‘That's not the kind of church we are’: Heteroglossic ambiguity and religious identity in contexts of LGB+ exclusion

Abstract

Focusing on a formal gathering between two Christian organizations with different viewpoints on gender and sexuality, I show how speakers from both groups share narratives in which they enact and disalign from Christian figures of personhood engaged in overt exclusion of LGB + people. Because of their use of religious language these narratives operate at multiple scales, with differing levels of indirectness and various implications for religious identity and institutional values. Additionally, I argue that disalignment can generate moral norms for conduct and that the moral norms generated in this context allow for personal, but not systemic, opposition to LGB + exclusion.