Reminiscent of 19th century "muscular Christianity" present-day, right-wing white American Evangelicalism laments the so-called "feminization of Christianity" and identifies Jesus as an icon of heterosexual masculinity. Caricatured as a "man’s man", this Jesus "ain’t no sissy". This paper examines Evangelical websites, blogs, and books which render Jesus as a John Wayne-figure (du Mez). These Evangelical sources ignore the fact that gendered Jesus traditions have far more in common with the LGBTQIA+ community than the American masculinist cinematic hero. This paper uses discursive analysis, particularly Foucault’s work on sexuality, Lacan’s taxonomy of the psyche, and Butler’s Gender Trouble to unveil their literalist fantasy whereby heteronormative claims are fixed into a naturalized body. The paper concludes that the literalist project fails. There is little evidence in extant Biblical scholarship that Jesus was a heteronormative male. Rather the texts suggest that he was asexual, an "Ace", and likely a mamzer (Chilton, Satlow, Bar-Ilan). Coupled with the theological premise of the virgin birth, literalism leads to the conclusion that Jesus, although being circumcised, could be considered intersex (Day, Cox, Cornwall), ostensibly having only one set of human genes (XX) from his mother Mary, a condition known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) (Quintana Pfaus). Evangelicals erase the memory of the trans-figured Christ, found in medieval mystical literature (Bynum) and artwork (Sexon, Friesen), where his maternal body with breasts and vulva feeds the faithful and births the church The Jesus traditions are domesticated in the mirror image of heteronormative American males, removing all their subversive elements.

Authors:
James McBride, New York University, United States

About the Presenter(s)
James McBride, Ph.D., J.D., is Professor of Liberal Studies in Global L:iberal Studies at New York University. He is currently finishing an article on "Trump's America and the Demise of the Rule of Law," analyzing the 2024 Supreme Court decision Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), which held that Trump is immune from prosecution for official conduct, comparable to the PRC model of "rule by law." He is also working on a book project, Thanatopolis Americana: The Frontier Myth, Male Gender Performance, and Its Obsession with Death, that focuses on the American cultural addiction to violence, rooted in the frontier myth, which animates the gun lobby and right-wing organizations who argue that individuals have a right to be a law unto themselves.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule

Bookmark