Althaus-Reid called herself as “indecent, Latina, bisexual theologian”. She challenged the sexual oppression behind traditional Christian concepts of decency and introduces theology rooted in the context of people whose sexual freedom has been limited. To her God must be liberated from the closet of sex-negative Christian thought and embraces God’s role in the lives of LGBTQ people.
“Our task and our joy is to find or simply recognize God sitting amongst us, at any time, in any gay bar or in the home of a camp friend who decorates her living room as a chapel and doesn’t leave her rosary at home when going to a salsa bar.” wrote her in her book “The Queer God”
Her theology could be summed up as follows: “An embodied spirituality must also be sexual. Otherwise, salvation is not completely attainable. Marcella thus guides us towards a spirituality which does not force us to sever our sexuality. On the contrary, she leads us to honor it as a path to holiness. Her indecent theology is a truly queer theology that has opened the doors of the closets of traditions and prejudices and prophetically calls us out to walk towards liberation.”
She argued that all theology is sexual; it is just a matter if the theologian/thinker is willing to "out" or make clear the sexual nature of her or his theology -- that is to speak clearly about what underlies one's assumptions and theology -- or if, as so many Heteronormative Systematic Theologians have done, if the sexual in the theology will be cloaked in so-called decency. None of us can be free, until we are all free, including from the oppression due to sexual tendency.
Marcella Althaus-Reid (May 11, 1952 – Feb. 20, 2009) theologian, was baptized as a Roman Catholic and grew up in Buenos Aires.
https://qspirit.net/marcella-althaus-reid-queer-theology/
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