You Can, If You Want To: Navigating Christian Faith, Conscience, and matters LGBTQ+

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A few years back, Continuum published In The Closet of the Vatican. Frdric Martels reporting exposed the hypocrisy of the Church and especially its cardinals on homosexuality. He reckoned that something like 70% of Vatican officials were gay and many of them living (fairly) openly with partners. There were tales of gay orgies and priests being so badly paid that they took to male prostitution to earn a living.

The Church today has had to face up to the huge progress made on LGBT issues in society and can no longer sweep it under the carpet. James Alisons book is a serious, nuanced, but ultimately deeply radical attempt to re-orientate our scriptural understanding of homosexuality. It is an attempt, as per his subtitle, to allow the church to move on.

He does this by revisiting the biblical texts. Many believe that the Bible is clear. All homosexual activity is forbidden. Alison, who knows Greek and Hebrew, proves in this book that this is not the case. The meaning of the biblical texts is far more subtle and enlightening. In that sense he is following on from a revolution in theology which is exemplified by the documentary 1946. It may well be that the bible doesnt forbid homosexuality at all.

The Catechism (also published by Bloomsbury Continuum) says that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered in human beings. Alison shows why this is absurd.

Author Bio

James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest and author. He has studied, lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Spain and the United States as well as his native England. James earned his doctorate in theology from the Jesuit Faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1994 and is a systematic theologian by training.

He is known for his firm but patient insistence on truthfulness in all matters gay as an ordinary part of basic Christianity, and for his pastoral outreach in the same sphere.

James now works as an itinerant preacher, lecturer and retreat giver. He is currently a Fellow of Imitatio. He accompanies a wide variety of publics, through academic lectures, undergraduate, postgraduate and professors seminars, adult catechesis courses, retreats for priests, parish groups, and Catholic and ecumenical gay and lesbian retreats.