“Everything Queer, Nothing Radical?”

Abstract

Many theologians have recently argued that Christianity is inherently queer, in part on the basis of traditions of gender fluidity in Christianity. This essay argues that such symbolic recovery projects often ignore the way the symbolics of sexual difference in Christianity are not threatened by gender fluidity, but in fact depend on such fluidity. Thus other strategies for queering Christianity are needed. Through a reworking of the doctrine of original sin, the essay sketches a sodomitical theology that chooses solidarity among sinners over contras-tive distinction between self and other. Identification with the Sodomite, the archetypal sinner, can avoid re-producing the distinction between the bad and the good that generates condemnation of queerness in many Christian contexts in the first place. At the same time, gender differences in looking backward or recovering Christian histories must be taken into account.