Religion and Intersex: How Theology, Science, Law, and Liturgy Legitimize Medical Violence
In five skillfully curated chapters, Stephanie A. Budwey’s monograph presents six intersex interviewees who discuss surgical, medical, and liturgical erasure of their physical complexities in an attempt to force their bodies to fit male or female sex. Budwey places her interview partners in dialogue with prominent gender theorists and published intersex authors such that the book provides a broad yet concise introduction to literature on intersex and Christianity…
Hidden Histories: An Approach to Sexuality in Womanist Religious Thought
Monique Moultrie’s Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership examines the lives of Black lesbian faith practitioners and leaders. Through ethnographic work, Moultrie catalogs the experiences of a variety of Black lesbians within a multitude of faith traditions. The project centers on these three critical questions: “How are Black Lesbian religious leaders incubators for social justice activism? How does spirituality animate their social activism? And how can these…
Coming Out in the Parish Hall: New York’s Gay Movement and the Church of the Holy Apostles, 1969–70
This essay recovers the history of the church that served as New York City’s first gay community center. The parish hall of the Church of the Holy Apostles, an Episcopal congregation located in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea, supplied meeting space for gay and lesbian organizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, during the movement growth that followed the Stonewall riots of June 1969. This moment’s rise of gay radicalism has been framed as quintessentially secular…
“Unique, Divine, Unrepeatable”: S. F. Makalani-MaHee and the Black Trans Christian Archive
The late Bishop S. F. Makalani-MaHee (1972–2017) was a minister, activist, actor/singer, composer, and spoken word artist. His essays, songs, poetry, plays, and sermons reflect his “Blackpentecostal” and Southern Baptist upbringing as well as his embrace of liberation theology, womanism, and Black feminist thought. This article analyzes his only published collection of poems, Don’t!, as a profound repertoire and theological manifesto with the aid of his autobiographical…
Queer and Trans Studies and the Jewish Question: Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Over the past twenty years, Jewish studies scholars have produced an outpouring of work informed by the insights of queer theory while also creating a small but growing library of scholarship centering queer and trans lives. This essay explores the insights gained from this body of work, considering both the limitations for scholarship in this vein within Jewish studies and the potential for new directions in the field. As this essay demonstrates, dozens of Jewish studies …
Traces Left Behind: Sculpture as Reliquaries for Trans Memorialization
Julian Carter: We have so much we could talk about that it’s a little hard for me to know exactly where to start. I want to hear about what you feel is most important about your piece that is featured on the cover of this issue—“A WOMAN CALLING HERSELF JEANNE THE PUCELLE (THE MAID), LEAVING OFF THE DRESS AND CLOTHING OF THE FEMININE SEX, A THING CONTRARY TO DIVINE LAW AND ABOMINABLE BEFORE GOD, AND FORBIDDEN BY ALL LAWS, WORE CLOTHING AND…