Is the Christian mystical tradition a relic of another time, shaped by celibates for celibates, unable to engage meaningfully with people of our time who embrace their corporeality and sexuality as crucial aspects of their journey towards union with God? This book reflects in serious theological depth and detail on the spiritual and sexual journeys of gay men of mature and committed Christian faith, employing the Christian mystical tradition as the lens and the interlocutor in this process. This study examines the major themes and stages of the mystical tradition as outlined by Evelyn Underhill, but also including more recent work by Ruth Burrows, Thomas Merton and Constance Fitzgerald. Using methods of qualitative research, it then considers the texts of in-depth interviews conducted with men, most of whom are theologians or spiritual leaders with a deep Catholic faith, and all of whom are openly, self-affirmingly gay. Finally, it employs Ricoeur’s hermeneutical theory to engage in a creative theological conversation between the traditional mystical stages and themes and these men’s lives, as described in their interviews. This is a unique study that brings together ancient spirituality with contemporary lived religion. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of religious studies, theology, Christian mysticism and spirituality, and queer studies. It will be of particular interest to those teach spiritual direction and to all who seek new ways to engage with the spiritual lives of LGBTIQ+ people.

Can the Christian mystical tradition inform the spiritual lives of contemporary people, and be enriched by their experience? Is it a relic of another time, shaped by celibates for celibates, unable to engage meaningfully with people of our time who embrace their corporeality and sexuality as crucial aspects of their journey towards union with God?I address these questions through a sustained conversation between two unlikely partners: the classical mystical tradition and the lives of contemporary gay, Christian men. Firstly, I examine the themes and stages of the mystical tradition as outlined by Evelyn Underhill, but also including more recent work by Ruth Burrows, Thomas Merton and Constance Fitzgerald. Using methods of qualitative research, I then consider the texts of interviews I conducted with eight gay men, who spoke in depth about their spirituality and sexuality. Finally, drawing on Ricoeur's hermeneutical theory, I engage in a creative theological conversation between the traditional mystical stages and themes and these men's lives. Through this, I seek to recover and reframe the mystical path as emerging from and speaking to lives that are whole, erotic and queer. I therefore re-imagine each stage of the mystical journey, grounding it in life and in the body. I elucidate the depth, wisdom and holiness that can and do emerge from the hopes, joys and struggles of these gay men of faith, and I explore how the language of mysticism can inform, and be transformed by, their incarnate spiritual journeys. Through this theological conversation I show that the Christian mystical tradition has the capacity for profound renewal, and that its wisdom can inspire and guide, while also being critiqued and enriched by, contemporary queer people. Such renewal, wisdom and inspiration are sorely needed in a world, and a church, in which body and soul, sex and spirit, earth and heaven have been so tragically split apart.

In 1994, Michael Bernard Kelly recorded six video lectures for the Erospirit Research Institute. The Erotic Contemplative charted a spirituality for gay and lesbian Christians grounded in the contemplative, mystical traditions of the church. Dr Joseph Kramer, who commissioned the lectures, writes: "His powerful words ... seemed to come straight from his heart and right into mine. I told Michael that he was offering transformative guidance, like Joseph Campbell did in his Hero's Journey. 'You have described the Mystic's Journey for Gay and Lesbian Christians.' " The lectures, originally released in 1995, were digitised and re-released in 2020. Now this transcription of all the lectures is published for the first time, and includes a study guide to the series prepared by Michael Kelly. "The Erotic Contemplative" is the most powerful and insightful study of Gay Spirituality that I know of. I have watched 'The Road from Emmaus' lecture three times, and still find new riches!" - John J. McNeill, PhD. Author of The Church and the Homosexual.

Queer God de Amor explores the mystery of God and the relationship between divine and human persons. It does so by turning to the sixteenth-century writings of John of the Cross on mystical union with God and the metaphor of sexual relationship that he uses to describe this union. Juan’s mystical theology, which highlights the notion of God as lover and God’s erotic-like relationship with human persons, provides a fitting source for rethinking the Christian doctrine of God, in John’s own words, as “un no sé qué,” “an I know not what.” In critical conversations with contemporary queer theologies, it retrieves from John a preferential option for human sexuality as an experience in daily life that is rich with possibilities for re-sourcing and imagining the Christian doctrine of God. Consistent with other liberating perspectives, it outs God from heteronormative closets and restores human sexuality as a resource for theology. This outing of divine queerness—that is, the ineffability of divine life—helps to align reflections on the mystery of God with the faith experiences of queer Catholics. By engaging Juan de la Cruz through queer Latinx eyes, Miguel Díaz continues the objective of this series to disrupt the cartography of theology latinamente.

The author explores a mystic Christian spirituality and describes numerous practical steps that gay men and women can take in order to connect with and express their innate spiritual nature.

Throughout the history of Christianity, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (“LGBT” or“queer”) people have been condemned as unrepentant sinners who are in dire need of God’s saving grace. As a result of this condemnation, LGBT people have been subjected to great spiritual, emotional and physical abuse and violence. This issue takes on a particular urgency in light of the ongoing harassment and bullying of LGBT young people by their classmates. Cheng argues that people need to be liberated from the traditional legal model of thinking about sin and grace as a violation of divine and natural laws in which grace is understood as the strength to refrain from violating such laws. Rather Cheng proposes a Christological model based upon the theologies of Irenaeus, Bonaventure and Barth, in which sin and grace are defined in terms of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. This book serves as a useful resource for all people who struggle to make sense of the traditional Christian doctrines of sin and grace in the context of the 21st century.

As a freshman in college, Rachel Murr found herself trying to decide which campus social group to join: the gay and lesbian advocacy group or the campus Christian fellowship. She knew it couldn't be both. For the next fifteen years she held onto the belief that she couldn't be both gay and Christian. When the pain involved in trying not to be lesbian called for a change in theology, she came out to her evangelical church. Conflict ensued. Unnatural is a collection of stories--not only of the harm religiously-inspired negative messages about homosexuality inflict, but also of redemption. Rachel uses her own story as well as personal interviews with ten other queer women and one female-to-male transgender man to tell how they were judged, lectured, kicked out of homes and families, subjected to reparative therapies, and even assaulted. Some faced homelessness, depression, suicide attempts, and pervasive shame. Still, they fought to keep their faith alive. Each demonstrated an Unnatural ability to forgive, love, believe, advocate, and heal.

There are those who go to gay bars and salsa clubs with rosaries in their pockets, and who make camp chapels of their living rooms. Others enter churches with love letters hidden in their bags, because their need for God and their need for love refuse to fit into different compartments. But what goodness and righteousness can prevail if you are in love with someone whom you are ecclesiastically not supposed to love? Where is God in a salsa bar? The Queer God introduces a new theology from the margins of sexual deviance and economic exclusion. Its chapters on Bisexual Theology, Sadean holiness, gay worship in Brazil and Queer sainthood mark the search for a different face of God - the Queer God who challenges the oppressive powers of heterosexual orthodoxy, whiteness and global capitalism. Inspired by the transgressive spaces of Latin American spirituality, where the experiences of slum children merge with Queer interpretations of grace and holiness, The Queer God seeks to liberate God from the closet of traditional Christian thought, and to embrace God's part in the lives of gays, lesbians and the poor. Only a theology that dares to be radical can show us the presence of God in our times. The Queer God creates a concept of holiness that overcomes sexual and colonial prejudices and shows how Queer Theology is ultimately the search for God's own deliverance. Using Liberation Theology and Queer Theory, it exposes the sexual roots that underlie all theology, and takes the search for God to new depths of social and sexual exclusion.

The four great English mystics of the fourteenth century—Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich and the anonymous author of “The Cloud of Unknowing”—though in doctrine as in time they are closely related to one another, yet exhibit in their surviving works strongly marked and deeply interesting diversities of temperament. Rolle, the romantic and impassioned hermit; his great successor, that nameless contemplative, acute psychologist, and humorous critic of manners, who wrote “The Cloud of Unknowing” and its companion works; Hilton, the gentle and spiritual Canon of Throgmorton; and Julian, the exquisitely human yet profoundly meditative anchoress, whose “Revelations of Divine Love” are perhaps the finest flower of English religious literature—these form a singularly picturesque group in the history of European mysticism. Aeterna Press

In Circuits of the Sacred Carlos Ulises Decena examines transnational black Latinx Caribbean immigrant queer life and spirit. Decena models what he calls a faggotology—the erotic in the divine as found in the disreputable and the excessive—as foundational to queer black critical and expressive praxis of the future. Drawing on theoretical analysis, memoir, creative writing, and ethnography of Santería/Lucumí in Santo Domingo, Havana, and New Jersey, Decena moves between languages, locations, pronouns, and genres to map the itineraries of blackness as a “circuit,” a multipronged and multisensorial field. A feminist pilgrimage and extended conversation with the dead, Decena’s study is a provocative work that transforms the academic monograph into a gathering of stories, theoretical innovation, and expressive praxis to channel voices, ancestors, deities, theorists, artists, and spirits from the vantage point of radical feminism and queer-of-color thinking.