Wednesday, October 20, 2021 — 5
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
In the Year of Our Lord 2014, I celebrated
my golden birthday, turning 13 on March 13.
And sure enough, the Pisces male, middle
school version of myself was as emotionally
charged, creatively centered and idiosyncrati-
cally idealistic as I am now. Yet, a corrosive
force, turning what was supposed to be a gold-
plated pubescent period into a rusty era of
remorse, stemmed from the staggering real-
ization I had that year as an increasing aware-
ness of my social identities became ironed into
my subconscious. The mainstream media’s
fervent fixation on Ferguson with the mur-
der of Mike Brown propelled this force into
motion, prompting a prominent newfound
perception of my own racialized identity as a
Black male in (what I would soon learn to be)
the settler-colonial police-state of America.
But if this glass-shattering, innocence-appre-
hending awakening wasn’t enough to fuel the
anxious adolescent fire inside of me, the sub-
sequent suspicion, scrutinization and specula-
tion of my sexuality in the seventh grade was.
It was then that homophobia and anti-Black
racism alchemized in antagonistic fashion,
manifesting as a menacing mixture that med-
dled not only in my middle-school years but
beyond.
The traumas troubling my life trickle down
to the marginalization of these two identities,
which are exacerbated by my working-class
status and deepened by the damning forces
of capital which control our culture. When
I was 15, phrases like “faggot” and “queer”
were hurled at me on the regular — all before
I had figured out what my sexuality even was.
Of course, this “figuring out” and my capac-
ity to inquire about my own queerness was
complicated by my mutable relationship with
religion, having grown up in a conservative
Black Christian church. Reconciling my faith
with my ever-changing sexuality has been,
undeniably, the most challenging tribulation
of my life. When your devotion to the divine
is dampened by dominating ideologies of the
time, how else do you ensure that your modes
of metaphysical and spiritual sustainment
aren’t stifled?
Perhaps it’s my predetermined Pisces char-
acteristics perpetuating my compulsivity. But
in light of these painful predicaments, I’ve
become fascinated with learning about dif-
ferent faiths and the rich complexities and
insights that various worldly religions have to
offer and seek to answer. If there is a silver lin-
ing to my suffering, then it’s to be found in the
drive I’ve developed over time to discern the
real from the fake, fact from fiction and truth
from non-truth.
The interplay of sexuality and religion is
severely complicated by notions of gender. In
pre-patriarchal society, the divine was depict-
ed as feminine, with the female God being an
ancillary function of the Paleolithic and Neo-
lithic era. In “The Great Cosmic Mother,” radi-
cal eco-feminist author Monica Sjöö describes
ancient societies around the globe as advanced
matrifocal cultures built on equality and kin-
ship as opposed to dominance. In this period
of time — from the Dahomey and Ashanti
peoples of West Afrika all the way to the indig-
enous Pueblo peoples of America — the pri-
macy of the mother was an essential element.
By the Bronze Age, however, Sjöö asserts that
the Great Mother was demoted in status as the
“remains of a revolution shift from dominant
female gods of Neolithic village to organizing
and controlling male gods of the literate city.”
Many of us are familiar with the famous Sume-
rian religious text, “The Epic of Gilgamesh”
an epic that influenced religious myths and
narratives within the Hebrew Bible. Sjöö dis-
tinguishes both this piece of Mesopotamian
mythology and the Old Testament scriptures
as a reactionary response to the Goddess-
centered religions preceding it. She claims that
much like the patriarchy, the emerging male-
centered religions effectively “split material
production from spiritual experience, science
from magic, medicine from herbal knowledge
and psychic/seasonal environment, sexual-
ity from the sacred, art from craft, astronomy
from astrology, language from poetry — and
to place the resultant ‘specialized,’ abstracted,
and mechanistic knowledge in the hands of a
privilege male elite organized into professions,
hierarchies, and classes.” This split and sepa-
ration has been a sustaining characteristic in
all major worldly religions, including but not
limited to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths,
Hinduism and Buddhism.
Obviously, one does not have to look very
far or very meticulously to see this unfortu-
nate reality. The holy texts of today are tainted
with a patriarchal positioning that has subju-
gated women around the world for thousands
of years. And this construction of an oppres-
sive male-centered society has had damning
effects for sexuality as well. Sjöö ascribes the
Hebrew Bible’s heterosexism as “an attack on
all shamanistic ecstatic religion, against the
bisexual image, theory, and practice of the
Great Goddess.” Her elucidation reminds us
that holy texts don’t exist in vacuums, and are
drastically informed and curated by the mate-
rial and historical conditions of the era. Yet,
these are the same texts which play a profound
role in the lives of many around the globe.
How do we harmonize the holy aspects with
the harmful? Is there still a Truth to be found
in these faiths? Is there a Devil or divinity to be
found within the details?
Attempts to answer these questions lie not
only in the hands of hermeneutics (biblical
interpretation) but in our conception of divine
revelation. Biblical scripture, for instance, has
the capacity to be interpreted from a literal,
moral, allegorical and anagogical perspec-
tive. These differing angles of approach pro-
duce an infinity of interpretations, allowing
us to arrive at an infinity of outcomes. This
becomes even more complicated when we
consider the dialectics of distanciation espe-
cially in relation to the written word. In this
literary context, distanciation refers to the
concept that the writer of any text is “blind” to
not only the readers of their work but also the
context that their work will be read in. They
are “blind” in the sense that the separation of
the writer and reader, as well as the reader and
the world of the text, fundamentally blurs the
writer’s intention and reader’s interpretation.
This blindness allows for what French her-
meneutic philosopher Paul Ricœur — a key
crafter of the distanciation concept — refers
to as a “surplus of meaning” to be amassed.
As you can imagine, this article alone would
evoke an infinitude in understanding, com-
prehension and interpretation for anyone
who stumbles across it. We can only imagine,
then, the immensity as to which any one indi-
vidual relates to a religious text. In writing, we
emulate the enigmatic enterprise of our own
Creator to effectively communicate the com-
plexities of existence without exterminating
the free will of creation.
In this same vein, divine revelation (the
reveal of a celestial Creator to creation) carries
with it an abundance of perspectives as well,
which can complicate our relation to religion
even further. Notably, Swiss theologian Karl
Barth’s notion of a conception of revelation in
which he argues that while having the capac-
ity to express the revelation of the divine,
human constructions, such as scripture and
the written word, cannot be a divine revela-
tion in itself due to the fact they are mediated
through fallible mortal concepts such as lan-
guage. Yet, nonetheless, Barth believed there
is Truth to be found in what he labeled as the
“Subject Reality of Revelation.’ Like him, I,
too, believe wholeheartedly in the outstanding
capacity of our Creator to use us as vessels of
disclosure and divulgence. After all, through
the arts and writing, especially, we often find
ourselves able to communicate to and con-
struct knowledge within others that we might
not even be privy to ourselves. As Black theolo-
gian James Cone clarifies in his seminal text,
“Black Theology and Black Power,” “the Work
of Spirit is not always a conscious activity on
the part of the persons through whom God
works.” In the Biblical scriptures there exists
a labyrinthine nexus of Truth and knowledge
to be ascertained above that which the origi-
nal writers even intended. Moreover, many
of these Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious
myths and narratives are what queer theolo-
gian Elizabeth Stuart refers to as “parodies”
of “extended repetition with critical distance,
improvising on a theme [with] non-identical
repetition, freshly embodied on new context.”
Much like Marxist theory espouses the notion
of retaining the old within that which is new,
we can still discover the liberatory essence of
the Cosmic Mother and the matriarchal man-
tras of pre-patriarchal society in our current
holy text.
Systematic theologian Patrick Cheng
and feminist and queer theologian Marcella
Althaus-Reid both do exactly this by putting
forth theologies of liberation focused around
this feat. In Cheng’s book “Radical Love” he
advances a doctrine of queer theology stem-
ming from classical doctrines around (the
Biblical) God. He claims that the doctrine of
the Trinity, which posits God as the beget-
ter (The Father), the begotten (the Son) and
the procession (of the Holy Spirit), which
through radical love establishes a dissolution
of self and other, of knowing and unknow-
ing and of flesh and spirit. This dissolving of
dualisms gives rise to a God that “transcends
gender,” encompassing supra masculinity
and super femininity. In this vein, God is a
relational God, not operating outside, but
with/in us. Along these lines, Cheng char-
acterizes Jesus Christ as the embodiment of
this radical love, exemplified through the
crossing of the divine into the human realm
and then back into the divine realm. Addi-
tionally, Cheng queers Christ in a multitude
of ways. Beyond the androgynous imagery
Christ is commonly depicted with, Cheng
cites his transgression of societal norms,
homosocial relationships with disciples (and
loving relationship with Lazarus) and bio-
logical intersexuality (Mary’s immaculate
conception being devoid of a Y chromosome
makes Christ chromosomally female while
phenotypically male) as evidence. He goes
on to liken the scapegoating of Christ in the
crucifixion with the scapegoating of queer
people in society.
Reid elaborates on this queer-coded Christ
even further. To Althaus-Reid, queerness is
not an “oddity” or even a sexual/gender iden-
tity, but instead a zone of possibility, poten-
tiality and the essence of a denied reality. In
her seminal text, “Indecent Theology” she
inserts the notion of a “Bi/Christ” which
refers not to sexual relations but ways of relat-
ing and thinking beyond binary. Over time,
my own bisexuality has granted me the for-
tune of experiencing the world outside of the
gay-straight dichotomy, which has, in turn,
prompted me to perceive of reality along non-
dualistic lines. Christ, while deliberately walk-
ing in community with proclaimed “sinners
and prostitutes” did so with an unfettered
fluidity eschewing false dichotomies. The Vir-
gin Mary also experiences an “indecenting”
or “queering” under liberation theology. No
longer a representation of repressive Marian-
ismo and anti-sexual celibacy rhetoric, Mary
instead in Althaus-Reid’s eyes undergoes a
divinization through “spiritual clitoridecto-
my” and becomes a bearer (through the bear-
ing of the Begotten son) of radical love. These
interpretations, from a hermeneutic lens, as
divinity scholar Hannah Hofheinz describes,
are creative interpretations which “create
new liberative possibili[ities] by embodying
knowledge as praxis within communities of
struggle.”
Furthermore, these queerings are impor-
tant because they allow us to deconstruct the
compulsory heterosexuality that has been
so vigorously confounded into our culture.
Althaus-Reid describes “heterosexuality” as
originating within a pathological patriarchy
operating through coercion and violence.
Sjöö describes rigid heterosexuality as a men-
tal and physical limitation, stating that “it is
as if on all levels of our being we are split in
half — locked into one half, and forbidden the
other … split against ourselves and against the
self in the other by this moralistic opposition
of natural polarities in the very depths of our
souls.” She claims that this causes war and
alienation as cisheteropatriarchy on behalf
of capital continues to construct barriers and
boundaries. If we have any chance of moving
forward in our liberation efforts, we need to
be cognizant of these constructions and the
ways in which organized, institutionalized
religion in their capitalistic efforts attempt to
exacerbate them.
Today, radical interpretations of Biblical
scriptures are becoming increasingly com-
mon as more and more people begin to recon-
cile religion with their sexuality.* “The Queer
Bible Commentary,” for example, is an 800+
page work providing an interpretative queer
lens of every book in the Bible, and is just one of
the many works seeking to unravel and resolve
what Cheng describes as the typical “texts of
terror” which supposedly condemn queer
peoples to an eschatological fate of fire and
eternal damnation. Beyond Biblical scripture,
we should be interested in locating the righ-
teousness in revelation of all worldly religions
and holy texts. However, we should do so with
a discernment between historic literalism
and mythic-symbolic interpretation, which
Sjöö points out is often difficult to distinguish.
Nonetheless, what we derive from the divine
texts of our time is mostly ours for the mak-
ing and taking. In the context of the Trinity,
the queering Christ is a queering of God, as
our Creator. If this is hard for you to re-imag-
ine, consider how much we’ve constructed a
mainstream conception of God as male, het-
erosexual and historically white. Indeed, as
Althaus-Reid states, “To say ‘God the Faggot’
is to claim not only a sexuality which has been
marginalised and ridiculed, but a different
epistemology and also a challenge to positively
appropriate a word which has been used with
contempt to humiliate people.”
In the Year of Our Lord 2021, I still struggle
to make this reclamation without reservation.
Yet, in the midst of my misfortune, I remind
myself that this struggle, much like the reli-
gious myths of the Cosmic Goddesses of
Creation, is a collective, universal and transfor-
mative one. And along those same liberatory
lines, I know now, seven years after my Golden
birthday, that if all else fails, I can rely on what
I learned in Sunday School seven years prior;
the Golden rule — a principle permeating in
nearly all worldly religions — reigns supreme:
“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in
this; ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’
– Galatians 5:14.”
Further Reading:
“The Great Cosmic Mother” by Monica
Sjöö
“Indecent Theology” by Marcella Althaus-
Reid
“Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer
Theology” by Patrick Cheng
“Black Theology and Black Power” by
James Cone
“Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for
Theological Reflection” by James B. Nelson
“The Queer Bible Commentary” by Deryn
Guest
“Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western
Body” by Gerard Loughlin
According to the regularly updated Uni-
versity of Michigan COVID-19 Data, 96% of
students and 88% of the employees at the Uni-
versity have been fully vaccinated, as of Oct. 12.
These seem like pretty solid numbers, and they
are, considering the University’s arguably inad-
equate COVID-19 health guidelines like the no
mask mandate at football games and the deci-
sion to end COVID-19 classroom notifications.
However, if we were to examine the vaccina-
tion rates across all of Washtenaw County, only
65.3% of residents are fully vaccinated. At the
state level, only 58.7% of the population is fully
vaccinated. Across the country, as of now, only
57% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated.
For reference, that’s roughly 70 million people
in the United States still unvaccinated, giving
plenty of opportunity for the COVID-19 virus
and its deadly variants to infect and transmit
throughout the population.
Non-vaccination seems like a very compla-
cent response to the adverse outcomes of the
pandemic, but it’s not surprising or new that
individuals are hesitant to receive the vaccine.
While many shame this view as a politically
charged, ill-informed opinion, vaccine hesitan-
cy is an understandable symptom of public dis-
trust in scientific institutions and government
intensified by chronic inaccessibility to quality
and transparent health care.
As defined by the World Health Orga-
nization, vaccine hesitancy is the “delayed
acceptance or refusal of the vaccine despite
availability to service,” and this has been a
recurring sentiment from the invention of
the first smallpox vaccine to child immuni-
zation today. Amid the panic and anxiety of
a pandemic, it is easy to overlook the strides
public health has made in infectious disease
control through vaccinations. Still, we must
remember, it is because of vaccines that we
have eradicated 14 diseases otherwise dan-
gerously prevalent in the United States, as
identified by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
Though the Food and Drug Administration’s
approval for booster shots and pediatric doses
of the COVID-19 vaccine are underway, hesi-
tancy persists as a threat to immunization for
extremely susceptible populations — from the
5 to 11-year-old population who may receive the
vaccine for the first time to high-risk individuals
who may benefit from boosters. Vaccination is
important, and in the age of the unpredictable
coronavirus and rampant misinformation, it’s
even more important to know why.
Successful vaccination campaigns have led
to disease eradication because of something
called herd immunity. Herd immunity is a
theoretical threshold of fidelity wherein a per-
centage of the population becomes immune to
disease, significantly reducing the chance of
disease spread. This percentage ranges from
70% to 90%, depending on the infectiousness
of the disease. Herd immunity results in pro-
tection for the whole population, or “herd,”
even for those who are not or cannot become
immune, and it is achieved by either natural
infection or vaccines. While natural infection
will induce immunity once we actually get
infected to the point of illness and complica-
tions, vaccines create preventative immunity
without making us terribly sick.
Vaccines work to stimulate the immune
system by mimicking infection. They intro-
duce weakened or dead antigens — the things
that cause disease — to the body to induce an
immune response and produce antibodies.
Antibodies are molecules that remember spe-
cific antigens and fight them, so we don’t get
sick. In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, acti-
vation of this immune response relies on the
injection of viral genetic material which serves
as a blueprint for our cells to make harmless
viral proteins. By safely exposing us to the very
thing that causes disease in a harmless, yet nec-
essary dose, vaccines are essential in prevent-
ing us from severe disease and death.
God the Faggot
Why vaccinate?
Design by Tessa Voytovich
KARIS CLARK
MiC Columnist
EASHETA SHAH
MiC Columnist
Read more at MichiganDaily.com