Reclaiming the Sacred: The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture

The second edition of Reclaiming the Sacred: The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture continues the groundbreaking work of the original, exploring the territory between gay/lesbian studies, literary criticism, and religious studies. This much-anticipated follow-up examines the appropriation and/or subversion of the authority of the Judeo-Christian Bible by gay and lesbian writers. The book highlights two prevalent trends in gay and lesbian literature—a transgressive approach that challenges the authority of the Bible when used as an instrument of oppression, and an appropriative technique that explores how the Bible contributes to defining gay and lesbian spirituality.

Reviewers of the first edition of Reclaiming the Sacred hailed the book’s enterprise in exploring the area between literary criticism and religious studies. Whereas contemporary literary-critical theory has been slow to integrate religion and religious history into queer theory, this pioneering journal has addressed the issue from the start with a collection of thoughtful and though-provoking articles.

This latest edition expands coverage to include noncanonical ancient texts, popular Victorian religious texts, and contemporary theater. Academics and lay readers interested in literary criticism, cultural studies, and religious studies will gain new insights from topics such as:

• religious mystery and homosexual identity in Terrence McNally’s "Corpus Christi"
• same-sex biblical couples in Victorian literature
• homoerotic texts in the Apocrypha
• sodomite rhetoric in a seventeenth-century Italian text
• Radclyffe Hall’s lesbian messiah in her 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness
• homosexual temptation in John Milton’s Paradise Regained

Religious conservatives have frequently used the Bible to justify homophobic rhetoric and policies. However, as the 11 papers presented by Frontain (English and interdisciplinary studies, U. of Central Arkansas) attempt to demonstrate, successive gay and lesbian writers have appropriated and subverted themes traditionally seen as condemning homosexuality in the Bible (such as the story of Sodom and Gommorrah) in order to undermine antihomosexual tropes. They also explore how same- sex relationships in the Bible that might be suggestive of homosexuality have been reclaimed by gay and lesbian writers. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

James C. Waller

Reclaiming the Sacred's critical enterprise inhabits a relatively unexplored frontier between literary criticism and religious studies. The conjoining of these disciplines is inspiring....Reclaiming the Sacred is a provocative bit of pioneering. -- Lambda Book Report