374 - Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God

Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God

By Carter Heyward

San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1989.195 Pp. $12.95.

This book is not ordinary theology! It will shock, confuse, enlighten, and delight. The content and style are prime examples of right-brain artistry more than academic rigor.

Professor Heyward says she wants to "write fire." She does so by mixing prose and poetry, by pushing back the thresholds of rationality, by disdaining male hierarchical theology, and by calling for a power inversion in social institutions. She says her book is about "nurturing and cultivating the goodness in our lives." Her thesis says that erotic mutuality is the process by which we create and liberate one another. And her model is lesbian mutuality, with emphasis on sensuality. This is a conflagration!

In the first chapter, she makes the case for "coming out"-open acknowledgment and celebration of the sexuality of lesbians and gay men, and the passionate endorsement of erotic ecstasy as the power of God in our midst. In the following chapters, she connects sexuality and spirituality and emphasizes their fluxional nature. Male supremacy in the heterosexism of society is then named as the "foundational resource of alienated power." Capitalism is named as the international version, with separation, violence, and oppression (powerlessness) as its consequences. The ultimate obscenity is heterosexual theology, with Paul Tillich as its

perpetrator. Heyward then finds that trustworthy authority lies in the shaping of justice in mutuality, with the Christa (female Christ) as metaphor. By connecting the erotic and God, she completes her case for the new/ old power of love, which transforms the social order. And in the final chapter, a sexual ethic is enunciated.

As feminist, womanist, and liberationist theologies take their place in our consciousness, we note that their passion and anger produce a volatile mix with love and advocacy. Male concerns about euphoria, idealism, and lack of rational structure are swept aside by our own guilt, and by their consummate concern. Our individualism is engulfed by mutuality. Even liberated males must read books such as this one, so we may learn how to offer balance rather than patronization or new oppressions.

G. Lloyd Rediger, Roseville, Minn.