Desire: Queering in the Black Church

Abstract

In chapter 1, I wrote about Baldwin’s prolonged religious crisis being shaped by the puritanical influences that demonizes black bodies and black sexuality. In chapter 2, I talked about how the effect of puritanism forces Baldwin to signify on black religion and the black church as an act of reclaiming black moral authority via the language of the blues. In chapter 3, I developed the concept that blues bodies are exiled by prevailing narratives of liberation that rely on theology that overlooks the puritanical influences shaping concepts of feminine and masculine identity. In chapter 4, I developed a concept that further exposes the puritanical “essence” of Christianity and the problems it poses for the exodic masculine orientation of black liberation theology. In chapter 5, I suggested that the shift from exodus to exile and Baldwin’s contributions to black religion and black theology actually queers conversion in the black experience. I concluded the previous chapter with a bold queer signifying of salvation through which I identify a blues Christology that emerges from Baldwin’s life and death.