A Queer Ecclesiology: Tradition as Embodied Memory

This paper constructively synthesizes Paul Tillich’s theology, Christian Danz’s pneumatology, and Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. The synthesis demonstrates how both Christianity and gender/sexual identities can be regarded as embodied forms of communication in which memory plays a constitutive role, recasting tradition and memory as synonymic within an ecclesiastical context. Moving beyond Tillich and Danz, this paper makes clear the dynamic and interconnected relationship between memory, gender/sexual identity, and God through the role of ontology. By re-framing identity through a queer-memory model of ecclesiology, this paper proffers that through memory both gender/sexual identity and Christian identity are constructed in communities that orient us through tradition (received meaning). Therefore, it contends that memory takes on an ontological function – tradition shapes our understanding of being – one that can free Christian communities from heteronormativity's gender essentialism, which problematically concretizes not only the gender binary but also conceptions of God.