Last Updated on December 2, 2023 by Kittredge Cherry
Advent celebrates the mystery of the Word made flesh — an important concept in queer spirituality. A favorite Advent theme for lesbian artists is Mary and her female lovers, sometimes with references to the virgin birth and its and its similarity to artificial insemination. Advent resources posted here also include prayers. In 2023 Advent begins on Sunday, Dec. 3.
LGBTQ people and allies are creating new ways to honor Advent, the time of expectant waiting for God’s arrival / Christ’s birth starting four Sundays before Christmas.
“I am reflecting on what it might mean for us as LGBTIQ people to give birth to, and to reveal to the world, the Queer Face of God in our time, and in our culture,” spirituality author Michael Bernard Kelly told Q Spirit before one of his Advent retreats. “Advent and Christmas call us to embrace the mystery of that love which always exceeds our grasp, and yet which is given, age after age, into our hand.”
Possible queer saints for Advent include LGBTQ activists Harvey Milk and Louie Crew Clay because the timing of their deaths coincides with the start of the liturgical season of Advent.
Advent: Lesbian Mary’s virgin birth
Some welcome Advent by considering the virgin birth with queer eyes. Lesbians sometimes identify Mary’s virgin birth with using artificial insemination to have babies without heterosexual sex. Artists who explore this theme include Becki Jayne Harrelson and Elisabeth Ohlson. Their lesbian Madonnas are featured in “Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More” by Q Spirit founder Kittredge Cherry.
It’s important to imagine the Christmas story in new and different ways because it empowers people to grow in their relationship with each other and with God. Imagining the Madonna as a lesbian may come as a surprise, but it reminds the viewer that the story of Jesus’ birth has always been radical. It was scandalous that God’s son was born to an unwed mother in poverty. God became flesh—a shockingly total identification with all people.
Pro-woman views of the virgin birth go back at least as far as the famous 1851 speech by abolitionist Sojourner Truth who had been born into slavery. “Where did your Christ come from?” Truth asked. “From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.”
A lesbian couple cuddles the Christ child in “Madonna, Lover and Son” by Atlanta painter Becki Jayne Harrelson. She puts her queer Holy Family into the same landscape as Da Vinci’s “Madonna of the Rocks.” It appears at the top of this post.
In Harrelson’s version, the Madonna has a classic stylized halo while the landscape forms a natural sunlit halo around her blonde lover (based on the woman who has been Harrelson’s partner since 1995). The contrasting halos are Harrelson’s way of saying that lesbians are a natural part of creation, as opposed to the roles of wife and mother imposed by patriarchal religion. A turkey baster is concealed in the bushes, a play on artificial insemination and virgin birth. “God has a sense of humor—where I get mine I like to think,” Harrelson laughed.
The Madonna and her female lover are portrayed by a real lesbian couple, seven months’ pregnant through artificial insemination, in “Annunciation” from the “Ecce Homo” series by Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson. The angel Gabriel comes in the form of their gay male friend, who floats in with a message from God—and a test tube for insemination.
A Bible quote is displayed with the photo: “The angel said to her, “ ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.’” (Luke 1:30-31)
“Annunciation” is the opening image in the Swedish photographer’s series titled Ecce Homo, a pun meaning “See the human being” and “See the homosexual.” Each image is haunting and sharply beautiful, with a fashion-photo clarity and documentary truth that makes the familiar story become acutely real.
All hell broke loose when Ohlson recreated twelve scenes from Christ’s life using contemporary LGBTQ models and locations. Her Ecce Homo series toured Europe, often in churches, but the Pope expressed disapproval by canceling a planned audience with the Swedish archbishop. Opponents vandalized the art, threw rocks at the artist and issued death threats. This kind of religious bigotry is exactly why images of a queer Christ are needed.
“I wanted Jesus for me and my own sexual sense,” Ohlson explains. “I wanted to be able to identify with Jesus. There are millions and billions of Jesus pictures for heterosexuals to identify with. In Africa they have black Jesus. In China they have Chinese Jesus. Lots of different countries each have a different Jesus.”
Queer Nativity scenes feature two Marys
I created my own queer Nativity scenes for the Christmas season. One has two Marys at the manger with the baby Jesus, and the other features two Josephs with the Christ child.
It was hard to find a Nativity set where Mary, Joseph and Jesus weren’t molded together as one heterosexual blob. But I finally found one and put Mary with Mary and Joseph with Joseph—just like putting two brides or two grooms on top of a wedding cake!
“Lesbian Nativity in Nature: Love Makes a Holy Family” by Kittredge Cherry
Obviously this is not about historical accuracy, but I believe my queer Nativity scenes are true to the spirit of the Christmas story in the Bible: God’s child conceived in an extraordinary way and born into disreputable circumstances. Love makes a family—including the Holy Family.
“Lesbian Nativity with Dog: Love Makes a Holy Family” by Kittredge Cherry
I photographed them in two settings: Out in nature — and the more popular version with Christmas decorations, including the Harlequin Great Dane coming out of a gingerbread house. In that version, the Marys seem to ignore the baby Jesus while looking sideways at the dog.
This looks simple, but it caused a firestorm of criticism when I posted it on my blog starting in 2009. It’s been attacked many times in countless comments and in articles on conservative sites as a “blasphemous attempt to rewrite the Christmas story.” For more info, see my article Queer Nativity scenes show love makes a family.
Queer Advent poetry
The lesbian love between Mary and the divinely feminine Holy Spirit is explored in a 2020 poem by Jim Wise, a queer poet living in the American Midwest. His poetry has been published widely, including here are Q Spirit. This is part of his “Queer Psalter,” a work-in-progress. Some songs to the Virgin by medieval German mystic Hildegard of Bingen also have an ecstatic lesbian quality.
Lesbian Madonna
“whom She loved”
By Jim Wise
Mary was an unwed,
pregnant teenager,
something that never
goes over well in cultures
obsessed with ritual purity,
chastity, and asceticism.
Mary was a sexual outlaw.
Mary was one of us.
Luke says the Holy Spirit
came upon her,
and images of Zeus
dallying with mortal girls
and producing divine sons
spring to mind,
but Holy Spirit is the
feminine aspect of Divinity.
She is the Goddess of the Trinity,
so Mary was not impregnated
by God the Father but loved
by God the Mother.
The Divine Goddess made love
to a young Jewish girl,
and the world changed.
Jesus,
the son of two mothers –
the Holy Spirit and a
peasant girl named Mary
whom She loved.
A queer look at Advent and Christmas comes in the 2022 anthology “Reconstructing Christmas” by SJ Blasko and 14 others. It offers encouragement for LGBTQ Christians who feel estranged from faith and family during the holiday season. Fifteen contributors cover the “Outsider Jesus,” “Our Lady of Disgrace,” the annunciation, incarnation, family Christmas traditions and much more. The collection includes poetry, sermons, devotional reflections, and short stories from mostly LGBTQ+ authors. Published by SJ Blasko, an LGBTQ Christian from Massachusetts whose poetry book “Tree” appeared on Q Spirit’s list of the top LGBTQ Christian books of 2021.
Advent prayer: From a closet fertilized by hope
Another LGBTQ way to celebrate Advent is offered by Chris Glaser, a gay Christian minister, activist and author of LGBT spirituality books including Coming Out to God: Prayers for Lesbians and Gay Men, Their Families and Friends
Advent wreath from All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California by Susan Russell.
One: The closet may be a fertile place:
creativity bursts out of a lonely hell,
and from a closet fertilized with hope,
the spirit leaps from a monastic cell.
Many: Those born in darkness
have seen life.
One: Out of dark soil sprouts new life,
from darkness springs embodied hope.
Both stretch for the illumination
of the cosmic landscape.
Many: Those born in darkness
have seen life.
One: Dear God,
Many: We seek your Word embodied
in life rooted in fertile darkness.
In life stretching for illumination,
we await your transforming Word.
Happy Advent! Q Spirit publisher Kittredge Cherry sits beside an Advent wreath.
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Related links:
Queering Mary, Queering Christmas by Angela Yarber (Believe Out Loud)
Painting Mary(s), Queering Mary(s) by Angela Yarber (Feminism and Religion blog)
5 Ways to Observe Advent (and how queerness is part of that) (queertheology.com)
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To read this article in Italian, go to:
L’Avvento e il Volto queer di Dio (gionata.org)
To read this article in Russian, go to:
Что квир- и транс*люди знают об Адвенте (Nuntiare.org)
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Top image credit:
“Madonna, Lover and Son” by Becki Jayne Harrelson
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This post is part of the LGBTQ Calendar series by Kittredge Cherry. The series celebrates religious and spiritual holidays, events in LGBTQ history, holy days, feast days, festivals, anniversaries, liturgical seasons and other occasions of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people of faith and our allies.
This article was originally published on Q Spirit in November 2016, was expanded with new material over time, and was most recently updated on Dec. 2, 2023.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.
Claiming that a virgin is a “sexual outlaw” who violates chastity codes is absurdly contradictory, and claiming that conservative Christians see Mary that way is just plain dishonest since you know that isn’t how conservative Christians view her. Claiming that Divine conception somehow equates to lesbian sex or artificial insemination is also ridiculous. Most of this article sounds like a parody of this type of thing.
Rev Cherry,
Your posts are so informative and uplifting. Thank you.