When I was twenty-two, I was deciding whether to continue being Christian. I was in England on a fellowship, and, no longer reliant on my Christian parents for tuition, I felt free to try patterns of thought that left God out. I had always vaguely felt that belief in God was a charade, though I didn’t explicitly think in those terms at the time. And I had grown to resent the emotional baggage Christianity saddled me with.

During this time, I found myself at a party one evening, where I got into a conversation with Hans, a international law student from Germany who was questioning in similar ways. The conversation turned, and I recall him asking, “Glaubst du, dass es Widerspruch ist, schwul und Christlich zu sein?” (Do you believe that it’s a contradiction to be gay and Christian?)

Though I hadmostly虽然那时我已经拒绝了基督教，但我对基督教仍然有一个固定的概念。在我看来，基督徒的信仰是建立在《旧约》和《新约》的基础上的，他们认真地对待它们(虽然不一定是字面上的)。所以我回答说，虽然我不反对同性恋，但我认为基督教反对。一个圣经中的基督徒，似乎必须认真对待《利未记》20章和《罗马书》1章(以及其他段落)，因为这意味着谴责同性恋。This, for me, was just one more thing that wasbadabout Christianity.

But Hans wasn’t convinced. So we decided to ask our English evangelical friend David, who was studying New Testament and theology. David’s answer was characteristically English in its brevity: “Yes, it is a sin to practice homosexuality. But it’s no worse than divorce!”

I was brought back to this conversation when listening to the March 5 Philosophy Talk episode onQueernesswith guest Susan Stryker. The show touched on several excellent themes, such as what “queer” means, whether it makes sense to positively (re-)claim an initially derogatory term, and how opponents of queer rights are fighting to have heteronormativity be the “unmarked case” (Ken’s thesis). But the show didn’t touch on the theme of queerness and religious identity at all, as I hoped it would.

更普遍的问题是这样的。是否有可能在保持传统宗教身份的同时，保持一种表面上被宗教经典认为是错误的生活方式和身份?

As we’ve seen, my earlier answer to this question was “no.” But I now think that that view rested on an erroneous conception of what religion is.

Let’s stay focused on Christianity for now, just for specificity, though I think my points will generalize. Let’s also distinguish between what Christianity as a religionisand how its practitionerspresentit.

我之前对基督教的看法是这样的。基督徒是这样一群人，他们实际上相信《圣经》是上帝的话语，而且它的每一句话在某种意义上都是真实的。按照基督教的这种观点，同性恋行为毫无悔意地违背了上帝的话语，尽管《圣经》中相关的部分相对较少。

But that way of thinking about Christianity is more a replication of how most Christianspresenttheir religion, which is not the same thing as what the religion (or any given variety of it) actually is.

I’ve now come to regard religions asidentity-constituting games of make-believe. (You can find longer papers of mine on thishereandhere.)

That means that religious practitioners themselves don’t have an attitude of factual belief to the propositions expressed in canonical religious texts. Rather—whether they admit it or not and whether they are aware of it or not—they have a moreimaginative attitudetoward those propositions. That means that the dictates of scriptures form the basis for playing a game of make-believe, and it is the perpetual playing of this game that constitutes one’s religious identity.

换句话说，一个人成为基督徒的条件是，他有支持参加基督教仪式、仪式、礼拜仪式和祈祷的态度。与一般的假装游戏不同的是，基督教游戏形成了一个人身份中更严肃的一部分。And in principle, one must bereadyto play one’s part all the time (though practicedeviates), unlike the player of a less serious game of make-believe, who is only obligated to be in character as long as playtime lasts.

This view offers a more flexible perspective on whether one can be both gay and Christian—or (more broadly) queer and Christian. Just as one can make-believe fight a dragon without adhering to every bit of dragon lore, one can play the role of Christian—which does involve adhering to the text of the Bible inmanyways—without lettingevery是宗教信仰的基础。这是大多数宗教人士在任何情况下都会做的事;因此，与我年轻时的观点相比，我现在的观点提供了一个更现实的理论，来解释当人们有宗教身份时发生了什么。

One cannot change the script entirely and still consider oneself a Christian. After all, if one makes too many changes to any game, it eventually becomes a different game. But my friend David was right to suggest the non-centrality of proscriptions against homosexual practice in the Bible, though some, of course,disagree.

尽管如此，传统宗教身份和现代身份(如同性恋或酷儿)之间可能总是存在紧张关系。原因是，有些人可能会抛弃剧本的一部分(《圣经》)，而其他人则极力坚持;在这种情况下，教派之间会出现紧张关系。目前，至少在许多教堂，同性恋和基督徒是完全可能的。从原则上讲，没有理由不让这种可能性继续下去。然而，基督教的伪装游戏的演变是不可预测的，就像任何宗教一样。因此，我们始终需要保持警惕，以保护迄今取得的包容性措施。