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Queer and Christian: Review of Brandan Robertson’s New Book

Queer and Christian: Review of Brandan Robertson’s New Book

Last updated on: May 12, 2026 at 9:52 am by James F. McGrath

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Queer and Christian: Review of Brandan Robertson’s New Book 2026-05-12T09:52:04-04:00 James F. McGrath

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I am long overdue to offer a review of Brandan Robertson’s powerful book Queer and Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table. The book came out in May, and I have been reading and making notes. It is a testament to the importance and power of this book that I could not just skim it and churn out a quick review on that basis. This book is prophetic. It is quotable and memeable. It is a book that, as you read it, you will be underlining, and hopefully sharing.

A statement in the introduction on p.xix encapsulates succinctly what the book is addressing: “I’ve been made afraid to pursue my faith because I was assured that this aspect of myself that I did not choose and could not change had made me detestable to God.” That is the experience of so many LGBTQ+ Christians. Like Job, their friends have shown up to defend their theology, making them the victims of the effort. This book indicates that, like the character of Job, Brandan has had the experience of God showing up to say “I am angry with your friends, for they have not spoken the truth about me as you have.”

Brandan’s efforts to grapple with the Bible are not in any way dishonest about its dark side. What he is emphasizing is not that the scriptures speak in a uniform way to embrace him and all who identify with the label queer, but that the Bible is a book that contains works that have pushed at such borders and boundaries before, and when we read and understand that aspect of the biblical literature, these writings continue to do likewise. He writes on p.xxii, “When we concede a book as influential as the Bible to those who use it to justify narrow, exclusive, fear-based theology, we not only allow a misunderstanding of the Bible to flourish, but we also enable religious and political leaders to continue to manipulate billions of people into believing that they represent God’s perspective and therefore must not be questioned.” And again on p.xxiii, “For far too long, pastors have gotten away with justifying their own homophobia and transphobia by pointing to a few obscure verses in Scripture, with their congregations simply accepting this theology as God’s truth.”

That’s still just the introduction, and yet I’m sure you’ll agree that this is already substantive and engaging stuff. In the first chapter, the connection between queerness and holiness is explored. The holy in its original sense, like the queer in its modern as well as its traditional sense, is that which does not fit in, which calls out to be handled with caution since it has the potential to shake things up and turn them upside down. Brandan quotes bell hooks’ definition of queer as “being at odds with everything around it,” to which he adds, “We live in a world shaped and controlled by ideas, beliefs, systems, and structures that particular humans have created to benefit their own particular groups. The things accepted as ‘normal’ haven’t always been normal, even though people continue claiming they have been. Nothing in our world has always been the way it is, and nothing in our world must stay the way it is. In fact, things shouldn’t remain the same” (p.5). Let me dare to paraphrase this. To be queer is at least potentially to be prophetic, and certainly to be prophetic is to be queer. Seeing that the world could be other than it is and inviting people towards that vision is what prophecy is all about. Thus, it needs to be emphasized, those who seek to stifle queer Christian voices are seeking to stifle prophecy, to maintain the status quo and stop their ears to the voice of God calling us on towards new, exciting, and liberating experiences. Brandan, more humbly but no less significantly, characterizes queering as reforming. I am not sure that religions are any more resistant to change and reformation that society in general. Religion is an expression of human beings, whether that religious expression calls for inclusion and liberation or exclusion and enslavement. Religions do this because people do, and if there has consistently been a history of majorities working hard to maintain the status quo, there are so many moments when queer prophetic voices have shifted the direction of a people, a nation, and ultimately the world that we need to balance realism with hope. Those powerful upsurges in human inclusivity and wellbeing are then met with efforts to domesticate them and restore the status quo. Brandan thus warns that the desire to be accepted within the mainstream can undercut the prophetic message (p.9).

Chapter 2 of Queer and Christian shifts gear into a more biographical mode. Especially if you are someone who is, has been, or is connected with people who are on the fence about queer inclusion in Christianity, please do not skip this section. You cannot read and believe the experiences of queer Christians and deny that they are different in a way that has biological roots beyond their control which expressed themselves at a young age. Nor can you read and believe what they write about their experience and deny that they have a genuine experience of God and of faith as Christians. It is precisely this evidence that must be allowed to overturn any attempt to insist that reality must be otherwise because of some doctrinal framework that you have been told to subscribe to. If a doctrine is incompatible with the real lived experience of Christians, then once again we must embrace the message of the Book of Job and discard such doctrine. The alternative is to have God angry with us as God was with Job’s friends (Job 42:7). God values honesty in light of experience, not the defense of theology at the expense of an individual’s lived truth. As someone who experienced childhood with an alcoholic father and found it difficult in countless ways, my heart goes out to Brandan and everyone who had to navigate that type of situation with additional burdens and challenges. I will add that my adult experience has more than made up for that childhood trauma. That again is precisely why I am so adamant and passionate as an ally. I am filled with indignation when people try to rob a brother or sister of their joy as they embrace who they are as human beings and as Christians. The sad irony is that many of the attackers, the bigots, are people who themselves are bearing burdens and have been robbed of the joy of being affirmed and comfortable in their own identity.

Chapter 2 ends with a profound religious experience (p.14) not unlike my own, except for the fact that when I had mine, it did not come with Chick-fil-A coupons. One of the things that is powerful about fervent religion is the sense of community. It is emphatically not the case that that experience of community is only for those who deny their queerness. If you have never experienced that, Theology Beer Camp is a place where you can. What convinced me that this was an event that I wanted to return to year after year was precisely taking communion where queer siblings in faith were not merely welcome at the table, but invited to be the ones who served communion to the rest of us. Returning to Brandan’s book, it is always fascinating to read what friends write and discover how similar the journeys were that we have each been on separately.

Chapter 3 then explores the heartbreaking turn that cisgender heterosexual Christians are spared even if we veer into views called heresy. There may be rejection, but when someone declares your deepest desire for connection to another human being to be sinful, that is pitting your biological nature against the grace and goodness of God in a way that is horrifyingly traumatic. The giveaway that this is something human rather than divine is summed up nicely when Brandan writes, “Authenticity was not valued, but conformity” (p.19). The chapters that follow offer the tragic if ultimately joyous and redemptive journey Brandan followed towards ministry, but initially believing that this required him to be “cured” of who he was at the deepest level. Chapter 5 should persuade any reader of the unnecessary and harmful trauma that heteronormative Christianity has inflicted on people at the moment when they experience what Genesis 2 describes, encountering another and feeling a deep connection of love. I hope that you will cheer for Brandan’s maturity of insight as he realized that the prayers to “cure” him of the experience of loving another human being could not possibly be of God (pp.30-31).

Reading Brandan’s biography, it wasn’t until chapter 6 that I realized that I had been part of his journey from quite so early. When we blog and engage in other forms of public scholarship, we don’t necessarily know that what for us is a stance of confidence after many years of reflection may be intersecting with what someone else is articulating for the first time. When I quoted Brandan in 2014, I did not then know that I was doing so to someone who was courageously expressing their progressive Christian voice for the first time. I am glad I did, all the more so now that I see the significance of that with hindsight.

Having already written at length, and still not finished, I will make this a multi-part review. I won’t promise from now that there will be only two parts, given how rich the first part of the book is. That won’t surprise anyone who has read what Brandan writes. As was getting ready to post this, an article of his about the recent Supreme Court decision showed up in my inbox, and so I am linking to that as well.

Hopefully this will already convince you to buy Queer and Christian. Even so, my review will continue in due course.

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