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Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores how religion and desire are co-constituted by members of an ecumenical LGBTQIA+ church in the Philippines, 'queering' mainstream conservative understandings and embodiments of traditional theology and scriptures by imagining Jesus Christ as a queer icon and subject of desire.

Paper Abstract:

There is arguably no form of sexuality considered more antithetical to religiosity than that which falls under the ‘queer’ umbrella, i.e. expressions and identities beyond cisgender and/or heterosexual norms. Yet, LGBTQIA+ people co-constituting these spheres undoubtedly exist and thrive across various social and cultural contexts. This paper follows members of an LGBTQIA+ affirming ecumenical Christian church based in Metro Manila, Philippines and offers an ethnographic exploration of how interlocutors actively ‘queer’ their understandings and embodiments of Christian theology, embellishing religious canon while maintaining a core that is unmistakeably Christian. In particular, this paper analyses the congregation’s imagining of Jesus Christ as a queer icon and subject of desire; thus, the spiritual missions and practices of Hearth’s congregants not only acknowledge but playfully celebrate queer desire and sexuality as mutually inclusive to religiosity, foregrounding the tenet that God loves them because of their LGBT+ identities, not in spite of them. Furthermore, these logics disrupt popular understandings of the Church as elevated above and separate from the messy physicality of being human, resolving the slippages between spiritual and physical, sacred and profane. The Philippines itself presents a particularly rich context to examine these negotiations within, as LGBTQIA+ Filipinos occupy a precarious space where their sexualities are branded deviant – even un-Filipino – by governing bodies and the public at large due to the colonially instituted roots of conservative Catholicism while queer identity simultaneously holds historical and contemporary significance plainly evident in popular and indigenous culture.