What happens when the world teaches us to look everywhere for truth except within ourselves?
For many Queer (LGBTQ+2Spirit) people, especially those raised in religious communities, the journey toward self-acceptance is complicated by the voices that have claimed authority over our lives. We are told what God thinks of us, what our bodies mean, which desires are acceptable, and where we can or cannot belong.
But what if our lives are not problems waiting for theological answers? What if our experiences are themselves sources of wisdom?
Three thinkers—St. Teresa of Ávila, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, and Adriaan van Klinken—offer different but deeply connected ways of exploring this question.
The Courage to Look Within
In The Interior Castle, St. Teresa of Ávila reminds us of the importance of entering into ourselves. For Teresa, the inward journey is essential to spiritual understanding. Self-knowledge and the search for the divine are intimately connected.
For Queer people who have experienced religious harm, this invitation carries particular significance.
Many of us have spent years listening to religious authorities tell us who we are. We have searched for belonging in institutions that demanded our silence, conformity, or self-denial.
Yet the inward journey can become a place of rediscovery.
Looking within does not necessarily mean returning to the religious traditions that wounded us. Sometimes it means recognizing that our lives can flourish beyond the institutions that once claimed authority over them.
The sacred may be encountered not through the rejection of ourselves, but through a deeper relationship with who we are.
Who Gets to Define a Whole Life?
African feminist theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye offers another perspective in her autobiographical reflection, A Coming Home to Myself.
Writing about her experience of childlessness within West African cultural expectations of womanhood, Oduyoye challenges the assumption that a woman’s worth or completeness must be determined by motherhood.
Her reflections raise a question that extends beyond her particular experience: Who has the authority to decide whether another person’s life is whole?
This question resonates deeply with African Queer experiences.
Across many communities, belonging is often tied to expectations about marriage, gender, family, sexuality, and religion. Those who live outside these expectations may be treated as incomplete, rebellious, or disconnected from their cultures.
Oduyoye’s reflections invite us to question these inherited definitions. Coming home to ourselves may require refusing the idea that our lives must follow someone else’s expectations to have meaning. We do not become whole by satisfying every cultural or religious demand placed upon us.
The Sacred Wisdom of Our Stories
In his work on African narrative Queer theology, Adriaan van Klinken argues for the importance of autobiographical storytelling as a way of doing theology.
This approach challenges a long-standing imbalance.
For generations, Queer African lives have been discussed by religious leaders, politicians, scholars, and cultural authorities. Others have interpreted our identities, judged our relationships, and debated our humanity.
But what happens when Queer Africans become the interpreters of our own experiences?
Our stories become more than testimonies of suffering or survival. They become sources of spiritual reflection, ethical insight, and new understandings of belonging.
A Queer person’s account of love, rejection, community, or spiritual discovery can challenge inherited assumptions about the sacred. This is a profound shift: from being objects of religious judgment to becoming creators of spiritual knowledge.
Coming Home Is an Act of Meaning-Making
Teresa invites us inward. Oduyoye challenges the expectations that define our worth. Van Klinken reminds us that our stories can generate knowledge.
Together, their reflections suggest that coming home to ourselves is both a personal and collective act of meaning-making.
It is the work of listening to our experiences, questioning inherited narratives, and discovering the wisdom that emerges when we tell our stories in our own voices.
For some, this journey may include reclaiming religious traditions. For others, it may mean leaving those traditions behind. Neither path should be imposed as the measure of spiritual wholeness.
This understanding lies at the heart of Queer SaQred.
We believe that LGBTIQ+2Spirit people deserve spaces where our sacred worth is honored and our lives are not treated as contradictions requiring resolution.
Works in Conversation
St. Teresa of Ávila. The Interior Castle, First Mansions.
Mercy Amba Oduyoye. “A Coming Home to Myself: The Childless Woman in the West African Space.” In Liberating Eschatology: Essays in Honor of Letty M. Russell, 1999.
Adriaan van Klinken. “Autobiographical Storytelling and African Narrative Queer Theology.” Exchange 47, no. 3 (2018): 211–229.
