Episode 7 - Queer Inclusion in Protestant Churches (A Complicated History)

In this episode, Dr. Sawyer complicates the narrative that Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity, has never been hospitable to queer folks. Beginning with the 19th century medicalization of sex, she narrates the shift from categorizing sex acts to naming identities, through the 1946 Revised Standard Version, into mid-century mainline ministry and the early roots of queer theology—and then into the evangelical turn across the AIDS era, "love the sinner, hate the sin," "same-sex attraction," and conversion therapy. Along the way we look at the exceptions the standard narrative erases and end where the course always returns: Christ's call to hospitality and why it feels urgent again now.10:05 See the documentary, 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture.16:55 Tim LaHaye’s The Unhappy Gays: What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality.18:17 The language of “modernized heterosexism” comes from Michelle Wolkomir’s Do Not Be Deceived: The Sacred and Sexual Struggles of Gay Men and Ex-gay Christian Men. 18:47 Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott’s Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? Another Christian View.20:33 Isaac B. Sharp’s The Other Evangelicals: A Story of Liberal, Black, Progressive, Feminist, and Gay Christians—and the Movement That Pushed Them Out.