You Can, If You Want To: Navigating Christian Faith, Conscience, and matters LGBTQ+

by James Alison

Overview

What if Christianity was far more liberating than the culture wars suggest? Can the conflict concerning Christianity and homosexuality be viewed from a more interpretative lens? James Alison, a Catholic priest who is also a gay man, has been wrestling with the matter for over forty years.

This luminous and rigorous book dismantles the fear-based binaries which have dominated conversations in the Church. Striving to address potential concerns about accepting LGBTQ+ individuals within the church, James draws on scripture, tradition and his lived experience to form a broader understanding of faith and humanity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399422994
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	09/02/2025
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest, and author. Having lived with the Dominican Order between 1981 and 1995, he currently travels the world as an itinerant preacher, lecturer, and retreat giver. He studied at Oxford University and the Jesuit Theology Faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He has lived and worked in México, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, and the United States as well as his native England.

His principal claim to fame is as one of those who has done most to bring the work of the great French thinker René Girard to a wider public. In addition he is known for his firm but patient insistence on truthfulness in all matters gay as an ordinary part of basic Christianity, and for his pastoral outreach in the same sphere.

He is the author of Knowing Jesus, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, The Joy of Being Wrong, Faith Beyond Resentment, On Being Liked and Undergoing God. His books have been translated into Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

When not on the road, James lives in Madrid, Spain.