Talking Dirty about the Saints: Storytelling and the Politics of Desire

Abstract

The author’s most recent book, Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints, was published by the Pilgrim Press, which is part of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a liberal Protestant denomination. The book came under a fair measure of close scrutiny by the UCC Ministry Interpreters, and parts of it were asked to be removed or rewritten. This article examines some of the ‘offensive’ or problematic passages in the text, and it raises questions about ‘the intersections of a sexualized gay discourse and a normative religious one’. The author looks at concepts of pollution or disorder as these might apply to the writing of an eroticized theology, and why it is that writing about the sacred in a sexual or homoerotic way, particularly in a Christian context, so often is perceived as a source of theological angst or ecclesial panic.