The Gay Christian Reading Challenge 2K24
Enter if you dare!
So I got a wild hair and made this challenge. It’s got twenty categories. This is partly for fun, and partly to make a point—that you can do a twenty-book challenge focusing on works important to queer Christians with what is reductively called “a traditional sexual ethic.” (lol I still hate this phrase but have not found a concise substitute.) I will almost certainly do suggestions for the various categories in the comments, so drop a comment if you have a book to suggest for one of the categories or want suggestions for them!
This was going to be a bingo card but that looked complicated to do. If one of you gets all DESIGN IS MY PASSION and creates something more beautiful, I will post it! But for now, you just get a list.
Scoring
5 = virgin queen (welcome to the party!)
10 = a walk on the Wilde side
15 = God is a thought that makes all that is straight crooked (yes I know this is Nietzsche… it was my yearbook quote, because of course it was)
20 = God’s gayest angel
There’s more to life than books, you know (but not much more)
NONE OF THESE WORDS ARE IN THE BIBLE: anything about Biblical exegesis, history, fanfiction… you can literally just reread the Book of Ruth and call it a day
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN: coming of age
IN THE RUINS OF RIEVAULX: anything medieval
GET THE FOUCAULT OF HERE!: anything about the social construction of sodomy, homosexuality, friendship, romance… you get the picture
NEAR EAST? MORE LIKE QUEER EAST: anything from Eastern Christianity
MORE LIFE: anything about or set within the AIDS epidemic
THE FRIEND MY CHILDHOOD PROMISED ME: the gayest book you read when you were a kid
VICAR IN A TUTU: anything by or about an ordained minister or involving gender play
THEY WERE ROOMMATES!: anything with a same-sex friendship that inspires you
GROSS INDECENCY: anything about queer life under criminalization
TRAGIC GAYS: free space
AGAINST NATURE: a text that’s historically important or personally meaningful, even though you suspect it’s also lowkey homophobic
ROMOPHOBIA: a book from a Christian tradition other than your own
WHAT IF ALL THE TREES IN THE BIBLE SYMBOLIZE VIRGINITY?: a text from the early Church
WOMAN, BEHOLD YOUR SON: a book about chosen family, found family, or the church as family
DESERT HEARTS: lesbians. Yes I am doing a Best Uterus category. Most of the books that shaped me were by and about men, and that’s fine as far as it goes, camp is the thing with feathers, but what if you’d like also to be shaped by women’s writing?
GAY AS IN HAPPY: a book with a happy ending
BRIDGES ACROSS THE DIVIDE: a book by someone with a notably different understanding of the Christian sexual ethic from your own
THERE ARE DOZENS OF US!: a book by a contemporary “side B” author
FAKE AND GAY: fiction about celibacy, lifelong friendship, life in community, or other relevant themes
I did this to amuse myself, mostly, but I also do hope it leads some of you guys to discover new works—or new ways of bringing works into conversation. What happens if you read Angels in America alongside St Methodius’ Symposium? What images of death and the body emerge from that collision? There’s a persona and a way of life implied by setting all these categories together—it’s a somewhat willful act of community creation, imagining a kind of person who barely exists yet. A tradition, caught in flagrante in the act of being handed over.
St Anne teaching the Virgin to read, from the Getty Museum and used under a Creative Commons license.
By popular (one person) demand!
For GROSS INDECENCY, obviously you can just read something by or about Our Oscar himself. I love almost all Wilde (some of the shorter nonfiction is boring, or silly in a bad way). As for Wildeana, the only novel I've read about him wasn't good (The God of Mirrors). The Ellmann biography was standard when I read it, and I'm not sure if it's been surpassed. Joseph Pearce wrote a pleasurably table-pounding case for Wilde as Catholic, which iirc is called Unmasking Oscar Wilde. It has some insights, but needs the corrective provided by... I can't remember if it's in Roden's Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture, which I've already recommended, or Ellis Hansen's Decadence and Catholicism, which isn't as good but iirc has more about Wilde and his involvement in queer culture/activism.
For VICAR IN A TUTU or DESERT HEARTS, I'll say Nina Bouraoui's Tomboy. Doesn't have anything about Our Lord in it, that I recall, but it's a great little book that should be better-known. Would also work for GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN.
WOMAN, BEHOLD YOUR SON: Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes; Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance. (Is this item specifically for Grant Hartley? maybe)
Also Laura Swan, The Wisdom of the Beguines; and, for practical advice, Leah Libresco Sargeant's Building the Benedict Option.
I would also argue that Dennis Coupland's Generation X belongs on this shelf, if only in the way that the vase in the optical illusion reveals, by its absence, the presence of the two faces.
I'm desperate to find a way to cram Michelangelo and Max Jacob in here somewhere. I suppose both did in fact live under criminalization. And how.
If you want something unexpected for THERE ARE DOZENS OF US, Gabriel Blanchard has a collection of poetry, a vampire novel, and a collection of apocalyptic fiction.
For GET THE FOUCAULT OF HERE, a lot of people have recommended How to Be Gay. Haven't read it!
And from my Amazon wish list, so I haven't read these yet either... I'm guessing that Mark Jordan's Queer Callings: Untimely Notes on Names and Desires would work for either FOUCAULT or BRIDGES ACROSS.
For NONE OF THESE WORDS or VICAR IN A TUTU, there's a book called The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins, looking at excerpts from his poetry, letters, journals and more.
And last: for FAKE AND GAY or THEY WERE ROOMMATES!, Margaret Wander Bonanno's Dwellers in the Crucible is a Star Trek tie-in novel (you're welcome) centering on a cross-species friendship of two women who become t'hyla, aka Vulcan soulmates. Caveat lector, they are hostages when this happens and there's fairly harsh reference to rape. Still, you know, I thought some of you might appreciate something a little less constructive and respectable.
Rebecca Brown is a Catholic convert, which retroactively makes her phenomenal short-story collection The Terrible Girls eligible for DESERT HEARTS and, imho, GROSS INDECENCY.
For THERE ARE DOZENS OF US! I'll recommend Greg Coles's Single Gay Christian, Greg Johnson's Still Time to Care, Bridget Eileen Rivera's Heavy Burdens, and--a fellow traveler--Tim Otto's Oriented to Faith.
Realized St Bernard also counts for NONE OF THESE WORDS ARE IN THE BIBLE.
MORE LIFE recommendations would include Michael O'Loughlin's Hidden Mercy, Andrew Sullivan's Love Undetectable, Rebecca Brown's Gifts of the Body :/, and the one I would do for this challenge myself because I need to reread it, Pier Vittorio Tondelli's Separate Rooms. Oh and Jose Luis Zarate's The Route of Ice and Salt.
VICAR IN A TUTU: how can I forget Gerard Manley Hopkins; also Matteo Ricci's On Friendship: 100 Maxims for a Chinese Prince.