Queer Theology Rethinking the Western Body

Queer Theology makes an important contribution to public debate about Christianity and sex. This remarkable collection reconceptualizes the body and its desires, enlarging the meaningfulness of Christian sexuality for the good of the Church. By divinizing desire, it radicalizes "queer theory" and its deconstruction of sexual and gender identities; and it invokes a complex social space in which transcendent Eros frees us from the fear of our differences. Written by some of the brightest and best of Anglo-American scholars, established and up-coming, from a variety of academic and religious backgrounds, the book shows us how western bodies and their desires are queerer than often thought. Our bodies are, the contributors propose, the mobile products of ever changing discourses and regimes of power; and God, they help us to understand, is indeed a bodily god.

Gerard Loughlin is Professor of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. His previous publications include Telling God’s Story: Bible, Church and Narrative Theology (1996) and Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology (Blackwell, 2004). He is a co-editor of the Journal Theology and Sexuality.