Queer Thriving in Religious Schools: Encountering Religious Texts, Values, and Rituals (Routledge Research in Religion and Education)

This book offers an account of religious schooling committed to ‘queer-thriving’ and envisions how queer staff and students can live their lives without being ‘accommodated’ within heteronormative religious traditions. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgements Series editor foreword References Chapter 1: On positionality and purpose References Chapter 2: Why queer thriving? Religions, genders, sexualities, and schooling Pluralism, identity, and the religious school Encountering religion as a mode of ‘growing sideways’ Understanding queer thriving Queer theologies and life narratives Outline of chapters Notes References Chapter 3: Queer encounters with religious texts Understanding pedagogy in the religious school Resisting ‘strong’ instrumentalism: The liminality of pedagogy Pedagogy and teacher authority Pedagogy and subject matter A queer pedagogical perspective Thinking with kerygma: embodiment and theological hermeneutics Queer thriving: growing sideways with religious texts Summary Notes References Chapter 4: Queer encounters with religious values The fostering task of education Ijtihad and the life narratives of Jews, Christians, and Muslims Muhsin’s story Difficulties with a propositional account of ijtihad The stories of Benay and Alyce/Jerry Queer thriving: Growing sideways with religious values Summary Notes References Chapter 5: Queer encounters with religious rituals Ritual, remembrance, and the ‘publicness’ of education Rituals of remembrance: attending to the present’s incompleteness Freedom as action and a concern for publicness Kavvanah, memory, and the publicness of ritual Queering Christian worship: a transformative recollection Queering Jewish and Muslim rituals: Queering gender Queer thriving: growing sideways with religious rituals Summary Notes References Chapter 6: Desire and the archipelago: Encountering resistance to queer thriving On liking the other Sharing the world without losing oneself: opacity and archipelagic pedagogies Why desire? A pedagogy of desire Desire and resistance to queer thriving in religious schools Notes References Chapter 7: Queer thriving in religious schools: Tracing the (im)possible? Embodying a commitment to living with, and being taught by, others Being receptive to the materially situated nature of people’s encounters with religion in religious schools Avoiding the tendency to grant religious traditions uniformity over themselves or others ‘The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is’ References Index This book offers an account of religious schooling committed to ‘queer-thriving'and envisions how queer staff and students can live their lives without being ‘accommodated'within heteronormative religious traditions.Engaging with queer theological perspectives across the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, the book begins by situating queer thriving as a viable part of the work of the religious school, and not just as something reserved for progressive education more broadly. Taking three areas that are typically used to justify religious heteronormativity (religious texts, religious values, religious rituals), it engages queer theologies to showcase how an educational approach committed to queer thriving can be enacted in religious schools in ways that are also theologically sensitive. The book then explores how religious school communities can navigate differences around queerness and religion in ways that are supportive of queer staff and students. It takes desire as an everyday reality in classrooms and applies a queer lens to this to challenge heteronormativity and to imagine alternative modes of relationship between staff, students, and communities that enable queer staff and students to thrive.Showcasing possibilities of resistance for the opposition between religious and queer concerns, it will appeal to researchers, postgraduates and academics in the fields of religion and education, whilst also benefitting those working across philosophy of education and educational theory, sex education, sociology of education, social justice education, queer theologies, religious studies, and sociology of religion.