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A queer history of Christianity
From Augustine to Bonhoeffer to Joshua Harris, the secret is out.
Augustine of Hippo, the famous 4th century Catholic, writes in his Confessions of his friend Alypius dying. “For I felt that my soul and his were one soul in two bodies, and therefore life was a horror to me, since I did not want to live as a half; and yet I was also afraid to die lest he, whom I had loved so much, would completely die.”
It’s nice to have something to live for?
Augustine reflects bitterly, attacking himself for the erotic current he’d felt between them. “Thus I contaminated the spring of friendship with the dirt of lust and darkened its brightness with the blackness of desire.”
When a gay theologian, John Boswell, pointed this out in his 1980 book, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, many were startled. They had read Augustine, but hadn’t?
That’s how it is in Christianity. Look closer, and you’ll see it.
A 15th century manuscript celebrating the Catholic saints depicts two images of Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, getting up from bed and putting…
