Swarthmore Lecturer Preaches ‘Queer Christ’ To Students
Besides a new “Masturbatory Theater Club“, Swarthmore College can now boast of an innovative approach to teaching Christian theology.
A recent guest lecture at Swarthmore College by a prominent homosexual seminary professor highlighted a growing argument among the so-called queer community that Jesus was bisexual.
In particular, the Rev. Patrick Cheng, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts, told the students that Jesus was a subversive person and God’s way of “queering the world,” so to speak.Cheng said Christ was “always coming out in the gospels” and that “Christ is God coming out.”
“At its heart, Christianity is queer,” Cheng told the students during the Feb. 7 talk. “It’s not just a matter of being tolerant. Christianity is queer at its core.”
Cheng, author of the 2011 book “Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology,” as well as “From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ,” published last year, argues queer theology essentially takes its cues from Jesus, who Cheng described in his speech as the ultimate boundary crosser.
“Queerness is at its heart radical love,” he said.
Cheng, who holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Union Theological Seminary, and also blogs about religion and homosexuality on Huffington Post, emphasized during his speech that feminist and queer theorists such as himself build theology from their own experience.
In fact all of the theology he spoke of in his presentation, according to a student who attended the lecture for The College Fix, seemed to relate directly back to his life as a queer Asian male.
At one point he was asked by an audience member about the role of the Bible. Cheng conceded different types of Christians emphasize scripture, tradition, reason and experience differently, and hinted he values all those things, but said emerging theology prioritizes experience, especially for “marginalized people.”
Cheng’s talk highlights a growing trend among the homosexual community that argues Jesus was bisexual.
In his “Queer Christ” book, Cheng argued there are “seven models” to consider: the Erotic Christ; the Out Christ; the Liberator Christ; the Transgressive Christ; the Self-Loving Christ; the Interconnected Christ; and the Hybrid Christ, according to portions of his book posted on Amazon….
In his piece, Cheng cites the Rev. Nancy Wilson’s argument that Christ was likely bisexual, quoting from her book “Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus and the Bible” that “the most obvious way to see Jesus as a sexual being is to see him as bisexual in orientation, if not also in his actions.”
Of course, this begs the question of what would happen if Cheng took this approach during discussions of Islam’s founder, Mohammed.
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Lehigh University student sues over grade, seeks $1.3 million
Thode, the daughter of Lehigh finance professor Stephen Thode, was attending the Bethlehem school tuition-free in 2009 when she received the poor mark in her fieldwork class. But instead of working to address her failings, she “lawyered up” and demanded a better grade, Hamburg said.
“She has to get through the program. She has to meet the academic standards,” Hamburg said.
Thode, 27, of Nazareth, was enrolled in the College of Education in her second and final year of a master’s in counseling and human services. She needed a B to take the next course of her field work requirement.
Orloski said she would have received that grade but for the zero in classroom participation that she was awarded by her teacher, Amanda Carr. Orloski charged that Carr and Nicholas Ladany — the then-director of the degree program — conspired to hold Thode back because they were unhappy that she’d complained after she and three other students were forced to find a supplemental internship partway through the semester.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-lehigh-university-student-sues-over-grade-20130211,0,937005.story