Overview
Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love is a passionate exploration of the history of Western religion as seen through the queer eye of one of the most widely acclaimed authors in gay spirituality. Drawing on recently discovered ancient sources, Will Roscoe offers a striking new view of Jesus as a charismatic mystic, whose teachings on love and the kingdom of heaven were complemented by a secret rite that served to impart the experience of entering heaven. After meticulously reconstructing this rite, Roscoe seeks its ultimate origins--an odyssey that eventually leads him to the margins of the inhabited world, where the ancient practices of shamanism survive to today. Whether discussing early Christianity, Plato's Symposium, the rites of shamans, or the myths of ancient Mesopotamia, Roscoe uncovers fresh insights at every turn. He builds a persuasive argument that mysticism and gay love are powerfully connected, and that this connection forms a hidden tradition in the history of Western religion. This new release updates references to substantiating information and reports on the response to those ideas in the decade since the book's first publication.
Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love won the 2004 Lambda Literary Award for Spirituality/Religion.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940164185541 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Will Roscoe |
| Publication date: | 07/12/2020 |
| Sold by: | Smashwords |
| Format: | eBook |
| Sales rank: | 874,534 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Will Roscoe received his Ph.D. in History of Consciousness/Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His first book, The Zuni Man-Woman (University of New Mexico Press) received the Margaret Mead Award of the American Anthropological Association and a Lambda Literary Award. He has since published Queer Spirits: A Gay Men's Myth Book (Beacon) and Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder (Beacon) by Harry Hay. He is also co-editor of Islamic Homosexualities (New York University Press) and Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities (State University of New York Press) and coordinating editor of Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology (St. Martin's Press). In 1998, he published Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America (Palgrave Macmillan), a comprehensive study of the Native American two-spirit tradition. In 2003, he received a Monette-Horowitz Award for lifetime achievement in combatting homophobia. For more on Will and his writings visit willsworld.org.
What People are Saying About This
"Will Roscoe always takes us places we never thought we'd go. By delving into the sacred heart of the Jesus myth, he opens gateways of revelation that both astound and inspire. Precise, political, and deeply personal, Roscoe's work moves the discussion about the role of same-sex love in the evolution of human consciousness ahead by a quantum leap."
—author of the Gay Spirit, Gay Soul, Gay Body trilogy
"What raises the book above the level of academic treatise is that it has a heart as well as a head. Roscoe felt and saw the AIDS catastrophe at first hand (his longtime companion died of the disease in 1996), and for him, as the personal reflections that close the book make clear, the idea that Christian love might include the devotion of one man to another is not an abomination or intellectual abstraction but a living hope and comfort."
—San Francisco Bay Guardian
"In his new book, Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love, Will Roscoe lives up to the archetype of consciousness scout: going first and pushing boundaries, taking the reader on an intriguing, insightful, and illuminating journey from Plato to the Gnostic Gospels to Siberian shamanism to AIDS. I found the book engaging, well-written, and thought-provoking."
—author of Coming Out Spiritually
"Wonderfully readable..a real contribution to the field of gay spirituality, in part because of the in-depth research and academic excellence.. Roscoe has indeed managed to synthesize a coherent spirituality that places same-sex love and modern gay consciousness at the heart of humankind's religious/spiritual quest."
—author of Gay Perspective: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe
"In Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love, Will Roscoe takes us on a remarkable journey into the heart of Jesus, one who loved passionately and equally with his whole body and his whole being. We are invited to consider anew the radical nature of Jesus' life and how it speaks to the deepest spiritual longings of our age--finding hope in the midst of grief, finding community in the midst of alienating and oppressive culture--and to the revolutionary potential of those who strive to love without condition."
— MCC San Francisco