This article explores the value of 'patience' as a term that could feature in an expansive theology of sexuality, and it does so by engaging a somewhat surprising source of insight: John Calvin. The first section analyzes and commends Calvin's thinking about patience. It identifies patience as a discrete dimension of sanctification wherein the believer suffers, endorses, and participates in a Spirit-led process of mortification that challenges the reign of sin and positions experiences of hardship within a providential frame. The second and third sections build constructively - and, I hope, liberatively - on this interpretative foundation. My principal suggestion is that patience be linked to the vivification of the flesh and an expanded account of vocation. Patience, by these lights, relates to God calling human beings to undergo and embrace a range of identities, some of which - as God wills it - might contest established sociosexual norms.
This essay proposes a psychoanalytic theory of religious subjectivity that reads Friedrich Schleiermacher's concept of "religious self-consciousness" through Jean Laplanche's theorization of "the fundamental anthropological situation." A primal, subject-constituting passivity renders subjectivity as such "religious," tied to itself by way of an unspeakable otherness that implants in the subject an unconscious drive. This theory of subjectivity is applied to three theological texts, evangelical theologian Sam Storms' essay, "Will There Be Sex in Heaven?", Augustine's Confessions, and Catholic theologian Paul J. DeHart's Unspeakable Cults.
This paper uses Speech Act Theory (SAT) to analyze a senior Mormon [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is more commonly known by the names: Mormons, the LDS, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church. For brevity, this paper will alternate between these more familiar names.] leader's sermon in which the metaphor of "muskets" appeared prominently. The metaphor targeted the Church's LGBTQ+ community, triggering a "firestorm" of responses [Faith Matters, "Elusive Unity at BYU".]. While Mormons are typically regarded as religious conservatives, negative responses to the sermon indicate that a more inclusive demographic/attitudinal shift has occurred in the Church's membership, even as the Church's leadership appears to be moving in anti-LGBTQ+ policy directions. SAT analysis will be contextualized within this socio-cultural shift and leadership authority claims, examining generic Mormon register-discursive use and understanding of metaphors. The paper will conclude that the sermon "backfired", not just for its utilization of an anachronistic, violent metaphor, but because of an abuse of the power differential.
Liberation theology is well-known and well-established in the twenty-first century. It was born in the 1960s in a Latin American context as a protest of Catholic faith against the widespread social and economic oppression and suffering of that region's poor. It is not to be so restrictively understood in this essay; here it is extended to be understood of the 'human poverty,' the deprivation of human dignity, of women and LGBTQI individuals. In this essay we do not offer any full treatment of liberation theology. We argue only that, in the words of Pope John Paul II, it is useful and necessary throughout the world, not only for the world's poor but also for the women and LGBTQI individuals made poor in human dignity in and by the Catholic Church.
The moral and theological implications of chronic shame for LGBTQ + youth reveal the limits of Aquinas's understanding of shame and love. While Aquinas views shame as a temporary moral affect redeemed through love and friendship, sacramental shame - an identity-based, enduring shame imposed through sacralized heteronormativity - complicates his framework. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's phenomenology of shame, the analysis shows how appeals to love can entrench exclusion rather than resolve harm. Instead of assuming shame as essential to moral formation, a framework that responds to sexual harm without reinforcing the shaming of non-normative identities is necessary. Challenging Aquinas's redemptive model of shame opens space for a reconsideration of sexual ethics beyond coercive moral emotions, toward justice that affirms dignity of queer youth.
