Abstract
In this chapter, Jo Henderson-Merrygold discusses the historic significance of the church as arbiter of morality and decency, influencing the creation and perpetuation of what Michel Foucault calls epistemes and discourses: the network of beliefs, ideologies, social practices, and power relations that shape people’s understanding of their world. Henderson-Merrygold considers Christian heteronormative discourses of gender and sexuality, which prescribe the recognition of others’ humanity in light of their gender identities and sexual preferences. Building on Gayatri Spivak’s work on epistemic violence and Judith Butler’s notion of “undoing” humanity, she explores how these Christian discourses render queer lives and experiences unintelligible and not human, and the implications of this for the lived experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans(gender) (LGBT) people. Specifically, she argues that these discourses may sustain certain forms of epistemic violence against LGBT people, denying recognition to their full humanity and thereby rendering them increasingly marginalized and vulnerable.
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Notes
- 1.
While “queer” has historically been used as a term of abuse and denigration, it has also been reclaimed by LGBT people as a term of self-description and self-articulation. As an academic discipline, queer theory emerged from lesbian and gay studies, and focuses predominantly on studies of sexuality. While trans(gender) studies emerged at a similar time to queer theory, it has taken longer to establish and has a complex relationship with its sibling discipline due to the different focus of each. While distinctions can rightly be made between the two disciplines, in this chapter, “queer” is used to cover analysis attentive to diversity of sex, gender, and sexuality outside the heteronormative paradigm. Throughout this chapter, I use “queer” as a synonymous and inclusive term to describe LGBT people, lives, and experiences. “Queer” also functions as a descriptor of the unquantifiable aspect of LGBT bodies and identities which mark an individual as outside the dominant norms of sexuality and gender.
- 2.
See Hornsby (2016, p. 2) for further discussion of the social construction and ubiquity of heteronormativity.
- 3.
The Bishops’ Guidelines comprise a number of Church of England publications and statements. Issues in Human Sexuality (The House of Bishops 1991) was later referenced and updated in the 2003 publication, Some Issues in Human Sexuality: A Guide to the Debate (House of Bishops 2003), and most recently in Working Group on Human Sexuality (House of Bishops 2013, especially pp. 28–36), which also covers intervening debates held at the church Synod. Further clarifications were made in a pastoral statement by the Church of England (2005) to reiterate the need for sexual abstinence within civil partnerships. While there have been significant developments between each publication, the linguistic framework is consistent throughout, with the language of “homosexual genital acts” and “homophilia” remaining unchanged (see e.g. House of Bishops 1991, p. 28; 2013, pp. 33, 36).
- 4.
Designed for self-proclaimed evangelical Christians, the statement is a response to the perceived rise of post-Christian discourses which have “embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being” (Coalition for Biblical Sexuality n.d.). The statement reasserts a biblically inspired, heteronormative, and complementarian model of gender and sexuality, and at the time of its launch had been endorsed by over 150 evangelical Christian leaders. Complementarianism is described by Katelyn Beaty as “The belief that men and women have distinct, God-given roles in the church and home” (2017). The statement was released during the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, on 29 August 2017.
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Henderson-Merrygold, J. (2018). Queer(y)ing the Epistemic Violence of Christian Gender Discourses. In: Blyth, C., Colgan, E., Edwards, K. (eds) Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion. Religion and Radicalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72685-4_6
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