A Holy Queering Part Four

February 13, 2012Chelsea Collonge

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Queering Genesis: Sexuality, Anarcha-Primitivism, and the Bible

Editor’s Note: Check out part one, two, and three of this series.

Christians often marshal the creation narratives of Genesis as foundational evidence for a vision of sexual morality based on gender complementarity and heterosexual marriage. The dominant interpretations go something like this: God made humans either male or female, for companionship (Genesis 2) and reproduction (Genesis 1), and Jesus referred to these verses while teaching in favor of marriage (Matthew 19). Therefore, to be cisgender (not transgender, but clearly male or female) and heterosexual is to be made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Case closed, right?

Well, it’s not that simple from an anarch@-primitivist 1 perspective, which views all aspects of human flourishing, including sexuality, through the primary lens of earth-based sustenance. This perspective focuses on the environmental and economic roots of all aspects of civilization and culture, including the holy stories that are themselves a product of civilization’s preoccupation with symbolic thought. For example, Christian anarch@-primitivists approach Genesis as the story of a real, material “fall” into civilization. The expulsion from the wild Garden of Eden and the curse of farming in Genesis 3:17 is evidence that at least some Hebrews regretted humankind’s shift from hunter-gathering into agriculture, which had taken place no more than 7,000 years before their writing.
For this series’ work of rewilding civilized sexualities, materialist biblical interpretation is a useful tool for re-examining holy sexuality in Genesis, one that is well-aligned with the concerns of anarch@-primitivism. As a deconstructive or critical approach, materialist biblical interpretation seeks to uncover and name the unholy dynamics of power and hierarchy that influenced the writing (or the “production”) of Scripture. For example, Ched Myers has traced the anti-monarchy strains of political thought in the Hebrew Scriptures that seem to have arisen from pockets of resistance to economic oppression, and the pro-monarchy strains that arose from the ideology of the rulers. 2

Materialist interpretation is also well-aligned with the work of queering, which is the questioning of things that appear “normal” and “natural” in order to reveal their social construction in history. The opposite of material is ideal: abstract, ahistorical, seen as generically true then and generically applicable now—like the concept of male or female “essence,” or marriage as one universal human institution. Materialist interpretation, on the other hand, works to reveal the concrete and complex cultures, economic interests, and social relationships that constructed the text.

Rather than being undermined by this analysis, the Bible becomes more authoritative when we hear its many voices and respect its irreducible complexity and distance from our own context. Resistant to domestication, it points to a God whose revelation cannot be colonized by any singular social purpose, for example the dominant sexual agenda of a certain political moment.

In Poor Banished Children of Eve: Woman as Evil in the Hebrew Bible, biblical scholar Gale Yee uses materialist biblical interpretation to help illuminate the gendered and colonial underpinnings of Genesis. 3 She identifies several economic sources to the Hebrew Scriptures’ vision of female sexuality as socially dangerous and dependent on the regulation of a certain kind of marriage.

According to Yee’s analysis, the creation narratives in Genesis were written down during the early monarchical period of Hebrew history, in which Hebrew society was transitioning from a family-based tribal model into a native-tributary economy under kings David and Solomon. The newly forming state demanded uncompensated material support from its population in the form of agricultural products, an economic hardship that is critiqued in 1 Samuel 8.

Genesis elevates the individual couple (Adam and Eve) as the basis of human society, in contrast to the traditional Hebrew emphasis on the extended family unit. Genesis 2 concludes, in verse 24, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.” Yee argues that this teaching indicates a shift in ideology, arising from a changing power structure and its material needs, which transfers cultural power away from the extended families that competed with the state in favor of nuclear families that posed less of a threat.

This creation account ends with the story of the Fall, which seeks to persuade the Hebrew people that the hardship of agriculture under a native-tributary system is both natural and God-ordained. Genesis 3:16-19 reads:

To the woman [God] said: I will intensify your toil in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. To the man he said: Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of you! In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you, and you shall eat the grass of the field. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

That women and sexuality are specifically mentioned in this economic vision is no coincidence. First of all, the Hebrew system of marriage was based on agricultural economics. Both patrilineality and endogamy (marrying other members of the father’s lineage), which necessitated strict male supervision of dangerous female promiscuity and fertility, functioned to maintain the inheritance of agricultural property, land. Secondly, Yee argues that the story of the Fall posits a natural or biological version of social inequality in the subordination of a wife to her husband, as well as emphasizes the consequences of an inferior (humankind) disobeying a superior (God). The depiction of God as the unitary ruler of the garden, capable of dispossession, justified the emerging inequality and unilateral flow of obedience between a Hebrew subject and the king.

In the rest of Yee’s book, she goes on to examine biblical teachings on female sexuality that emerged from the Hebrew people’s experience of foreign colonization, including exile and a foreign-tributary economy upon return. The writings of the Prophets often feature a rhetorical link between women and land, and symbolize the nation’s problems with land tenure in terms of female sexual wantonness (as in the whoreish sisters of Ezekiel). Yee’s analysis of the whoreish woman in Proverbs, dated in the post-exilic period, emphasizes that not just any women are suspect, but especially foreign women who represented foreign power and marriages that threatened land inheritance for the Hebrew land-owning elite.

As we can see from Yee’s historical analysis, every biblical notion connecting women, sexuality, and land results from a particular circumstance in which race and class played a factor. While each is a social construction, rather than a natural phenomenon that links the three realms by essence, they are all deeply rooted in the sedentary lifeway of agriculture and land ownership. Ideologies that link land economics with gender are a common dynamic throughout the history of civilization, precisely because heterosexism and the gender binary system are social technologies that serve state power. They do this to the material benefit of those who have the social power to back their ideologies, at the expense of the bodies of creation. As Susan Stryker writes in Transgender History:

The state’s actions often regulate bodies, in ways both great and small, by enmeshing them within norms and expectations that determine what kinds of lives are deemed livable or useful and by shutting down the spaces of possibility and imaginative transformation where people’s lives begin to exceed and escape the state’s uses for them. 4

Because moral teachings on sexuality perform functions for the state, both in biblical times and now, investigating sex and gender oppression is not an optional activity for anarch@-primitivists.

Ultimately, every reader’s engagement with the text is influenced by material interests because we are all embodied (material, made of earth as it says in Genesis 2) and social beings. Recognizing this frees us to critically consider every interpretive possibility in the text that arises from each of our diverse locations. This is the gift of deconstructing the heterosexism in the text, that it allows us to see what else might be in there.

Far from being cut and dry, Genesis hints at its own wild complexity in its very first verses. Feminist theologian Catherine Keller has drawn our attention to the infinite, primordial creativity of the formless deep of Genesis 1:2—the abyss, the void, the wilderness, the wasteland, the waters, the chaos/cosmos. 5 It existed as part of God and in cooperative relationship with God before the orderly forming and pairing and taming of creation ever began.

Transgender theologian Justin Tanis has commented that in Genesis 1, the ha’adam or earth creature originally exists as a created transgender being, before being split into male and female. 6 Body theologian James Nelson has emphasized that when God created human beings to be sexual, Genesis 1:31 clearly states that God created found them to be good. 7 Feminist theologian Sarah Coakley reminds us that the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that God’s self, which humankind images according to Genesis 1, is a relational community of love among three equal persons, not a heterosexual or an unequal, complementarian dyad. 8

From an animal liberation, anti-speciesism perspective, I would add that when God first started looking for an appropriate companion for Adam in Genesis 2, God thought Adam might find adequate love with one of the other animals God had created (Genesis 2:18-20). For anarch@-primitivist Christians who intuit that God’s creation is a little wilder and queerer than just Adam and Eve, “Adam and Steve” might not even scratch the surface!

Notes:

  1. I use anarch@ to indicate anarcho/anarcha, in an attempt to link this approach to anarcho-primitivist (anti-civilization) thought with my general orientation toward anarcha-feminism. ↩
  2. See www.chedmyers.org for articles and blog posts, or check out his article in the Witness Magazine on Genesis 11: http://thewitness.org/agw/myers.032802.a.html ↩
  3. Yee, Gale. Poor banished children of Eve : woman as evil in the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003. Please note: the summary above is greatly limited by the fact that I am not a Bible scholar myself. I highly recommend reading the original for all the nuances of Yee’s argument. ↩
  4. Stryker, Susan. Transgender history. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2008. p. 51 ↩
  5. “…the creation as genesis is not reducible either to chaos or cosmos. Let us call it by James Joyce’s fabulous neologism: the chaosmos”. Keller, Catherine. God and Power. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. 147. ↩
  6. Tanis, Justin, “Gender Variance and the Scriptures.” Trans-gendered: theology, ministry, and communities of faith. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 2003. ↩
  7. Nelson, James. Body theology. Louisville, Ky: Westminster/John Knox, 1992. ↩
  8. Coakley, Sarah. “The Trinity and Gender Reconsidered.” In God’s life in Trinity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. 133-142. ↩

Tagged as: adam and eve, anar@-primitivism, anarcho-primimitivism, gender, genesis, holy queering, queer, rewilding, sexuality, transgender

  • Anonymous

    Adam and Eve? Challenge yourself. Google First Scandal.

    • Chelsea

      Well, your blog is quite a challenge! I followed your instructions and I think what you are saying is that the fruit of the forbidden tree was anal sex, although you don’t come right out and say it. However it makes sense when you combine your idea that the original sin was nonprocreative sex and the two trees at the center of the garden were two things at the center of adam’s body. I like how you are careful to say that this is definitely not your opinion but hard fact.

  • Andylewis

    Thanks for this entire series, I’ve been thinking a lot about the void and or chaos of creation which seems to have been a real sore spot for the institutional founders of Christianity. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s ,The Murmuring Deep: reflections on the biblical unconscious, resonates with your reading of the multi layered interpretations and intentions within the text. The importance of midrash as a way to engage with the layers of meaning as well as a way to engage ones lived experience seems crucial. Thanks again for this vital series.

    • Chelsea

      Thanks Andy, I will definitely check out that book.

  • willie

    I am grateful for this series. There are a couple of questions I have that I am unable to discern in this series to date, and it may well be due to my own limitations and ineptitude, and if so, please forgive me. I confess that I am a bit overwhelmed by the jargon that is referenced in this series, and I have not yet had time to engage all the references.

    What is the meaning or purpose of sex that is particular to it and that is not reducible to other forms of love/relationship such as friendship, etc…?

    What does giving birth have to do with sex?

    Why is sex so central to personhood in this vision?

    What, if anything, does sex have to do with loving and following Jesus Christ?

    I do not expect anyone to necessarily address me personally on these, but if they could be addressed as the series develops, I would be grateful.

    Again, if I am missing it, please forgive me.

    • Chelsea

      hi Willie, I do apologize for all the jargon here. Jesus Radicals definitely prefers articles in accessible language, and you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is for two supposedly talented grad students like us to remember how to talk like normal people again. Thank you for wading through all the technicalese to engage with our ideas. I will think about your questions and take time to respond to them. Certainly Christianity has always honored celibacy and relativized the importance of sex in our discipleship, two tensions with “sex-positivity” that I value in our tradition. Could you say more on your second question regarding birth and sex? That’s the only one where I don’t get a sense of where you’re coming from with the question.

      • willie

        Thanks for your response, Chelsea. I do not mind jargon, and do no think that is a derogatory word. After all jargon is short hand for communicating meanings and values rather than full explication all the time. I am just not familiar with this jargon.

        With regard to birth and sex, it seems to me that there is an obvious relationship there. Most of the Christian tradition wants to say that there is a necessary relationship there. How or why does one understand what is happening when we uncouple birth and sex and is that a good idea?

        • Chelsea

          Okay, got it. I look forward to thinking more about your questions and discussing these things with you.

  • primaltruth

    I view it that there is not necessarily to be regretting humankind’s shift from hunter-gathering into agriculture, as may be thought to have been regretted, but that there was more certainly an interruption to humanity living in nature, and with nature, and having natural farming, in a very good way under God, to be under developing civilization with compulsion, this involved with increasing technology for agriculture with interests in food production increases which was its base. In this process that came from humanity’s fall, there grew power and hierarchy that was apart from God.

    • Chelsea

      I like the way you explain this. I read something today about natural farming that really excited me – it was a profile of the Land Institute’s work to naturally breed varieties of grasses that yield nutritious grain but are perennials, and therefore grow without a lot of artificial inputs or interference. I know a gathering lifestyle could not support the world’s present population, but I never thought about ways to actually cultivate plants that are good for gathering and good for restoring ecosystems.

      • primaltruth

        Chelsea, when you say a gathering lifestyle will not support the world’s population, you might be excluding natural farming that can go with that, but does civilization with its agriculture support all the population like that, without depleting resources and harming environments of the world? The greatest part of the problem, which many do not want to see, is dependence on animals for needs, which takes much much more from what the environments can support, and then depending on what is not grown locally. If all lived in a manner that could best be provided for in this world, it would not be in the manner of civilized living, but rather subsisting on what on the local land without depleting the land more than that. Are there too may for that? Maybe, but then they are even more too many for any other way of living, and depletions would happen faster.

        I wish to separately bring up the topic about having forums. I would bring it up in a separate post, but I can’t do it separately, this isn’t a forum that I could do that. I would message any of those I thought I should for that, but this is not a forum that would make that possible. For such things and other reasons, a forum is really necessary, or at least an email group, with one of these or something similar, things can be initiated and more varieties of discussions might lead to things being done, rather than threads of response to submitted essays being the totality.

        I thought a forum could come about again. Someone, such as it once seemed to be possibly Travis, could do something for having it started. I tried to say I would do something in my part to help it work. Nothing has yet happened, and as I see great need for it, I have just started a free forum for those active here. I have not been in communication with others here for getting it started, I did not know how. I try to make myself available for communication for it.
        fredsemail@yahoo.com
        I do not know how I can make the forum work by myself, and could really use some help. Those contacting me that care about it and really would help I can let have my phone number. I could use help in choosing categories in the forums. But it can be for any here interested in wider and more effective communication, certainly those for primitivism, as well as other expressions of radical Christianity and with anarchism.
        positiveprimitivistradchristian.freeforums.org

  • Derek

    This is a beautiful piece! De-colonize the world!

  • John T.

    I think an anarcho-primitivist critique of biblical sexuality is inherently flawed because the bible does not make any moral judgements of any kind of sexuality, although it does frequently acknowledge sexuality. Nor does it ever promote or even allude to the nuclear family. The default marriage norm is polygamy – even Jesus spoke of the bridegroom marrying five out of the ten virgins. Therefore a critique of sexuality and the nuclear family in the bible is meaningless. The hetero-normative theologians have looked to the bible for sexual direction but in the vacuum they have simply imposed their own assumptions onto the texts. This AP critique seems to focus on orthodox interpretations of the text rather than the text itself.

    King David (who re-instituted the Jubilee and Sabbath thus decentralising society after Saul and before Solomon’s corruption) had hundreds of wives and concubines, but the bible passes no moral judgement of this. David’s life partner was his lover Jonathan, but the bible passes not judgement of this. But what is important for the bible is the genealogy of David, especially the root of Jesse, (the son of a foreign woman adopted into concubine law), from which Jesus was born. This genealogy has nothing to do with sexuality. I wonder what David’s wives and concubines were doing in the women’s tents when David was running around with Jonathan? I wonder what the eunuchs, the only men allowed into the women’s tents. were doing for their mistresses?

    All condemnations of homosexualuty and fornication are referring to temple prostitution and boy-slaves which were cultural indicators of the invading gentile society, just as food offered to gentile gods and graven images were condemned – it had nothing to do with sexuality.

    The so-called secret gospel of Mark, the remnant of a part of Mark edited out by the Roman theologians, makes no judgement about Jesus spending the night with the naked young man that loved him, the story is about something else.

    This AP critique seems to assume that the bible promotes hetero-normative nuclear families just as the orthodox theologians have but it simply isn’t the case.

    A stumbling block to anarcho-primitivist critique of the bible is Zerzan’s analysis of represented and symbolic knowledge which I suspect is behind the statement – “the holy stories that are themselves a product of civilization’s preoccupation with symbolic thought”. This theory involves the assumption that the bible stories – or sacred stories of contemporary tribal indigenous peoples – are indicators of corruption and domestication simply because they are stories. To begin an analysis with this assumption will make us blind to the perspective of tribal people, in the bible or today. In this sense the AP analyst must interpret the story of Adam and Eve as a justification for gender separation, monogamy and the nuclear family rather than, as I suggest it is, an affirmation of naked life in the garden beyond considerations of good and evil. The “fall” had nothing to do with sexual dynamics – both people were complicit and punished. The story is about adopting the gentile moral code of the moral binary of good and evil, the consequence of which was agriculture, cities then empires. Reading sexuality into the story, as the church has done, is imposing meaning onto it.

    Today, tribal indigenous societies are characterised by a/ gender role differentiations, b/ posessory (but collective) claim to land, c/ stories and art that represent the relationship between people, the land and spirit, d/ a hierarchy of eldership – just as the tribal-bible people did. All these things are considered bad by many anarcho-primitivists Although Anarcho-primitivism has inverted social Darwinism and does not claim that civilisation is superior to tribal society, AP still categorises tribal society as barbarism just as the social Darwinists do.

    I do not think it is helpful to put the oppression and liberation of non-hetero-normative people and indigenous people, or even non-human-animals, into the one convenient ideological basket unified by the word “wild”. The risk is that indigenous perspective will be assimilated and dominated by the narrative of sexual liberation in the same way the anthropologists have interpreted indigenous people through the lenses of their own presumptions.

    The global women’s movement has involved ongoing conflict between western feminism that proclaims that liberation comes from transcendence or escape from traditional family structure and tribal indigenous women who have embraced traditional family structure as both the means and the ends of liberation from colonisation, domestication and assimilation. (There is similar conflict between white feminists and P.O.C. women as to what oppression and liberation actually mean).

    For (at least some that I have spoken to) indigenous people of non-heteronormative identity, their oppression comes from being excluded from family structure, not from being bound by it. They do not call for the extinguishing of traditional family structures, just to be included in them. They point out that traditional culture embraced a variety of sexualities and gender roles and the rejection by families is a result of colonisation and missionary morality. Check out “The sister girls” – http://www.genderrights.org.au/index.php/all-topics/147-non-white-cultures/67-indigenous-australians-the-sistergirls

    The anarcho-primitivist analysis does not seem to fit indigenous culture very well (including in the bible), in fact it judges much of it as bad. Yet A.P. embraces a utopian notion of egalitarian tribalism of which there is no archaelogical evidence and is paradigmatically different from all existing contemporary tribal cultures. As long as this gap between AP utopian theory and indigenous tribal reality remains, the ideological incorporation of the oppression and liberation of tribal people into the narrative of queering and re-wilding is perhaps just another colonial re-definition of indigenous reality?

    • John T.

      p.s.

      I meant to say in the above post -

      Biblical marriage laws are not about “agricultural economics” they are about tribal land rights and traditional inheritence – the genealogies. These land rights were attributed, according to the story, after a generation of re-wilding after Egyptian domestication and in conjunction with the Jubilee and Sabbath anti-agriculture and re-wilding laws. The marriage laws should be interpreted in that context, not presumptions of agricultural feudalism.

      Today, tribal indigenous people (at least in Australia) have a complex system of marriage laws that are an important part of the workings of traditional culture and self-government and, like the bible, determine land rights and traditional inheritance. These ancient marriage laws have nothing to do with agriculture or domestication, nor do they restrict sexuality and identity. They are a central aspect of tribal culture, not a civilised corruption.

      • willie

        Where does the notion that we have “sexuality” rather than engage in behaviors come from?

        Where does the idea of “identity” come from?

        Both of these seem like cornerstones of the discussion and appear to me to be assumed. The ideas of “identity” and “sexuality”, and I could be very wrong, seem like constructions out of contemporary psychology over the last 50-70 years or so. Is that right?

        If it is, what are the anthropological assumptions embedded in them about what is at stake in being a person? Are those compatible with the Gospel?

        • John T.

          Willie,

          As I see it, sexuality is both our attitude and our behaviour regarding eroticism (not gender). It is not a “rather than” situation, behaviour and attitude have a lot to do with each other. Our identity is our perception of ourselves, which may (or may not) involve notions of gender.

          Humans have been sexually active and self aware for more than seventy years.

          The anthropological assumptions are not that people are sexual or self aware but rather assumptions about the nature of sexuality and identity – anthropologists assume that their own, usually western, gestalt* is a universal template by which to measure other cultures. (*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology) For example – an anthropologist might study a tribal culture and observe that european models of hierarchy are absent and report that the culture has no hierarchy, thus remaining blind to non-european hierarchies such as the political authority of extended family elders. Or, the anthropologist may observe transexual behaviour and report that the culture is tolerant of deviance without recognising that transexuality is an orthodox phenomenon within the culture.

          • willie

            I don’t mean to be difficult, but what do you mean by “eroticism”?

            I agree about the connection between attitude and behavior.

            I appreciate your comment about anthropology.

            I think the Gospel and Christianity has some specific anthropological commitments. Such as humans being created in the image of God and being invited to develop in the likeness of God. That we are more human the more we are in communion with God, and that there is a method of love of God and towards neighbor, prayer, and asceticism to integrate our lives and desires towards God and our neighbor and to minimize and eventually be free of distortions to our personhood like greed, anger, gluttony, etc…

            I do not think this ends the conversation about sex. I do think it provides a frame.

            I guess what I am suspicious/questioning of are things like “identity” and “sexuality” that appear to me to be freighted with post-enlightenment and post modern assumptions about the person that are antithetical to and even purposefully derisive of Christian anthropology.

            I think part of the Christian challenge is to address the questions about person hood that are raised by people about sex, without adopting wholesale the anthropological assumptions of post enlightenment and post modern ideologies.

            To state the obvious (I hope it is not pedantic) “gay” is not just about same sex attraction and love, but is an ideology that is new within the last 50 or so years. Hence the new endeavor of “queer” theology, etc… These raise important questions that need to be engaged and answered adequately by the Church. It is not at all clear that everything espoused by queer theology is authentic to or compatible with the Gospel.

            Please forgive me if this is obvious to everyone else. I am just trying to get up to speed.

          • willie

            Thanks for this conversation. As Lent commences, I am unplugging until after Pascha. See you all in April. Christ is Risen!

    • Travis

      Can you elaborate a little on how a good/evil binary moral code leads to agriculture?

      • John T.

        Travis,

        Genesis says the mistake was consuming the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the consequence was agriculture. This is not of itself a holistic analysis but that is what the book says. My comment was in regard to interpreting the book.

        The fall was the consciousness shift away from dependence on God and towards human independence – deciding what was good and bad within God’s creation rather than unconditionally accepting the gifts of God.

        Good and evil is the consciousness created by human and not God. Agriculture is the economic mode created by human and not God. The notion of idolatry is relevant to both.

        I interpret “the knowledge of good and evil” to refer generally to the philosophy of empire and state – the philosophical binaries of the Hellenist tradition, not just good and evil but also heaven and earth. soul and body, spirit and matter, male and female ( Genesis has male and female created from one and then joined as one, this is a radical challenge to Hellenic dualism, not a promotion of heterosexual monogamy).

        Also, the knowledge of good and evil is the central pillar of social order based on reward and punishment rather than sharing and forgiveness.

        There is a bigger issue here in relation to the above article’s perspective of “materialist interpretation” that suggests changes in the mode of production caused changes in consciousness. However the bible suggests that changed consciousness came first and corruption in the mode of production and social organisation followed as a result. I agree with the bible but am too lazy to thrash that idea out right now, except to draw attention to the issue.

        • John T.

          (I’ll thrash out that last point just a little bit) if consciousness shift came before changes in the mode of production, then consciousness shift can get us out of it. “Materialist” interpretations of the world suggest that our consciousness (or the consciousness of the bible writers in times of colonisation and domestication) cannot transcend the status-quo and reconnect to the original spirit of the garden but rather are bound by material circumstance.

          • Travis

            Zerzan talks about change in consciousness coming first too (in No Way Out? for example). So there’s common ground there. I guess the difference is in the details of what that change was?

        • Travis

          One of my favorite parts of Come Out My People is where it points out how Solomon prays for wisdom of good and evil (to rule the people), which is exactly what Genesis (written later) forbids.

        • Chelsea

          John, I’m really impressed and intrigued by your comments. I appreciate your criticisms of AP as it’s something I’m really quite new in. I’m going to ask Liza if she can engage with your comments on AP and indigeneity because queer indigenous studies is her field. It seems like we have a lot of similar background in approaching sexuality and this intersection. I would be very interested in hearing more about how you would go about constructing a suggested Christian AP approach to sex and gender. We’re writing this series because we’re confused about the links and there seems to be gap in the discourse. How would you fill in the breach? What would you teach others who approach the world in this way but haven’t thought much about sexuality?

    • Nekeisha

      . . .the bible does not make any moral judgements of any kind of sexuality, although it does frequently acknowledge sexuality.

      I just wanted to address this portion of your post. The fact that the bible does not make any moral judgments about sexuality (which strikes me as being a somewhat inaccurate statement considering all the rules about who one is allowed to be sexually active with and how and when–which are in and of themselves judgments) seems to be an odd way to argue for a more open sexuality.

      Yes it is the case that polygamy is the standard for much of the biblical text. But it is also the case that those unions could and often did involve rape (such as in the case of King David and Uriah’s wife), favoritism, emotional neglect, abandonment, and misery for the lesser-loved party. And it is also the case that those unions were often patriarchal in nature, borne out of political allegiances, and were inextricably tied to property/economics and certain views of the female body. The Bible may not pass judgment on that sort of thing, but it (sadly) doesn’t pass judgment on lots of things that uphold male dominance and privilege.

      For that reason, I certainly don’t see how simply listing the number of concubines a king had or speculating about what wives did or did not do with or without eunuchs can serve as a guide for organizing relationships. If anything, I find that the stories of polygamy in the Bible are, at best, pretty good examples of what not to do.

      David’s life partner was his lover Jonathan, but the bible passes not judgement of this.

      There are certainly people who read the story of Johnathan and David’s relationship in that way, but it remains one interpretation on the matter.

      • John T.

        Nekeisha,

        There are various marriage restrictions in Moses’ law. Firstly there are incest laws – no sex with close kin, this is not about sex but about maintaining the tribal structure (moiety). I see no conflict between these laws and sexual freedom. Then there is beastiality – perhaps someone might like to argue that sexual freedom should not respect the artificial distinction between human and non-human animals, but this is a broader issue and all I will say is I do not see this taboo as being in conflict with sexual freedom. Then there is sex in Moloch worship, which is more about Moloch than sex and therefore is no contradiction to sexual freedom. Then there is adultery, which is about deceit and duplicity, which is antithetical to sexual freedom, so I have no problem with that either. Then there is the interesting one – no sex with a man as with a woman. I say this is not about homosexuality in general but about specific abominations – cultural norms of the gentile empires such as the enforced feminisation of boy slaves. The fact that this law comes straight after the Moloch law suggests it is about the culture of the empire. I would see the liberation of boy sex slaves to be consistent with notions of sexual freedom. Another reason I don’t think this is about homosexuality is a/ because there is no equivalent banning of lesbianism and b/ the law found it necessary to specifically outlaw men having sex with their fathers and uncles, such specifics would be unnecessary under a general ban on homosexuality.

        So I see no conflict between the law of Moses and sexual freedom if it is looked at from a tribal perspective.

        I do admit to pre-supposing sexual liberation when I look at the bible, e.g. Jonathan and David, because it is consistent with the wholisitc liberation of the whole story. I wonder why you (and others) presuppose repression, rape, neglect abandonment and misery?

        If you think the principles of the bible are so bad, why are you a christian?

        I note that western commentary of tribal society too can use words such as “repression, rape, neglect abandonment and misery” – this is a common white caracature of Australian Aboriginal society, I am sure such stereotypes exist about Indigenous Americans too. But the tribal perspective is something different. I say, at least maybe, this is the same with the bible too.

        • John T.

          p.s.

          I should say something about patriarchy too, because the male perspective of the bible is undeniable.

          Tribal society includes, to various degrees, a dialectical relationship between men and women – not isolated individuals or husbands and wives but in the collective entities of womens and mens business, territory and ceremony.

          A parable – When anthropologists study tribes they usually speak to the men only, often because it is the men’s job to speak to strangers. The anthropologist learns all bout the mens business including what the men think about the women’s business. They assume what they have heard about the women from the men to be correct and they report on women’s business accordingly. The anthropologist will report patriarchy.

          However in the relatively small field of women’s anthropology, where tribal women’s perspective is explored on its own terms, notions of women at the centre of society emerge. In tribal society the men believe they live in a patriarchy and the women believe they live in a matriarchy and the creative conflict between the two fuels society.

          The bible is mens business and assumes patriarchy, it is predominantly stories about men and the stories about women are told by men. But this does not mean that there was not women’s mythology, law and wisdom. I mentioned the harems of wives and concubines and daughters before, these womens places would have been very rich with womens culture and power.

          But the women’s perspective was not written down, as the men’s perspective was. I suspect it was just as strong but was transmitted through oral culture and finally wiped out in the 1st century Roman genocide. Or perhaps it was written down somewhere and destroyed by the patriarchal Roman empire in the same way that they burnt the writings and pharmacopeias of tribal Eupopean women in the witch burnings.

          But my point is that the patriarchy of the bible should not be interpreted as an isolated given, as the church has done, but rather as only one half of the story.

        • Nekeisha

          So basically your assertion in your first paragraph is that none of the biblical laws about sex are really about sex and that they really mean other things but instead of talking directly about those other things they just so happened to use specific sexual acts as examples…. I find that even less convincing that the initial argument.

          I do admit to pre-supposing sexual liberation when I look at the bible, e.g. Jonathan and David, because it is consistent with the wholisitc liberation of the whole story. I wonder why you (and others) presuppose repression, rape, neglect abandonment and misery?

          I’m not presupposing anything. The stories of rape, abandonment, neglect and misery are in the stories themselves and are therefore undeniable to anyone reading them. Rachel and Leah. David and Uriah’s wife. Sarah, Hagar and Abraham. These are not stories of polyamorous, egalitarian love relationships. The stories are often not sexually liberating for any one other than the men who could have many a concubine (while women could be stoned for having multiple partners all the way up to the New Testament). The sexual/marital stories of the Bible, in my opinion, are not the blueprint for sexual liberation. There might be some other blueprint, but I don’t see them coming from those stories themselves any more than I see ethics around violence against women coming from men mutilating a woman and sending her body parts around town to make a point.

          If you think the principles of the bible are so bad, why are you a christian?

          Not that I think you are genuinely interested but since you asked, I am a Christian who does not see the Bible as being above critique or as a document that stands completely outside of the culture of its day, with both positive and negative results. I am a Christian because I see the Bible as a dialectic of voices, some of which agree and others of which disagree (ie prophetic texts vs. priestly texts vs. monarchic texts) in which my voice also plays an important role. I am also a Christian because I am a follower of Jesus, the Son of God, who challenged many early practices for their oppressive qualities. Hope that helps.

          I note that western commentary of tribal society too can use words such as “repression, rape, neglect abandonment and misery” – this is a common white caracature of Australian Aboriginal society, I am sure such stereotypes exist about Indigenous Americans too.

          Except no one is making any commentary about “tribal society.” I am talking about your own biblical examples that you put forward as sexually liberative without nary a critical analysis. It is one thing to read the bible with sexual liberation as a lens and another thing entirely to ignore the obvious pain in the stories that are primarily experienced by women. That certainly is your prerogative but it doesn’t have to be mine and throwing “western commentary” and “stereotypes” around to try and devalue my position, as if you are not bringing any of your cultural baggage and agenda to the reading of the text, isn’t going to change that.

          • John T.

            What “specific sexual acts” does the bible refer to? I find your assumption that the marriage laws are about sexual acts to be unconvincing.

            Rachel and Leah and Sarah and Abraham are all before the institution of Moses law. In the case of Rachael and Leah, the problem is deceit, not sex. Hagar was oppressed by Sarah’s jealousy, which is the problem,not sex. Regarding David and Uriah, 2 Samuel 11:27 “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” There is certainly no justification for murder or adultery in this story.

            “men mutilating a woman and sending her body parts around town to make a point.” – what are you talking about?

            Do you consider tribalism to be “the culture of its day”? If so, isn’t this an important consideration for analysis and critique? If you do not acknowledge the tribalism of the bible then you are indeed reading western concepts into the text, especially in regard to sexual implications of marriage law.

            I disagree with you about biblical contradiction or disagreement about prophetic v.s priestly v.s monarch. The bible has a consistent position on all these things. There is certainly stories of Israel’s unfaithfulness and disobedience including corruption of priestly duties and aspirations for kingdoms in the fashion of imperial monarchs, indeed it was this that caused the exile in the first place. But the whole bible is the perspective of the prophets who themselves critique the priests and monarchs.

            Jesus said he had come to fulfill the law and the prophets.

            Having said all this, the bible is no blueprint for sexuality, it was not written for that purpose – it is a manifesto of indigenous liberation and self government. My comments are to deconstruct assumptions that the bible prescribes a repressive sexuality, not to promote the ancient middle eastern anthropology as a universal sexual template.

          • http://twitter.com/thejoeturner Joe Turner

            Oh I see – Jesus came that we might have more sex and more sexual freedom. Silly me, I never noticed that before.

            Seems to me the overwhelming message of the bible (if there is one) is about personal restraint, duty and commitment.

          • Nekeisha

            “men mutilating a woman and sending her body parts around town to make a point.” – what are you talking about?

            I’m talking about “the culture of the day” in Judges 19-30, where a man sends his wife and virgin daughter out to a group of men so that they could be raped instead of his male guest. And then after they are raped and abused throughout the night, only to be left on the his doorstep in the morning, he cuts his wife’s body up into twelve pieces and sends them to all the tribes of Israel.

            As for your other comments, I have no problem wrestling with the culture of the day the context for our discussions. The problem is that isn’t how you started the conversation. You simply listed a bunch of relationships that were not monogamous in the Bible to make a point about our present-day discussion of sexuality–and you did so without naming the issues behind these relationships such as the social structuring of men and women. I only entered the discussion to add some of the context around patriarchy. Just because a “tribal culture” does something and I as a westerner critique it doesn’t mean my critique is somehow of no value. “Tribal cultures”–as you call them–are not above critical analysis simply because of their “tribal” nature. Of course it is necessary to be cautious given the history of western colonialism. But that goes for when we are appropriating stories for our own positive purposes as well.

          • John T.

            Nekeisha,

            You seem to have missed the fact that the original pack-rape and murder by the Benjamite men of Gibeah and the man’s butchery are both condemned as wicked in the story. In fact the “vile tragedy” becomes the basis of war between Benjaites and the other tribes which is the real focus of the story.

            If anything can be said of the “culture of the day” it is that the people were collectively horrified by rape, murder and human butchery. Yet for some reason you read the story as condoning these things. Why?

            Note – You have misread the story. The husband did not send his daughter and concubine to the rapists, his host at Gibeah did this. The husband butchered the concubine after she had been raped and murdered by the Gibeah men, to send her body to the families of those that murdered her. While the people still condemned this – the man was ostracised – his motivation for butchery is not the same motivation of the men that raped and murdered the concubine. Chapter 19 indicates the man’s respect and love for the concubine which, in an angry dysfunctional way, is his reason for butchering her (but the story still condemns it).

            p.s.

            Forgive me for not contextualising my comments about marriage, it was an oversight. It all came from Leviticus 18

        • Chelsea

          “If you think the principles of the bible are so bad, why are you a christian?”

          This is a disrespectful question, and also illustrative of the error of approaching the bible as though it contains one voice and one coherent set of principles.

          • John T.

            Chelsea,

            While there are many voices in the bible, the error is in approaching the bible as if it did not contain a coherent set of principles.

            The question is to determine what that coherency is on its own terms, rather than judging its coherency or otherwise by the standards of our own time and cultural assumptions – and dismissing the bits we don’t like as inherently flawed, anachronistic or just wrong.

            The bible is a manifesto of indigenous national formation, bondage and liberation. If read from this perspective it is coherent and consistent. If it is to be read from any other perspective, be it of the Roman empire, European evangelicalism or radical queering, then it will appear conflicted and incoherent because it does not reflect those foreign perspectives – it is not about these things.

            My comment – “”If you think the principles of the bible are so bad, why are you a christian?” was not intended to be disrespectful and I think you have too easily dismissed a very important question.

            If the bible is a conflicted discourse within the represented knowledge of hierarchical culture – as your articles suggest, why would any sane anarchist embrace it? There are plenty of conflicted and anachronistic texts in the world, why is this 2000 year old Middle East story so important to us?

            Most of civilised society has rejected the bible for reasons similar to your and Nekeisha’s critique of it. Common wisdom is to ignore the anachronistic, mysoginistic, patriarchal text. Common anarchist wisdom is to pro-actively challenge the text. Why do Christian anarchists still embrace the bible at the same time as embracing anarchist critique of it?

            Could it be that some Christian anarchists are emotionally dependent on the symbol of the bible in their lives but are not brave enough to reject the bible because of its consequence on their whole self identity as Christians?, Do some make up all sorts of justifications for the relevance of the bible to their lives – the most common one that spans from orthodox catholics to conservative evangelicals to Christian anarchists – the bible is a conflicted text and we have to choose the good bits and reject the bad bits?

            I say, the bible narrative is an inspiring story of freedom. In my context of time and place, it is a point of overlap between Australian tribal Aboriginal people and white Australians such as myself – when read and taught from tribal indigenous perspective, which is the perspective from which the bible was written. But this post-missionary indigenous theology that is emerging in Australia (and is not exclusive of white people), does not pick and choose the good bits and bad bits of the bible narrative, it sees the profound connections of the bible narrative and ancient Aboriginal stories. The similarity between Aboriginal story and bible story is the absence of the moral binary of good and evil. The dramatic conflict and the resolution are always to do with historical causes and effects, not on any simple moralistic determination of right and wrong.

            So the bible makes a lot of sense to my circumstance, but if I thought it was even in part a narrative of repression or injustice I would dump it rather than try and justify it because it has been an important symbol in my life. I don’t understand why people who have come to this conclusion can still maintain the book has some inherent integrity?

  • rusti

    Thanks so much for this article! I’ve been waiting for someone to write this!
    “Because moral teachings on sexuality perform functions for the state, both in biblical times and now, investigating sex and gender oppression is not an optional activity for anarch@-primitivists.”
    I totally agree, and would say its not an optional activity for anti-authoritarian christians either.
    Too often the church, even then radical church, is plagued by the normalization of monogamy and marriage, and the hesitancy to rethink sexual morality. Thanks!

  • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

    Jesus’ views on sex seem inseparable from his views on marriage (which I imagine was consistent with the Jewish tradition, including the Genesis stories). So if there is “sex-positivity” to be found in Jesus’ views, I think we’d have to find it in Jesus’ obvious “marriage-positivity.” The most obvious evidence of this is his strong teachings against adultery and his affirmation of God’s uniting married people as “one flesh.”

    You do address marriage in this part of the series, but I’m not clear on what you are saying. There seems to be an implied criticism of the concept of marriage as “one universal human institution,” and you also mention “a certain kind of marriage” being used to regulate female sexuality for economic reasons. But I suspect you do not mean to criticize all marriage. Is there a “different kind” of marriage that you do promote as the setting for healthy sexual expression?

    When only criticisms of marriage are presented, it’s hard to see your “sex-positivity” as consistent with Jesus’ “marriage-positivity.”

    • Chelsea

      Hi Paul, no, I don’t promote any one setting as God-given. I think good sex can happen in many different relationship configurations, whenever it’s accompanied by virtues and goods like honesty, respect, consent, trustworthiness, safety, health, pleasure, etc. I would say I have some strong issues with patriarchal marriage, which views women as property, which we see in the Bible. As for marital, monogamous, life-long committed relationships, I am in one of those myself (well, monogamish) and see their spiritual, covenantal value.

    • Chelsea

      I’m not sure I would describe Jesus as sex-positive in a direct way. You can read Matthew 19 to be about general marriage-positivity, but I read it more as specific divorce-negativity, a critique of a particular practice of divorce that was harmful to women in that context. Jesus is certainly not marriage-positive when he teaches that no one will marry or be given in marriage in heaven, and that it is better to remain unmarried for those who can do it.

      • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

        I was also thinking of a number of other places Jesus warned against adultery, not just when he was teaching about divorce. It seems to me that his rejection of divorce, warnings against adultery, and affirmation of God’s hand in uniting married people adds up to a strong support and respect for marriage, even stronger than in the tradition he came out of.

        And yes, I was thinking of Jesus’ support of marriage here and now, not in heaven. But here and now is what we’re concerned with, right? I’m not familiar with Jesus teaching that it’s better not to marry, unless you mean the “eunuch” passage. I don’t understand that to mean it’s always “better” (though it may be in certain circumstances) but I can see how it might be read that way. But doesn’t “eunuch” mean much more than unmarried, doesn’t it also imply celibacy?

        • John T.

          I suggest that when Jesus spoke of marriage, adultery and divorce he was speaking of the marriage covenant between God and Israel in the same way that the prophets spoke in these terms.

          I briefly look at divorce in the sermon on the mount in this essay – http://newaustralianwineskins.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/how-to-read-the-bible/

        • http://www.facebook.com/amaryahshaye Amaryah Armstrong

          Was Jesus really a ‘strong supporter of marriage’? As you say? His admonishments against adultery really are radical because they didn’t allow married men to just abandon their wives, as often happened, leaving the wife without any resources or means to provide for herself. Which, to me, is not a simple affirmation of marriage, but is tied up into concern for the treatment of a marginalized group (women), in his time.

          Also, after Jesus Christian communities had to get together and work out a lot of issues regarding sexuality, marriage, celibacy, and other forms of relationality. To act as if what Jesus came to do was close the book on marriage is kind of ignoring the ways your interpretation of marriage is already coming through a tradition of interpretation and community who did work to discern that marriage was a good for the community.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            I don’t quite understand what you mean about adultery and abandonment, Amaryah. I can see that Jesus’ rejection of divorce did offer greater protection against abandonment (though I think it wasn’t only about that), but condemning adultery doesn’t really address abandonment, does it? That has to do with sexual faithfulness within marriage, and respect for the marriages of others.

            That understanding about marriage and adultery also was the result of Jewish community discernment over many, many years, and Jesus affirms it. It continues to be affirmed in the Christian community, as far as I know. I haven’t heard any defense of adultery in the variety of Christian circles I’ve come in contact with.

          • http://www.facebook.com/amaryahshaye Amaryah Armstrong

            I’m just saying, you are responding as if Jesus’s talk on marriage is just about affirming marriage over other kinds of relationships, and I’m simply pointing out that Jesus is not solely concerned with affirming a certain kind of relationship, but is trying to also inhibit problematic abuses of power. To reduce what Jesus says about marriage to a pro-marriage argument is reductionistic.

            Also, who is trying to defend adultery? As I see it, adultery is a case, not only of a lack of faithfulness, but doesn’t fit in to what Chelsea’s been saying about “honesty, respect, consent, trustworthiness, safety, health, pleasure, etc.” But you seem to be harping on adultery as if there is anyone in this thread trying to defend it, when in reality people are simply saying that there isn’t a universalizable conception of marriage and that there are different ways of being in relationship than just a heteronormative, patriarchal, white-supremacist, definition of marriage.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            I’m glad if there isn’t anyone defending adultery, because I actually wasn’t sure. There seemed to be signs from several people of a rejection of monogamy, and criticisms of marriage with no apparent affirmation of marriage (like perhaps a non-patriarchal, non-oppressive kind, the marriage God actually works in making two people one flesh). So I was starting to wonder if there was any concern about adulterous sexual activity.

            I don’t mean to harp. But Jesus seems to have said very little about sex, and yet he did think it was important to several times express a strong concern about adultery (including even an adultery “of the heart”). I wasn’t seeing that same concern in the conversation here so far.

            I don’t think what Jesus said should be reduced to “pro-marriage” and nothing else. But it seems clear that (among other things) he was pro-marriage. And in this I see Jesus being also “pro-sex.”

          • http://twitter.com/thejoeturner Joe Turner

            I think Jesus was pro-commitment. I can’t see he would have any time for the concept of using other people as disposable objects. I find it hard to believe that it is really possible to have a ‘no-strings’ sexual encounter which is essentially ‘freeing’ to everyone.

            It confuses me why there is so much pre-occupation with the word ‘marriage’, as if somehow promises made in a special place at a special time are any more Godly than words said anywhere else. My marriage is lived out, and the truth of my vows are not directly related to the fact that they were made before God (somehow), but because they relate directly to the ‘facts on the ground’.

            And in that, I think his concept of adultery was more than just breaking a legal contract with your spouse, it showed up the lack of commitment implicit in human beings following their urges rather than restraining themselves for the exclusiveness of another person.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            Yes, I don’t see marriage as a legal contract, as it has been defined by the state and culturally. So adultery is more as you describe it, and should be a concern for anyone entering into sexual relationships (or even anyone thinking about it, as Jesus points out).

            Jesus words about it are thus relevant and a challenge to all of us as sexual beings, and it makes more sense why he chose the few words he did in speaking about sex.

  • http://www.facebook.com/amaryahshaye Amaryah Armstrong

    whoops.

  • Nekeisha

    From an animal liberation, anti-speciesism perspective, I would add that when God first started looking for an appropriate companion for Adam in Genesis 2, God thought Adam might find adequate love with one of the other animals God had created (Genesis 2:18-20). For anarch@-primitivist Christians who intuit that God’s creation is a little wilder and queerer than just Adam and Eve, “Adam and Steve” might not even scratch the surface!

    Hi Chelsea. I suspect you were being a little tongue-in-cheek in your last paragraph. But if you are implying that the garden has a favorable outlook on beastiality–and I can’t say for sure that you are, but it seems like you might be with the Adam and Eve/Adam and Steve references–then I don’t see that as reflecting an animal liberation perspective (and also don’t see how that is being derived from the text).

    • Chelsea

      Thanks for pointing this out! Oops, I did not mean to advocate bestiality (an abusive and non-consensual form of sex) as divine. What I meant is: When we see that a god-given drive for companionship and friendship is at the heart of sexuality, we can see that sexuality has a queer heart – one that originated before genital-sexuality began, before gender began, and that transgresses spiritual divisions between humans and non-human “others.”

      • Nekeisha

        Ah ha! Okay, I see. Part of me didn’t think that is what you were saying but I felt I should clarify rather than be confused. :) That indeed sounds very anti-speciesist to me. This might also be one of the reasons that the relationship between human and other than human animals in the garden is one in which consumption of each other is not practiced: violence and destructive consumption of the other (literally and figuratively) is kind of antithetical to healthy companionship and friendship :)

  • Travis

    My limited readings on the subject put Genesis’ redaction at the time of Exile, not Monarchic times and I can see how that would change how one (Yee) might read it -Either as (Hebrew) Monarchy-justification or (Babylonian)Empire-resistance literature. I can’t tell which side the article takes. It seems like Yee’s, but Ched is a Exilic-era person, and he’s also cited in the article.
    I don’t know.

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