Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me (John Donne, holy sonnet XIV)
the heteronormative nature of Christian theology, is in one way expected, and in another, puzzling. It is perhaps because based- upon New Testament literature at any rate- Christianity is not meant to be a religion of the world. The author of the Apocalypse of John attacks this view, and the apostle Paul at best excepts it with grudging indifference. Jesus said the kingdom of God is at hand, which in its historical context at least, meant the end of the world and the dawning of a new era was imminent. Obviously this didn't happen and probably never will, at least not in the Christian way of imagining things. Christianity became a religion of the world. Paul and Jesus, who only offered grudging acceptance of marriage, were taken to espouse it as the norm for human affairs. Recent scholarship on the status/history of Mary Magdalene, in an admirable effort to reclaim the feminine for contemporary Christians, has downplayed its fundamental male Homosocial characteristics,; for these patriarchal aspects, rightly so, are troubling to contemporary feminist Christians. While Jesus undoubtedly had female followers, the writers of the canonical Gospels at least portrayed Jesus as creating a very male focused club . What is more, it is a club which challenges the institutions of the family etc. in first Thessalonians, Paul seems to want the church to be like a hunting club (or some other traditionally male institution). He refers to his fellow Christians as brothers in Greek, although the new revised standard version translates it as brothers and sisters, and there is ongoing debate about his attitude toward women.
We've all heard arguments like these before. But even they failed to get at the real issue: what to do with the nature of God? For Christians, Christ in his human form at least was a Jewish man in his 30s, who was followed around by other men. He was also I might add, a carpenter. One might even call Jesus and the 12 disciples apocalyptic ancient Mediterranean "Village people" In Renaissance art his crucified male body was an object of erotic cathexis for women, and arguably, homoerotic and Homosocial cathexis for men. But this gets into complicated issues of anthropology and social psychology, which I don't even need to prove to make my point.
So let's look at theology. In the medieval period, female mystics like Saint Catherine, Julian of Norwich, or St. Teresa use the bride of Christ metaphor to describe their relationship to God. In part because it drew on the song of songs, this was not a metaphor exclusive to female mystics, or indeed, even mystics. For some Jesus is the husband of the church. Christians actually invented the word membership, since each believer has a small part in that marriage
with Christ. So you might ask why a poet, who was very heterosexual and loved his wife deeply would use such homoerotic imagery to describe his relationship with God. If he did not see himself as the bride of Christ, then why the sexual overtones ? All I merely suggesting is that those who say that there is no precedent for same-sex unions in either the Bible or theology (even if we exclude David & Jonathan and Naomi & Ruth) are ignoring two things: firstly, that Christianity in its early stages was antifamily and pro-Homo sociality; and Secondly, every Christian whether male or female is engaged in a symbolic marriage with Christ. If we take the incarnation as God's total experience of humanity, then God is also both queer and straight at the same time. Union with God, therefore, occurs to all kinds of people, in all kinds of ways and – for Christians – helps them to realize their humanity. Maybe John Donne's experience of God as a male lover helped him explore/remember aspects of his wife that he missed so deeply, by imagining himself as the feminine partner in an erotic relationship with God. In short what I'm saying is it's a bit hypocritical for the church to oppose gay marriage, when frankly it encourages male Homo social bonding, and male believers often engage in a mystical same-sex marriage with Christ. Why can that not be the new paradigm on which they base theological marriage?
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