Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred Bisexual, Pansexual and Polysexual Perspectives

Foreword
Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé

Introduction: Our Hearts Hold These Intimate Connections
Loraine Hutchins and H. Sharif Williams

Part I: Christian and Unitarian Discourses

1. Not Even on the Page: Freeing God from Heterocentrism
Martha Daniels

2. Re-enforcing Binaries, Downgrading Passions: Bisexual Invisibility in Mainstream Queer Christian Theology
Phillip A. Bernhardt-House

3. Bi Christian Unitarian: A Theology of Transgression
Stephen Lingwood

4. Developing a Bisexual Adult Religious Education Curriculum
Loraine Hutchins

Part II: Indigenous and Decolonizing Spiritual Discourses

5. Living with Dual Spirits: Spirituality, Sexuality, and Healing in African Diaspora
Ifalade Ta’shia Asanti

6. Bodeme in Harlem: An African Diasporic Autoethnography
H. Sharif Williams

7. Colonial Legacies, Decolonized Spirits: Balboa, Ugandan Martyrs, and AIDS Solidarity Today
Kenneth Hamilton

8. Make It Funky Now: The Birth of Funk Studies – A Review of Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1 by Herukhuti
L. H. Stallings

Part III: Feminist Spiritual Discourses

9. Reading Althaus-Reid: As a Bi FeministTheo/Methodological Resource
Margaret Robinson

10. Bisexual Women as Emblematic Sexual Healers and the Problematics of the Embodied Sexual Whore
Loraine Hutchins

11. Bi bell: Spirituality and the Sexual Intellectual
L. H. Stallings

12. Non-Monogamous Bisexuality as a Practice of Spiritual Freedom in The Color Purple
Marlon Moore

Part IV: Buddhist Discourses

13. The Third Precept: Towards a Buddhist Ethics of Bisexuality
Lisa Keele

14. Bi, Buddhist, Activist: Refusing Intolerance, But Not Refusing Each Other
Jonathan Alexander and Karen Yescavage

Part V: Neo/Pagan Discourses

15. The Sacredness of Pleasure
Starhawk

16. "All Cool Women Should Be Bisexual:" Female Bisexual Identity in an American NeoPagan Community
Susan Harper

17. Review of Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
Yehudis Schorr

Biography

Loraine Hutchins teaches inter-disciplinary sexuality studies. Her 2001 Cultural Studies doctoral dissertation documented contemporary U.S. sacred sexualities, particularly those with a queer feminist focus. She co-edited Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, which was awarded a '100 best LGBT books of the 20th century' award by Lambda Book Review. She is a national leader in the U.S. bisexual movement, as well as an independent scholar writing on sexuality and spirituality issues.

H. Sharif Williams is a clinical sociologist, sexologist, educator, and cultural theorist, and is the founder of Black Funk: The Center for Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, USA. Under his spiritual name Herukhuti, he is the author of Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1. He is a faculty member at Goddard College, USA. An initiate and practitioner of African wisdom traditions since the age of fourteen, he is spiritual godfather, advisor and teacher to various practitioners around the world and keeper of the Shrine of Sekhmet and Heruhet, USA.

'...an abundant source of examples of bisexual spiritual experience and practice...'

'This volume succeeds in showing that individuals situated in major world religions, as well as adherents of alternative spiritualities, are seeking to generate discussion of its implications. Building on the editors’ own earlier work on bisexuality, notably Hutchins’ 1991 anthology Bi Any Other Name, the volume seeks to bring a range of voices and perspectives into the conversation.'
-Susannah Cornwall, University of Manchester, in Religion and Gender, vol 2 no 2

'As religions worldwide continue to struggle with homosexuality, a new book enters the fray, addressing sexualities that do not fit into the mainstream dichotomous thinking that limits sexuality to ‘hetero’ and ‘homo’. This energetic anthology of writing, originally published in the Journal of Bisexuality, successfully challenges assumptions by introducing readers to a brave new ‘post-dichotomous’ world that ceases to place sexualities and the sacred in radical opposition to each other. The book not only challenges heterosexual readers to recognise the diversity of sexuality and spirituality, but also acts as a timely reminder to those in the lesbian and gay community who fail to hear the voices of bisexual, pansexual and polysexual people.'

'As religions grapple with the issue of same-sex marriage, same-sex parenting and openly gay religious leaders, this timely book asks us to widen the debate and, indeed, our hearts and understandings, to that of bisexual, pansexual and polysexual perspectives. While gay affirming Christianity appears to be suffering from homosexism – the assumption that all same-sex attracted individuals are not bisexual – this collection of writing acts as a lighthouse leading us to greater understanding and embracing of nontraditional sexual and spiritual identities. This book is a valuable addition to contemporary theological and sociological scholarly writing.'
-Luke Benjamin Gahan, La Trobe University, in Culture, Health & Sexuality, Oct 2012

'If we are of the view that a multitude of perspectives are necessary to reflect human experience and to help build up a collective truth of some sort, this book is useful and can even be considered necessary. I found that it was also revealing and inspiring in places.'
-David Woolwine, Hofstra University, in the ALA's GLBTRT Newsletter, vol 24 no 3