Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe have once again discovered a book they wish had been around when they were younger. But since it was published just last year, they did the next best thing, inviting the Rev. Margie Baker, the author of “God, Gospel and Gender: A Queer Bible Study for Teens,” to join them on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Listen to their conversation here.
Baker is a former teacher who currently is on staff of St. John’s Episcopal Church in West Hartford, Connecticut, where she serves children, youth and families. Her book contains Scripture passages, activities, and “lots of wondering questions,” she told Catoe and Doong.
“This book was written for teens and tweens, but I’ve heard from adults who’ve really benefited from it,” she said. It can be used in a class or retreat setting, and it’s a book “you can hand to that one kid” in church “who has questions.”
Doong asked, “What are specific ways we should engage with teens to discuss the intersection of LGBTQ+ issues, faith, inclusivity and affirmation, and how should we engage with teens differently from other demographics?”
Baker said she wrote the book because the youth at her church “are yearning for a just faith and for a faith that requires active love of neighbor. That matters to them.”
While Baker found resources on topics like antiracism, “when I went looking at those resources from a queer lens, from how to either affirm your own identity or how to be a good ally, I couldn’t find it.”
“My context, and most of the kids that I meet who have questions about this, want to engage those questions through Scripture,” she said. “I think that’s a big difference from when I was growing up.”
“I don’t remember hearing a lot of Bible stories to help me understand that God loves gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,” Baker said. “Queer kids and people who want to be allies don’t have the same baggage that adults do. I grew up knowing about ‘the clobber verses,’ the relatively few verses in Hebrew Scriptures and in Romans where we see explicit interdictions about homosexuality.”
“My kids didn’t seem to care about that as much. They were more interested in the wide arc of God’s love and God’s justice over time that as Christians we see embodied in Jesus of Nazareth,” Baker said.
Catoe asked: What Bible stories do you uplift?
Among Baker’s favorites is “reading Genesis 1 through a nonbinary lens.”
“‘Male and female, he created them’ — that sounds very binary,” Baker said. But binary-sounding creations, including “light” and “dark,” are interspersed with words like “morning” and “evening,” which Baker described as “points on a spectrum.”
“You have all this gorgeous room” in that first account of Creation, she said. “With Genesis, this is especially good for allies as well, because it’s a different way to play with Scripture with a beautiful and theological imagination: If we start with day and night and we move to land and sea and then we talk about beaches and seasonal riverbeds and wadis that you have all over Scripture, we start to see that even though the verses are saying ‘day’ and ‘night,’ ‘land’ and ‘sea,’ there’s more going on.”
By the time you get to some birds that swim and a few flying fish, “the kids are ready. They’re like, ‘What about penguins?’ … Maybe the story of Scripture in Genesis 1 isn’t trying to tell us exactly how something was made. Maybe the story of Scripture here is telling us about the breadth and power of God’s Creation, so that when we finally get to the last few verses of Genesis 1, we see that God created Adamah — God created humanity in God’s own image. Male and female, God created them.”
“Suddenly, male and female feel like points on a spectrum and poetry that might include and encapsulate a wider truth about what it is to be alive, and that God made it all, and that all of it is very good.”
New episodes of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Charles Baker, Production Clerk, Presbyterian Distribution Service, Administrative Services Group (A Corporation)
Kristine Baker, Associate for Risk Management, Administrative Services Group (A Corporation)
Let us pray:
Gracious God, you call us as partners in Creation. Through your Son, Jesus Christ, fill us with blessings and grow in our lives, that by the Holy Spirit we may go out into the world to do your will. Amen.
