Focus on the (Chosen) Family

Queer folk long ago developed the idea of “chosen family”: the idea, that is, that the people who are your actual family are the ones who behave like it, supporting you, loving you, bearing you up, holding you accountable when you need it, whether or not those folks are your biological relations.

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This post is my contribution to QueerTheology.com’sQueer Synchroblog 2013. This year’s theme is “Queer Creation.” Links to all of the other excellent entries are at the bottom of this post. After reading mine, go forth and read more!

In order to get to what the theme “queer creation” evokes in my mind, I need to discuss a point of view about as far removed from my own as I can imagine: the views of extremely conservative and patriarchal evangelical Christianity.

My interest in those views came into clearer focus a few days ago, when I read Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. It is a compelling but sobering read. In it, Joyce sketches out a portrait of possibly the most theologically and socially conservative Christians in the United States. The organizing commitment that unites the various groups in this wing…

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Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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