Reimagining the Household of God: Scripture and Tradition for a Queerly Reasoned Christian Sexual Ethic

Standards for sexual ethics among clergy in The Episcopal Church are framed either negatively (in the canonical language of avoiding abuses of ministerial power) or vaguely, as in the ordination rites for both deacons and priests who promise that they will “pattern” their lives (and potentially that of their household) “in accordance with the teachings of Christ.” Those “teachings” are not officially defined but are generally assumed to promote modern Western cultural standards concerning sexuality and marriage even though these differ significantly from biblical families and the various types of familial arrangements in church history. This essay proposes to reimagine the “household of God” in ways capacious enough to include a variety of familial forms while still embracing foundational values that would conform to the “teachings of Christ,” especially for the sake of a trinitarian view of divine relations in Christian households.