Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred Bisexual, Pansexual and Polysexual Perspectives

Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred is a thoughtful collection of bisexual, polysexual and pansexual scholarship on religion and spirituality. It examines how religious and spiritual traditions address sexuality, whilst also exploring the ways in which bisexually-, polysexually-, and pansexually-active people embrace religious and spiritual practice. The volume offers a comprehensive analysis of these prevalent themes by focusing on five main areas of discussion: Christian and Unitarian Discourses; Indigenous and Decolonizing Spiritual Discourses; Feminist Spiritual Discourses; Buddhist Discourses; and Neo/Pagan Discourses.

Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred offers an accessible yet scholarly treatment of these topics through a collection of critical essays by academics of theology, humanities, cultural studies and social sciences, as well as sexology professionals and clergy from various faith and spiritual traditions. It gives readers an insight into the intersection of sexualities and spiritualities, and attempts to disrupt this very dichotomy through its careful consideration of a wide variety of discourses.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.

Foreword Introduction: Our Hearts Hold These Intimate Connections Part I: Christian and Unitarian Discourses 1. Not Even on the Page: Freeing God from Heterocentrism 2. Re-enforcing Binaries, Downgrading Passions: Bisexual Invisibility in Mainstream Queer Christian Theology 3. Bi Christian Unitarian: A Theology of Transgression 4. Developing a Bisexual Adult Religious Education Curriculum Part II: Indigenous and Decolonizing Spiritual Discourses 5. Living with Dual Spirits: Spirituality, Sexuality, and Healing in African Diaspora 6. Bodeme in Harlem: An African Diasporic Autoethnography 7. Colonial Legacies, Decolonized Spirits: Balboa, Ugandan Martyrs, and AIDS Solidarity Today 8. Make It Funky Now: The Birth of Funk Studies – A Review of Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1 by Herukhuti Part III: Feminist Spiritual Discourses 9. Reading Althaus-Reid: As a Bi FeministTheo/Methodological Resource 10. Bisexual Women as Emblematic Sexual Healers and the Problematics of the Embodied Sexual Whore 11. Bi bell: Spirituality and the Sexual Intellectual 12. Non-Monogamous Bisexuality as a Practice of Spiritual Freedom in The Color Purple Part IV: Buddhist Discourses 13. The Third Precept: Towards a Buddhist Ethics of Bisexuality 14. Bi, Buddhist, Activist: Refusing Intolerance, But Not Refusing Each Other Part V: Neo/Pagan Discourses 15. The Sacredness of Pleasure 16. "All Cool Women Should Be Bisexual:" Female Bisexual Identity in an American NeoPagan Community 17. Review of Gaia and the New Politics of Love: Notes for a Poly Planet by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio

Loraine Hutchins teaches inter-disciplinary sexuality studies. Her 2001 Cultural Studies doctoral dissertation documented contemporary U.S. sacred sexualities, particularly those with a queer feminist focus. She co-edited Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out, which was awarded a '100 best LGBT books of the 20th century' award by Lambda Book Review. She is a national leader in the U.S. bisexual movement, as well as an independent scholar writing on sexuality and spirituality issues.

H. Sharif Williams is a clinical sociologist, sexologist, educator, and cultural theorist, and is the founder of Black Funk: The Center for Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, USA. Under his spiritual name Herukhuti, he is the author of Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1. He is a faculty member at Goddard College, USA. An initiate and practitioner of African wisdom traditions since the age of fourteen, he is spiritual godfather, advisor and teacher to various practitioners around the world and keeper of the Shrine of Sekhmet and Heruhet, USA.