Christopher Southgate, Theology in a Suffering World: Glory and Longing

Abstract

reality within which people's economic and sexual lives and relationships are organized and classified in theological terms, made coherent, given story lines or scripts to try to live up to. (p. 85) Queer theology uncovers greater injustices involving capitalism, the family and heteronormativity. 'The whole social order that separates people into the decent and indecent, that regulates accepted orders of bodily and economic exchange, is ruptured by a Christ who gave his life for all' (p. 96). Subverting the 'whole social order' takes Tonstad into queer ecotheology (p. 105), the possibilities of a particular black Pentecostalism (p. 108) and queer anthropology (p. 112).Tonstad is well aware of the irony of attempting to define 'queer' too closely. However, 'queer theology' is not nothing, and what 'it' is, or ought to be, can be a matter of some fruitless speculation, chasing the least inadequate reification. But in the course of coming to the conclusion that queer theology is what Althaus-Reid says it is, she does not address any of the critiques of Althaus-Reid's thought over the last 15 years, while she undermines the current efforts of revisionary theologians striving for greater sex and gender justice, in the world and in the Church. Consequently, she finds some queer theologians to be not queer enough. On both counts readers may be disappointed. Widely commended as an introduction to the field of queer theology, the book argues for and takes a position within the field.

Theodicy and What Could Be Otherwise: A Response to Christopher Southgate

“…That would rankle with much of what Southgate describes. (In a recent book (2018), he has focused on the category of glory.) But could there be theodicy worked out in terms of dramatic cogency, for instance?…”