Nancy Koester, . Fortress Introduction to the History of Christianity in the United States. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007. xi+239 pp. $18.00 (paper).

2008 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 409-410
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Williams
1994 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 628
Author(s):  
Jay P. Dolan ◽  
Mark A. Noll

Author(s):  
Brock Perry

Many have been left behind by the apparent push into a brighter future of growing civil and religious acceptance for LGBTQ people. Taking note of the rhetoric of recent accounts of the progress for LGBTQ rights in the United States, this essay stages an encounter with a text that documents an early Christian attempt to imagine a better future, The Apocalypse of Peter, through the lens of queer negativity and queer historiography. This reading raises questions not only for the contemporary narrative of progress for LGBTQ people, but also for readers and historians who desire to redeem the meaning of problematic texts in the archives of the history of Christianity or reject them outright. Ultimately, efforts to redeem or reject such artifacts in the name of a better, more inclusive future are in danger—perhaps unavoidably—of reifying the relational dynamics of exclusion that have characterized the marginalization of those marked as queer. The Apocalypse of Peter is haunting evidence of the violence with which a community’s vision of the future can be enacted on those who are made to represent the cause of its un-ending deferral.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document