Covenantal relationships and queer bodies

Abstract

Ephesians 5:22–33 imagines Christ’s relationship with the church in what a contemporary perspective might term cis-gendered, heterosexual and patriarchal. For centuries, the language of this scriptural text has informed churches’ concepts of gender and human intimacy, especially rituals of ‘marriage’ and ‘covenantal relationships’. Ephesians is, therefore, important to contend with. This is not only because of its centrality in English-speaking rites of human covenant-making but also its power in ‘declaring’ norms through which it is weaponised against queer bodies and relationships. While aspects of Ephesians need to be rejected—its mistaken view of women’s inferiority to men—other aspects of it may yet be durable. In this chapter, we take a critical lens of majority readings and their ritual expressions and imagine how contemporary expressions and lived experiences of ‘queerness’ and ‘queer’ intimacy expand, rather than oppose, the kind of covenantal discourse which Ephesians entertains. Exploring ‘traditional’, feminist and queer readings of the influential portion of Ephesians, we propose language and understandings of covenantal relationships that arise from the contexts of the queer lived experience. Our reflections suggest that queer experiences offer much to Christian communities by demonstrating models of relationships that challenge hierarchies and binaries.