Queer Christianities: A Conference at The New School

Both queerness and Christianity challenge received notions of the good and the natural. While these terms are often depicted as mutually exclusive, queer Christians have been quietly constructing new identities, articulating new understandings of faith, and creating new religious communities. With speakers from across the country, the conference focuses on the history and lived experience, religious practice and theology of three apparently incompatible modes of queer Christian life: Celibacies, Matrimonies, and Promiscuities.

Friday, March 23, 4:30-8:30

Panel of Undergraduate and Alumnae/i Research
The New School, 66 West 12th Street, Room A510
Karen Bray (Eugene Lang College ’05, Drew University), Respondent

Here, Queer, Christian
First Presbyterian Church of New York, 12 West 12th Street, Great Hall
Jon Walton (Senior Pastor, First Presbyterian Church), Queer in the Church: Opening Up the Closet
Winnie Varghese (Priest in Charge, Church of St. Mark in the Bowery), Respondent

Saturday, March 24, 10:00-5:30
Theresa Lang Center, 55 West 13th St, 2nd Floor

Keynote: Victor Anderson (Vanderbilt University)
Sex was Good until it became Natural, and then it became Moral

Panel I: Celibacies
David Hunter (University of Kentucky), On the Emergence of Celibacy as an Ideal Among the Earliest Christians
Anthony Petro (New York University), Contemporary Christians and Celibate Desire
Sister Carol Bernice (Community of the Holy Spirit), How Queer is “Celibate”?
Kathleen Talvacchia (New York University), Moderator

Panel II: Matrimonies
William E. Smith III (Indiana University), Christian Monogamy, What’s That?
Heather White (New College of Florida), Gay Rites and Religious Rights: New York City’s First Same-Sex Marriage Controversy
Teresa Delgado (Iona College), Marriage Beyond Procreativity: Solidarity Between LGBTIQ Catholics and their Catholic Heterosexual Allies
Mark Larrimore (Eugene Lang College), Moderator

Panel III: Promiscuities
Michael Pettinger (Eugene Lang College), A Queer Theology of Sin
Elijah Nealy (Columbia University), Transgender Realities, Theologies and Mutualities
Boon Lin Ngeo (Boston University). Blessed are Those Who are Horny: Rethinking Christian Sexual Ethics
Karen Bray (Drew University), Moderator

Closing Reflection
Kathryn Lofton (Yale University)

For registration and further details, see http://www.newschool.edu/lang/queer-christianities-conference/