Susannah Cornwall | University of Exeter (original) (raw)
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Papers by Susannah Cornwall
Intersex, Theology, and the Bible, 2015
Anglican theologians often identify the “sources” of Christian theology as Scripture, tradition, ... more Anglican theologians often identify the “sources” of Christian theology as Scripture, tradition, and reason. Many Christians, especially in the Wesleyan tradition, add the category of experience; for others, personal experience falls within the category of reason. But whether the sources are represented as three- or fourfold, reflection on experience has been largely missing from Christian accounts of intersex, with minimal focus on how intersex people reflect on their own identity. In this chapter, excerpts from interviews with intersex Christians in Britain are presented as part of a “missing source” for theological accounts of human sex. I suggest that taking account of the experience of others leads to a fuller and more nuanced account of sex, and that the assumption that intersex is so rare as to have minimal significance in theologies of sex, gender, and sexuality is already to make judgments about what constitutes “real” sex, which the experiences of intersex people may challenge. First, I examine Scripture, tradition, and reason as possible sources of knowledge about intersex. Then I explore how six interviewees’ responses testify to the significance of intersex experiences as legitimate sources for Christian theology.
Modern Believing, 2021
Sexuality debates in the churches often polarise along entrenched lines. However, emerging questi... more Sexuality debates in the churches often polarise along entrenched lines. However, emerging questions in sexuality and sexual ethics, including those on matters such as polyamory and BDSM, and in gender, including the rise of non-binary identity, may prompt ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ alike to step well beyond their comfort zones and reconsider what are the goods that Christians should endorse. In this way, they may discover that, despite their disagreements about well-worn chestnuts such as same-sex relationships, they are closer together on broader concerns such as faithfulness, stability and permanence than they might previously have suspected.
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SCM Press via the lin... more This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SCM Press via the link in this record
Published in Hedges, Paul (ed.) (2014), Controversies in Contemporary Religion: Education, Law, P... more Published in Hedges, Paul (ed.) (2014), Controversies in Contemporary Religion: Education, Law, Politics, Society, and Spirituality, Volume 2: Debates in the Public Square and Ethical Issues, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 213-239.
... 399439. (1992), Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Hu-man Body in Medi... more ... 399439. (1992), Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Hu-man Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books). Cannon, Katie G. and Carter Heyward (1994),'Can We Be Different But Not Alienated? An Exchange of Letters', in Daly, Lois K.(ed ...
Published in Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 18 (2010), 61-74.
Sexualisierte Gewalt in kirchlichen Kontexten | Sexual Violence in the Context of the Church, 2021
Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2020
Abstract Recommendations about best practice for upholding the agency and physical integrity of i... more Abstract Recommendations about best practice for upholding the agency and physical integrity of intersex people using human rights discourses acknowledge that the lack of specific protections for people with intersex characteristics to date is a problem. However, failure to follow such recommendations leaves people with intersex characteristics still vulnerable to violations of their agency and physical integrity. Religious communities, especially those that teach that binary sex is intended by God, may be particularly challenged by intersex, despite historic recognition of multiple sex categories in Judaism and Islam in particular. However, these religions also contain resources for constructing rich and robust accounts of personhood, and understanding diverse forms of embodiment as a gift. In particular, Abrahamic constructions of life as gift from God offer a different way to promote the physical and spiritual integrity and wellbeing of people with intersex characteristics.
Theology & Sexuality, 2018
ABSTRACT Intersex’s representation as “border case,” explored via six fictional treatments of unu... more ABSTRACT Intersex’s representation as “border case,” explored via six fictional treatments of unusually sexed bodies, echoes the ways “atypical” and “marginal” sex and sexuality receive attention to defer focus on that never queried because it seems so ordinary. Across the novels, the purported otherness of the intersex character highlights the dysfunctionality of those around them. In this way, dysfunction, disjunction, and disgust exist across the relationships and dynamics surrounding the scapegoated identity and are a means to avoid the hard work of critical self-reflection on the parts of those who do not usually deem themselves “other.” If the supporting characters in all these novels are guilty of failing fully to explore their own marginality, the same has frequently happened with religious bodies’ attitudes to intersex, and this is discussed with reference to accounts of intersex in Judaism and Islam, and tensions surrounding the casting out of sexual “violators” in one Christian tradition.
Teaching Theology & Religion, 2018
Health and Social Care Chaplaincy, 2019
Theology, 2019
policies of short-stay and temporary migration. The main ethical challenge in the post-Brexit age... more policies of short-stay and temporary migration. The main ethical challenge in the post-Brexit age, for both churches and politicians of good intent, is how to change the climate of the debate from one of fear to one of compassion. It is how to reassure those who are genuinely fearful for their livelihoods and identities and to show them that incomers to the country can bring benefits as well as threats and are thus deserving of welcome. The challenge is how to exorcise the spectre of Enoch Powell. To emphasize the humanity of each individual, as this book does, is a good starting point.
Intersex, Theology, and the Bible, 2015
Anglican theologians often identify the “sources” of Christian theology as Scripture, tradition, ... more Anglican theologians often identify the “sources” of Christian theology as Scripture, tradition, and reason. Many Christians, especially in the Wesleyan tradition, add the category of experience; for others, personal experience falls within the category of reason. But whether the sources are represented as three- or fourfold, reflection on experience has been largely missing from Christian accounts of intersex, with minimal focus on how intersex people reflect on their own identity. In this chapter, excerpts from interviews with intersex Christians in Britain are presented as part of a “missing source” for theological accounts of human sex. I suggest that taking account of the experience of others leads to a fuller and more nuanced account of sex, and that the assumption that intersex is so rare as to have minimal significance in theologies of sex, gender, and sexuality is already to make judgments about what constitutes “real” sex, which the experiences of intersex people may challenge. First, I examine Scripture, tradition, and reason as possible sources of knowledge about intersex. Then I explore how six interviewees’ responses testify to the significance of intersex experiences as legitimate sources for Christian theology.
Modern Believing, 2021
Sexuality debates in the churches often polarise along entrenched lines. However, emerging questi... more Sexuality debates in the churches often polarise along entrenched lines. However, emerging questions in sexuality and sexual ethics, including those on matters such as polyamory and BDSM, and in gender, including the rise of non-binary identity, may prompt ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ alike to step well beyond their comfort zones and reconsider what are the goods that Christians should endorse. In this way, they may discover that, despite their disagreements about well-worn chestnuts such as same-sex relationships, they are closer together on broader concerns such as faithfulness, stability and permanence than they might previously have suspected.
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SCM Press via the lin... more This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SCM Press via the link in this record
Published in Hedges, Paul (ed.) (2014), Controversies in Contemporary Religion: Education, Law, P... more Published in Hedges, Paul (ed.) (2014), Controversies in Contemporary Religion: Education, Law, Politics, Society, and Spirituality, Volume 2: Debates in the Public Square and Ethical Issues, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 213-239.
... 399439. (1992), Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Hu-man Body in Medi... more ... 399439. (1992), Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Hu-man Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books). Cannon, Katie G. and Carter Heyward (1994),'Can We Be Different But Not Alienated? An Exchange of Letters', in Daly, Lois K.(ed ...
Published in Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 18 (2010), 61-74.
Sexualisierte Gewalt in kirchlichen Kontexten | Sexual Violence in the Context of the Church, 2021
Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2020
Abstract Recommendations about best practice for upholding the agency and physical integrity of i... more Abstract Recommendations about best practice for upholding the agency and physical integrity of intersex people using human rights discourses acknowledge that the lack of specific protections for people with intersex characteristics to date is a problem. However, failure to follow such recommendations leaves people with intersex characteristics still vulnerable to violations of their agency and physical integrity. Religious communities, especially those that teach that binary sex is intended by God, may be particularly challenged by intersex, despite historic recognition of multiple sex categories in Judaism and Islam in particular. However, these religions also contain resources for constructing rich and robust accounts of personhood, and understanding diverse forms of embodiment as a gift. In particular, Abrahamic constructions of life as gift from God offer a different way to promote the physical and spiritual integrity and wellbeing of people with intersex characteristics.
Theology & Sexuality, 2018
ABSTRACT Intersex’s representation as “border case,” explored via six fictional treatments of unu... more ABSTRACT Intersex’s representation as “border case,” explored via six fictional treatments of unusually sexed bodies, echoes the ways “atypical” and “marginal” sex and sexuality receive attention to defer focus on that never queried because it seems so ordinary. Across the novels, the purported otherness of the intersex character highlights the dysfunctionality of those around them. In this way, dysfunction, disjunction, and disgust exist across the relationships and dynamics surrounding the scapegoated identity and are a means to avoid the hard work of critical self-reflection on the parts of those who do not usually deem themselves “other.” If the supporting characters in all these novels are guilty of failing fully to explore their own marginality, the same has frequently happened with religious bodies’ attitudes to intersex, and this is discussed with reference to accounts of intersex in Judaism and Islam, and tensions surrounding the casting out of sexual “violators” in one Christian tradition.
Teaching Theology & Religion, 2018
Health and Social Care Chaplaincy, 2019
Theology, 2019
policies of short-stay and temporary migration. The main ethical challenge in the post-Brexit age... more policies of short-stay and temporary migration. The main ethical challenge in the post-Brexit age, for both churches and politicians of good intent, is how to change the climate of the debate from one of fear to one of compassion. It is how to reassure those who are genuinely fearful for their livelihoods and identities and to show them that incomers to the country can bring benefits as well as threats and are thus deserving of welcome. The challenge is how to exorcise the spectre of Enoch Powell. To emphasize the humanity of each individual, as this book does, is a good starting point.
Through engagement with theologies of adoption, pro-natalism, marriage, and queer theology, Susan... more Through engagement with theologies of adoption, pro-natalism, marriage, and queer theology, Susannah Cornwall figures developments in models of marriage and family not as distortions of or divergences from the divinely-ordained blueprint, but as developments already of a piece with these institution's being. Much Christian theological discussion of family, sex and marriage seems to claim that they are (or should be) unchanging and immaculate; that to celebrate their shifting and developing natures is to reject them as good gifts of God. However models of marriage, family, parenting and reproduction have changed and are still, in some cases radically, changing. These changes are not all a raging tide to be turned back, but in continuity with goods deeply embedded in the tradition. Alternative forms of marriage and family stand as signs of the hope of the possibility of change. Changed institutions, such as same-sex marriage, are new beginnings with the potential to be fruitful and generative in their own right. In them, humans create new imaginaries which more fully acknowledge the interactive nature of our relationships with the world and the divine.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introducing Un/familiar Theology
2. Generativity: The Disruption of Biological Origins
3. The Content of Marriage: Two and Only Two?
4. Natality: Reproduction and the Possibility of New Beginnings
5: Adopting Our Own: Worldless Newcomers or Children of a Common God?
6: Full Quivers and the Diversities of Generativity
7: Un/familiar Institutions: Repetition and Difference
Conclusion
Works Cited
Reviews
“Cornwall's prolific writing is always fresh and innovative, weaving together classical and contemporary theology with contemporary thought and social practice. Her latest book does not disappoint. Her approach to marriage, same-sex families, adoption, even polyamory (and more) is a tour de force, achieving in her writing what she advocates for Christian traditions more generally - that they are dynamic; and that they must negotiate continuity with change, and identity with difference. Her analysis of 'generativity', whether in 'un/familiar' family forms, or within the theological tradition as it generates new thinking, is timely and convincing, and will also generate much appreciation among her readers.” – Adrian Thatcher, University of Exeter, UK