ABSTRACT
‘Transcendent/desire’, as conceptualised by the author, are connections and/or conflicts between the sense of the sacred and the desires, sexual expressions and embodied experiences of gay men. The notion of transcendence here does not refer to a ‘rising above’, but a deepening of bodily realities. The chapter draws on Carter Heyward’s notion of the erotic as power in right relation which manifests God. Hence, the author shows how the sexual body can embody, reflect and reveal the divine from three perspectives. First, transcendent/desire enables gay men to be true to themselves in their desires. Second, gay men understand their desires as a sacred vocation which they must heed. Third, transcendent/desire provides spaces for gay men to manage opposing pressures. In this regard, these men must negotiate the unevenness, fluidity, unruliness and struggle that exist in the interplay between the sacred and the sexual. This chapter also develops a queer theological notion of sexual sin, and a theology of divine sexual revelry that considers God’s celebration of desire and pleasure in gay men.
