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| author | Sara Rosenau |
| title | Becoming Church: An Ecclesiology of Failure, Embodied Politics, and Queer Grace |
| abstract | This dissertation investigates theories of embodiment in ecclesiology, focusing on the significance of ecclesiology as a Christian
practice with political impact on queer bodies and queer life. While scholars in the field of theology have begun utilizing queer theory in constructive theology, a
queer ecclesiology has yet to emerge. Exploring recent trends in ecclesiology, including a turn towards embodied practice, this project critiques the continuation of
ecclesiological idealism that converges with the marginalization of queer people within church life. Instead, this project suggests that both our embodied practice and
the practice of church are plastic by divine intention. God forms both individual bodies and church bodies through the grace of Christ. Drawing on queer theories of
recognition, performativity, and failure, this project proposes that church failure has queer potential, opening possibilities for ecclesiological evolution. Further,
practices of queer life in the context of church transform the norms of Christian community, illumining church as always in the process of becoming the Body of Christ.
Those whom the church has lost or rejected know something about what church is and the potential of what church can become. This project argues that queer Christians
long for the church to get lost with them, not to find them. For perhaps in the losing there is a saving. |
| school | Drew Theological School |
| degree | Ph.D. (2017) |
| advisor | Chris Boesel |
| committee | Catherine Keller
Traci C West |
| full text | SRosenau.pdf |
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