Customer Reviews

Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto

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A lot of the people who sit in churches and preach from pulpits have forgotten the kind of man Jesus was. The man who loved the prostitutes, healed the sick on the Sabbath, and went on a rampage in the Temple isn't the kind of person who would sit quietly by while gay and lesbian people were beaten and hated. Robert Goss recaptures the essence of Jesus in this book - his love for the downtrodden and the fire for equality that burned within him. Based upon concepts of Liberation Theology, Goss studies the language of hatred, violence against Gay and Lesbian people, coming out, and the blessing of same-sex unions. Interested yet? How about the title of one of the sections: Deconstructing Biblical Terrorism. Or another: The Politics of the Cross. Anyone interested in Liberation Theology, Gay and Lesbian studies, or issues around homophobia will find this book an enlightening experience.

Published in 1993, I just got around to reading this book, which looks at LGBT lives, love, sexuality and civil rights both within and outside "The Church" through the lens of liberation theology. It was a thorough (for the most part) but quite dry read. As I mentioned, this book was published in '93, so the first two chapters which deal with history of LGBT folks in the U.S. are dated for those who've learned and lived our history since the Stonewall Riots. I was quite disappointed that Goss did not do much Biblical exegesis in regards to the few anti-gay 'clobber' passages of the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament. Also his writing tended to be written in a very 'theolog-ese' fashion (was this his dissertation?) and quite redunant throughout the book... he could have used a little simpler language and condensed the chapters by doing a better job of editing (or have a better outside editor?). This negativity aside I think it's an important work for women, LGBT folk, people living with HIV and AIDS, and religious progressives to read. I especially liked his chapter "The Struggle for Sexual Justice" which looks at the various means/ways LGBT people have 'educated' and 'protested' within/outside the institutional church's sexism, heterosexism and homophobia.

This book is written by a clergy member who was a part of ACT-UP. His point is that Jesus helped the have-nots, which would include gays, lesbians, and the HIV+ today. In a little footnote, he says, "I'm not addressing any question about whether Jesus was gay or bi." so he avoided the question totally that I expected him to answer. This book may be good for gay and lesbian Christians just beginning to think about radical politics. But I was not particularly moved by this book. Maybe I just wasn't his target audience or don't have enough of a theological background.