Other Sheep - Multicultural Ministries with Sexual Minorities

Annotated
Bibliography

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Biblical
Books

Biblical Books

L. Robert Arthur, The Sex Texts: Sexuality, Gender and Relationships in the Bible,Omaha,1994.
Arthur, former district coordinator of UFMCC, has produced a pastorally sensitive text for leading
congregations through erotophobia, misogyny and homophobia.

Robert L. Brawley (ed), Biblical Ethics & Homosexuality: Listening to Scripture, Louisville, The
Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1996.
One of the more positive attempts at a biblical ethics of homosexuality. Several fine essays.

Bernardette Brooten, Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Exciting work that undercuts gay and heterosexist analysis of the Romans 1. Brooten brings a great
deal of contextual evidence of female homoeroticism in antiquity to her gender analysis and exegesis
of Romans 1.

L. William Countryman, Dirt, Greed, & Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and Their
Implications for Today, Philadelhphia, Fortress Press, 1988.
Countryman contextualizes the passages on sex in the Christian scriptures within property rights and
purity concerns. The purity and property concerns of antiquity can no longer be the basis of our
contemporary sexual ethics.

Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.
Douglas analyzes the holiness code and explores what is means. Important work used by a number
of biblical scholars in their analysis of the texts of terror.

George Edwards, Gay/Lesbian Liberation: A Biblical Perpsective, New York, The Pilgrim Press, 1984.
Edwards provides a good exgesis of the biblical texts and moves in the direction of a liberation
theology.

Michael E. England, The Bible and Homosexuality, San Francisco, UFMCC, 1986.
England minimalizes the biblical texts of terror and embeds them in their cultural context.

Victor Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1979.
Furnish understands Paul as condemning exploitative homosexuality, not healthy gay/lesbian
relationships.

Peter Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, New York, William Morrow &
Co., 1996.
Gomes deconstructs abuses of the Bible against particular social groups, including doctrinaire
homophobic prejudice falsely based on readings of the text.

Daniel Helminiak, What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality, San Francisco, Alamo Square
Press, 1994.
This is a good primer for the lay person wanting to know what the Bible says about homosexuality.
Easily readable.

Tom Horner, Jonathan Loved David: Homosexuality in Biblical Times, Philadelphia, The Westminster
Press, 1978.
A good, classic work on the Israelite cultural background for the homoerotic citations in the Hebrew
scriptures. Horner is weaker on the Christian scriptures but does discuss the sexuality of Jesus.

Arthur Frederick Ide, City of Sodom and Homosexuality in Western Thought, Dallas, Monument
Press, 1985.
Ide argues that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah does not refer to homosexuality, thus weakening
contemporary religious homophobia. He looks at the mistinterpretation of the biblical story as it
impacts western thought and homophobic practice.

Arthur Frederick Ide, Battling with Beasts: Sex in the Life and Letters of St. Paul, Garland,
Tanglewuld Press, 1991.
Ide argues that Paul was a homosexual. Sort of circuitous and idiosyncratic argumentation.

Arthur Frederick Ide, Noah and the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homophobia, and Heterosexism in the
Flood Story and Its Writing, Dallas, Monument Press, 1992.
Ide argues that Genesis was altered to hide to ancient sexual license to legitimize religious
homophobia and racial hatred.

James Loader, A Tale of Two Cities: Sodom and Gomorrah, Kampen, J. K. Kok, 1990.
Loader analyzes the Sodom and Gomorrah story and provides a good interpretative history within
the Jewish and Christian scriptures, intertestmental and patristic writings.

Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1995.
Martin has produced a wonderful work on how Paul and the Corinthian community views the body.
Martin has much to say about gender and sexuality issues.

Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1983.
Scroggs inteprets Paul's citations in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 as an objection to pederasty, not
to modern expressions of homosexuality.

Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interepretation of the Secret Gospel of Mark,
New York, Harper and Row, 1973.
Smith tries to show a gospel fragment about Jesus' nocturnal sexual initiation of a young man.
Certainly suggestive and provocative about early Christianity.

John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
Spong speaks out against literal interpretations of the Bible and their denial of basic human rights.
He also suggests that Paul was a closeted homosexual.

Gerd Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1987.
Theissen's excellent study of Paul cites a number of German biblical studies, suggesting that Paul
was a homosexual. This is generally ignored by American Pauline scholars.

Sjef van Tilborg, Imaginative Love in John, New York, E. J. Brill, 1993.
Van Tilborg argues that the author of the Gospel of John uses the pederastic model to describe the
relation of Jesus to the Beloved Disciple.

Michael Vasey, Strangers and Friends: A New Exploration of Homosexuality and the Bible, London,
Hodder & Stoughton, 1995.
Vasey provides one of the most in-depth evangelical readings of the biblical texts of terror in their
contexts to debunk the exclusion of gays/lesbians.

Nancy Wilson, Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
Wilson provides an enlivened queer reading of the biblical texts. Her last chapter on queer sexual
theology offers much promise for further development of sexual theology.