      And I, and I think that that’s like Jesus is getting at something very human with these folks, but also like we have a very human response too in that. Yeah, I think, you know, I I I wanna hear someone say that like when, when times are bad, it’s sort of our human nature to think that they will never get bad, they never get good again. And that when times are good that it’s about like they’re about to turn bad and it’s, and like all the goodness that we, we just experienced is about to go away. And so I definitely sort of like see that human impulse that I know I experienced like playing out here as well. Yeah. And now we’re, we’re heading into the very kind of final section of these chapters. And it’s important to note that this is the exact center of the gospel of Matthew.

                      3 (33m 6s):

                      So we’re at the dead middle of Matthew’s narrative of Jesus’s story. And we have a really fascinating encounter between Jesus and Peter in particular. Jesus asks his disciples, who do people say that I’m? And they come out with this like range of things. Like some say that you’re John the Baptist resurrected, some say that you are Elijah, some say that you’re Moses. And then Jesus asks them, who do you say that I’m? And Peter comes back with, you are the Messiah, the Son of God.

                      3 (33m 48s):

                      And then it’s after that that Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom, says, anything you bind on earth will be bound. Anything you unloose will be unlost. But this is what strikes me as really fascinating about this portion amidst all of the flowery language. It’s also after Peter’s declaration of who Jesus is, that Jesus starts to talk about, okay, like now we’re heading to Jerusalem, we’re, we’re going to the center of power to confront the powers that be. And I think that this is fascinating because it strikes me that it’s only after Peter says something treasonous, right?

                      3 (34m 35s):

                      Peter has just now said, you are the Lord, not Caesar, you are God, not Caesar like this. This isn’t a theological statement. We’re not entirely a theological statement. This is a political statement and it’s a political statement that could get you killed. Like, yeah, this is treason. And it’s only after Peter commits treason that Jesus says, okay, now we’re heading to Jerusalem. Now you’re in this like now, now we’re gonna go on our real work, which is to confront the powers directly and we’re gonna travel there and we’re gonna go together. And it’s also right after this that Jesus says, take up your cross and follow me.

                      3 (35m 20s):

                      Mm. And so this is not a, like, I, I think that we have been so conditioned to read this text taxed with like the end, Jesus’s end in mind as if Jesus is the only person that was crucified and he wasn’t right. Like crucifixion was the thing that Rome did to anyone who committed treason. Anyone who tried to go against the powers that be anyone who tried to be a rebel. It was public because it scared other people and made them get into line, right? Like it was a public execution to quell rebellion. I think about like the Hunger Games, right?

                      3 (36m 1s):

                      It’s like this is what was happening. So when Jesus says to Peter and the disciples take up your cross and follow me, he’s not talking about like, I don’t know, be miserable or like suffer. He is saying, okay, now we’re confronting the powers that be. Are you willing to go with me even though it’s gonna get us all killed? Right? That’s the question. Yeah. And so for me that makes this passage, this isn’t, again, this isn’t just like some trite theological thing about suffering for Jesus. This is like, what are the crosses you are being called to take up today?

                      3 (36m 41s):

                      Like what treasonous acts are you being asked to participate in? Are you willing to participate in, to bring about the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven? And that to me is a much more challenging question. It’s a much more uncomfortable question. And I think that is the question that we’re being asked to wrestle with and like that’s how this text is still speaking. Yeah. I’m seeing this text and I mean, I’ve seen this text, this passage, you know, whole new way a few to times over the course of my life. And this is one of those sort of like another revelation moment where it’s not like you’re going to be burdened with this for the rest of your, like being gay is just sort of like a burden you have to live with for the rest of your live long days.

                      3 (37m 24s):

                      Right? Or what will you give up? It’s like act as if you’re already dead. Like, and like you like taking up your cross is like, okay, like now that, like now that you’ve resigned yourself to like dying for this cause like, then what does that free you up to do? And like, holy shit. Like I, that’s a big, that is a big charge that like, I don’t know if I’m up for it. I dunno if many of us are up for that, right? But, but I also think, right, like it’s so often this, this passage is you like wielded against vulnerable people, right?

                      3 (38m 5s):

                      Like your abusive marriage, the abusive marriage that you’re in, woman is like your cross to bear, your sexuality queer people is your cross to bear. And actually it’s like quite the flip side, it’s like, like being willing to give up all of the things that keep you safe and make you powerful and to like orient yourself to a confrontation with the empire and to like resign yourself to like, oh yeah, this is the thing that’s gonna, that’s gonna kill me. It reminds me of there’s this incredible scene in how to survive a plague. It’s it’s documentary footage of back from like in the eighties and, and nineties, I believe it was, it was probably like, like mid nine, early mid nineties.

                      3 (38m 53s):

                      And there’s this clip of Peter Staley, there’s a bunch of like aids and Act Up organizers sort of like planning their next action. And Peter Staley in this clip says like, I’m gonna die from this. Like this is it. Like I’m gonna die from this.

                      5 (39m 5s):

                      I’ve felt forever now that I’m not gonna outlive this epidemic that I will, that I will die from this.

                      6 (39m 10s):

                      You know, maybe that is

                      7 (39m 11s):

                      Our future that we’re gonna watch each other die. It’s, that’s not a new thought. We’ve been thinking that ever since we started the group.

                      6 (39m 19s):

                      The way the recent spate of deaths is, I don’t know, it’s, it all seems so much more apocalyptic. Like the story doesn’t seem to have this relationship to effective treatment or a cure anymore. It now seems to have this relationship to death. It iss it ends with everybody dying. We’re the last person alive and Chelsea please turn out the lights.

                      3 (39m 40s):

                      And so like there was a bunch of like faggots in the nineties who were like, had death sentences and then that freed them up to do like wild and crazy things to like, so that others might live. And the, the wildest part of all of it is that like some of them ended up living Peter Staley is obviously still alive and thriving and that like, but there was just this sort of like gravity of like, we’re done. But like, rather than being defeated by that, channeling that into like a higher purpose and a higher and a higher power so that like, so that others might live,

                      5 (40m 17s):

                      I’d like to close with words written by fellow AIDS activists Vito Russo, when future generations ask what we did in the war, we have to be able to tell them that we were out here fighting and we have to leave a legacy to the generations of people who will come after us. Remember that someday the AIDS crisis will be over and when that day has come and gone, there will be a people alive on this earth. Gay people and straight people, black people and white people, men and women who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and in some cases died so that others might live and be three.

                      3 (41m 6s):

                      Yeah, there’s something there. I I think your point is well made too, because it’s also like, it’s not a surprise that the people that were willing to follow Jesus are the fishermen and the tax collectors and the people with nothing else to lose. Right? Because they didn’t have to give up anything. And I think that’s why we so often see stories in the gospels of like rich people who walk away sad. I, okay, like you’re welcome, you’re welcome to join the movement. This is what it’s gonna take. And people are like, oh actually, like I don’t, that’s that’s not really what I wanted. I wanted to like make a couple donations out of my excess and then go home feeling good about myself.

                      3 (41m 53s):

                      And, and so I think that that is like the continued call of like, this isn’t, this isn’t a, a cheap faith, this isn’t an easy answer. And it’s also I think why so many people are much more interested in getting lots and lots of people to pray a prayer and to think of all of their religious, you know, commitment as Bible reading, prayer, going to church because like what is really required is marching upon the halls of power and saying, this isn’t working like this. You’re, you’re hurting people.

                      3 (42m 35s):

                      And, and we’re not gonna stand for that. And that is a much scarier and much more demanding and much more, it requires a lot more of us to do that work. And so, yeah, I I think that that for, for anyone with any type of privilege that this call is even harder than it is for people who have already lost so much. Yeah. Jesus is here to make your life easier as a much easier sales pitch than like follow Jesus. It might get you in prison or killed. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I think too though, this is also a moment where we have so much to learn from the people that have come before us, right?

                      3 (43m 15s):

                      Like I think about those act up protesters. I think about Philip and Daniel Barrigan who burned draft files in Vietnam very much out of a sense of their religious fervor, right? Their, they were quoted as saying better, the better the files than the bodies of children. Like it was very much out of their faith that they went and did this act of destruction and desecration and they paid for it, right? They spent years upon years upon years in jail over many, many different prison sentences. ’cause they kept getting, as soon as they got out, they kept going back and doing more destruction.

                      3 (43m 57s):

                      But I do think that like this also really confronts people who are like, well, we, we just need to be respectable. Respectable. We just need to vote democratic. We just need to like do the nice political things that make us good citizens. And it’s like, actually maybe what you’re being called to do is commit some treason and burn some draft files and find other ways to make some holy trouble. And that that’s, that’s what it is to take up your cross. The Queer Theology podcast is just

                      8 (44m 31s):

                      One of many things that we [email protected], which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q Christians and straight cisgender supporters.

                      4 (44m 38s):

                      To dive into more of the action, visit [email protected]. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. We’ll

                      8 (44m 46s):

                      See you next week.

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                      The post Called to Treason, Matthew Chapters 14-16 appeared first on Queer Theology.

                      45 min
                    • Still Scared About Sex and the Bible?

                      We’re diving into one of their most asked-about topics: sex, relationships, and faith. Building on years of listener questions like, “Is it okay to masturbate?” “What does the Bible say about premarital sex, polyamory, or kink,” we explore why so many of us seek definitive answers and how that impulse comes from an evangelical mindset that treats the Bible like a rulebook. As always we invite y’all to move beyond arguing Bible passages toward a deeper, embodied understanding of faith, sexuality, and ethics that is grounded in consent, respect, and self-awareness. Queerness, desire, and faith are not at odds. God’s love is not conditional, and living faithfully means embracing complexity, doing inner work, and claiming your inherent goodness. 

                      Resources:

                      • Join our online community at  Sanctuary Collective Community 

                        • If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology

                         

                        This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

                        1 (10s):

                        Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy.

                        2 (13s):

                        And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts from

                        1 (17s):

                        Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news, LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how

                        2 (23s):

                        Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here.

                        1 (32s):

                        Alright, for this episode, our little two part series on sex and relationships, we want to take a look at a lot of the questions that we’ve gotten over the years about sex and dating and how that intersects with Christianity. A few years ago, my, one of my, my then boyfriend, we were having a conversation about sex and, and queer theology.com and he said, wait, people like strangers on the internet ask you if it’s okay to masturbate and then like what you say back to them matters to them. And I was like, yep, that is, that is something that happens. And so today we wanna look at sort of like broadly at questions like, what does the Bible say about sex?

                        1 (1m 15s):

                        Is it okay to masturbate? Is it okay to have premarital sex? Is polyamory okay? Is kink okay? Like, is like insert x, y, Z thing that you might want to do with yourself, with and or with someone else inside and or outside of, of the bedroom in some form of like vaguely sexual and or romantic and or kinky context. And I think that, right? Like say Shea, you have a, a master’s in divinity from Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, like one of the, you know, premier seminaries in the world. And so like, I’m sure you could give us like a verse by verse breakdown or like an issue by issue breakdown of like, here’s like what the Bible says or, or doesn’t say about masturbation or sex before marriage or sex outside of marriage.

                        1 (2m 1s):

                        And we’ve actually gone through a lot of those in our tricky questions about sex workshop, which like looks at each one of those questions that are all user, all listeners submitted questions about sex that we really sort like a one question at a time. But what I want to explore today is like what the, sort of like what happens after that af after you sort of, because I’m sure you’ve had a lot of these conversations. What happens when you tell someone your perspective on what the Bible says about X, Y, z sex related things? So like the, like, then, then where does that leave them? I,

                        3 (2m 40s):

                        I think that this is so fascinating, right? Because in many ways this is the same conversation that we have around the collaborative passages. Yeah. Right? Yep. And, and so we’ve got a workshop on that one too, collaborating the clobbers, which which looks at each of those versus and takes them one by one. And, and what we have found in both cases is that like the, this idea is stemming from, I, I think an, an evangelical impulse and frankly an evangelical like teaching that there is a, there is indeed a Bible verse for everything. And that if you can just find the right Bible verse, you will know what to do with your life.

                        3 (3m 25s):

                        And so the first thing to say is that like, again, the Bible was not meant to be read in that way. Like that is not how we use the Bible. And so even if you can find chapter and verse, that’s, that’s probably not the best way to read scripture. And what it does is that that still like puts the kind of locus of authority outside of us, right? It, it gives away our ability to really think through who we are as people, what we need and what we want. And, and puts that kind of puts it out there somewhere.

                        3 (4m 6s):

                        Like someone can tell us what we can do and if we just follow the rules will be okay. And like the hard thing about life, and I think the hard thing about faith is that like, it’s not just about following a set of rules, right? That, that the Christian life is about an orientation towards being concerned with the things that Jesus and God are concerned about. And that sometimes the ways that we live them that out is gonna look different than the ways that other people are gonna live that out. Right? And that’s, that’s complicated and it’s messy and it requires a lot of us to, to wade through all of that.

                        3 (4m 46s):

                        I mean, just thinking about like outside of the realm of sexuality, like the way that we live out our Christian ethics under capitalism, it’s gonna look different, huge for different people, right? Yeah. And it’s complicated and it’s messy. And there are moments where we are making the best decision with what we’ve got at the moment, even though it’s not the best kingdom of God decision, right? And like, it, it gets complicated. And so all of that, to bring us back to sex, to say that like, these questions about what you can and cannot do are more complicated than, yes masturbation is 100% always okay, or no, it’s not right.

                        3 (5m 28s):

                        That sometimes the, the answer might be, well, it depends. And like, what work have you done to think about when is it right for you? What are the ethics that you’re trying to live out? And so instead of, instead of going to a chapter in verse, it’s a, it’s a much more complicated and broad idea of what does it look like for you to follow your faith with your body in relationship to your sexuality and in relationship to other people and their bodies and their sexuality.

                        1 (6m 5s):

                        Yeah. One of the things that we were really clear about when we started queer theology.com, god, at this 0.9 years ago, was that we don’t want folks to substitute what their pastor told them about their Bible for what we tell them about the Bible. That we think part of about being like honestly a person really like a Christian, definitely, but also like a person in general is like figuring out how do you relate to the bible, to faith, to spirituality, to your sexuality, to your gender, to your sexual and romantic life that like, it’s important for you to claim that because like we can tell you like, it’s okay to masturbate usually most of the time probably, or like, you know, well when you’re talking about sex outside of marriage, like what is the other person?

                        1 (6m 48s):

                        What, who is the other person? Like what are they, what are they wanting? There’s lots of these questions, you know, like how to, like what place that sex have in your life, how does it make you feel about your body? Like what work are you doing on that? There’s like you were saying, it’s, it’s so, it’s like it’s, there’s so many factors in it and that it’s like, I don’t know, like it’s a lot easier, right? If to to to say like, don’t ever have sex or like true love weights or it’s also a lot easier to say sex is always good all the time and you should have as, as much as you can all the time without any regard for anyone else. Like, but like, I don’t, like, I don’t think, I don’t know any progressive Christian really that that’s like saying that, right? Like, like the both, like the beauty and also the challenge of being a, like intentional Christian, a progressive Christian, a queer Christian is that like we recognize that like life is complicated and that like sex can be messy and that like relationships always have the possibility for like beauty and grace and creation, and they also have the possibility in them for harm and destruction.

                        1 (7m 53s):

                        And so like navigating that tightrope like is tricky, but that’s also like what it means to be human. And so I think like when I hear folks asking about, you know, is it okay to have sex before marriage? What does the Bible say about masturbation? What does the Bible say about king? Usually what’s happening is if you’re asking that question, there’s some sort of like nagging in you of like, is this okay? Am I all right? And that usually comes down to like a fear of like hell or a fear of like pa like pissing off God, if I step out of line, God will remove god’s love from me.

                        1 (8m 35s):

                        Or if I step out of line, I will go to hell. Or maybe not specifically connected to anger or damnation, but just sort of this, this, this fear of like, there is something inherently wrong or disordered about me is wanting to have this type of sex or sex in this type of way or sex with this person. Like inherently disordered like, and I, and I, like I am 37, I am, I would call myself like an ethical slut. I’m like polyamorous. I’ve been in a stable long-term relationship for almost 14 years now. Like, and also sometimes I’m like, Ooh, like I want someone to put something in my butt.

                        1 (9m 16s):

                        Like, does that make me gross? Or you know, and like when it’s a stranger, like on the internet, it’s like, sometimes it’s much easier. But sometimes my, my partner who I’ve been having gay sex with for 14 years, there even sometimes I worry like, oh no, like, will he still love me if like I want to bottom for instance, you know? And like the answer to that is not in like, I don’t know, Lamentations 1218 or like pick up. I like the, the like the answer to that question is like not going, am I okay? Am I lovable? Am I whole and worthy?

                        1 (9m 57s):

                        Like, there’s not a chapter in verse for you specifically. I think that there are lots of chapters and verses that talk about sort of like the divine spark in us and God’s love for us and our place in the world and our interconnectedness. But like the answer to like, am I going to hell, will God hate me? Am I gross? Will my partner stop loving me? Is not going to be solved by asking like, what does the Bible say about masturbation or what does the Bible say about kink? And so part of it is like figuring out the work that you have to do before you can even hear and appreciate the answers to what does the Bible say about sex or kink or consent. And that’s like a lot of self work.

                        3 (10m 36s):

                        Yeah. And it’s, it’s like I, I think sometimes people think that just because I’m a super nerd about the Bible, that that’s why I’m always telling people to learn to read the Bible better and, and encouraging people to like do the journey into the Bible course. And, and it’s both a yes and right, like, yes, because I’m a nerd and because I find it really fun. But also that I do think if you learn to read scripture better, it, it takes away some of the angst around trying to find a chapter in verse. And along with that, I, I think what what you were just talking about is so profound and beautiful, and part of what that makes me think of like is if you can start to shift your own posture away from inherently disordered to inherently good and trusting that like you are already good, that you reside in goodness that God loves you, then it opens up a space for you to have a conversation about, okay, if, if like anything that I do is not gonna cause me to lose God’s love or to lose my inherent goodness, what might I then want to do with my body?

                        3 (11m 54s):

                        How might I want to explore? What might that look like for me? And it also allows you to have grace for yourself in the moments when you try something that doesn’t work or that you didn’t enjoy or that doesn’t feel good, right? And I, and I think that like we often talk about, listen, if it’s based in mutual respect and consent, like have at it. And, and I think that there is a, there is a moment to say that here too of like, it, if it’s based in mutual consent and respect, you’re not gonna lose God’s favor. But it’s a, but it is a lot easier for us to say that than it is for you to have done the work, to actually believe that, to believe in your inherent goodness, to, to move from a posture of fear to one of love, right?

                        3 (12m 49s):

                        And I think that that takes work that’s not just around sexuality. It’s, it is around like, how do we read the Bible? How do we understand God? How do we understand Jesus? How do we understand salvation, right? Like all of these huge theological issues that rear their ugly heads when we’re in bed with someone and suddenly that shame comes up, right? And it’s like, it, it’d be nice. I would love to, to be able to say like, there’s just a simple formula. There’s a prayer you can pray, there’s a verse you can read. Yeah, there’s a lecture you can listen to by a pastor and that’s gonna make all of this go away.

                        3 (13m 32s):

                        But the truth is like, it, it, it’s not that easy and it takes work, but also it is possible. Like I, I, I mean I grew up in indoctrinated in the height of purity culture in a fundamentalist evangelical church. And like I have worked through shame, right? So I’m, I it is possible yeah, to do that work to get there, but it does take time.

                        1 (13m 60s):

                        Yeah. There, you and I are both huge like book nerds. And so, you know, like we get, like you were saying, there’s not a formula, right? Like, it’s not just like, do this or do that. And so like we, you know, there’s not any like one book or one lecture or one prayer or one checklist that’s going to, to sort of like unlock this for you. Like you were saying, you have to take ownership over this process. So I like, I, there’s been a few books for me that have along the way that have been helpful. And it’s funny because like most of these books are not even about sex, but they get to that sort of underlying question of like, you know, like, am I okay? Am I good? Made for Goodness by Desmond Tutu, damaged, good by Dee Anderson, original Blessing by Matthew Fox can sort of all get at, you know, those, that first and last one or like really get at those questions of like, who are we?

                        1 (14m 47s):

                        And, and like how does God relate to us? And also what has happened for me in the past and what I’ve seen for folks that we’ve worked with inside of Sanctuary Collective or in our courses or our coaching is that like the, the reading only gets you so far, right? Like at some point you have to like, put the book down and like put what you’ve learned and to practice and you have to like get back into your body. And so if you like, wanna like read these books or read other books, listen to our podcasts and then like figure out how to take action on your own. Like, if we could leave you with one thing, it would be to not just like consume the information, but to take action on them. And if you find that you’ve like read the books and you’d like, listened to the podcast and you’ve like watched the sermons and you’re still getting like, you’re still feeling shame, you’re still feeling uncertain, you still have all these like big questions that are unanswered or these big uncertainties, reach out to us and we will talk with you about some ways that we can support you in moving from like thinking and worrying to living out your ethics and your values and sort of getting back in touch with your body and making this as like a self-directed process.

                        1 (15m 54s):

                        So you can email us connected queer theology.com or send us a DM on any of our platform social media as a YouTube and Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

                        3 (16m 4s):

                        And I think this is just another moment to, to remind us that all of all of the work that we do is integrated, right? The integration of our sexuality and gender identity into our spirituality, the way that we read the Bible, the theological work that we do, the justice work that we do. Like it’s all, it all comes together and it, it’s all about getting us to integration and to health and wholeness and that all of these pieces work together. And, and it’s impossible to separate out one and hope to find wholeness. And so, so do the work, do it all together, do it in community with us.

                        3 (16m 45s):

                        We’re rooting for you and we want to see you healthy and well and whole.

                        1 (16m 49s):

                        Amen.

                        4 (16m 51s):

                        The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we [email protected], which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q, Christians and straight cisgender supporters. To

                        2 (16m 60s):

                        Dive into more of the action, visit [email protected]. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

                        4 (17m 7s):

                        We’ll see you next week.

                        Libsyn Ads (17m 12s):

                        Marketing is hard, but I’ll tell you a little secret. It doesn’t have to be, let me point something out. You’re listening to a podcast right now and it’s great. You love the host, you seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion and this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libs in ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience and their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to libsyn ads.com. That’s L-I-B-S-Y-N ads.com Today.

                        The post Still Scared About Sex and the Bible? appeared first on Queer Theology.

                        18 min

                      About Queer Theology

                      From the publisher's feed

                      The longest running podcast for and by LGBTQ Christians and other queer people of faith and spiritual seeker. Hosted by Fr. Shannon TL Kearns, a transgender Christian priest and Brian G. Murphy, a…

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