LGBTQ+ Christian Author @eli-forrester - Tumblr Blog

I’ve gained a bunch of new followers over the past couple of months, so I figure it’s probably about time for a new introductory post.

Hi, I’m Eli. I’m bi and nonbinary and my pronouns are they/them. I’m turning 27 next weekend, I live in New Zealand, and I’m an Anglican.

I also write LGBTQ+ Christian fiction. So far, I’ve written two novellas which are both available to read online for free.

[Image Description: The cover of my novella, Micah, which includes a photo of a rose]

Micah tells the story of the titular character, a Christian girl who is just starting university. She’s now attending an affirming church, where she realises that it’s possible to be LGBTQ+ and Christian, allowing her to question her sexuality for the first time.

You can read Micah on FictionPress or Wattpad.

[Image Description: the cover of my novella, Known By Its Fruit, which includes a photo of an apple tree]

In Known By Its Fruit, Thom is a bi guy who is on the worship team at his church. As a result of the worship leader’s homophobia, Thom is forced to choose between being on the team and his new relationship.

You can read Known By Its Fruit on FictionPress and Wattpad

eli-forrester

I also now have a blog where I talk about writing, Christianity and queerness

#my posts #my writing

eli-forrester

An anthology of devotionals written by 60+ progressive authors deconstructing, reconstructing, and liberating their faith.

Just wanted to create a quick post to amplify this Kickstarter created by the folks at Our Bible App. For as little as $15, you can get access to this book of devotionals written for folks who are deconstructing their faith

“The Deconstructionists Playbook is a compilation of authors speaking to a wide and diverse audience all cresting the same wave: Evangelicalism. Call us backsliders, Exvies, or spiritual misfits, but we’ve exited more traditional church spaces and rhetoric and are anxious to reconstruct our ideas on God, the Bible, and religion. With the chorus of some 60 authors, journey through an anthology of devotional days that celebrate this epic churning of faith. In three sections, these authors invite you to deconstruct religion and systems of oppression, reconstruct faith principles around the elements of social justice, and step happily into liberation theology as an act of resistance against white supremacy and patriarchy. By taking part in this emulsion of ideas, you will find yourself in a movement of acceptance, self love, and finding God in mysterious places. We invite you in.”

An anthology of devotionals written by 60+ progressive authors deconstructing, reconstructing, and liberating their faith.

“The Deconstructionists Playbook is a compilation of authors speaking to a wide and diverse audience all cresting the same wave: Evangelicalism. Call us backsliders, Exvies, or spiritual misfits, but we've exited more traditional church spaces and rhetoric and are anxious to reconstruct our ideas on God, the Bible, and religion. With the chorus of some 60 authors, journey through an anthology of devotional days that celebrate this epic churning of faith. In three sections, these authors invite you to deconstruct religion and systems of oppression, reconstruct faith principles around the elements of social justice, and step happily into liberation theology as an act of resistance against white supremacy and patriarchy. By taking part in this emulsion of ideas, you will find yourself in a movement of acceptance, self love, and finding God in mysterious places. We invite you in.”

I’ve been absent from Tumblr for a little while, and I’m just popping back briefly to give an explanation for why.

About a month ago, I realised that I’m no longer a Christian. It’s been a long slow journey to this point (over a year) but I’ve gradually shifted to viewing God as purely a concept or idea. And as interesting as I think that God/Christianity/the Bible is, I’m not willing to centre my life around something that I don’t think is True.

I know that I’m not the only one On Here going through this type of journey, so I have a couple of resources to recommend. I’m currently reading Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion by Marlene Winell, and it is so helpful. You can read a couple of chapters here. You Are Your Own by Jamie Lee Finch is also very good. And if you want to talk to a spiritual director who will support a decision to change or leave religion, @fratresdei is wonderful.

This blog will most likely become inactive now, but I do plan to leave it up. And I guess there’s a possibility that I will return if I end up wanting to talk about Christianity again (or the ex-Christian journey, I suppose).

I’ve really enjoyed my time in queer, progressive Christian land, and I’m sorry to be leaving. Unfortunately, I’m no longer able to contort myself enough to be able to fit in, so I really don’t have a choice. I wish all of you the best though.

Eli

phoukanamedpookie

Redemption arcs and Christian hegemony in fandom

Note: I originally had another half-written post delving into this topic. Then Tumblr went, “LOL! Fuck you!” and ate it. This is my second attempt.

As a fan of many characters deemed villains in their respective stories, redemption arcs are often a topic of discussion. Does this or that character deserve redemption? What makes for a satisfying redemption arc? Which redemption arcs work or don’t work?

However, it’s rare for me to come across a conversation that examines the concept of a redemption arc itself, let alone the forces that shape our understanding of what redemption means and how it works.

With that in mind, I’m going to see what I can do to crack open the assumptions behind redemption narratives and see what interesting alternatives present themselves.

Keep reading

#judaism

Psalm

I am not lyric any more

I will not play the harp

for your pleasure

I will not make a joyful

noise to you, neither

will I lament

for I know you drink

lamentation, too,

like wine

so I dully repeat

you hurt me

I hate you

I pull my eyes away from the hills

I will not kill for you

I will never love you again

unless you ask me

- Alicia Ostriker

#my posts #poetry

snailsong

LGBT+ Transfiguration

Luke 9:28-36 (NIV)

“28 About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and Jameswith him and went up onto a mountain to pray.29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. 30 Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. 31 They spoke about his departure,[a] which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. 32 Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. 33 As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)

34 While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. 35 A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”36 When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.”

Today is the day that the Church celebrates The Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ. The Transfiguration narrative is one of the richest and most mysterious stories passed down by the early Christians. It’s so weird and wonderful that unlike all the other major narratives from the gospels, it wasn’t given its own feast day until the eighth century.

I love this story. Its mystery is matched only by its realism. All the details, none of them putting the disciples, the ones who pass this story on, in a good light point to a real and tangible event. But it is so beautifully, breathtakingly strange.

Take a moment, step into the shoes of Jesus’ friends. Stand with them on the mountain with their friend as he is surrounded by the glory of the Lord, the actual Lord! His actual face is actually shining! His actual face! And two of the most important people in the history of their faith are right there with him! This is what theologians like to call a Moment of Revelation. Jesus revealed himself entirely. Everything about who he was and where he came from was revealed to his three closest friends on that mountain. His humanity, his divinity, everything was shown to them in that moment. In that moment they saw the very image of God. This was something they were still reflecting on for years to come (see 2 Peter 1:18).

So, we can all agree that the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ is a moment of unsurpassed weirdness and beauty in the history of our faith, but here in a community of LGBT+ Christians, unsurpassed beauty and weirdness is what we’re all about. Each of us engages in profound Moments of Revelation throughout our lives. Created in the image of God, created bi, gay, trans, lesbian, queer, intersex, aspec, nonbinary, when we disclose these aspects of our identity we are disclosing part of the glory of the Lord in us. These are our own personal Moments of Revelation. We stand partially transfigured before those with whom we choose to be our own LGBT+ selves.

Revelation of who we are is our calling. Revelation of who we are as LGBT+ folk is revelation of the glory of the Lord within us. Like Jesus, our transfiguration is not the last Moment of Revelation. Jesus continues to reveal himself in different ways to different people. We come out, normally like Jesus to a few friends at first, and the journey begins, but we are presented with the choice to reveal ourselves to others every single day. We can take great comfort in the fact that we serve a God who did not choose to reveal himself utterly to everyone all the time in the way he did in the Transfiguration.

But like Jesus our Moments of Revelation are not alone. We stand alongside those LGBT+ heroes of our faith, we stand with Ruth and Naomi, the Roman Centurion and his partner; with Felicity and Perpetua, Sergius and Bacchus; with Galla and Benedicta, Venantius Fortunatus; with St Aeldred of Rielvaux, Marbod of Riennes; with all the nameless LGBT+ heroes of our faith throughout history. They are our Moses and Elijah. They are the richness, the background of our own transfiguration.

So go, stand proud with your LGBT+ siblings, as much as you can find space where you can be the weird and beautiful person you were created to be, shine forth the glory of the Lord in the world. Make your own Moments of Revelation and value and treasure those of others.

Amen.

snailsong

Yesterday was The Feast of the Transfiguration so I thought I’d share this again.

#lgbtq

fratresdei

While a spiritual journey naturally looks different for everyone, the way forward is always propelled by an openness to something new, something deeper, something greater, something beyond.

milkboydotnet

“The individualistic understanding of Jesus as ‘my personal savior’ is a catastrophic consequence of capitalism.”

— Dorothee Sölle, Thinking About God: An Introduction to Theology

#quote #deconstruction

a-queer-seminarian

Avery shares their poem about how tasks as mundane as preparing tea can become a prayer. They were inspired to write this poem by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s discussion of how Jewish law fosters mindfulness and orients a person towards God.

Text of the poem:

preparing tea is its own kind of prayer – one that heat and water pray for you.

the kettle’s keening. laughter bubbling up. the steady sigh of water as it folds into the cup.

see the steam raise its arms to embrace the sunlight peering in through kitchen window?

those swaying arms enact a psalm of praise clear as voice or timbrel, or clapping trees of the field.

see how the water blushes, rich and brown, as the sachet swirls within?

likewise are we saturated through with Spirit when we open to Her dance.

each mundane task, each daily chore or act overflows with blessing.

the whole world thrums with gratitude for God Who permeates the stream, the steam, the sunbeam’s heat –

Who was with the leaves when they unfurled from the twig to taste the pulse of the earth, its breath and light;

Who was with them when a hand reached up and plucked, and Who is with them still, as they swirl within the cup.

#poetry

lgbt-history-archive

“GOD LOVES US. JUST ASK HER” pinback, manufactured by Ephemera, Inc., Phoenix, Oregon, 1993. #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #lgbttheirstory #lgbtpride #QueerHistoryMatters #HavePrideInHistory #Night

#lgbtq

alaiaorax

Nature is God by Alaiaorax

#art

The church has not easily embraced those like Junia Joplin. Could telling her story help her keep her job?

#my posts #lgbtq #trans

A look at the theology of clothes

“Ask Christians if porn is bad, and they might say, “Hell yes.” If you ask what Bible verses establish that view, however, they might have to get back to you. I can’t seem to come up with any. The Bible opens with two naked people in a garden. Not a perfect book to find a ban on looking at them?“

#my posts #sexual ethic

blessedarethebinarybreakers

I can’t recommend Melanie Gillman’s webcomic As the Crow Flies enough for anyone who thinks the story of a Black queer kid and a white trans girl supporting each other through a cissexist White Feminist™ Christian camping trip sounds interesting.

____________

[image description: panels from As the Crow Flies in which three middle school girls sit on the ground in front of a mountain lake with a background of rocky cliffs and green shrubbery. One of them, Adelaide, is white with black hair and bangs, a pointy nose, and a tank top. In the middle is Charlie, who is black with short black hair, glasses, and a green shirt. Last is Sydney, a white girl with shoulder-length orange hair, a black shirt, and a green skirt. Here is the dialogue they share in speech bubbles throughout the depicted panels: Adelaide: “Sort of related to that – do you ever wonder…why does everyone call God a ‘he’ anyway? If God really is the infinite, all-encompassing being everyone says – why call God a ‘he’? Wouldn’t that be – sort of a limitation?” Charlie: “I have trouble with the idea that God could probably be any gender, but ‘just happens’ to be the gender with the most privilege.” Adelaide: “Especially a God we’re supposed to believe is a champion of the poor and the meek.” Charlie: “Haha, right. Even the way people paint God – God almost never looks like most of the people on the planet. Just the most well-to-do slice of it.” Adelaide: “Most of them aren’t very historically accurate, either.” Charlie: “Yeah, that’s the thing people always bring up. But it’s also – what do all those paintings say about which bodies we think are and aren’t capable of godliness?” Sydney: “It’s telling how people act like it’s an insult if you describe God any differently. Like - try calling God a ‘she’ in church. But I mean, why not?? It’s not like God ever came down and said, ‘Hey Abramosesbediah, just wanted you to know I’m a pasty straight dude’” Adelaide: “Seems like the fairest thing would be to keep shaking up the depictions.” Charlie: “Hang a few paintings where God’s a Peruvian grandmother.” Sydney: “A Black women’s wrestling champ!” Adelaide: “A kid in a wheelchair.” Charlie: “Maybe…someone who doesn’t need a gender at all?” Sydney: “A femme lizard-human-cyborg hybrid.” / end id]

#art

a-queer-seminarian

we are taught to interpret Esau’s trading of his birthright for a bowl of stew as impulsiveness, even (in Christian language) as a ‘weakness of the flesh.’ He chooses instant gratification over the farther off but far more valuable thing, and thus proves himself unworthy of his firstborn status and all it entails – Abraham’s wealth and social power, but also Abraham’s relationship with God.

i don’t believe that.

Esau gave in to Jacob’s demand because he knew that Jacob would never have the means to compel Esau to make good on his word.

Jacob was physically weaker. Jacob was set to inherit the tiniest fragment of the wealth and resources that Esau would inherit. how on earth would Jacob ever wrest the birthright and the blessing he was owed from Esau?

Esau’s ‘crime’ here is less impulsiveness, and more a trust in the status quo. his world of patriarchy and primogeniture promised him his inheritance, whether he was a good man or bad, an honest man or a liar. he could tell his younger brother whatever Jacob wanted to hear, but down the road he could trust that their father would bestow the blessing on Esau anyway.

his reliance on the status quo is what allows Esau to hand over his birthright so easily – because he knows that merely saying it’s Jacob’s now does not make it so.

Esau’s great failing is that he assumes that his culture’s will is God’s will.

the problem for Esau is that God does not play by human rules.

____________

in the Book of Genesis and throughout the rest of scripture, we see God working within the bounds of cultural assumptions and norms, rolling with the binary systems that human societies construct – right up to the point where Xe doesn’t.

In The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, Jewish scholar Joy Ladin focuses on the elements of gender inherent to the system of primogeniture that places the firstborn Esau over the secondborn Jacob in every way. To her, biblical maleness comes in different “flavors” – the roles expected of a firstborn son are different from those assigned to non-firstborn sons. She says,

“Jacob and Esau are both male and are born almost simultaneously, but they are assigned at birth to very different gender roles. Because Esau emerges from the womb first, he is considered the firstborn, heir not only to Isaac’s worldly possessions but also to the relationship with God that Isaac inherited from his father, Abraham. Though Jacob is born holding onto his brother’s heel, he is considered the second-born, expected to accept the authority of his older brother, who, after their father’s death, will be the head of the family. Like the gender binary, this law of inheritance, called ‘primogeniture,’ creates a lifelong, life-determining binary division between males who are and those who aren’t firstborn sons. And like the gender binary, primogeniture turns biology, in this case birth order, into destiny. The way male children are raised, the roles they are assigned, and the futures toward which they are steered are determined by whether they are or aren’t firstborn sons.” (p. 36)

Esau has grown up understanding that his inheritance is his destiny. It’s what he’s been born for, what he’s been raised for, what he is entitled to. Why would he believe that he would ever have to make good on his silly promise to Jacob to hand over that destiny? It’s set in stone, inviolable.

at least it is in the eyes of men. but not to God.

Keep reading

#lgbtq #trans #deconstruction

a-queer-seminarian

Maybe we rush to exonerate Sarah and Abraham because we know that God blesses them, that they are role models of faith. But God doesn’t bless perfect people, because there are no perfect people. And sometimes what our biblical role models are modeling for us is what not to do, how not to be.

But it’s hard for us to hold seemingly contradictory truths in tension: That good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things. That someone who knows oppression like Sarah can still abuse others. That the same person who is capable of beautiful kindness, like that which Abraham shows to the three strangers, is also capable of enabling horrible cruelty.

The phrase “there are no good cops” has been going around a lot these days, and I think people’s immediate rejection of this phrase stems from this same struggle to hold multiple things in tension. Many of us know a good person who is a police officer – and therefore, we say, there are good cops! But what the phrase is actually saying is that even a good person – someone who is kind and loving when off duty, who joined the police out of a desire to serve the community – cannot be a good cop, because when they serve that role, serving unjust laws is part of their job description.

To be a police officer, they must uphold racist, ableist, sexist, queerphobic laws. They must be ready to show up to work and be told to put on riot gear, load up rubber bullets, and stand against peaceful protestors.

Likewise, Abraham and Sarah may well be good people – that is to say, when at their best, they do good things. They are faithful; they are devoted to each other; they practice hospitality. But perhaps the phrase “no good cops” could be adapted to that ancient time, and we can say “There are no good patriarchs.” Abraham is a good man, but he is not good in his role as patriarch, as head of his household – because to maintain that role, he must do unjust things. It’s in the job description. To be a patriarch, he must wield power over other human lives, must hold them as his property. He must have children, and that means raping an enslaved woman. He must maintain order, and that means casting Hagar and Ishmael away.

There are no good patriarchs.

- “No Good Patriarchs - Solidarity with Hagar,” a sermon on Genesis 21 by Avery Smith

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

LGBTQ+ Christian Author