We're Here: Chaplaincy, Ritual, & Divinity in Drag

by alaina hoffman

December 18, 2021

We’re Here, HBOMax’s documentary style television series that lives in the same universe as RuPaul’s Drag Race, stars three former Drag Race Queens Eureka O’Hara, Shangela, and Bob the Drag-Queen as hosts who mentor small town individuals for their first drag performance. The three Drag-Queens arrive in a new town each week looking ready to slay a MET Gala red carpet and tend to cause quite a stir on the main street of whatever community they are visiting. The Queens then meet their Drag-Daughters and the viewer is invited to witness a process of both outward and inward transformation. At the drag show performance culminating their time together, each Drag-Daughter lip syncs to a song that represents a part of their transformative story. The audience cheers them on, beaming with pride for each brave performer. Truly, as a viewer, weeping is the only reasonable response. The credits roll as the upbeat song I Am America plays, reminding the viewer that in every small town in America there are LGBTQIA+ people searching for and building community. They are not outsiders, they are integral to any idea of an American “us” that exists.

The term “Drag-Mother” conveys a sense of chosen family, nurturing, and mentorship, and is a part of the drag culture legacy, but We’re Here shows us how a Drag-Mother can also be doing the important work of intercultural spiritual chaplaincy. We’re Here’s chaplaincy reaches a wide audience. As a white Christian cis-hetero-female seminarian seeking ordination who grew up in a small town but now resides in an urban city, I find We’re Here to not only be a valuable theological mirror but also a faith praxis and spiritual care aspiration. We’re Here invites us into conversations about conservative theology purity ethics, liberation theology, Queer theology, metaphorical expressions of God in drag, and the power of sacred ritual within community.

Queens as Chaplains:

Although chaplains provide pastoral care, they are not necessarily pastors. I don’t say this to limit the chaplaincy role of Eureka, Shangela, and Bob, but rather to make room in the conversation for how people think and talk about chaplaincy and spiritual care which does not need to be tethered to religion. Official inter-religious chaplains are found in hospitals, prisons, universities, military bases, war zones, nursing homes, police departments, protests for human rights movements, and even within the United States House of Representatives, but the need for chaplains is not limited to this list. Essentially, anywhere there are humans holding the existential weight of what it means to be human, a chaplain can be utilized. Intercultural spiritual care according to Emmanuel Levinas can be thought of as a ‘creative interruption’ that ‘privileges the wisdom of love over the love of wisdom’.[1] This creative interruption of chaplaincy is not inherently connected to religiosity though it does care for the human soul--seeking to establish an authentic care encounter holding kindness, respectful connection, meaning-making, and hope for all people.

Chaplains are skilled conversation partners for the stories we tell ourselves about how we connect to our own identity and sense of being, the world around us, and beyond--including the divine--impacting one’s spiritual integration and sense of wholeness. We see these types of conversations modeled as the Queens bracket their own lived experience in order to allow their Drag-Daughter to take focus as they explore how they have interpreted and internalized their personal story, asking questions that support each one’s journey of differentiating and processing facts, perceptions, values, and expectations.

We’re Here is not the first time we’ve seen chaplaincy care through a television platform. Children’s television was deeply impacted by the developmentally aware chaplaincy of Rev. Dr. Fred Rogers. In a now famous six minute speech given to the senate that won the Public Broadcasting Station 20 million dollars in funding, Rogers said, “We deal with such things as -- as the inner drama of childhood. We don't have to bop somebody over the head to...make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut, or the feelings about brothers and sisters, and the kind of anger that arises in simple family situations. And we speak to it constructively.”[2] Rogers understood that existential processing happens our entire lives. Rogers, with his calm demeanor and deep listening, processed a wide variety of feelings with children ranging from the curiosity of how crayons are made to divorce, assassination, death, racism, and disability. Rogers didn’t assume the inner drama of childhood was easy or simple nor that it needed to be manufactured through violent images or storylines, saying “I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.” Rogers expressed a gentle and natural Lartieyen interculturality[3] in his conversations with children by, first, focusing on the universal human experiences of encountering emotions such as fear or shame or courage, and, second, expressing the way our experiences and perspectives are unique within communities. However, perhaps what Rogers is most known for is, third, his assertion of beautiful, valid, uniqueness in each child. “I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, ‘You've made this day a special day, by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.’”

In recent years, Queer reality and documentary style programming has been at the forefront of adult chaplaincy through media. Shows like Queer Eye expanded the concept of a make-over show to include a pursuit of personal wholeness and connectedness. Roger’s declaration of “liking you just the way you are'' has the onus flipped to self on RuPaul’s Drag Race with the host’s signature sign-off of, “If you can’t love yourself then how the hell are you gonna love anyone else?” While Queer depictions in media are often explored in large urban cities where gay community can more easily be found in culturally Queer neighborhoods, bars, open and affirming faith communities, etc, We’re Here explores the existence of Queer experience in small-town America where the individuals participating can feel isolated from Queer community and openly expressed culture. The arrival of the hosts, who all grew up in small towns before becoming international drag superstars, confirm for the participants that they are not alone, offering empathy and understanding and often seeking to build their connection to community within their own town.

We’re Here’s commitment to intercultural and inter-religious awareness is not only seen in their intentionally diverse casting and varied location scouting, but also within their chaplaincy approaches. Participants bring their full identities to their drag performances and the hosts interact with their stories fully as both uniquely their own while also held within the contexts of the cultures that create their identities and communities. Added to both the Queer and small-town stories being told in every episode, a few examples of We’re Here exploring additional cultural intersections are through explicitly trans stories (S2, E4&8), stories of plus-sized bodies (esp S2-E1), a Muslim refugee story (S2-E4), a Navajo story (S1-E4), Mormon stories (S1-E2), a story of disability (S1-E5), Black stories and histories (S2-E4), and Kānaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiian) stories (S2-E7).

Using the Kānaka Maoli stories to highlight the intentional interculturality, not only is Hawaiian spiritually-connected language used, such as “kuleana”--meaning one’s sense of responsibility to community, self, land, etc,[4] but the show also depicts hula with reverence for its legacy as spiritual practice, cultural lifeblood, and colonizer resistance. Depictions of Hawaiian people, culture, and hula in North American media have repeatedly, throughout U.S. history, perverted the depth and vibrancy of Hawaiian culture into grass-skirt punchlines and capitalist consumption prioritizing the haole tourist experience above all. There has been no responsibility; no kuleana. The normalized racism and appropriation of “Tiki” bars has turned Polynesian cultures into a game to be played while the Hawiian people have fought for over a century to preserve the right to practice their own traditions, speak their own language,[5] and live on the land they hold as a sacred ancestor. As the credits roll at the end of the We’re Here episode filmed in Kona, instead of the typical song, I am America, the melodic voices of the Hawaiian participants are heard as they sway together, arm in arm, at the end of the drag show. The song they sang, Hawai’i Aloha, is an important and beloved song within Hawaiian culture. Replacing We’re Here’s closing song was a choice that prioritizes accuracy within it’s storytelling as the United Nations acknowledges Hawai’i as a sovereign nation-state illegally occupied by the United States.[6] The song also stands in solidarity with the powerful words of scholar and activist Haunani-Kay Trask, “Say it in your heart. Say it when you sleep. We are not American. We will die as Hawaiians. We will never be Americans.”[7] Lastly, it was an act of spiritual care offered to all Kānaka Maoli; holding their stories with the respect and sacred honor they are brutally denied through colonization.

Conservative Christian Theology Purity Ethics:

While the chaplaincy displayed within We’re Here is inter-religious in nature, We’re Here also offers a valuable lens for Christians of all orientations to engage their lived faith and theologies. Season 2, episode 5, has received attention recently after Pastor Craig Duke, an ordained United Methodist pastor and ally in Indiana, stepped down from his position after negative feedback from congregants concerning his participation in the show.[8] Duke had performed with the intention of showing open and affirming support for the LGBTQIA+ community, including his pansexual daughter. Duke acknowledges in the show that his choice to participate would make him more vulnerable to those who think he’s acting in ways that are unbefitting to ministry, however, Duke goes on to name that his choice to be vulnerable is the least he can do in order to be in solidarity with the many Queer constituents he serves who do not have a choice in how exposed their sexuality and/or gender expression makes them in their Indiana town. His Christian faith requires his solidarity.

Duke’s story is part of a larger disagreement within the Methodist Denomination that has been playing out for years. The first anti-gay language was added to Methodist church teachings in 1972, “‘We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider it incompatible with Christian teaching,’ and, ‘We do not recommend marriage between two persons of the same sex.’”[9] However, at that time, the denomination already had ordained Queer ministers actively pastoring churches who hoped the denomination would become more openly affirming over time. To their great heartbreak, over the years the Methodist standing has slowly become more conservative--the most conservative of the mainline protestant (non-evangelical) denominations. Contested for decades with no agreement in sight, a vote to split the church into two denominations was postponed due to the pandemic and is now set to take place in August of 2022.[10] Breaking into two denominations based on where churches fall on either side of this human rights issue is reminiscent of other denominational splits occurring around the human rights issue of slavery. But a “human rights issue” does not sound personal enough. We are talking about actual humans. The toll on LGBTQ+ methodists and allies pushing for change has been real and significant and held deep grief. Leaving his local church, Duke is planning to start an open and affirming church community in his town and has already received some financial support from the We’re Here viewing community.

I assume that those who sought the resignation of Duke, along with depictions of protestors in other episodes, are using a fundamental/conservative definition of the word sin which tends to focus on defining behaviors that are off limits with heavy emphasis given to a culturally defined idea of sexual purity. This definition is rooted in cultural systemic power rather than careful reading of Biblical context and prioritizes cis-hetero-male experience claiming to use a superior “plain and literal reading” of Biblical texts that allows for only one self-declared valid interpretation.[11] A plain and literal reading is a nearly impossible assertion of any text. We all bring our lived experiences and learnings and understandings to everything we engage with, our best hope is to be aware of our biases. This conservative sexual ethic has sought to demand that the practice of “Christian” sexuality be only understood within a marriage relationship between one man and one woman. Not only is this not a universally Christian definition of marriage, but this is also not a universally Christian definition of ethical sexuality, nor a universally Christian definition of a Biblical interpretation of scripture, and this is also not the only Christian definition of sin. As Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber writes in her book, Shameless, “Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union with and purity is about separation from.”[12]

It takes a lot of humility to critically examine theological beliefs you have been told were a package deal with God. I have deep compassion for people entering this place. Although I don’t believe that I would have ever been a part of the protests depicted in We’re Here, and I have always been connected to and aware of both my own love and God’s love for my friends in the Queer community, I was still indoctrinated with the fallacy that Christianity was incompatible with homosexuality in my formative years. Limiting who is welcome at the open table of God is the heart of the protests recorded in much of the New Testament. Having gone through the destabilizing and uncomfortable process of renovating my faith from a place of simple regurgitated answers to a place of complex questions and wrestlings, the truth I wish I could give my younger self is to hurry; “hurry to the margins, because God is waiting!” Unexamined beliefs are far more traumatizing for a Queer person wrestling with their own identity and how they believe God feels about them personally. To put it plainly, it is a spiritually abusive theology to wield, regardless of intention, and one that causes devastating and violent inner and outer damage to people deeply loved by God. This harm even extends to the person holding this theology, as bell hooks writes in Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, “To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim…Violence is first the dehumanization of ourself that we might dominate another.”[13]

Knowing the impact of theology is always valuable information to consider. Matthew 7:16-18 says, “​​You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” Look at the fruit. In a theological disagreement where one person holds privilege—the conversation will at worst be uncomfortable, but where someone holds no privilege, the conversation can be life or death. To treat a disagreement as equally important for people debating both “sides” of open and affirming theology does not acknowledge the radically different cost of that disagreement. Churches who answer questions around sexuality by saying they “love the sinner but hate the sin” and that “everyone is welcome” but their roles are limited because of a “disagreement with their lifestyle” are, at best, ignorant to the danger of the deadly weapons they are wielding, but ignorance doesn’t stop wounds from bleeding. Bolz-Weber again brings her wisdom to bear when writing, “My Christian faith tells me that good news is only good if it is for everyone, otherwise it’s just ideology.”[14] Look at the fruit.

According to a study on religion's impact on LGBTQ youth suicide published in the 2018 American Journal of Preventive Medicine, “Lesbian and gay youth who said that religion was important to them were 38% more likely to have had recent suicidal thoughts, compared to lesbian and gay youth who reported religion was less important. Religiosity among lesbians alone was linked to a 52% increased chance of recent suicidal ideation. Questioning youth who said religion was important to them were nearly three times as likely to have attempted suicide recently, compared to questioning youth who reported religion was less important."[15] In her book, Untamed, Glennon Doyle recounts her wife’s tearful lament that, as a Queer youth, she felt forced to choose between herself or God and church, to which Doyle replied, “When you were little, your heart turned away from church in order to protect itself. You remained whole instead of letting them dismember you. You held on to who you were born to be...When you shut yourself down to that you did it to protect God in you...you did not choose yourself instead of God and church, you chose yourself and God instead of church...you took God with you. God is in you.”[16]

Emmanuel. God with us. This is good fruit. This is good news!

Liberation Theology:

This good and liberating news reflects Jesus’ bold self referential declaration in Luke 4:18 -19 that “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because (s)he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. (S)He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This core mission of liberation is at the heart of all Christian Liberation Theologies, which include, but are not limited to, the original Liberation Theology from Latin America which focused on liberation for the poor, Feminist theology, Eco-feminist Theology (prioritizing relationship with God through the earth), Black Liberation theology, Womanist theology (which is located at the intersection of gender and racial liberation), theologies of Disability, Queer theology, Trans theology--each theology bringing together a fuller picture of God. Liberation theologies view God and theology through the lens of the oppressed for the important reason that God identifies with the oppressed. A God who identifies with the oppressed means that: God IS poor. God IS a woman. God IS Black. God IS disabled. God IS Queer. God IS trans.

It is, unfortunately, all too reductive to try to distill the fullness of each perspective into a blanket that covers them all. Each should be explored for its own unique lens. However, I think it is beneficial to this conversation to point out that the concept of sin within these theologies can be understood as both the domination and oppression of systems of power and also that which disconnects us from relationship and community. Black liberation theologian Frederick Ware asserts that freedom from sin and sin itself moves beyond the realm of the personal into the social and communal realm. “Christian liberty, freedom from sin, is especially impactful when sin is defined broadly to encompass not only personal moral failure but also systemic evils rooted in social structures.”[17]

In addition to the urgent pursuit of liberation for all people as foundational to the definition of Jesus’ gospel mission, we can also explore Queerness within the Biblical text itself; liberating characters and stories from oppressive translations that kept them hidden for centuries. Queer theology isn’t just “allowed”, its also hugely valuable in exploring who God is and what faith means. One text specifically applicable to this discussion is the story of Joseph and their infamous coat. Unfortunately for every theater kid who is currently singing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in their head, while Joseph’s coat could have been many colors, the text in Genesis 37:3 is more accurately translated now as being a long robe with sleeves, “Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves.” Whether many colors or a long robe with sleeves, the only other place this Hebrew phrase is used in the Bible is found in 2 Samuel 13:18[18], “Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for this is how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times.” Joseph, a beloved and celebrated child and the hero of this story, was, as Trans theologian Austen Hartke names, “coloring outside the lines of the gender binary.”[19] Regardless of its colors, Joseph’s coat IS a rainbow.

God in Drag:

In his book, GuRu, RuPaul Charles describes the embodied spiritual encounter of drag in practice by saying “You’ve heard me say, ‘you’re born naked and the rest is drag.’ In truth...all the superficial things you list as your identity are in reality your ‘drag.’ Years ago, when I heard someone say ‘we are all God in drag,’ I knew it to be the truth at my core.”[20] This idea of a spiritual reality in a physical expression being at the core of drag can be one way of thinking about the incarnation of Jesus in John 1:14, “the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us...”. It can also be valuable to think of the dwelling of the holy spirit within us as spiritual drag.

I, personally, find the idea of God’s drag especially valuable when considering the male-ification of God. God, as spirit, is both in and beyond all genders. Truly, the fact that we have a genderless pronoun that expresses singularity and plurality simultaneously in the English language, they/them, that seems to answer all of the needs of a spirit who is simultaneously three and one and also beyond gender, AND YET the default pronouns used are still masculine surely says a lot about how comfortable our culture is with exclusive male power. Thankfully, the Bible has recorded God not only doing male drag; God is also a Drag-Queen and her name is Sophia Wisdom. Sophia is the feminine name for God’s embodiment of wisdom used in the book of Proverbs. ‘Sophia is described as being present at the beginning of creation: ‘When there were no depths, I was brought forth when God established the heavens, I was there playing before [God] all the while’ (Prov. 8:24, 30).”[21] There are many other female metaphors used for God as well. God is likened to a birthing God with a womb, a breastfeeding God, a mother bird God, a mother bear God, a woman looking for a coin, a woman baking bread, a midwife, a seamstress and many other examples[22]…God does drag. One of my favorite drag looks for God is the Hebrew name El Shaddai which can mean “the many breasted one”[23] ...THAT’S how nurturing God is. THAT’S how abundant God’s care for you is. El Shaddai is not only theologically beautiful and reassuring, it’s also CAMP![24] Sophia Wisdom slays!

Theopoetics:

While theology is typically the act of talking and thinking about God and spirituality, theopoetics as theology removes the emphasis of meaning-making and understanding from words and concepts and puts the emphasis of spiritual engagement and understanding onto the embodied experience found in the act of bringing something into being.[25] Theopoetics is something you do. Theology seeks to define God through engaging a mental process of ideation and metaphor while theopoetics seeks to encounter God by prioritizing experience through our senses while creating. Finger painting, performing a monologue, cooking, playing an instrument, planting a garden, or the act of giving birth are all examples of ways you could theopoetically engage your understanding of God. A Theopoetic lens allowing us, as the viewer, to understand drag as an embodied creative encounter with the creative originator of all embodiment makes the creative act of drag an inherent co-creative partnership with the divine.

The Ritual of Drag:

In addition to being a theopoetic enactment, drag can also be an opportunity for moral imagination, offering performers an opportunity to communicate that, as Bob the Drag-Queen states in season 2 episode 5, “You are worthy of compassion, community, rights, friendship and respect; and, most importantly, you are worthy of love!” Drag can be understood as a ritual in that it is an intentional human path of meaning-making toward an encounter with what is beyond us. Some rituals hold the hope of explicitly spiritual connection, such as those found within religious traditions, while other rituals connect us to each other or the earth and still others are tied to making-meaning within our own personal journey, such as a graduation rituals connecting us to our community, the concept of time, and achievement within our own story.

Often the word “myth” is used to simply mean that something is untrue, but understanding myth in its original intention of “sacred story”, without the need to quantify or prove its degree of accuracy, can open us up to how we encounter truth within symbol, story, and performance; allowing for value beyond what we may consider believable. Though there are many ways for Christians to understand the act of taking the eucharist ritual as sacrament, I believe the act is a symbolic entrance into Christ’s story as well as an imaginative engagement with community united throughout time and place in remembrance of a shared vision to live out love, peace, and justice. I do not need to believe in a literal transformation of bread and wine into flesh and blood in order to encounter the holy within the ritual. Often rituals, like the eucharist, hold a story of what something was and the becoming of what it is or the hope of what it will be. The story drag tells is of a resilient community that will not be diminished or defined by mandates of cultural heteronormalcy; choosing celebration where there was silencing. Drag as ritual reminds me of poet Frederick Turner’s request to, "Show us how to experience the beauty we have paid for with our shame."

Joseph Campbell believes, “A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth of wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual...you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom...Your consciousness is being reminded of the wisdom of your own life.”[26] The drag ritual found in the transformation of David Huggard Jr into Drag Queen Eureka O’Hara can welcome us all into a conversation with something true-- The sacred story of inner knowing and Queer identity, inner worth surpassing heteronormative expression, the sacred story of chosen community, the fires of resistance that have created laws and protection where there were none, and a commitment to furthering it all. The ritual becomes a portal to something beyond.

Ritual creation and participation can also help individuals to hold that which is too big to hold. In her book, Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes, “This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn't have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising...”[27]

Music and dance have been connected to ritual throughout human history. Music and dance rituals have been used by communities to prepare for momentous happenings in the future, and they have also been used by communities to hold and heal from the momentous happenings of the past and to process the happenings of the present. Anne Solomon and Njoki Nathani Wane write in their book chapter on Indigenous Healers and Healing in a Modern World, “The songs, dances, ceremonies, sacred medicines, and traditional languages serve as the vehicle and tools of the healer.”[28] The song and dance employed in the drag performances in We’re Here are similarly vehicles of healing for both performers and viewers.

Drag has held the shared grief, woundings, celebrations, victories, and survival of Queer people, creating rituals of understanding, resilience, visioning and healing in addition to shared language and deep community. Drag as ritual holds the sacred. Community is inherently divine because it is a reflection of God’s very being. The triune God of the Christian faith is defined by relationality. Community is holy.

Long Story Short:

We’re Here offers chaplaincy, ritual, and a beautifully liberating opportunity to experience God as Queer. In a world that holds danger and violence in both its homophobia and misogyny, drag builds a theopoetic stage atop that hazardous intersection and invites us to do the holy work of love, mercy, and justice as we cheer for those who dare step into the spotlight and dance hope into being.

END NOTES

[1] Jamie Beachy, “Spiritual Care as Creative Interruption: Exploring a Generative Metaphor for Intercultural Healthcare Chaplaincy” (diss., University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology, 2015), in https://www.proquest.com/openview/71ac7fa1bb7a013269f406ee62da42ff/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750.

[2] Fred Rogers Rev PhD, “Senate Statement On PBS Funding,” American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, May 1, 1969, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fredrogerssenatetestimonypbs.htm.

[3] Emmanuel Yartekwei Lartey, In Living Color: An Intercultural Approach to Pastoral Care and Counseling, 2nd ed. (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2003), 14.

[4] Kamana’opono Crabbe, PhD and et al, Mana Lāhui Kānaka: Mai Nā Kūpuna Kahiko Mai a Hiki I Ikēia Wā (Honolulu: Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 2017), 39, https://19of32x2yl33s8o4xza0gf14-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/OHA_MANA_LAHUI_KANAKA.pd.

[5] Esther Kim, ““We Are Not American! We Will Die as Hawaiians, We Will Never Be American!”,” Ka Leo, March 10, 2021, https://www.manoanow.org/kaleo/we-are-not-american-we-will-die-as-hawaiians-we-will-never-be-american/article_71f72884-be58-11ea-9984-ef5b951616bb.html.

[6] Esther Kim, ““We Are Not American! We Will Die as Hawaiians, We Will Never Be American!”,” Ka Leo, March 10, 2021, https://www.manoanow.org/kaleo/we-are-not-american-we-will-die-as-hawaiians-we-will-never-be-american/article_71f72884-be58-11ea-9984-ef5b951616bb.html.

[7] Kimmy Yam, “Haunani-Kay Trask, Renowned Scholar Who Fought for Hawaiian Sovereignty, Dies at 71,” NBC News, July 8, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/haunani-kay-trask-renowned-scholar-who-fought-hawaiian-sovereignty-dies-n1273364.

[8] Amanda Holpuch, “Pastor Leaves His Church After Appearing On Hbo Drag Show,” New York Times, December 8, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/us/indiana-pastor-drag-hbo.html.

[9] Madeline Heim, “Her trial for officiating a same-sex wedding triggered a decade of activism to try to change the united methodist church. It didn't work.,” Post Crescent, July 13, 2021, https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/2021/07/13/methodist-lgbtq-pastor-put-trial-lesbian-wedding-leaves-church/7811632002/.

[10] The Associated Press, “United Methodist Conservatives Detail Breakaway Plans Over Gay Inclusion,” NBC News, March 2, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/united-methodist-conservatives-detail-breakaway-plans-over-gay-inclusion-n1259270.

[11] “What Does the Bible Say About Homosexuality?,” The Human Rights Campaign, accessed December 12, 2021, https://www.hrc.org/resources/what-does-the-bible-say-about-homosexuality.

[12] Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation (New York: Convergent, 2019).

[13] bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, [second ed. (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015).

[14] Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation (New York: Convergent, 2019).

[15] Megan C. Lytle, PhD et al., “Association of Religiosity with Sexual Minority Suicide Ideation and Attempt,” American Journal of Preventative Medicine, March 14, 2018, https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(18)30050-3/fulltext.

[16] Glennon Doyle, Untamed (New York: The Dial Press, 2020),

[17] Frederick L. Ware, African American Theology: An Introduction (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 14.

[18] “Blue Letter Bible,” https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h6446/kjv/wlc/0-1/, accessed December 12, 2021.

[19] Austen Hartke, “Youtube: Transgender and Christian,” Transgender and Christian: Queer Gender Expression in the Bible, February 7, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4a8Zm9NA5g.

[20] RuPaul, GuRu (New York: HarperCollins, 2018), xi.

[21] Joyce Rupp, “Who is sophia in the bible? The biblical figure of sophia, or wisdom, is more than metaphor; She is an expression of the feminine aspects of god.,” uscatholic.org, January 4, 2016, https://uscatholic.org/articles/201601/desperately-seeking-sophia/.

[22] Mike Morrell, ““biblical Proofs” for the Feminine Face of God in Scripture,” mike morrell, May 30, 2012, https://mikemorrell.org/2012/05/biblical-proofs-for-the-feminine-face-of-god-in-scripture/?fbclid=IwAR3dr7HqSSSaN0m0ugRMfoIoAOLPfdHvs78J8pCu6tiEr4t5clqMpYm2-Q8.

[23] David Biale, “The God with Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible,” History of Religions 21, no. 3 (Feb 1982): 240-56, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1062160.

[24] Aria Darcella, “Still Don’t Know What “camp” Means? Let Rupaul Explain…,” Fashion Week Daily, May 9, 2019, https://fashionweekdaily.com/rupaul-camp-interview-2019/.

[25] “Https: //artsreligionculture.org/definitions,” Arts Religion Culture, accessed December 12, 2021, https://artsreligionculture.org/definitions.

[26] Bill Moyer, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth — ‘the First Storytellers’,” BillMoyers.com, accessed December 12, 2021, https://billmoyers.com/content/ep-3-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-the-first-storytellers-audio/.

[27] Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love (New York: Viking Press, 2006).

[28] Anne Solomon and Njoki Nathani Wane, Integrating Traditional Healing Practices Into Counseling and Psychotherapy; Chapter 5: Indigenous Healers and Healing in a Modern World (New York: Sage Book, 2005), https://sk.sagepub.com/books/integrating-traditional-healing-practices-into-counseling-and-psychothe.