This Week in Barrel Scraping: The Libruls Are Queering GOD
The University of Chicago is offering an intro course on queer scholarship on Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and boy are conservatives being normal about it.
by Alyssa Steinsiek
Pure Flix is gonna be real sour about this one…
Wednesday afternoon, the Daily Caller—a conservative news and opinions outlet founded by far-right pundit Tucker Carlson infamous for publishing false stories and refusing to correct them after the fact—put out a story regarding a new course being offered in University of Chicago’s 2023–2024 autumn term: Queering God.
Oh, boy.
The class is being taught by professor Olivia Bustion. The description of the class on U of C’s course catalog suggests it poses some hefty questions about how the big three Abrahamic religions can be contextualized by modern queer artists and activists, and apparently you don’t even need experience in academic theology or queer theory to engage.
That sounds interesting! Let’s check out all the super normal reactions to a class that hasn’t even been taught yet…
screenshot from the Daily Caller
Alright, well. Wishful thinking on my part, I guess.
My favorite part of Joseph’s very calm and collected response is when he insists that capital G God is genderless, then immediately refers to him using gendered pronouns. Daily Caller even manages a capital H Him reverence during when quoting Flores, so you know the Lord must take His pronouns very seriously.
Which is nuts because I thought there weren’t any pronouns in the bible. Shows what I know!
Who else is weighing in?
screenshot from Twitter
That’s right, only the most normal and well-adjusted QAnon conspiracy theorists are upset about this course. If believing in a man completely unmoored from reality is wrong, I just don’t want to be right.
Fox News reported on the Daily Caller’s reporting to remind everybody that UChicago tried to teach a class about whiteness last year, until everybody lost their minds and a young white college boy shed enough great big crocodile tears on the news that the course was postponed. Free speech for me but not for thee, I guess.
This whole thing is pretty goofy, but predictably so. A bunch of people who are very invested in the heterosexuality of good Christian folks take offense at the idea that queer people might fit into their religion anywhere, as if there isn’t queer church leadership in Christian communities all across America.
I’m sure they see a course listing like ‘Queering God’ and immediately assume some lefty lunatic is trying to denigrate their religion. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Professor Olivia Bustion holds a Master of Divinity degree, and is working on her PhD in Theology. She’s employed by UChicago Divinity School, ranked number one in the field of the study of religion by the National Research Council. She’s been published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
I think it’s safe to say that Olivia Bustion is devoted to theological studies, and I can only assume she has all the best intentions in exploring the relationship between the queer community and religion.
When so much of the virulent anti-queer movement are evangelist Christians spouting quotes straight from the bad guys in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s easy to forget that we have queer siblings in every faith-based movement across the world. Some of them are forced to deny themselves to their peers and communities; some are open about their identities, and find themselves excluded from a place that feels like home.
Whatever conservative bible thumpers tell us, we know that we’re welcome wherever we go, and that includes religious spaces and discussions about a higher power and our connection to them as queer people.