Otherness for such a time as this
by Virginia Mollenkott

If ever there was a time when Americans have needed to learn more about the "otherness of the other," that time is now. As we have heard Osama bin Laden spew hatred in the name of Allah, we must remember that one of the most widely read poets in our country today, Rumi, was also a worshiper of Allah. And that Rumi and bin Laden differ more from one another than, say, bin Laden and Jerry Falwell. Gone are the days when we could afford to regard world religions such as Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism as monolithic, any more than we can judge an entire race or ethnicity by the actions of a few. And no longer can respectable multiculturalists act as if religion had not formed the backbone of most cultures. In an already complex world, September 11 has turned everything more complex.

During recent years within many Christian churches, the most divisive form of "otherness" has been gay and lesbian otherness, with bisexuality too terrifying to discuss and other forms of transgenderism threatening, perhaps, but still shrouded in a prevailing ignorance. Now two Episcopal priests, L. William Countryman and M.R. Ritley, have lifted up gayness and lesbianism in the Christian church, labeling it a gift not only to the church and the culture, but also to the individuals who discover such "otherness" within themselves and are forced to come to terms with it. Writing chapters alternately from Countryman's "out" gay male perspective and Ritley's lesbian perspective, they share the good news that everybody without exception is who we are by the grace of God. Therefore lesbian and gay Christians "must affirm that being gay is not an accident, an illness or a sin. It is a calling, as fully a vocation as any other."

Because these two authors are speaking for a category of otherness to which I happen to belong, I am pleased that they do so in an intelligent and literate fashion. As a specialist in 17th-century English poetry, I was moved by Countryman's connecting Henry Vaughan, George Herbert and Thomas Traherne to contemporary Christian struggles about sexuality. For instance, Countryman points out that in his poem "Love," Traherne depicts God's love for his soul in both heterosexual and homosexual imagery. And although Countryman does not say so, by that imagery Traherne implies that God's love-nature is bisexual: God wants him as both "His boy" and "His bride." Like John Donne, Traherne has noticed and utilized the transgendered imagery of the New Testament in a way that most contemporary Christians have overlooked.

M.R. Ritley is no less literate, but her expertise is Islamic mysticism. Her Sufi parable of "crossing the sands" is especially valuable for lesbian and gay Christians wandering in the wilderness of churchly rejection and debate, robbed of our history and cheated of our spiritual core. The parable concludes, "There are two things you must do. Stay alive. And keep moving. If you can do just these two things, you will come to another oasis."

Ironically, the book's major shortcoming is its failure to emphasize bisexual otherness and gender otherness. Ritley, who identifies as "bigendered," but denies being either bisexual or transgendered, does imply the inaccurateness of the binary gender paradigm by saying that gay culture has always known that "men can be tender, nurturing and sensitive without being weak, and women can be strong, dynamic and decisive without being violent." Rightly, she suspects "that what people fear the most is the challenge we [homosexuals] pose to the traditional gender roles, not our sexuality as such, because rethinking the gender roles might just require people to change and risk acknowledging the parts of themselves they have long rejected." Admitting that she has been as ignorant and prejudiced about bisexual and transgendered people as heterosexuals have been about her, Ritley speculates that we have "not even begun to see the full variety [of God's creation] even now." That being the case, I wish Ritley and Countryman had included testimony about the gifts of those whose otherness we have begun to see: bisexual, transsexual, intersexual, and otherwise transgendered Christians. But perhaps those are challenges for future books.

What I want to emphasize here is that Countryman and Ritley have done to perfection what they set out to do. They have depicted lesbian and gay otherness as "windows through which God's working in the world is glimpsed," as role models of the courage to be what God intended us to be, of vulnerability as freedom and spiritual strength, of the wholeness of being both sexual and spiritual, and of the willingness to go on loving no matter what the cost. And for those gifts (as we Anglicans so often say), thanks be to God.

Virginia Mollenkott's twelfth book is Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach (Pilgrim Press, 2001).