LRR: Queer Theology, Linn Marie Tonstad

“Humans are not fixed or static, and neither is God’s storyline with human beings”

I sat down with Linn Marie Tonstad. Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, author of God and Difference, and the Cascade Companion Queer Theology. We talk about how Queer Theology isn’t about apologetics, Linn’s own apologetic for not doing apologetics, a church without judgment, why rights based approaches to justice – which seek to graft LGBTIQ people onto existing structures – fall into dangerous traps, how identities are never fixed, Queer Theologies critical engagement with capitalism, the problem with the Christianity is Queer line, and the shared concern for a proper attitude to finitude.

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You can buy the book here: https://www.bookdepository.com/Queer-...

Professor Tonstad is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of systematic theology with feminist and queer theory. Her first book, God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude, was published by Routledge in 2016 and was named both as a best new book in ethics and a best new book in theology in Christian Century in the spring of 2017. She joined the Yale Divinity School faculty in 2012 after teaching for a year at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. From 2009 to 2011, she was a Lilly Fellow in the humanities and theology at Valparaiso University. Her teaching interests include systematic theology, feminist and queer theory, philosophy of religion, and theological method. Professor Tonstad has made contributions to various journals, including Modern Theology, International Journal of Systematic Theology, and Theology & Sexuality. She serves on the steering committee of the Theology and Religious Reflection unit and the Queer Studies in Religion unit of the American Academy of Religion, and as an associate editor at Political Theology.