An unexpected turn of events
If you had told 19-year-old David Bennett what his life would look like in 2024, he would never have believed it.
Living happily as a gay activist in Sydney, the idea of being religious – let alone Christian – was not in the script.
Yet one night, after a conversation with a friend in a pub in Sydney’s gay quarter, he was confronted by the message of Jesus.
This led to his conversion – and a radical change of lifestyle.
David now works in Oxford as a theologian and researcher – specialising in, among other things, the Holy Virginity, and the queerness of Jesus.
He also openly identifies with “Side B”; those who believe that in the case of same-sex attraction, the pursuit of celibacy is the obedient response to God.
This choice of lifestyle is no doubt challenging at times – and to outsiders, it may appear both repressive and cruel.
For David, however, it’s not about a passion repressed; rather, it’s a passion redirected … and in doing so, he’s discovered a little of the “queerness” of Jesus Himself!
“Holy Virginity that’s coming out of that motivation of being like Jesus and witnessing to this culture differently… for me, that’s a highly strange and odd thing,” he said, adding that it’s a “highly queer thing”.
If David’s conservative stance on sexuality angers progressives, no doubt his continued identification with “queerness” will raise the eyebrows of conservatives.
However, a proper understanding of “queerness” is essential to grasp both David’s point, and also one of the most radical aspects of Christianity – it’s Holy love.
“What queerness means for me is something that’s simply covered over and can’t be seen by normative discourse that has the power to control our society,” he said.
“(Queerness) is always bubbling up, breaking open, and that’s what Jesus did in his society constantly, without betraying the created order or the law, which I think is the tension we’re called to live in.”
David currently works as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Theology and Religion faculty at Oxford University, specialising in (among other things) Queer Theology
The Biblical eunuch
David identifies a model for queerness in the Biblical character of the eunuch – a sexually ambiguous figure in both the Gospels and the Old Testament (Isaiah 56:4):
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb, and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Matthew 19:12
“It’s not sexual, but spiritual – and that’s queer, that’s strange,” he said.
“That’s not how a Jewish worldview or a Roman worldview would ever think of procreation, fecundity, fruition of the self … (and) self-actualization today would never embrace that reality.”
Truly queer, truly Christian
In this light, David lives a truly queer Christian life – one based upon a King who challenges but then seeks to both renew and hold to account authorities and power structures.
This expression of queerness, he notes, is threatening to the certainties of both conservatives and progressives.
However, he finds his guide for living this way in Jesus Himself.
“I look at Jesus and how he loved us and gave up all of his desires … to save us,” he said.
“Being gay has become a gift that has linked me to Jesus even more profoundly because He was excluded from the created good to witness to give us access to its radical transformation in the resurrection,” he said.
“It’s not a rationalization, it’s just a reality. You know, where I live. And it’s a really beautiful life, but it’s queer.”
Find out more about David on his website
Adapted by Alasdair Belling, from Undeceptions Bonus episode ‘Holy Virginity‘, with Dr David Bennett
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