THIS is a book of two distinct halves. The seven chapters of Part One provide queer readings of Jonah, while the seven chapters of Part Two address what it is to be a queer prophet in contemporary religious contexts where LGBTIAQ+ people and interests are still regarded with suspicion.
One feature that holds the two halves together is how contributors use personal vignettes. For example, Charlene van der Walt opens Part One with an experience common to many LGBTIAQ+ folk: that of being physically rejected from a church gathering. In this particular case, the gathering was the 2016 synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, South Africa. Her chapter connects with the image of Jonah sitting with his “anger, despondence and silence. . . Not leaving, but rather angrily being there.” It is a profoundly moving essay precisely because it does not shy away from painful and difficult questions about how God is owned and weaponised in church debates. I commend the editors on a winning formula.
The chapters in Part Two ground and contextualise the readings of Part One as we hear about the Ujamaa Centre with its vision for inclusion and collaboration, and are given examples of its contextual biblical interpretation. We are introduced to the lives and activism of contemporary queer prophets: Zethu Matebeni, Desmond Tutu, Charlene van der Walt, and Apostle Darlan Rukih, while Ashwin Thyssen interviews Nokuthula Mjwara, Hanzline R. Davids, Louis van der Riet, and, in a further chapter, two womanist biblical scholars, Sheurl Davis and Madré Arendse.
Part Two also includes a discussion of transgender identity in Genesis 17 as Rosa Ross reflects on “Queering the Circumcision Covenant”. These chapters provide counter-narratives to the more dominant African position, where “queer” is tantamount to a wave of Western colonial theorising that threatens the foundations of the Church.
One of the chapters in Part One, Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer’s “Queering the Straight Jonah”, provides a surprising but effective challenge to such fears. She argues that, over the past two thousand years, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim interpreters have bent the message of Jonah, “often in a most cavalier manner”, to their theological and cultural convictions. It is they who have queered Jonah!
AlamyJonah in a fresco by Karl Mayer (b. 1810) in the Altlerchenfelderkirche, Vienna
Different religious interpretations are also to the forefront in Jione Havea’s “transtextual” reading, which contrasts biblical and Qur’anic readings of the great fish and the desert plant before introducing two of Vishnu’s avatars: Matsya the great fish and Kurma the giant tortoise.
In other chapters, Rhiannon Graybill discusses coercion, control, and consent in the prophet-deity relationship. We wander in queer heterotopias with Steed Davidson, who settles on the desert plant, beneath which, offstage but decentering centre stage, sits the “pouting Jonah . . . at odds with the deity”.
L. Juliana Claassens effectively deploys the work of Sara Ahmed to “consider the queer moments, the queer turns and the queer effects in the book of Jonah”. We gaze again at the city of Nineveh as Hendrik Bosman considers the power dynamics of empire, imperialism, and the ambiguous intrusions of deities who can prompt the rise and downfall of great cities.
Overall, this is an accessible collection of essays from an international array of scholars. Chapters could be used to ignite fresh and robust discussions in church Bible-study groups just as readily as in academic student classrooms.
Dr Deryn Guest is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham.
Queering the Prophet: On Jonah, and other activists
L. Juliana Claasens, Steed Vernyl Davidson, Charlene van der Walt and Ashwin Thyssen, editors
SCM Press £45
(978-0-334-06513-5)
Church Times Bookshop £36