Queer Women and Religious Individualism PDF Download

Author: Melissa M. Wilcox
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253353513
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Melissa M. Wilcox explores the complex spiritual lives of queer women in the Los Angeles area. She takes the reader on a tour of a colorful array of religious and secular groups that serve as spiritual resources for these women--from the well-known Metropolitan Community Churches to Wiccan covens, from the Gay and Lesbian Sierrans to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Arguing that these women's stories are exemplary cases of postmodern patterns of religious identity, belief, and practice, Wilcox offers a nuanced analysis of contemporary Western spirituality and selfhood, and a detailed exploration of the history of queer religious organizing in Los Angeles. Queer Women and Religious Individualism is important reading for scholars in religious studies, sociology, women's studies, and LGBT studies.

Author: Melissa M. Wilcox
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442275685
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Queer Religiosities is the first comprehensive, comparative, and globally focused introduction to queer and transgender studies in religion. Addressing sophisticated topics in clear and accessible language, award-winning teacher and scholar Melissa M. Wilcox brings her engaging lecture style into conversation with the work of scholars around the globe to welcome students into these rapidly growing fields. Following an introduction to key concepts in religious studies, queer studies, and transgender studies and an overview of the history of transgender and queer studies in religion, thematic chapters address the topics of stories, conversations, practices, identities, communities, and politics and power. This inherently comparative organization helps readers to understand the details and complexities of religions, genders, and sexualities as they are lived out around the world. Additional resources include study questions, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, a glossary, an annotated filmography, and a selected bibliography to encourage further study.

Author: Melissa M. Wilcox
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253221161
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Melissa M. Wilcox explores the complex spiritual lives of queer women in the Los Angeles area. She takes the reader on a tour of a colorful array of religious and secular groups that serve as spiritual resources for these women—from the well-known Metropolitan Community Churches to Wiccan covens, from the Gay and Lesbian Sierrans to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Arguing that these women's stories are exemplary cases of postmodern patterns of religious identity, belief, and practice, Wilcox offers a nuanced analysis of contemporary Western spirituality and selfhood, and a detailed exploration of the history of queer religious organizing in Los Angeles. Queer Women and Religious Individualism is important reading for scholars in religious studies, sociology, women's studies, and LGBT studies.

Author: Melissa M. Wilcox
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479820369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
"Modern-day badass drag queen superhero nuns"--"It was like this asteroid belt": the origins and growth of the sisters -- "We are nuns, silly!": serious parody as activism -- "A sacred, powerful woman": complicating gender -- "Sister outsiders": navigating whiteness -- "A secular nun": serious parody and the sacred -- New world order? -- Blooper reel -- Studying the sisters

Author: Melissa M. Wilcox
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479847402
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
An engaging look into the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, queer activists devoted to social justice The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence make up an unlikely order of nuns. Self-described as “twenty-first century queer nuns,” the Sisters began in 1979 when three bored gay men donned retired Roman Catholic nuns’ habits and went for a stroll through San Francisco’s gay Castro district. The stunned and delighted responses they received prompted these already-seasoned activists to consider whether the habits might have some use in social justice work, and within a year they had constituted the new order. Today, with more than 83 houses on four different continents, the Sisters offer health outreach, support, and, at times, protest on behalf of queer communities. In Queer Nuns, Melissa M. Wilcox offers new insights into the role the Sisters play across queer culture and the religious landscape. The Sisters both spoof nuns and argue quite seriously that they are nuns, adopting an innovative approach the author refers to as serious parody. Like any performance, serious parody can either challenge or reinforce existing power dynamics, and it often accomplishes both simultaneously. The book demonstrates that, through the use of this strategy, the Sisters are able to offer an effective, flexible, and noteworthy approach to community-based activism. Serious parody ultimately has broader applications beyond its use by the Sisters. Wilcox argues that serious parody offers potential uses and challenges in the efforts of activist groups to work within communities that are opposed and oppressed by culturally significant traditions and organizations – as is the case with queer communities and the Roman Catholic Church. This book opens the door to a new world of religion and social activism, one which could be adapted to a range of political movements, individual inclinations, and community settings.

Author: Matthew Vines
Publisher: Convergent
ISBN: 1601425163
Category : Christian gays
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Reinterpretations of key Bible texts related to sexual orientation, written by a Harvard student, present an accessible case for a modern Christian conservative acceptance of sexual diversity.

Author: Melissa M. Wilcox
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253216199
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
For many Christians, homosexuality is an issue that is often presented as a matter of "us (straight) Christians" versus "them," or worse, as an isolated behavior that is a questions of behavior somehow not an intrinsic part of the identities of gays and lesbians. Discussion of the issue has become so heated that it threatens to create a yawning chasm within several mainline denominations. This book examines this conflict from the perspective of a group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Christians. It explores the life histories of these individuals and their current beliefs, cultural backgrounds, and community influences to determine what helped each forge an identity as both gay and Christian.

Author: Adriaan van Klinken
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271085606
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Popular narratives cite religion as the driving force behind homophobia in Africa, portraying Christianity and LGBT expression as incompatible. Without denying Christianity’s contribution to the stigma, discrimination, and exclusion of same-sex-attracted and gender-variant people on the continent, Adriaan van Klinken presents an alternative narrative, foregrounding the ways in which religion also appears as a critical site of LGBT activism. Taking up the notion of “arts of resistance,” Kenyan, Christian, Queer presents four case studies of grassroots LGBT activism through artistic and creative expressions—including the literary and cultural work of Binyavanga Wainaina, the “Same Love” music video produced by gay gospel musician George Barasa, the Stories of Our Lives anthology project, and the LGBT-affirming Cosmopolitan Affirming Church. Through these case studies, Van Klinken demonstrates how Kenyan traditions, black African identities, and Christian beliefs and practices are being navigated, appropriated, and transformed in order to allow for queer Kenyan Christian imaginations. Transdisciplinary in scope and poignantly intimate in tone, Kenyan, Christian, Queer opens up critical avenues for rethinking the nature and future of the relationship between Christianity and queer activism in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.

Author: Catherine Wessinger
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479809462
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
An introduction to the study of women in diverse religious cultures While women have made gains in equality over the past two centuries, equality for women in many religious traditions remains contested throughout the world. In the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints women are not ordained as priests. In areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan under Taliban occupation girls and women students and their teachers risk their lives to go to school. And in Sri Lanka, fully ordained Buddhist nuns are denied the government identity cards that recognize them as citizens. Is it possible to create families, societies, and religions in which women and men are equal? And if so, what are the factors that promote equality? Theory of Women in Religions offers an economic model to shed light on the forces that have impacted the respective statuses of women and men from the earliest developmental stages of society through the present day. Catherine Wessinger integrates data and theories from anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history, gender studies, and psychology into a concise history of religions introduction to the complex relationships between gender and religion. She argues that socio-economic factors that support specific gender roles, in conjunction with religious norms and ideals, have created a gendered division of labor that both directly and indirectly reinforces gender inequality. Yet she also highlights how as the socio-economic situation is changing religion is being utilized to support the transition toward women’s equality, noting the ways in which many religious representations of gender change over time.

Author: Diego Garcia Rodriguez
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100092890X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Gender, Sexuality and Islam in Contemporary Indonesia explores gender, sexuality and religion in contemporary Indonesia. It is the first book-length analysis of the experiences of queer Muslims in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country and the world’s fourth most populous nation, as well as the first monograph exploring the voices of their allies vis-à-vis the role of Indonesian progressive Islam and Islam Nusantara. An ethnographic study based on semi-structured in-depth interviews, participant observation and media analysis, the book analyses how queer Indonesian Muslims come to, and navigate, their gender, sexual and religious subjectivities and subject positions, beliefs and practices. This is done by paying attention to their interactions with family, education, media, and peers. It also investigates the emergence of queer religious geographies through the case of an annual camp leading to alternative discussions on gender, sexuality, and religion impacting processes of subjectivity formation among participants. The author draws on recent scholarship that attends to ‘agency’ not merely as a synonym for resistance but also as a modality of action to examine the rise of queer religious agentic systems through the everyday practices of queer Muslims. Finally, the book explores the background of the allies of queer Muslims who have come to develop queer-inclusive strategies from within Islam by considering the processes that shaped their advocacy and the role of Islam Nusantara. The book reflects on the critical role of Islam for gender and sexual minorities in Indonesia. Presenting the voices, practices and activism of present-day Indonesians to explore the position of Islam as a source of emotional strength, guidance, and social support, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Religious Studies, Asian Studies and Southeast Asian Studies, Islamic Studies and Queer Anthropology.