Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Queering the Pilling Report: Church of England Reports and the 'Queer Art of Failure'

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dc.contributor Lawrence, Louise
dc.contributor Cornwall, Susannah
dc.creator Cowell Doe, P
dc.date 2023-01-10T13:47:34Z
dc.date 2023-01-09
dc.date 2023-01-10T13:40:11Z
dc.date 2023-01-10T13:47:34Z
dc.date.accessioned 2023-02-23T12:19:09Z
dc.date.available 2023-02-23T12:19:09Z
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10871/132211
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/258754
dc.description Pilling – The Report of the House of Bishops Working Group on Human Sexuality, published in November 2013, initiated a process within the institutional Church of England of discussions and reflections on the issue of (homo)sexuality. This thesis will que(e)ry the contents and methodology of this report, set in the context of earlier church reports on sexuality, analysing the hermeneutical lenses through which Pilling chose to examine homosexuality and its place in church polity. After critically reflecting on the report itself, the thesis will turn to the processes which it launched: official and unofficial conversations about gay identity and gay relationships. Both the report and these processes will be interrogated for their constructions of authority and for their, perhaps unacknowledged, construals of power and privilege in which white, educated, cisheterosexual norms remain unmarked and ‘other’ identities are (albeit implicitly) positioned as abject. Pilling – both report and process – claims that it is not searching for a consensus or a resolution in the sexuality debate, yet its apparent reliance on the neoliberal narrative of progress and productivity denies the possibility of failure. The thesis suggests that one kind of resolution might be through, what Halberstam has termed, the ‘queer art of failure’, a turning away from the hegemonic epistemologies of church reports and institutionally sanctioned debate, towards an undoing of theological privilege and hierarchical constructions of authority. The queer art of failure recognises that failure is part of the human condition and for Christians an inherent part of our fallen nature. Failure may be faithfulness to an apophatic tradition, inhabiting the unknowingness of Holy Saturday and the queer temporality of living in the ‘not yet’.
dc.publisher University of Exeter
dc.publisher Theology and Religious Studies
dc.rights 2024-02-01
dc.rights Awaiting possible publication in book form
dc.rights http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved
dc.subject Church of England
dc.subject The Pilling Report
dc.subject Queer Theology
dc.subject Queer theory
dc.subject Sexual theology
dc.subject Homosexuality and the Church of England
dc.subject Queer theology and the Church of England
dc.subject Queer theology and Church of England Reports
dc.subject Queer theology and the Pilling Report
dc.subject Holy Saturday theology
dc.subject Sexuality and the Church of England
dc.subject Queer theory and the Church of England
dc.subject Queer theory and the Pilling Report
dc.subject Queer theory and Church of England reports
dc.title Queering the Pilling Report: Church of England Reports and the 'Queer Art of Failure'
dc.type Thesis or dissertation
dc.type PhD in Theology
dc.type Doctoral
dc.type Doctoral Thesis


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