"Jesus is an example. We have other examples, including many of our ancestors as role models who understood the inner meaning of our orientation"
About this Quote
Boyd’s move here is both pastoral and political: he lowers the temperature around Jesus by refusing to treat him as a trump card. “Jesus is an example” is almost disarmingly modest, and that’s the point. In debates where scripture is often wielded like a gavel, Boyd repositions Jesus as a model of lived ethics rather than a weaponized citation. It’s a subtle rebuke to any theology that claims exclusive ownership of Christ in order to police other people’s bodies and loves.
Then he widens the frame. “We have other examples” pushes against a hierarchy of holiness that only runs through official saints and approved narratives. When Boyd names “many of our ancestors,” he’s doing two things at once: granting queer people historical depth (a lineage, not a trend) and challenging the church’s amnesia. The phrase “role models” reads almost casually, but it’s a radical institutional demand: make room in the moral imagination for lives the tradition has routinely erased.
The clincher is “the inner meaning of our orientation.” Boyd sidesteps the sterile language of pathology and the reductive language of “lifestyle.” Orientation becomes something with interiority and spiritual intelligence - not merely desire, but a way of knowing. That “inner meaning” also signals a queer hermeneutic: truth isn’t only in the text or the rulebook; it’s in experience, community memory, and the long, quiet work of understanding oneself before God.
As a clergyman writing against the grain of mid-to-late 20th-century church culture, Boyd isn’t begging for tolerance. He’s asserting tradition - just a truer, wider one.
Then he widens the frame. “We have other examples” pushes against a hierarchy of holiness that only runs through official saints and approved narratives. When Boyd names “many of our ancestors,” he’s doing two things at once: granting queer people historical depth (a lineage, not a trend) and challenging the church’s amnesia. The phrase “role models” reads almost casually, but it’s a radical institutional demand: make room in the moral imagination for lives the tradition has routinely erased.
The clincher is “the inner meaning of our orientation.” Boyd sidesteps the sterile language of pathology and the reductive language of “lifestyle.” Orientation becomes something with interiority and spiritual intelligence - not merely desire, but a way of knowing. That “inner meaning” also signals a queer hermeneutic: truth isn’t only in the text or the rulebook; it’s in experience, community memory, and the long, quiet work of understanding oneself before God.
As a clergyman writing against the grain of mid-to-late 20th-century church culture, Boyd isn’t begging for tolerance. He’s asserting tradition - just a truer, wider one.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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