Theological Talk in a Salsa Bar on Wigan Pier

A Salsa Bar on Wigan Pier: Marcella Althaus-Reid and Sarah Coakley

The late queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid had an unprecedented impact on the field of theology and sexuality. The Queer God opens with the question ‘Where would God be in a salsa bar?’ (2003: 2), and she goes on to say:

There are many sexual dissenters whose theological community is made up of the gathering of those who go to gay bars with rosaries in their pockets, or who make camp chapels in their living rooms simply because there is a cry in their lives, and a theological cry, which refuses to fit life into different compartments (Althaus-Reid, 2003: 3).

For Althaus-Reid, the setting of a salsa bar offers an ideal location within which to challenge ‘T-theology’ – Totalitarian theology (2003: 8). Althaus-Reid criticizes ‘T-theology’ as a theological ideology:

a totalitarian construction of what is considered “the One and Only Theology” which does not admit discussion or challenges from different perspectives, especially in the area of sexual identity and its close relationship with political and racial issues (2003: 172).

T-theology is a privileged theology, far removed from the issues which are faced by quotidian experiences in the lives of many individuals.

This article frames the setting of a salsa bar as a displacement of the traditional settings of theology. The salsa bar represents a victory against the continuous struggle for representation within mainstream locations. It is an entirely queer location as it disturbs the usual settings for theological talk. It is exotic, sensual, a place of sexuality and a place of exile. The concept of location has also featured in the work of Sarah Coakley who discredits Wigan Pier as a location to theologize (2013). Coakley states how theologizing on Wigan Pier allows ‘its own distinctive claims to authority – less institutional, more purely intellectual, in tone. Here is a theological option that uses postmodernism precisely against itself’ (2013: 72).

Yet despite what would appear to be an attractive location for contextual theology, Coakley does not welcome theologizing on Wigan Pier. Her recall to systematic theology is at odds with contextual theology. Coakley’s aim is in critical opposition to Althaus-Reid’s, as she offers three critical concepts of ‘Wigan Pierisms’. First, Coakley denounces the position of postmodern secularism in the production of critical theology and advocates a return to institutional authority within ecclesial hierarchies. For Coakley, it seems that orthodoxy offers certainty, while contextual theologies are seen as unstable. Coakley is sensitively aware of the ‘brilliant intellectual table-turnings of [the] theological strategy’ (2013: 73) of contextual theologies, yet the second ‘Wigan Pierism’ she offers is one which claims that the thrilling ride of contextual theology is mere temporal escapism. Brandy Daniels rightly points out that Coakley’s critique of contextual theologies ‘begs the question of the presumed order/stability of academic/systematic theology’ (2016: 96). Following Daniels and Judith Butler’s work (1990), I state that theology, like gender, is only perceived as stable because of repetition.

Coakley’s third ‘Wigan Pierism’ is marked out by its difference to the first two types:

For here modern philosophy and social science, as such, seem to provide no reason for theological hope [...] except to invite one to remake “God” by almost arbitrary personal preference (2013: 77).

The concern is not unique to systematic theologians such as Coakley, but sexual/contextual theologians have shown similar disquiet. Elizabeth Stuart, writing from a sexuality perspective, warns against contextual theologies which produce a ‘mirror-God simply reflecting our own image’ (2003: 29). Similarly, Jeremy Carrette asks ‘how messy theology can become before it will lose control of its utterances’ (2001: 291). To find a suitable response to such warnings, we note how Althaus-Reid astutely attributes queerness to God, stating how ‘Queerness is something that belongs to God, and people are divinely Queer by grace’ (2003: 34). Contextual theologies do more than provide a mirror God, they widen the scope of God, as I note elsewhere:

Contextual expectations about God are reshaped; God is creatively unbound. Queer theology can therefore move away from God as a fixed identity, and, what emerges is a truly queer God: unfixed, uncapturable and unpredictable ... God is freed from bondage, and is no longer cemented into a rigid theological frame. It allows us to peek through the blinds and binds to offer a wider, more creative scope of God in the lives of individual Christians (Greenough, 2018: 175).

T-Theology versus théologie totale

Linn Tonstad (2015) offers a thorough critique of Coakley, demonstrating how queer theory can successfully reconstruct Trinitarian theology. Tonstad states how Coakley is ‘the favourite feminist of those theologians and analytic philosophers of religion most hostile to or uninterested in gender concerns’ (2015: 98). In God, Sexuality and the Self (2013) Coakley sets out a new method for doing systematic theology, a methodology she calls ‘théologie totale’ (2013: 88). Brandy Daniels (2018) offers a critical examination of this methodology in light of queer theory and temporality. This article offers a critical reading of Coakley alongside the scholarship of Althaus-Reid, thereby troubling her idea of ‘théologie totale’ for six main reasons.

First, Coakley privileges private contemplation and prayer as a practice that ‘sustains the systematic theological enterprise’ (2013: 88). Contemplation, explains Coakley, is ‘the willingness to endure a form of naked dispossession before God’ (2013: 19). Readers of Althaus-Reid will be reminded of the knicker-less lemon vendors that opened Indecent Theology (2000a): ‘can you smell the odours of their sex? Perhaps they do not have underwear while they sit there with lemons and children’ (2000a: 3). The difference between Coakley and Althaus-Reid lies in the question of ‘decency’, and contemplation or prayer is out of the question for the lemon vendor as she strives to make an income for her family. In contrast, Coakley’s contemplation is a private affair, where the naked prayer is somewhat privileged by being afforded the time and comfort to pray, presumably indoors. Moreover, private contemplation for Coakley takes the form of kneeling, as she describes contemplative prayer as ‘the kneeling work that ultimately slays patriarchy at its root’ (2003: 327). Althaus-Reid exposes the politically charged gender power dynamics involved in kneeling, as she states the ‘tight body practice of kneeling gave way to different modes of docility and acceptance of the orders of society and the church’ (2003: 18). Describing the difference between how boys and girls kneeled to confess in Argentina in the 1960s, Althaus-Reid reveals ‘the symbolics not only of kneeling in relation to the priest’s genitalia in the church, but of the position of women in Argentinian society’ (2003: 17).

Second, while disavowing ‘modern science, philosophy or social science’ (2013: 73) as disciplines that engage in theology and are separate to doctrine, what Coakley constructs emerges ironically as a new methodology, ‘théologie totale’, which, despite its correlation to doctrine and traditional theology remains an academic construct in itself. ‘Théologie totale’ is itself a postmodern trope. It is not unnoticeable that the nomenclature ‘théologie totale’ has lexical similarities to Althaus-Reid’s ‘T-theology’ discussed above.

Third, in her recall to systematic theology, Coakley fails to acknowledge the queer (and therefore contextual) methods she adopts. She describes her ‘théologie totale’ as a ‘“foraging raid” into the Christian tradition’ (2013: 144). In similar terms, Judith Halberstam proposes that queer methodologies are scavenging:

a queer methodology is, in a way, a scavenger methodology that uses different methods to collect and produce information on subjects who have been deliberately or accidentally excluded from traditional studies in human behaviour (1998: 13).

‘Foraging’ or ‘scavenging’ are both non-traditional methods which are more suitably aligned to the production of queer theologies.

Fourth, we are reminded that theologians ‘have to do’ with Wigan Pier, ‘rather than Dover Beach’ (2013: 71). Here, Coakley makes reference to a poem by Matthew Arnold (1867) entitled Dover Beach, which pointed to the retreating ‘sea of faith’ compared with Orwell’s text The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), describing the bleak living conditions in the town. Coakley is concerned with the ‘withdrawing tide to the retreat of Christian faith’ (2013: 69) as exemplified in Arnold’s poem, yet her argument fails to engage with contemporary, living, geographic, cultural, demographic and social presentations of the two locations Wigan and Dover. The geographical metaphors used by Coakley possibly reveal the contrast between the tide of faith withdrawing and the experience of class in Britain. The contrast exposes divisions between demography, social class and wealth. Moreover, the tool of literature is used as a justification for her preference for Dover Beach over Wigan Pier, yet paradoxically Coakley does not observe how such literature is a contextual product. Wigan Pier is not a seaside pier. The ‘pier’ in Wigan was the device used to move coal onto canal boats. According to this reading of Coakley, the fact Wigan Pier is not a real pier in the sense of those found in seaside towns means that the theology produced in such settings is also not ‘real’.

Fifth, Coakley states that Wigan Pier ‘represents a postmodern theme park “option” worthy of a quick Sunday excursion off the M6 motorway’ (2013: 73). Yet this idea of theme park theology is not entirely new, as Althaus-Reid used it previously to refer to liberation theology herself, although Coakley does not engage with or reference Althaus-Reid’s idea (2000b). Althaus-Reid says that postcolonial theologies and liberation theologies then become a ‘theme park’ of theology: ‘The fact of being presented as a theme park accentuates the imaginary aspect of the construction of regional theologies. They highlight by their mere native presence the fact that real theologies are elsewhere’ (2000b: 42). In many respects, Coakley affirms what Althaus-Reid suspected, that in theology ‘ultimate authority still lies in the central church structures of the West and in the academic centres of Europe and the United States’ (2000b: 41).

Sixth, the use of the French language for the nomenclature for her trope ‘théologie totale’ in an English language text reveals itself as once removed by its own ambiguous pretence. Coakley states how her use ‘is based, although only loosely, on an analogy to the French Annales Schools’ l’histoire totale’ (2013: 35, fn). I fear the use of French as a foreign language actually implies a move away from the language of the people, and becomes a non-vernacular theological trope. In such terms, the term serves to exclude those who do not speak French.

I am a queer, contextual theologian and a resident of the northern town of Wigan. Each time I point to my own location, I am reminded of the essentiality for writers on gender and sexuality to share information about their identities and locations, in what Nancy Miller terms as ‘the obligatory dance cards of representivity’ (1991: 121). Therefore, the setting of a salsa bar in Wigan provides the ideal context for my theologizing. As an inhabitant of Wigan, I can assert how Wigan is characterized as a northern industrial town, with a strong working-class community – a homely, welcoming town renowned for its pies, pits and pubs – and, for the purpose of this article, metaphorical salsa bars.

‘Having to do with Wigan’ (Coakley, 2013: 17) suggests a form of endurance and non-satisfaction, while the comparison to Dover Beach exposes demographic elitism and raises questions of social mobility and class. Tina Beattie shares a similar concern regarding Coakley’s social elitism, asking: ‘I wonder how a busy Christian with a demanding day job, a young family, and a relative disinterest in theology might fit into this vision of what faith is about?’ (2015: np). While Coakley’s ‘théologie totale’ privileges contemplative prayer, it also exposes how such a method is also privileged.

Having established the location of my setting of a salsa bar in Wigan Pier, exposing some subtle similarities between Althaus-Reid and Coakley’s theological tropes, I now consider the nature of the theological talk which takes place in the salsa bar in Wigan Pier.

Queerly Rupturing Academic Theological Norms

Jennifer L. Koosed’s contribution to the Queer Bible Commentary notes how queer ‘does not fit within the tightly scripted norms of heterosexuality in terms of gender identity and/or practice’ (2006: 338), and this holds true when queering the expected norms of producing theology. Queer ruptures enable a freedom of possibilities in relation to identities and expressions. In terms of the academy, queer creativity has been arguably subjugated in academic writing, which adheres to tightly scripted norms and expectations. Althaus-Reid’s publication of Indecent Theology (2000a) favoured a disruptive and challenging use of language which questions the reader, and indeed, makes them sit up and feel discomfort. This unease was brought about through her contravention of traditional academic expectations, which has a pure-bred lineage and genealogy, particularly in systematic theology. Carrette notes that readers’ responses to Althaus-Reid are ‘either disgust or delight (perhaps always both)’ (2001: 289), describing her style as ‘flirtatious’ with ‘sensual delights’ and ‘indulgent’ (2001: 288). Kwok Pui-Lan states that the use of such language:

subverts the traditional decent rhetoric of theology and may indeed be labelled as “perverse” in some conservative circles. Since sex has the dimension of fun, risk and transgression, sexual theology pays attention to expressions and performances that subvert the status quo (2003: 151).

Clearly such a style, in my reading of Coakley, would prove to be mere escapism on Wigan Pier. Queer theology embraces pluralities and multiplicities of experiences, thereby destabilizing grand narratives within traditional Christian theology.

Judith Butler acknowledges queer’s first and foundational failing when used as an umbrella term to capture a multitude of identities, as queer does ‘not fully describe those it purports to represent’ (1993: 230). Susannah Cornwall agrees that ‘failure, inadequacy and obsolescence are built into queer from the start’ (2011: 15). The Queer Art of Failure (2011) by Jack Halberstam exposes the jocose yet significant lessons to be learnt from taking academic endeavours less seriously. Halberstam sees such work as ‘undisciplined’, noting that

terms like serious and rigorous tend to be code words, in academia as well as in other contexts, for disciplinary correctness; they signal a form of training and learning that confirms what is already known according to approved methods of knowing, but they do not allow for visionary insights or flights of fancy (2011: 6).

Therefore, this article can be seen, as Halberstam notes, as ‘a stroll out of the confines of conventional knowledge’ (2011: 7). Academic disciplinarity has set out expectations of what qualifies as appropriate authorship, what is credible, what is legitimate, and therefore what must be rewarded. Yet breaking the binds of academic order, rigour and approved methods may, according to Halberstam, ‘offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world’ (2011: 2–3). Of course, taking such strolls out of the confines of pre-established disciplinary boundaries has been something those engaging with queer studies are familiar with; yet queer ceases to be queer, in my view, if it repeats the same parameters and frameworks as previous normative scholarship. I hold that queerness is not solely about the content of the work, but also the creative methods used to generate the research, and the innovative style in which it is fashioned. Queer calls for rupture, for deconstruction, for an undoing. Butler’s observation that gender is performed through repetition holds true for both traditional religion and for academic endeavours.

Deryn Guest observes the problematic nature of allegiances, which are ‘homely, comfortable, sure things, providing a sense of identity for what one believes in’ (2012: ix), but also ‘alienating, discomforting, unsure things’ (2012: ix). This article represents my allegiances to my diverse but complementary research areas: Christian theology, queer theology, theologies of sexuality, sexual theologies, identity and spirituality, sociology of religion. While academic disciplines have sought neat areas of categorization, the blending of interdisciplinary work within postmodern scholarship has meant that these categories collide, cohere, complement and conflict. Moreover, this work offers a presentation of queer scholarship in the creative unique blending of academic voices which have pioneered pathways in the academic disciplines aforementioned. So, what would it look like to theologize in a Wigan salsa bar?

As Coakley participates in a ‘foraging raid’ (2013: 144) within the Christian tradition, I invite the reader to indulge in the pleasures of escapism on Wigan Pier as I engage in a critical review of the scholarship of one area of contextual theology: namely sexual/queer theology. The theological talk in a salsa bar on Wigan Pier takes the form of a play script below. The protagonists include some of the major scholars who have contributed to the advances within queer theology, sexual theology and those who work at the intersections of life stories, religious identities and sexualities. The differences and diversities in approach of the various theologians and theorists invoked can be briefly noted here: Andrew Yip (sociology of religion), Marcella Althaus-Reid (sexual and queer theology), Ruard Ganzevoort (practical theology), Susannah Cornwall (sexuality and queer theology) and James Nelson (body theology).

In the spirit of using the language of queer theology and queer theory as creative and playful, I seek to combine the voices of those who have worked in the area of identity, sexuality and religion in unique dialogue. I shall refer to Marcella Althaus-Reid, Andrew Yip, Susannah Cornwall, James Nelson and Ruard Ganzevoort by their first names, fully cognizant that ‘personal names are textual markers of gender identity. In most cultures, male and female names are carefully demarcated’ (Koosed, 2006: 339). Moving away from the binds of academic conventionality, the situation would be largely informal; this strategy therefore disrupts the academic expectation of referring to authors by surname. Disembarking from the traditionally upheld practice of prose in academia, I seek to develop a virtual context to enable these scholars to become dialogue partners, and I invite the reader to join us as we enter a salsa bar, in an imaginary meeting of one another.

The following dialogue is constructed from direct quotations referenced from texts taken from each author’s corpus of work, without any paraphrasing or rephrasing on my part. I present my voice and the stage directions in italics as an effort to colour and combine the quotations referenced from their work. This dialogue creates a new working text with a new focus in response to Coakley, and after the scene, there is a critical commentary on the dialogue. For reasons of positionality, Coakley does not make an appearance at the salsa bar on Wigan Pier. In disassociating herself from belonging to a camp of theology that is contextual, she decries how she is ‘regularly accused of belonging to these alternative camps’ (2013: 71, fn 3). It would therefore be highly irresponsible of me to become one of these accusers and place her in the Wigan Salsa Bar.

The Wigan Salsa Bar

Andrew Yip and Chris Greenough are first to arrive together. Having taken an earlier flight, James Nelson arrives. Once Marcella Althaus-Reid joins them, they greet one another warmly. Chris begins informal introductions and the discussion begins. Ruard Ganzevoort and Susannah Cornwall seem to be running late.

Chris (reaching out to shake hands): Glad you could make it. I’ve been looking forward to us getting together for a long while. (Slightly nervous) So, some introductions ... This is Marcella Althaus-Reid, Professor of Contextual Theology, who has challenged theology through her indecent and queer theologies. To her left is Andrew Yip, a Professor of Sociology, who has written extensively on sexualities and faith identities. To Marcella’s right is James Nelson, Professor of Christian Ethics who has written about the theological issues in human sexuality. We all work around the areas of sexuality and theology.

Andrew: Sex is an explosive topic within our culture. It is often grossly exaggerated and unrealistically presented in the mass media (1997: 77). The sexual abuse charges besetting the Catholic Church [...] are a sad reminder of its ineptitude as an institution in dealing with sexuality issues, as well as its general lack of accountability (2003a: 60). Given the sex and sexuality-negative ethos that infiltrates every vein of the Churches’ power structure, the resistance to change in this area is stronger than most people realize (2003a: 60-61).

James: (almost hesitant as he searches for the correct words) A shift is happening, from understanding the church as asexual to understanding it as a sexual community (1988: 126).

Chris: This shift seems to be taking forever! Sexuality seems to be deemed one of the measures by which people judge the inclusivity of churches and religions.

Andrew: (with calm assertion): Many consider Christianity rather ill-informed about issues relating to sex and sexuality (1997: 89). That homosexuality is a contentious issue within the Christian community is undeniable. However, on the academic level, the discourse is dominated almost exclusively by theologians, evidenced by the burgeoning corpus of literature in this area (2003b: 138).

Marcella raises an eyebrow.

Andrew: (unperturbed, continues): Sociologically, however, the interplay between sexuality and spirituality seems a relatively unexplored terrain. Within the sociology of sexuality in general, or queer studies in particular, the religious and spiritual dimension is either mentioned en passant or neglected all together (2003b: 138).

Marcella: (nodding in agreement) Sexuality is a complex issue and so is theology. The continuous exchange and dialogue that sexual theories, the sociology of sexual stories, new political thought and postmodernism provide us with, together with the hermeneutical circle of suspicion, are crucial elements necessary for theological reflection (2000a: 9).

James: Sexuality thus expresses God’s intention that we find our authentic humanness in relationship [...] Sexuality, we must also say, is intrinsic to our relationship with God (1979: 18) ...

Marcella: (interjecting) People’s intimacy has historically been a space for localizing belief systems (2001: 246).

James: (continuing his train of thought) A shift is occurring, from understanding sexuality as either incidental to or detrimental to the experience of God, to understanding sexuality as intrinsic to divine-human experience (1988: 116).

Andrew: (pausing before speaking) Having felt rejected by the Church because of their sexuality, [some] engage in what I call the politics of counter-rejection through which they develop arguments against the stigmatizer, namely the Church. This form of politics of counter-rejection might lead to the actual participation in political activism (1999: 49).

Susannah arrives with Ruard, after picking him up from the airport and a delay in his arrival time. They order drinks from the bar and return to join the others with bags of crisps, nuts and pots of olives.

Chris: This is Susannah Cornwall, a prominent scholar in the field whose research explores sex, gender and sexuality. And Professor Ruard Ganzevoort, a practical theologian. We’re just talking about individuals who experience that they don’t fit within their religion because of their sexual practices.

Susannah: (removing her scarf and taking a seat) Subjective testimony and personal experiences – including sexual experiences – are legitimate sources of theological reflection. It is sometimes necessary to make theology ‘indecent’ in order to reveal what is naturalized hegemony (2010: 22).

Chris: Ruard, do you agree that such sexual stories should be part of narrative research?

Ruard: Others see narrative research as a way to allow marginalized stories and voices to be heard, firmly placing their practical theological endeavour in the tradition of liberation theology (2011a: 221). [This] empowers marginalized voices by creating an audience for their stories (2011a: 214).

Andrew: The documentation of lived experiences is important on many levels. Politically, it signposts the presence and visible existence of LGBTQI people, even in spaces where their existence is most contested and oppressed. Sociologically, it shows how marginalized people understand and manage experiences of oppression, and transcend power structures such as heteronormativity (2010: 48–49).

Ruard: Narrative approaches have given voice to marginalized groups. Scholars with a feminist, postcolonial, queer, or otherwise critical perspective often work with narrative approaches to highlight the value of local stories that challenge the dominant logic of an oppressive society (2011b: 218).

Susannah: (making quotation marks in the air with her fingers) ‘Queer theologies’ not only involve positively reclaiming queer identities, but also implicate narrowly heteronormative theologies as the ones which are really hideous and grotesque (2010: 209).

Chris: Yes! Sexual storytelling as a theological method isn’t restricted to non-heterosexual groups. All groups who have felt shame or guilt about their sexual practices, because they rub against dominant Christian understandings of sex, should be part of this agenda.

Susannah: (with pronounced emphasis on some of her words) We might understand queering, activities which make or enact queerness, as having a necessary grounding in the biographies of those who have resisted or queried heteronormative theologies because of their own sexualities, but as not necessarily being limited either to sexual issues or to utilization only by those who identify as homosexual (2011: 23).

Marcella: Let us remember here that the Genderfucker might also be straight’ (2003: 68). We also have our own stories, significant enough for us and our communities to add. That is, stories to relate by means of making alliances between Queer-biographical theology and church traditions (2003: 10).

Andrew: What is significant is that, in contemporary society, social processes such as detraditionalization and individualization increasingly empower the self over the institution as the basis of such self-directed hermeneutics that constitutes identity construction. Thus, the empirical ‘what is’ (based on personal experience) is prioritized over ‘what ought to be’ (2005: 59). While theology often engages with ‘what ought to be’, empirical work grapples with ‘what is’, amidst the messiness of life as lived (2010: 45).

Ruard: In one way or another human stories are connected with stories of and about God (2011b: 214). Religious stories are characterized by motives of hope, trust and openness (1998: 280–81).

Chris: (reaches for a handful of crisps)

Marcella (taking a quick sip from her glass): The theological method of sharing sexual stories requires that everybody engage with an honesty in a theology which takes distance from sexual ideologies (2004b: 105).

Chris: Such deep, entrenched, sanctified ideologies are hard to sweat out! The image of God in traditional theology is one which still remains hostile to many people, who do not see themselves made in that image.

James: Yet healing that wounded God image is complex (1988: 45). Jesus as the Christ has been desexualized by most Christian piety throughout the ages (1988: 105).

Marcella: The dressing of Jesus may be critical here, because in reality the only thing that we know about Jesus is that he has been dressed up as a heterosexual man by a heterosexual theology (2000a: 112).

Andrew: (nodding emphatically) A good example of this is their attempt to ‘queer’ Christ by focusing on his humanity, emphasizing his role as champion of victims of social injustice and a radical political activist who transgressed traditional social order and power structure. Gay bashing becomes Christ bashing (2005: 57).

Chris: Just how is Christ currently dressed in Christology?

Marcella: As far as we are concerned, Jesus may have been a transvestite, a butch lesbian, or a gay or heterosexual person (2000a: 114).

Andrew: Jesus Christ, therefore, is primarily believed to be an enabler who identified with the marginalized people. He gave a voice to people who are otherwise silenced by religious authority structures (2003b: 148).

Chris: God’s sexuality has been overlooked for too long in theology. Marcella, you’d be open to lifting God’s skirt, wouldn’t you?

Marcella: (grins) If we were going to use a metaphor inspired by the New Testament, we would say that theology is the art of going to bed with God while avoiding full sex. After all, this is the first thing that the Christian faith tells us: that the beginning of the historical relation between God incarnated and humanity is to be found in the metaphor of going to bed with God for the first (unique) time, and without a condom. Such was Mary’s experience (2000a: 23).

Susannah: If the meaning assigned to ‘Body of Christ’ can stretch to encompass bodies which queer or subvert what bodies are held to mean in a heterosexual, male-and-female theological anthropology, can the meanings of binary human sex as invested by mainstream theology also be stretched to encompass different truths about humanity? (2010: 97).

Andrew: For a start, the Churches need to learn to overcome their ‘sex-phobia’ in general (2003a: 62–63). In its place, the Churches need a ‘sexual theology’ that emphasizes lived experiences as the starting point to illuminate our understanding of scriptures and tradition (2003a: 63).

Chris: And this sexual theology often comes from the lives of the people who are sitting in the pews, or indeed absent from the pews because they do not fit.

Andrew: While the churches rest on their laurels out of a fear of change, society in general, the religious landscape specifically, and indeed Christians themselves, are changing rather rapidly (2003a: 61). However, the Christian community outside of the Church hierarchy, namely the local congregation, is considered to be more understanding and open to change (1998: 49).

Susannah: Indeed a queer theologian who continues to identify as Christian is likely to present more of a challenge to the Church – and conceivably, to make the Church more uncomfortable – than one who comes to identify as a complete outsider and can perhaps be more easily dismissed as a heretic or backslider (2011: 194).

Andrew: Of course, not everyone wants to learn about these seemingly disturbing issues. To learn is to be humbled, and some people are not capable of that (1997: 2).

Susannah: One of the strengths of queer political activism has lain in its insistence that it is not to be fobbed-off, that people who have been excluded from signification on various grounds deserve to be heard (2010: 227).

Chris: So, engaging with such lives is an act of practical theology.

Ruard: (pausing at first) Practical theologians show a preference for qualitative, biographical research (2011b: 220). Practical theologians often do not aim for general, objective knowledge and absolute, but develop local, particular, and in a certain sense subjective understanding (2011b: 215).

The DJ plays a song, and dedicates it to the theologians in the corner. ‘Suddenly remembering Tina Turner, the Latin American theologian ironically replied: ‘You are asking me what love has to do with this?’ (Althaus-Reid and Isherwood, 2004a: 1).

Andrew: Falling madly in love is just a rosy start, learning to share life together is the real test (1997: 29).

The scholars start to get up and put their coats on and begin to leave.

Marcella (loudly): Should the country song ‘Stand by your man’ become the twenty-first century classic hymn to be sung at Sunday worship? The repetitive, monotonous lines express in such a simple yet powerful way the reality of repetitive, monotonous relations from the heterosexual matrix of sexual imagination (2003: 55). In Argentina we sing tangos, which are also hard stories of perpetual displacement worth considering in this gathering of new sources of theology [...] Can tangos be another source for a Queer Theology? (2003: 20).

Andrew: (shaking hands before hailing a taxi) Thanks for listening! (1997: 139).

All dramatis personae exit the Wigan salsa bar.

Critical Commentary on Contextuality

Queer theologies are demarcated by their act of resistance to traditional, orthodox, systematic theology. The scene above unveils the following features of Christian discourse on matters of sexuality in the following ways: (i) it exposes the cumulative impact of negative rhetoric from church organizations on the lives of Christians who attempt to reconcile their sexuality with their faith; (ii) it highlights how engagement with sexuality and faith is imperative to practical theology; (iii) it reveals how individualization of faith trumps institutional forms of faith; (iv) it demonstrates how contextual theology is truly an act of contemplation, offering a liminal space which the human and the divine can meet.

Coakley states that ‘the task of theology is always in motion (in via), always undoing and redoing itself’ (2013: 18), and offers a deeper vision through commitment to prayer and contemplation, as noted earlier on in this article. Prayer and contemplation are often solitary acts, where the human focus aims to be on the divine. In a similar metaphor of motion, Althaus-Reid describes the act of theology as a ‘caminata’ (2004: 12). The caminata Althaus-Reid suggests ‘is one of structural denunciation’ (2004: 12). It is a walk with the community and locality. Unlike Coakley’s adoption of a foreign language to describe her method, Althaus-Reid authentically returns to her native tongue. For Althaus-Reid, this method of doing theology does not engage with ‘a hierarchy of knowledge’ (2004: 14) and it breaks down barriers between ‘professional theologians’ and ‘people’s theology’ (2004: 14). In this context, Coakley can be attributed to the former group, while Althaus-Reid advocates for the latter group.

Extrapolating the common themes between the work of Coakley and Althaus-Reid begs the question as to whether systematic and contextual theology can come together. If they are imaged as opposites rather than complementary, the queer reading undertaken in this article serves to find potholes in the ‘via’ of ‘théologie totale’. Arguably, doing theology in response to particular contexts often makes points of reference to systematic theology, even if the task at hand is to subvert or undo systematic theologies. Queer theology continues to challenge what Althaus-Reid termed T-theology.

Yet, in a surprise twist, Coakley engages with queer theology in what may appear to some as a surprising reading of the Christian belief in the eschaton, Coakley herself notes how the use of queer theory reveals the impossibility of gender and sexuality on earth, as they ‘have their final goal in the future: they create the future by enacting its possibilities’ (Coakley, 2000: 64). Coakley cites Butler, noting how grief and desire are ‘the remaining marks of a body longing for transformation into the divine’ (2000: 64). My premise here is how systematic and contextual theologies are not binary opposites, but interwoven and inextricably connected.

Conclusion

The theological endeavour of this article has been to mobilize sexual contextual theology in response to Coakley, highlighting how such a theology is a driving force for faith in the lives of those on the margins. The juxtaposition of the scholarship of Althaus-Reid alongside that of Coakley unveils a similarity in their use of theological tropes. For all her emphasis on a recall to systematic theology and a disavowal of contextual theology, Coakley’s ‘théologie totale’ might be uncomfortable in the setting of a salsa bar on Wigan Pier, as she notes,

God “in the field” is found by lifting the decks on the grimy ills of “Wigan Pier” without getting stuck there, not by fantasizing about a postmodern theme park “Wigan Pier” of unreal nostalgia (2013: 85; her emphasis).

Coakley’s emphasis, ‘without getting stuck there’, reveals the temporality of theology in a contextual setting. Yet a recall to systematic theology does not point to a stable, static theology with firm foundations. A queer reading of systematic theology reveals how its order, rationale and reasoning are only considered stable entities because they have continued to be repeated. There are clear correlations between the undoing of gender in Butlerian terms, and the undoing of theology. Rupturing such repetitions has been one of the catalysts for queer theology. Yet in terms of producing queer theology, the theological insights of this article have struck out further: to use queer theory to offer a queering of normative academic modes of writing. Queer theology’s situation within contextual theology demands to be recognized as a powerful agent and tool. To a large extent, this article has offered a different way for queer theology to operate by subverting hegemonic expectations within the academy.