These are challenging times for LGBTQ+ people, particularly LGBTQ+ people of color, as the Trump administration has been rolling out initiatives targeting trans people and devaluing diversity and inclusion in the government and public square. Meanwhile, traditional doctrinal religions, struggling with issues of sexuality, gender, and same-sex marriage, are in upheaval. Religion publishers are addressing these issues and controversies in new titles drawn from academic research or prompted by authors’ personal experiences.
According to scholar Katherine Kelaidis, the current moment is as consequential as the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. Her book The Fourth Reformation, coming in August from Bloomsbury Academic, “illuminates why conflict and uncertainty and transformation are endemic to all religious traditions—and how gender and women and the LGBTQ+ community are shaping the future of these traditions theologically, politically, and culturally,” according to Bloomsbury senior academic editor Richard Brown.
Sociologist Dawne Moon and philosopher Theresa W. Tobin gathered scores of personal stories for a book that hits all today’s biggest buzzwords. Choosing Love: What LGBTQ+ Christians Can Teach Us All About Relationships, Inclusion, and Justice (June) is, according to Oxford University Press, “a powerful tribute to the ‘change-makers’ working to fuse faith and identity.” And psychologist Mark A. Yarhouse, who directs the Sexual and Gender Identity Institute at Wheaton College, offers Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (InterVarsity, Nov.) to pastors, professionals, and parents seeking ways to reconcile both biblical teachings and individual experiences.
Brandan Robertson, the self-described TikTok pastor and host of the Faith for the Rest of Us podcast, blasts the misuse of Bible verses as a way to “clobber” gay people in Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table (May). Robertson even includes a chapter titled “The Queer Saints of Scripture.” The book is designed, according to St. Martin’s Essentials, to offer “unwavering support for anyone ready to reclaim their faith from the clutches of intolerance.”
Trans man and minister Malcom Himschoot’s Reading Secrets: A Queer Interpretation of Scripture, due in June from Flare Books, is a memoir written in verse. In it, Himschoot reflects on the struggles of his late father, a fundamentalist Christian and closeted gay man, and how both he and his father dealt with what the publisher calls “homophobia and the American culture that shaped their triumphs and tragedies.”
Cartoonist and journalist Caitlin Cook’s graphic memoir Ace of Hearts, coming from Street Noise Books in December, explores how the author was reared in a conservative religious community and ultimately broke away to find peace and happiness identifying as asexual. Street Noise publisher Liz Frances says churches “often provide a loving and supportive community for people when they are not finding that elsewhere. And that seems like a good thing, something we all might need. But then, what control do we give up as we look for a place to belong? We see hypocrisy exposed when Caitlin embraces the tenets of the group, only to find herself losing her own agency, and even more vulnerable to hurt.”
And Episcopal reverend Lizzie McManus-Dail’s God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us: 40 Devotions to Liberate Your Faith from Fear and Reconnect with Joy (out now) is intended for any Christian disenchanted with churches they feel promote hateful or abusive theology. TarcherPerigee calls it a “feminist, anti-racist, LGBTQ-affirming devotional that will take you on a journey of spiritual re-enchantment.”
