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Queer Holiness: The Gift of LGBTQI People to the Church
LGBTQI people in the church have spent a long time being told what God expects of them and how they should behave. From prohibitions on who they might love or marry, to erasure and denial, the theological record is one in which LGBTQI people are far too often objectified and their lives seen as the property of others. In no other significant religious question are ‘theological’ arguments made that so clearly reject overwhelming scientific and experiential knowledge about the human person. This book seeks to find a better way to do theology—not about, but with and of LGBTQI people—taking insights from the sciences and personal narratives as it seeks to answer the question: ‘What does human flourishing look like?’
192 pages, Hardcover
Published November 30, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 29, 2025
While I broadly agree with Charlie’s perspective, and indeed entirely sympathise with his apparent anger, I am not sure that this book does much to move the debate either way. The reason for this is that, to my mind, the principle issue around which the whole problem revolves remains unarticulated. It is touched on tangentially in parts of this book but never really explored.
The question of whether or not gay people can or should marry, so far as the church is concerned, must depend upon the Church’s, and the Biblical, conception of what marriage is for. For Charlie, as it is for many of his modern conservative opponents, marriage is about personal fulfillment - the mutual thriving of those who are paired to one another. But this, it seems to me, is precisely the problem, because it isn’t obvious that marriage is thought of principally in this way in the Bible at all. Rather, it seems, as it has been in much of the world for most of history, it was chiefly a practical arrangement entered into for largely pragmatic considerations connected to both the reproduction of a family line and its provisioning with the land and property with which it could sustain itself. What almost none of the examples of married couples in the Biblical narrative exemplify is a romantic liberal individualist conception of personal flourishing, in which the beloved is a partner in a journey of growth and self discovery; both a prompt and a resource for the apprehension of the better self. Indeed, on only a handful of occasions in the Bible are we told that a man loved his wife, which indicates that this was a relatively rare occurrence- precisely because romantic love was not the principle motivation for marrying. Similarly, marriages are typically arranged by relatives, or if consented to by the parties, they are so rapidly and with no romantic prelude. Furthermore, both concubinage and apparently instrumental, lust-based extramarital sex are regular features of the Biblical narrative, precisely because sex, desire, personal fulfilment, dynastic/professional/tribal advancement etc were understood to only rarely dovetail together, and so different arrangements served different needs.
This was simply a matter of common sense for most of history- people needed a marriage partner with whom to build a family business and sire children; children who were required, in lieu of any real social support networks other than kinship, to take the place of welfare, healthcare, and law enforcement for their elderly parents and younger dependents. Thus, the majority of people, heterosexual and homosexual, will have married someone they perhaps would have preferred not to, and had to make the best of it in order to survive and avoid penury in their old age.
This is why so much ancient culture is focussed on the issue of policing fidelity- there was much greater incentive to infidelity when there was no pretence of love or sexual attraction in the marriage in the first place, but there could very much be with an unsuitable love rival in the village. It is also surely why scripture devotes so little attention to sexual fulfillment in general and homosexuality in particular. Where the latter is discussed, the reference is brief, inspecific, and condemnatory, not because there is some deep mystery about what is meant, but precisely because no subtlety or complexity is intended- the sexual desires and romantic ambitions of individuals just weren’t that important in the ancient world. What was important was (a) surviving and (b) doing your best for your family by marrying well.
These observations help us to see what the real issue is, which is that heterosexual Christian couples have become hypocrites, not, as Charlie says, because they deny matrimony to gay people while enjoying it themselves, but rather because there is a very open question, from the Biblical viewpoint, about whether modern marriage is even the same thing as what is being discussed in the Bible. Thus, conservatives who claim to believe in ‘traditional marriage’ while selecting partners via modern individualist practices like dating, and using romantic criteria to do so, pursuing separate careers, using contraception etc in fact believe in no such thing- they believe in a modern romantic individualistic conception of marriage. This account helps us to understand why this issue has only arisen recently- in the ancient, and indeed medieval and early modern world, no such hypocrisy was detected- because everyone, gay or straight, was in the same situation: they were more likely than not to marry someone they had no attraction to.
The pivot between the ancient and contemporary views of the subject seems to be made up of the advent of welfare, effective maternity care, and contraception. This has changed the meaning of marriage for heterosexual people because it has changed the meaning of sex. It is now possible to think of it chiefly as a recreational activity, only occasionally, and with the consent of the respective partners, reverting to its biological procreative function. Given that it is now thankfully quite rare for women to die in childbirth, the whole meaning of sex has changed, from an act which always had the potential to be life-changing or life-ending, to something with important emotional overtones, but little to no risk of necessitating lifelong commitment or causing premature death. It is because the church has no theology of this changed meaning of sex that it can have no adequate theology of marriage. Again, Charlie adverts to this but doesn’t give it the central place it deserves.
It seems likely that this omission is motivated by the fact that Charlie wants to speak of the value and meaning of homosexual relationships in their own right, rather than as derivatives or copies of heterosexual originals. Laudable as this is, the statistical preponderance of heterosexuals over homosexuals, and the aforementioned consequences of heterosexual sex mean that marriage will always be, fundamentally, an institution intended to contain and manage those consequences. If you doubt this, ask yourself whether anyone would get married if it weren’t for the costs imposed by pregnancy, childbirth, the loss of children and mothers in the process, and the need to invest in the process of recovery and childhood that follow. It seems unlikely.
The issue, then, that the church needs to face, is not whether gay christians can marry, but whether any Christians are married in the sense that the Bible is talking about when it discusses marriage. Ironically, the argument that ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ Christians are having is really an argument within a single modern liberal romantic individualist paradigm, as a result of which both sides fail to produce a coherent account of what a text that talks in completely different terms is saying. The real disjuncture is not between liberals and conservatives, but between modern people who think marriage is an institution within which a subject conceptualised principally as an individual seeks to find fulfillment, and ancient people who found fulfilment in discharging social roles and obligations on behalf of the groups they were responsible to and for. This suggests that the change in the institution has been so extensive that it has created a new and different institution - and one which requires different rules that reflect its different function. The problem here is firstly that the Bible does not address this issue, and secondly that any new rules will be just that- novel. Thus, they won’t enjoy any direct Biblical mandate. It is surely this that really scares conservatives; not gay people per se, but the spectral presence of Biblical irrelevance, the need to acknowledge one’s own comparative liberalism, and the painful process of generating new norms with the authority to bind people to common observance.
The question of whether or not gay people can or should marry, so far as the church is concerned, must depend upon the Church’s, and the Biblical, conception of what marriage is for. For Charlie, as it is for many of his modern conservative opponents, marriage is about personal fulfillment - the mutual thriving of those who are paired to one another. But this, it seems to me, is precisely the problem, because it isn’t obvious that marriage is thought of principally in this way in the Bible at all. Rather, it seems, as it has been in much of the world for most of history, it was chiefly a practical arrangement entered into for largely pragmatic considerations connected to both the reproduction of a family line and its provisioning with the land and property with which it could sustain itself. What almost none of the examples of married couples in the Biblical narrative exemplify is a romantic liberal individualist conception of personal flourishing, in which the beloved is a partner in a journey of growth and self discovery; both a prompt and a resource for the apprehension of the better self. Indeed, on only a handful of occasions in the Bible are we told that a man loved his wife, which indicates that this was a relatively rare occurrence- precisely because romantic love was not the principle motivation for marrying. Similarly, marriages are typically arranged by relatives, or if consented to by the parties, they are so rapidly and with no romantic prelude. Furthermore, both concubinage and apparently instrumental, lust-based extramarital sex are regular features of the Biblical narrative, precisely because sex, desire, personal fulfilment, dynastic/professional/tribal advancement etc were understood to only rarely dovetail together, and so different arrangements served different needs.
This was simply a matter of common sense for most of history- people needed a marriage partner with whom to build a family business and sire children; children who were required, in lieu of any real social support networks other than kinship, to take the place of welfare, healthcare, and law enforcement for their elderly parents and younger dependents. Thus, the majority of people, heterosexual and homosexual, will have married someone they perhaps would have preferred not to, and had to make the best of it in order to survive and avoid penury in their old age.
This is why so much ancient culture is focussed on the issue of policing fidelity- there was much greater incentive to infidelity when there was no pretence of love or sexual attraction in the marriage in the first place, but there could very much be with an unsuitable love rival in the village. It is also surely why scripture devotes so little attention to sexual fulfillment in general and homosexuality in particular. Where the latter is discussed, the reference is brief, inspecific, and condemnatory, not because there is some deep mystery about what is meant, but precisely because no subtlety or complexity is intended- the sexual desires and romantic ambitions of individuals just weren’t that important in the ancient world. What was important was (a) surviving and (b) doing your best for your family by marrying well.
These observations help us to see what the real issue is, which is that heterosexual Christian couples have become hypocrites, not, as Charlie says, because they deny matrimony to gay people while enjoying it themselves, but rather because there is a very open question, from the Biblical viewpoint, about whether modern marriage is even the same thing as what is being discussed in the Bible. Thus, conservatives who claim to believe in ‘traditional marriage’ while selecting partners via modern individualist practices like dating, and using romantic criteria to do so, pursuing separate careers, using contraception etc in fact believe in no such thing- they believe in a modern romantic individualistic conception of marriage. This account helps us to understand why this issue has only arisen recently- in the ancient, and indeed medieval and early modern world, no such hypocrisy was detected- because everyone, gay or straight, was in the same situation: they were more likely than not to marry someone they had no attraction to.
The pivot between the ancient and contemporary views of the subject seems to be made up of the advent of welfare, effective maternity care, and contraception. This has changed the meaning of marriage for heterosexual people because it has changed the meaning of sex. It is now possible to think of it chiefly as a recreational activity, only occasionally, and with the consent of the respective partners, reverting to its biological procreative function. Given that it is now thankfully quite rare for women to die in childbirth, the whole meaning of sex has changed, from an act which always had the potential to be life-changing or life-ending, to something with important emotional overtones, but little to no risk of necessitating lifelong commitment or causing premature death. It is because the church has no theology of this changed meaning of sex that it can have no adequate theology of marriage. Again, Charlie adverts to this but doesn’t give it the central place it deserves.
It seems likely that this omission is motivated by the fact that Charlie wants to speak of the value and meaning of homosexual relationships in their own right, rather than as derivatives or copies of heterosexual originals. Laudable as this is, the statistical preponderance of heterosexuals over homosexuals, and the aforementioned consequences of heterosexual sex mean that marriage will always be, fundamentally, an institution intended to contain and manage those consequences. If you doubt this, ask yourself whether anyone would get married if it weren’t for the costs imposed by pregnancy, childbirth, the loss of children and mothers in the process, and the need to invest in the process of recovery and childhood that follow. It seems unlikely.
The issue, then, that the church needs to face, is not whether gay christians can marry, but whether any Christians are married in the sense that the Bible is talking about when it discusses marriage. Ironically, the argument that ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ Christians are having is really an argument within a single modern liberal romantic individualist paradigm, as a result of which both sides fail to produce a coherent account of what a text that talks in completely different terms is saying. The real disjuncture is not between liberals and conservatives, but between modern people who think marriage is an institution within which a subject conceptualised principally as an individual seeks to find fulfillment, and ancient people who found fulfilment in discharging social roles and obligations on behalf of the groups they were responsible to and for. This suggests that the change in the institution has been so extensive that it has created a new and different institution - and one which requires different rules that reflect its different function. The problem here is firstly that the Bible does not address this issue, and secondly that any new rules will be just that- novel. Thus, they won’t enjoy any direct Biblical mandate. It is surely this that really scares conservatives; not gay people per se, but the spectral presence of Biblical irrelevance, the need to acknowledge one’s own comparative liberalism, and the painful process of generating new norms with the authority to bind people to common observance.
August 24, 2023
If you want an insightful academic book on the oppression of LGBTQI people in the Church of England and some helpful suggestions of ways forward to address it, this is the book for you. It is a very important contribution to current debates in this area - a crucial contribution, I think. My hat goes off to Charlie Bell in thanks for his efforts in the face of injustice. I hope the Church listens, takes on board and steers its course accordingly.
October 26, 2024
I enjoyed this book, the academic writing style is refreshing and the topic well handled. I didn’t agree with everything but it definitely made me think.
January 24, 2025
it didn’t leave me feeling particularly empowered but i’m grateful for every bit of queer theology i can get
February 1, 2025
I enjoyed a lot of this, but it is strange to mention LGBTQI on almost every page and yet exclusively discuss sexuality.
February 22, 2025
A soberly-written overview of the theological struggle of the Church of England with regard to the lives of LGBTQ people.
August 27, 2022
Punchy. Not pulling any punches. Quite academic and dense. Maybe not as radical as I’d like.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews