queer spiritual spaces

April 2008- April 2009 6 case studies Focus groups +

interviews, action research

3 co-investigators, 4 postdoctoral fellows, and 1 postgraduate, 1 RA

Outcomes: 1 co-authored monograph, website, virtual conference

Associate Professor Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, Sociology, University of Nottingham

Dr Kath Browne, Geography, University of Brighton

Professor Sally R Munt (P.I.) Cultural Studies, University of Sussex

History, Anthropology, Medical Sociology, Religious Studies and Digital Media

Findhorn community (‘New Age’)*

Michigan Womens’ Festival (goddess/Gaia)*

Queer Buddhists*Queer MuslimsQuakersThe ‘non-aligned

spiritually curious’ on/off-line** Denotes ‘new

spiritualities’

Debates upon marriage and civil partnership legislation for same sex couples in both places have raised the profile of religious approaches to homosexuality.

LGBTQ peoples who wish to affirm both their sexual/gender identities and their membership of a faith/spiritual community, are faced with articulating their relationship to the faith mainstream. LGBTQ relationships to

spirituality and spiritual space are complex because homosexuality and gender 'deviance' have been both historically and contemporaneously subject to punitive sanction within many majoritarian religious contexts.

secularization of society in the ‘post-Christian’ West has directly affected LGBTQI communities

LGBTQI growth of interest in the sacred via non-traditional religious experience

widespread investment in ‘self’; ideologies of personal growth and therapeutic discourse

key desires of having a (predominantly non-normative) ‘safe space’ in which to achieve that

historical and cultural importance of spirituality to sexual identity movements

emergence of LGBTQI identities and communities into the ‘new phase’ after political struggle

now concerned with ‘lifestyle’ ‘experience’ and ‘enrichment’ – dispersed post-disciplinary subjectivities enacting practises of adaptation and ‘self-improvement’

LGBTQI peoples in Britain and the United States who wish to affirm both their sexual/gender identities and their membership of a faith/ spiritual community, are faced with a question of 'spiritual immanence' - how to relate to and how to create 'spiritual space'?

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The sodomitical sublime, is a symbol of (shameful) desires that cannot be foreclosed, that provoke mystery, that can evoke a musical resonance in oneself for stretching out what is possible to endure, and perhaps, enjoy.

The shrimp and the shrimp-goby

Throughout the case studies - what we have variously termed the ‘sacred ordinary’, ‘ordinary spiritualities’ and ‘ordinary transcendence’ - has been key.

We found that spirituality was not distanced or separate from, but an integral part of everyday lives of LGBTQI people’ spatial and temporal habitus.

This contrasted starkly with the representational ‘homosexual other’ of religious identities where the person is only associated with deviance.