Holy Queer Answers
Holy Queer does not reduce Jesus to a modern sexual identity label. Instead, it asks a deeper and more disruptive question: why are Christians so afraid to imagine Jesus in relationship to the people they have been taught to reject?
From Holy Queer
Holy Queer explores the loved disciple, the intimacy of Jesus, the margins, embodiment, and the ways Jesus lived outside the systems of religious and political respectability.
The book does not treat queerness merely as sexuality. It treats queerness as disruption, marginality, tenderness, threat, refusal, transformation, and divine nearness to those pushed outside the center.
Jesus was not safe to empire. Jesus was not respectable to religious power. Jesus was not contained by the categories people tried to place around him. In that sense, Holy Queer invites readers to consider Jesus through a queer theological imagination without flattening him into a modern identity category.
What Holy Queer Proclaims
Holy Queer proclaims that Jesus belongs to those on the margins.
It proclaims that the life of Jesus disrupts systems of exclusion.
It proclaims that the Christ story has always been closer to queer experience than many churches were willing to admit.
Maybe the question is not whether Jesus was queer.
Maybe the question is why the church became afraid of a Jesus who loved beyond the boundaries.
Critical Acclaim
"This powerful and insightful book exemplifies a deep Black prophetic Christian witness that will touch souls, change minds, and transform the lives of all of us..."
— Cornel West
"Holy Queer is beautiful, haunting, disruptive, prophetic, and healing... fashioned in the brave-as-hell style of bell hooks..."
— Gary Dorrien
Named one of Religion News Service's Top Religion & Spirituality Books of 2023.
A Black queer gospel by Rev. Karmen Michael Smith. A provocative Black queer gospel reimagining faith, body, love, and liberation.