Do Not Despise the Discipline of the Almighty: God as Leather Daddy and Reading Job through Althaus-Reid

Joseph Rogers

doi:10.3390/rel8100214

Abstract

The feminist queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid (1952–2009) wrote about what it meant to be an “indecent theologian” and claimed that sexual stories from the margins of society can help transform theological issues. What can “indecent theology” mean for the problem of evil specifically as it is addressed in the book of Job? This article will use Althaus-Reid’s creative methodology, which engages in a dialogue between theology, sexual theory, politics, and personal narrative. This methodology will be applied to the hermeneutic of suffering in the book of Job. I propose that this engagement of theodicy through a queer lens and more specifically within the category of gay sadomasochism in particular, while not definitively addressing the broader problem of evil, can be a creative lens to reinterpret the book of Job. By queering Job, I offer an alternative understanding of the problem of suffering and evil that can find a space within contextual theology. The article concludes with a remark on how such a reading can be used as a liberating text for the queer community.

Highlights

Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics, Marcella Althaus-Reid suggests that all theology “is a sexual ideology performed in a sacralising pattern” (Althaus-Reid 2000, p. 87)
Althaus-Reid would add that this reflection is indecent. What she means by this is that a Systematic Theology that supports hegemonic constructs of sexual coercion or capitalistic or military power within the major institutions of society are labeled as “decent.” Those theologies that undermine, subvert, and critically question these thought systems Althaus-Reid would be termed as
“indecent.” This would ask the practical theologian to engage in indecent readings of scripture to both subvert and reorganize the relationships found within its pages

Summary

Introduction

Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics, Marcella Althaus-Reid suggests that all theology “is a sexual ideology performed in a sacralising pattern” (Althaus-Reid 2000, p. 87). Because all theology operates with a sexual ideology rooted in accepted forms of oppression that cause violence for marginalized people, the task of a robust queer theology is to embrace its status as an outsider, and to re-contextualize a theology of liberation that includes erotic desire from a subversive loci that disrupts popular orthodoxies. This breaks boundaries that allow theology to be located in experience, one that even allows for “doing theology in corsetlaced boots” Job using what Althaus-Reid would lovingly call “displacement techniques” (Althaus-Reid 2003, p. 3)

Queer Reading

Sadomasochism

An Indecent Reading of Job

Conclusions