THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE: RECLAIMING CHURCH AND TRADITION FOR QUEER FLOURISHING
The Theotokos of the Life-Giving Spring, traditional icon. Image courtesy of the author.
“How do you read Romans 1?” That was the question in the air as I, a 15- year- old at the time, tried to make sense of my nascent bisexuality. The pastors at my evangelical church at the time were invested in a “traditional” interpretation of Scripture, and bringing up these “proof-texts” was their way of pre-empting conversations about queer affirmation in the church. At the time, I had no logical answers, just a deep sense that God was for me and would use my experiences for the furthering of the Kingdom. Eventually, when I went off to college and came out, that church became less and less of a home for me. By then, I was on a journey towards Eastern Orthodoxy, and the deep wells of tradition that it offered as refreshment to my heart.
Much of the work that has gone into queer affirmation in faith circles has been the important work of deconstruction, helping people process spiritual trauma, and developing the case for queer Christianities. Parachurch organizations and affirming congregations create community, seeking to shape new wineskins for new wine. Theologians in the academy engage in creative syntheses of queer theory and systematic theology. There is much interesting and valuable work being done. Out of necessity, much of this work takes place outside the day to day life of the church, or at the very least outside of traditional conceptions of “the church.”
Meanwhile, our critics rally around the language of “tradition” and their sense of being “the true church.” Right-wing Christians employ rhetoric of “traditional marriage/gender roles,” Biblicism and appeals to the authority of time-honored Christian faith and practice.
But what if the “tradition” they stake their claim on is actually more expansive - even more queer - than they’re willing to admit? What if the catholicity of the Church requires queer witness to be whole? What if queer Christians are Christ’s sheep by birthright and not merely by inclusion?
As a bisexual Eastern Orthodox Christian, I want to reflect on three themes that begin to cast a vision for how we might reclaim the meaning of the Church and of a Holy Tradition for queer flourishing, a step towards the flourishing of all of God’s children.
The Church is a living, dynamic, breathing organism. Christ is its heart, the risen Lord whom we Orthodox name in worship as “the fountain of life,” the Person who knits together our humanity with God’s divinity. For us as for many Christians, the epicenter of Christ’s presence is the Eucharist, and the radiant light of God’s grace flows out from that center. From this center, however, the life-giving power of God’s love spills over its visible boundaries in the structures of the Church, pouring out on all flesh. Our tradition famously says, “we know where the Church is, but we do not know where it is not.” The life of God overflows from the Mystery of the Eucharist into the no less God-given mysteries of human life. The Church is always troubling human-made boundaries of “in” and “out.” Our gathered structures and church order at their best can iconize the fulness of the Church, but the Church is always “queering” the lines, illuminating and transfiguring our experience through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The criterion for where the fulness of the Church comes to be, then, is not “sacred vs. profane” or “love vs. truth” (as in non-affirming models) but “life vs death.” Where queerphobia and transphobia persist in our Christian institutions, when Bible and doctrine are weaponized against queer Christians (especially the younger and more vulnerable ones), the practical outcome is silence, despair, rejection, and even death. Christ, the beating heart of the Church itself, came to deliver us from death by his resurrection. When we speak out for queer justice, when we draw from the wisdom of the communion of saints to shelter and uplift one another, we bring the new life of Christ to these places of death, and God restores them to life. The full catholicity of the Church is Christ’s life flowing out to all places, overcoming death, and we help to manifest that when we advocate for affirmation and the full dignity of God’s queer children.
Orthodox Christianity cultivates kinship with saints, histories, and theologies which go back to the decades immediately following the life of Christ. This attentiveness to sacred history and how it affects our practice of the gospel is what we call “Holy Tradition.” Part of this attentiveness is feeling oneself as part of a living community of the Body of Christ which crosses time and space. As a queer Orthodox Christian, I often feel a greater kinship with the saints of ages past who suffered for their faith than with current institutional structures that seek to marginalize my community.
Ancient faith tradition is full of queer surprises. Take martyr saints like Sergius and Bacchus or Perpetua and Felicity, who shared an intimate same-sex bond and were martyred together. Or consider mystics like St. Symeon the New Theologian who allude to a queering love for God grounded in life experience. Or even remember monastic saints like Elder Dositheus of Kiev who were assigned female at birth, transitioned while in monastic life, and became renowned for their wisdom as spiritual guides. Though the church of old did not conceive of its community in terms of modern LGBTQ+ terminology, our experiences have always echoed in the life of the Christian faith.
Some theologies of affirmation take a Biblicist approach. This is to say, they seek to make the case for queer affirmation using Scripture alone. Such theologians often ground affirmation in St. Paul’s assertions of all being one in Christ, and of the Gentiles (read: queer folks) being grafted into the family of God. As a bi person who has been in the church my entire life, I always felt our community had more in common with the audience of the Catholic Epistles, the letters of Sts. John, Peter, James and Jude. John speaks to those who know “what was from the beginning,” the Word of God that they followed around Galilee and came to trust as the Son of God. Queer Christians who grew up in church contexts already have a relationship with Christ grounded in a tradition. All that remains is for us to claim those parts of it which continue to bring life, and to let those which bring death slip away.
Finally, there are ways in which queer experience touches the Kingdom of God. Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas talks about the Kingdom as a tree with its roots in the future and its branches and flowers in the present. The future is Christ, who in eternity has already made all things new by his resurrection. To God who is outside of time, the restoration of all things (what we Orthodox call the apocatastasis) is already fulfilled. In our everyday lives, the resurrection and the kingdom are breaking in. Flowers from the branch of Jesse blossom in the joy and wonder of our lives. Light from the Kingdom flashes before our eyes like light from a star reaching earth.
Our lives as queer Christians, at their best, are lit up with this Kingdom light when we come together to celebrate survival in a hostile world; When we bring each other into new found families that reflect the all-embracing love of God; When we discover new ways of doing gender and personhood, and transfigure humanity like Christ was transfigured on the mountain; When we pursue eros and agape in intimate relationships that reject heteronormative lineage, but instead reflect the day when “they will no longer marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like angels in heaven.” In a million small ways, the resurrection light shines through us and the resurrection life lives in us, when we confess Christ as fully realized queer people.
Each person in community must do their own work to find their place in the story of that community. It is my hope that these reflections offer a place for some to start. Queerphobic and transphobic “traditionalists” continue to hold a very small and weak view of the vast beauty of the Church in its fullness. The truth, by contrast, is much broader and much more exciting: The Church not only has space for our queer witness, but it needs us (as it needs all its children) to be whole.
