The study starts with a historical overview of the notion of gender and sexual identity and belonging in the German Christian church as seen from a queer and intersectional gender studies perspective. The following study moves to explore three individual experiences and encounters with the Christian church. The experiences are contemporary and have been made by queer Christians inside the church and during the creation of a personal faith that is suitable for their needs. With the analytical help of the feminist standpoint theory and queer theory, the researcher examines a limited empirical corpus based on three interviews. The study centers on the experiences of these participants and asks fundamental questions about how to unite two significant belongings that seem to be contradictory. These sample stories include individuals who openly belong to the queer community. They have worked in and for the church or study theology. The stories of such double belonging have been investigated through semi-structured interviews. The discussion and analysis outline similar experiences made by the participants. The main findings include the lack of language and role models that lead to experiences of loneliness and exclusion. How they construe their sense of faith varies as faith is individual. Nevertheless, and as highlighted, is the immense significance of being religious, the importance of spirituality and faith for the inquired members of the LGBTQIA+ community, but not necessarily church as an institution.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-191562 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Rostek, Johanna |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Tema Genus |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds