The Ultimate Blasphemy? Man Rewrites Bible To Replace Homophobic Rhetoric

An author is rewriting the Bible in order to replace the inherent heterosexism with a queer context.

Robert Whitehead plans to undo the “implicit sexism, misogyny, heterosexism, hierarchical oppression, slut-shaming, etc” present in the Bible and replace these with “the feminine, the queer, the outcast, the strange.”

Whitehead believes that the Bible is an “influential work of literature” with a “remarkable place in the history of human thought, action, and awareness,” however it has “been misused by religious, political, or cultural leaders and institutions to negatively influence the lives of queer people.”

Whitehead believes that as a queer person the bible fails him and questions:

“The Bible did not represent me, the Bible condemned me, so how could I be a part of that system of belief?”

He decided that because the “possibility of change” is “embedded within the history of the text” he would make it his mission to change “the literary and mythic content” in order to create a “radical translation that is radically inclusive.”

It is not Whitehead’s intention to change the meaning of the Bible and he will instead be examining the “literary and mythic content,” in order to “show meaning in a queer way.”

Whitehead claims:

“I will make shifts to pronouns, word choice, and rhetoric that will allow for queer representation. I will revise metaphor, allegory, and narrative in order to undo the problems of male gaze, redistribute attention to marginalized characters, and scrub heterosexist ideology from the stories.”

The concept of rewriting the Bible so that it fits with queer theory and progressive politics seems to be a popular one and in a few days Whitehead has crowd-funded almost $3,000 to put toward the project.

Whitehead has spoken out about his reason for starting the project and stated:

“My hope is to reconstitute what, for queer people like myself, more closely resembles our truth. And to make the literature of the Bible correspond to my experience of being queer.”

“I see the radical act of this project as having the potential to assert the power of queerness against the brutal conservative, literalist reading of this religious text. I see this project as telling my own story and the story of countless queers who have been told they are wrong because it is written in the Bible. It is a project of queer liberation, queer representation, and queer celebration.”

Image by Dwight Stone via Flickr under this Creative Commons License.

Natasha is a freelance writer, feminist, and coffee addict based in the UK. She has a Master's degree in Literary Studies and specialised in Gender Studies throughout her time at University. She spends her free time collecting tattoos and dying her hair bizarre colours, much to her girlfriend's dismay.