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Paper short abstract

In this paper, I ethnographically explore how members of an ecumenical LGBTQ+-affirming church based in Metropolitan Manila, Philippines, mediate marginality and privilege by curating their identities as Christian, queer, metropolitan Filipinos oscillating between the fringe and the mainstream.

Paper long abstract

Amidst the rise of right-wing populism across the globe, the identifications of ‘being queer’ and ‘being religious’ have seemingly never been more at odds; queer theory conceptualises sexuality/gender identity as being neither binary nor static, while many long-held religious ideologies tout heterosexuality and binarised gender as divinely imparted truths from which deviation is fundamentally ‘unnatural’. Yet, the queer faithful undoubtedly exist amidst this conceptual gulf despite their marginality. In this paper, I explore this supposed gulf by drawing on ethnographic research conducted amongst an ecumenical LGBTQ+-affirming congregation based in Metropolitan Manila, Philippines. While ‘progressive’ queer movements (particularly those which originate from Euro-American metropoles) often set themselves in opposition to ‘traditional’ religiosity to distance itself from the latter’s conservative elements, I argue that congregants here account for the interplay of seemingly contradictory ideas and influences as LGBTQ+ urbanites living amidst colonially-rooted Christian ideology embedded within contemporary Filipino national identity and culture through careful everyday identity curation. Such practices enable congregants to make sense of and mediate the marginality and privilege that shape their day-to-day lives as well as how they envision idealised forms of selfhood and community as religious, queer, metropolitan Filipinos constantly oscillating between the fringe and the mainstream. Thus, I demonstrate how congregants dispute reductive narratives of ubiquitous queer suffering under religion and homophobic discourses that dismiss LGBTQ+ identities as antithetical to Christianity or a Western import and, thus, un-Filipino despite the historical and contemporary significance of local queerness evident throughout popular and pre-colonial culture.