Abstract
This chapter sets out the phenomenon which is the centre of the book—the intersection between Australian Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity (PCC) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ+) people who have been or continue to be participants in it. I outline a précis of the overarching argument, particularly the key social and theological distinctives of PCC, and the discursive clash over the truth of sex which undergirds LGBTQ+ experiences of PCC in Australia. I also outline my methodological approach and the structure of the narrative chapters.
“Blessed are the persecuted for my sake.” I feel like that’s a really big part of the issue, even to do with LGBT people, because the church persecutes the LGBT community, and Jesus says “Blessed are they who are persecuted for my name’s sake.”
—(Fain)
Happy are you when people insult you and harass you and speak all kinds of bad and false things about you, all because of me.
—(Matthew 5:11, Common English Bible)
By and large, people have been really accepting and embracing of me as a person and me as a human being, with all of my struggles, and they’ve been really understanding and really supportive. Like, I couldn’t be happier with the way in which people have journeyed with me, because it’s not been—as I said earlier, it’s not been this on the front foot, proactive, hands-on approach where they’re trying to fix me and I’m their project of sorts.
—(Harley)
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Notes
- 1.
Australian Bureau of Statistics “Same-sex couples in Australia, 2016,” accessed July 6, 2018, https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/2071.0main+features852016.
- 2.
Scott Thumma, “Megachurches,” in Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism, ed. Brenda E. Brasher (New York: Routledge, 2001), 298.
- 3.
Mark Jennings, “Explainer: What Is Pentecostalism, and How Might It Influence Scott Morrison’s Politics,” The Conversation, 1 October, 2018, https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-pentecostalism-and-how-might-it-influence-scott-morrisons-politics-103530.
- 4.
Walter J. Hollenweger, “An Introduction to Pentecostalisms,” Journal of Beliefs and Values 25 no. 2 (2014): 125–37, see also Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997).
- 5.
I say Foucault might have called it this, but he did not—for him, the key was that the sexuality discourse originates in the attempt to transform sex to discourse in order to produce the original “science” of sex—sexuality (Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: The Will to Knowledge, London, Penguin Books, (1978): 12; 20–3; 28; 33; 36; 61; 159). Nevertheless, the word “transformation” captures the intent of the original sexuality discourse—to transform “aberrant” sexual desire.
- 6.
Gary D. Bouma and Anna Halafoff, “Australia’s Changing Religious Profile—Rising Nones and Pentecostals, Declining Protestants in Superdiversity: Views from the 2016 Census,” Journal for the Study of Religion 30, no. 2 (2017): 129–43.
- 7.
Andrew K.T. Yip, “The Politics of Counter-Rejection: Gay Christians and the Church,” Journal of Homosexuality 37, no. 2 (1999): 47–63.
- 8.
Anthony Venn-Brown, A Life of Unlearning: A Preacher’s Struggle with His Homosexuality, Church and Faith, Revised ed. (Sydney: Personal Success Australia, 2015).
- 9.
Anthony Venn-Brown, “Sexual Orientation Change Efforts within Religious Contexts: A Personal Account of the Battle to Heal Homosexuals,” Sensoria: A Journal of Mind, Brain & Culture 1, no. 1 (2015).
- 10.
Graham Douglas-Meyer, You Shall Walk in the Dark Places: My Story—Resolving My Sexuality and My Faith (Beeliar WA: The Love of God Publishing, 2014).
- 11.
Jim Marjoram, It’s Life Jim … One Man’s Story of “Coming Out:” Unravelling Religion, Sexual Identity and Personal Integrity, Third ed. (San Bernadino, CA: James Marjoram, 2017).
- 12.
Bronwyn Fielder and Douglas Ezzy, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Christians: Queer Christians, Authentic Selves (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).; Bronwyn Fielder, “Queer Christianity—Authentic Selves: The Negotiation of Religous, Sexual and Gendered Identities among Lesbian, Gay, Sexual and Transgender Attendees of Four Congregations in Australia” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Tasmania, 2015).
- 13.
Stuart Edser, Being Gay, Being Christian: You Can Be Both (Wollombi, NSW: Exile Press, 2012).
- 14.
Joel Hollier, A Place at His Table: A Biblical Exploration of Faith, Sexuality, and the Kingdom of God (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019).
- 15.
Most notably William Loader, The New Testament on Sexuality (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012).
- 16.
Nigel Wright, ed. Five Uneasy Pieces: Essays on Scripture and Sexuality (Adelaide, AU: ATF Publishing, 2012).; Michael Bird and Gordon Preece, eds., Sexegesis: An Evangelical Response to Five Uneasy Pieces on Homosexuality (Sydney, AU: Anglican Press Australia, 2012).
- 17.
“freedom2b,” freedom2b, accessed August 19, 2022, https://freedom2b.org/.
- 18.
Murdoch University Human Research Ethics Committee permit 2015/190.
- 19.
A quote from Fain appears at the beginning of the introduction, but I have not included Fain’s story here. I sincerely hope I can draw upon it in other research, however, as these are stories which need to be told.
- 20.
PCC pastors were also interviewed, using different indicative questions, and it is my hope that these will be the basis of a future monograph on Australian pastoral responses to LGBTQ+ people.
- 21.
Richard Biernacki, Reinventing Evidence in Social Enquiry: Decoding Facts and Variables (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 4, emphasis original.
- 22.
See, for example, “Vignette: Paul” (Fielder and Ezzy, LGBT Christians, 31–4).
- 23.
This is not to say that Fielder and Ezzy’s text is atheoretical—far from it. One text that uses the vignette approach and certainly is atheoretical is David Shallenberger’s book Reclaiming the Spirit: Gay Men and Lesbians Come to Terms with Religion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), which contains only the narratives of participants with no theoretical analysis.
- 24.
Mark Jennings, “De-Fusing the Horizons? Content Analysis and Hermeneutics,” tropos 10, no. 1 (2017): 125.
- 25.
Please contact the author through the University of Divinity for access to the archive: enquiries@divinity.edu.au
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Jennings, M. (2023). Introduction. In: Happy: LGBTQ+ Experiences of Australian Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity. Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20144-8_1
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