Pearl Wong, director of QTA, was invited as a session speaker by the Society of Asian Biblical Studies (SABS) conference 2018 from July 16-20 in Malang, Indonesia, attended by almost 100 participants.  The session is Queer readings in and for Asia, Pearl’s presentation is titled “Queering Hermeneutics in Asian-Chinese Contexts” during which she introduced the latest book published by QTA. Other speakers include:

• Stephen Suleeman (Jakarta Theological Seminary, Indonesia), Queer themes in the Indonesian Tradition
•  Lee Yeong Mee (Hanshin University, South Korea), Reading the Book of Ruth as a story of queer family
• Jione Havea (Trinity Theological College, New Zealand), God did not let Jonah die?

Click here to take a look at the Abstract of Pearl

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“Queering Hermeneutics in Asian Chinese context”

Pearl Wong, Queer Theology Academy, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This paper demonstrates how queer (LGBTQI+) Christians (from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China) "reclaim" the Bible by creative and constructive interpretation from their own perspectives. By affirming queer experience, they not only liberate themselves from scriptures that are traditionally oppressive to LGBTQI+ people, but also liberate the Bible from homophobia, transphobia, oppression, misogyny, and hetero/binary gender system.

  In contemporary hermeneutics, we can no longer ignore interpretations from the perspectives of marginalized, feminist, womanist, black, gay and lesbian, postcolonial, Asian, African Diaspora, in other words, interpreting the Bible is no longer dominated by a particular group of people traditionally white heterosexual males. For the past thirty years, queer theologies and queer biblical interpretation have gradually come of age as a result of many courageous lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex people who come out to challenge the essentialist notions of sex, gender identity and sexuality.

  The development of queer theologies and queer hermeneutics in the context of Hong Kong is in existence for less than ten years, and since 2014 to now, LGBTQI theologians, biblical scholars and pastors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China met together to explore theology and interpret the Bible from their own queer experiences. As a result of the collaboration between these three regions, a book comprises of eighteen articles on queering hermeneutics in Chinese language have been published this year in which the authors engage in a proactive approach with issues such as family diversity, intersectionality, polyamory, intersex in the Creation Story, sex workers and queer sexual ethics.

  This paper will also examine the central theological inquiry of this book, what is the word of God manifested through the body of Christ in the interest of queer people, as well as provide a brief summary of the contribution, development, and the different strands in the evolution of queer biblical interpretation.