Queering the queer: an exploration of how gay celibate asceticism can renew and inform the role of desire in contemporary Anglican theology

Thesis

Being gay and celibate are together intensely queer realities. They are, however, curiously side- lined in queer and contemporary Anglican theology. This thesis explores gay celibate asceticism (GCA) as an essential witness in the contemporary Anglican discussion of human sexuality. Through a constructive theological analogy between holy virginity and GCA in Augustine’s theology of desire, I explain how it both differs from and is like holy virginity as an instantiation of peregrine oddity or queerness. This queerness uses creation in enjoyment of God and invents a new ‘category’ of erotic martyrdom which Augustine leaves space for in De Sancta Virginitate. Through Oliver O’Donovan’s theology of moral order, I proffer a theological basis for GCA as i) a Christ-like exclusion from the created good of marriage, and ii) a form of sacramental existence that, due to its exclusion, enjoys greater erotic intimacy and inclusion with Christ in his death and resurrection. By interrogating Christ’s prayer in the Markan Gethsemane, I retrieve Coakley’s trinitarian ascesis and argue that GCA is a ‘new asceticism’ which calls gay affectivity to a pneumatocentric, christological renewal. Finally, I examine Ward’s erotics of redemption, agreeing with his queer diagnosis of the Fall on gender and sexuality but differing on the solution he provides. Rather than suspending sexual difference through trinitarian analogy, gay celibates understand sexual difference as an essential part of created order in the manner of Augustine and O’Donovan. By revisiting Richard Hooker’s Lawes, GCA is described as a via media between innovationist accounts like Robert Song, Graham Ward, and Rowan Williams, and ascetical theologies like O’Donovan and Coakley.

The thesis argues that gay celibacy is a robustly Hookerian way forward from the Living in Love and Faith project. GCA needs to inform LLF in that it faces the theodicean and ethical dilemma of same-sex desire through scripture, reason, and a distinctly Augustinian erotics of redemption. Finally, I conclude that GCA queers the queer by synthesising queerness and holiness in a hope- filled and pneumatocentric/christological ascesis that affirms and relativizes the created order through Christ’s resurrection in the foretaste of the Spirit’s transformation of our bodies.

Authors: Bennett, DAC

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Graham Ward; theology; gay; queer; celibacy; Richard Hooker; Oliver O'Donovan; Anglican; desire; Sarah Coakley; Augustine; queer theology; pastoral theology; ethics; queering; homosexuality
• Subjects: Celibacy--Church of England; Queer theology; Theology, Doctrinal; Christian ethics; Saint Augustine, Theology; Queer theory; Pastoral theology--Anglican Church; Desire--Religious aspects; Desire for God