Reseña del libro "Rainbow in the Word (en Inglés)"
There may be no Christians who have been more maligned by their own church and fellow Christians over a longer period of time than lesbians, gay men, bisexual, transgender, genderqueer, and other non-heterosexual, non-gender conforming, or non-sexually normative people. As we are beginning to understand, gender and sexuality are social constructs which have brutalizing power. That they are constructs has not stopped Christians, among others, from attempting to place people into rigid categories insisting that all humanity naturally is divided into straight male or straight female. It has not stopped them from assigning moral superiority to heterosexual males and females who present unambiguously as heterosexual males and females and moral inferiority to everyone else.It has not stopped Christians and the church generally from using the Bible to abuse LGBTQ people. Using the Bible to abuse them--or anyone else--is a serious problem. It is a serious indictment of Christians and the church. It is especially troubling since Christians and the church are supposed to bring Good News to everyone. Using the Bible to abuse people, however, is not Good News for them--it is Bad News. It is Bad News for people who are told over and over and over, supposedly by God in God's Word, that they are fundamentally flawed, that they are an abomination, a pervert, a corruption. LGBTQ Christians live not only with shame but in fear. They live in fear of being found out. They live in fear of being excluded or abandoned. They live in fear of taking the next step and coming out or making the transition from male to female, female to male. The systematic generation of shame and fear on the part of Christians and our church using the Bible is a problem to say the least. It is a problem for gays, it is a problem for straights, it is a problem for the church, and it is a problem for God.While it is difficult to make claims for other people, these essays have shown me that many LGBTQ Christians are clinging to the Bible. This in itself is remarkable and worthy of note. They cling to it for a way out, not of their queerness, but for a way out of shame and its destructiveness. They cling to it because they are tired of being afraid. They cling to it because in it they find hope--the profound sense that the future can be different from and better than the present. They believe that the future can hold abundant life rather than pervasive death, connectedness rather than isolation, health rather than disease, triumph rather than defeat. They cling to it for the promise of holistic salvation it offers them. These poems, essays, and remembrances come from much the same places in which the books and stories of the Bible were created--oppression and exile. Similarly, these writings are exercises in resistance. They push back. They say no to efforts to instill shame or create fear. They make the strong claim that God loves LGBTQ people just as they are or despite the fact God may have made a mistake when their bodies were being shaped in the case of trans people. Likewise, it should not be as surprising as it was for me that these writers, working out of their queerness, offer welcome new ways to think about major theological categories--creation, temptation, salvation, faith, hope, love. They offer welcome new ways to consider the characters in the Bible--Lot's wife, Abraham, Mary, Jesus, Lazarus, the wife of Cleopas. They offer inventive new ways to think about major biblical episodes--the fall, the flood, the annunciation, the crucifixion. In their close readings of the Bible, in their resistances, and in their inventiveness, they are playing a part in liberating themselves, liberating Christianity and the church, and liberating the Bible. They may even be liberating God. -- Ellin Sterne Jimmerson
