Queer Theology and Social Transformation: Points of Contact, Points of Conflict
at Pacific School of Religion
Berkeley, CA
Jay Michaelson will be delivering the seventh annual Boswell Lecture at the Pacific School of Religion.
Queer theology holds forth the promise of reinventing theological discourse in the light of LGBTQ experience, queer theory, and a hermeneutic informed by marginalized voices and outsider discourse. Yet many queer theologians are also LGBT activists, called upon to comment on political questions. And sometimes, ideas which are crucial for good queer theory (for example, the construction of identity, the malleability of sexual/gender terms, sex-positivity, problematizing structures of gender and power) are politically disadvantageous.
How do scholar-activists translate between theological theory and activist practice? What forms of political discourse are informed by queer theology, and what are undermined?
