To boldly endorse queer theology in the church takes courage. To patiently explain such theology takes wisdom. Joseph N. Goh is doing both of those things — in Malaysia.
Here’s how Goh describes his blog, Queer Eye for God’s World:
An online presence that provides space for me to share my spiritual reflections from queer theological perspectives as a Malaysian in Malaysia. I invite you to walk with me in this journey of faith.
Queer theology, Goh says, involves acknowledging “that queer folk – be they gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex, bisexual, queer questioning or however they wish to define themselves – contain bodies of divine wisdom. All of God’s creation, without exception, bears traces of God.”
So many Christians would happily affirm that second sentence if it stood alone in the abstract, but can’t accept it when someone like Goh speaks it following that first sentence. That’s a problem. That means missing out on those “traces of God” and rejecting the divine wisdom that comes embodied in the people they reject.
Joseph Goh and I are Christians who write blogs, yet his world is half a world away from mine. When it’s daytime for me, it’s night for him. When it’s winter for me, it’s summer for him.* Just the fact of Goh and his blog, then, challenges me to remember that my place is only one place, and the view from here is not the view from everywhere. The fact of his blog also encourages me — reminding me that I’m part of a world-wide web as well as a world-wide Web.
But it’s not just the existence of his blog that challenges and encourages me — it’s also the substance of it. Goh is an academic theologian — he studied systematic theology with the Jesuits at Santa Clara and he’s pursuing his doctorate back home in Malaysia — and he sometimes reads like an academic theologian. But he’s also an ordained minister (in the North American Catholic Ecumenical Church) and often adopts a less scholarly, more pastoral tone.
You can see both of those modes present in his latest post, “Inclusivity as another Name for God,” which is adapted from a recent sermon he preached on one of my favorite biblical texts — Acts 10 and 11, the story of Peter and Cornelius. The conclusion of that sermon encapsulates a main theme of Queer Eye for God’s World, and demonstrates why I admire Goh’s blog:
To be an inclusive Christian first means that we take the risk to tell our stories to those who are willing to listen. By sharing our stories with them, we include them in our lives. Our aim is not to convince or convert people, but to share stories of our lives and our faith with others. Secondly, to be inclusive Christians means that we watch out for ways in which we exclude others. Sometimes, we are not even aware that we exclude people, even our fellow LGBTQ brothers and sisters. Lastly, to be an inclusive Christian means that we try to be more inclusive not towards LGBTQ persons, but towards people who are excluded and marginalised in any other way, including ethnicity, religion, physical appearance and status. As Christians, we are called to inclusivity because each of us is made in the image and likeness of God. Each of us is a follower of Jesus Christ. We are called to inclusivity because “inclusivity” is another name of God. Through Baptism, we make the decision for our lives to proclaim and bear witness to the fact that we are children of God and followers of Jesus Christ. In this way, we take on God’s name as our own. And in taking on God’s name, we are called to reflect God by following Jesus and becoming inclusive in our attitude towards others.
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* Or not, actually. Thx Ben. Malaysia is just north of the equator. Oops.
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