‘ “Because They’re Worth It!” Making Room for Female Students and Thealogy in Higher Education Contexts’ Feminist Theology 17 (1) pp. 43-71

This paper is the result of teaching a thealogy module to a class of Honours level undergraduates. Critical reflection upon this experience and the students’ evaluations of the module, raises intriguing questions concerning the value of women-only space, how one can establish a feminist classroom within a British Higher Education context, writing educational learning outcomes for a thealogy module which might include the hope of personal transformation, and ultimately reflection upon my role as an educator at the University of Birmingham

‘Encountering Beasts: Lesbian Biblical Hermeneutics on the Road’ Conclilium: International Journal for Theology 1 (2008) pp. 105-119.

This paper evaluates motivations that produced the lesbian biblical hermeneutics project and how it could be understood in terms of reconciliation. The first section of this paper thus discusses how the first act of reconciliation could be seen in terms of the contribution lesbian biblical hermeneutics might make for those who identify as lesbian and who struggle to square this with their allegiances to scriptures that are often deployed to condemn their choices.

However some deploy the Bible to disseminate anti-lesbian rhetoric. At the foundation of religious positional statements on homosexuality is usually a small clutch of texts on which an entire debate hinges:  they are made to speak – across the centuries and geographical divides — of God’s unequivocal condemnation.  In this context, a voice for lesbian biblical interpretation is vital, not only for resisting those texts of terror and their use in the contemporary world, but also in reclaiming scriptural stories in ways that demonstrate how the Bible is not a one-directional text.

These two things – reconciliation in terms of healing oneself from internalized homonegativity and reconciliation in terms of engaging with those who would use the Bible to condemn – do not happen in isolation, but are interlocked; and it is difficult for one to proceed without the other. Moreover, while the reconciliation envisaged for the former appears to be able to proceed relatively smoothly, reconciliation in terms of the latter venture has been much more of a bumpy road, littered with beasts and spectres of paedophiles. This paper addresses the issues that have arisen when taking lesbian biblical hermeneutics ‘on the road’ and attempt to unpack some of the resistance to reconciliation that I have met.

‘Looking Lesbian at the Bathing Bathsheba’ Biblical Interpretation 16 (3) (2008) pp. 227-263

The variety of approaches to interpreting scripture emerging in the late twentieth century has demonstrated how well known texts can yield different and surprising interpretations when the interpretational frame of enquiry is differently angled. Feminists and womanists have done sterling work; shedding light on the role and status of scriptural women, asking new questions, modifying and challenging existing methodologies, raising issues not traditionally incorporated within historical critical exegesis. However, almost the entirety of this work has taken place within a heterocentric frame of reference; one that assumes the heterosexuality of the scriptural women themselves and one that appears to presuppose a heterosexual academic community, since lesbian-related concerns and issues have hardly been give a sentence untl very recently. This paper will outline the contribution that a lesbian-feminist approach to the Hebrew Bible can offer.

‘Battling for the Bible: Academy, Church and the Gay Agenda’ Theology and Sexuality (2001) 15, September 2001 pp. 66-93.

This article identitfies some of the issues that are at stake in the 'translesbigay' battle for the Bible, arguing that it is the Bible’s continued status as cultural icon mediating the inspired Word of God that makes its appropriation so desirable in contemporary conflicts.  The role of an already-implicated academy in such matters is explored.

‘From Gender Reversal to Genderfuck: Reading Jael through a Lesbian Lens’

forthcoming in in Ken Stone and Holly Toensing (eds.) Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship Scholars Press.

This paper demonstrates what happens when the story of Jael is subjected to a lesbian-specific engagement; and how disciplinary boundaries between biblical scholarship and other types of scholarship are blurred or troubled in the process. While it might owe much of its theoretical development to feminist biblical scholarship and share many similarities with it, the site-specific interests and concerns of a lesbian approach mean that it is never fully at ease within that disciplinary boundary. A lesbian reading engages with different and unlikely dialogue partners to asserts its own voice. In this illustration, the paper argues that the language of gender reversal is inadequate for dealing with the gender confusion provoked by Jael’s story. The terminology of gender reversal reinforces the two-sex, two-gender binary of male/female and masculine/feminine, merely shifting the ground from one to the other. Genderfuck, however, is the language and business of queer theory and its confrontational, uncompromising stance is one of resistance to such binaries; subverting, undoing, deconstructing the normalcy of sex/gender regimes, cracking them open, focussing on the fissures that expose their constructedness. When interpreted from such a standpoint, the story of Jael reveals unexpected but joyous resonance for some lesbian, transsexual and transgender readers.

‘Liturgy and Loss: A Lesbian Perspective on using Psalms of Lament in Liturgy’

in Stephen Burns, Michael N Jagessar and Nicola Slee (eds.) The Edge of God: New Liturgical Texts and Contexts in Conversation London: Epworth Press.

This paper notes the absence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered voices in liturgy and explores the effects for those LGBT-identified members of congregations who inevitably find themselves on the edges of collective worship insofar as their experiences are unrepresented and their lives and loves ignored (at best), or condemned (at worst). It proceeds to note how certain texts that have a profound ability to speak to the experience of feeling lost: the Psalms of Lament and explores how Psalm 42 could be interpreted as a liturgy of loss for lesbian-identified congregants.