Queer Reproductive Justice as Framework for Christian Anti-Capitalism

During the summer of 2020, the Wendland-Cook program hosted a series of webinars under the theme: Liberating People and the Planet: Christian Responses at the Intersection of Economics, Ecology, and Religion. Originally planned as an in-person conference, these webinars featured insights from theologians and scholars of religion reflecting on our climate and economic crisis. The original papers are being prepared for a book to be released in 2021.

In preparation of the book release and to contextualize the webinars, we featured brief overviews of each of the chapters in an Interventions forum. To see the entire forum, click here. This is Jeremy Posada’s contribution to the forum.

QUEER REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE AS FRAMEWORK FOR CHRISTIAN ANTI-CAPITALISM

JEREMY POSADAS

September 24, 2020

In this chapter, I argue that queer reproductive justice offers a conceptual foundation for constructing a Christian response to capitalism.

Reproductive justice is a normative framework first formulated a quarter-century ago by twelve Black women as a more comprehensive agenda for securing self-determination of all persons in matters of biological reproduction and family formation. Queer reproductive justice is the my own recent expanded formulation of reproductive justice so that it secures equity across the entire sphere of social reproduction (not only biological reproduction) and between the species Homo sapiens and the rest of the ecosphere.

After summarizing the core principles of queer reproductive justice, this chapter uses it as a lens for interpreting three central components of the Christian witness: Creation, the Christ-event, and the communio that constitutes the Body of Christ’s continuing earthly life. When these are understood through the lens of queer reproductive justice, it becomes evident how capitalism is intrinsically incompatible with the Christian proclamation, and hence that Christians are obligated to take up the long task of eradicating capitalism, not merely ameliorating it.

Jeremy Posadas is an associate professor of religious studies and core faculty member in gender studies at Austin College (on the rural Texas-Oklahoma border), where he holds the John F. Anderson Chair of Christian Thought. A queer-feminist social ethicist, he has written on anti-work theory, reproductive justice, and Christian rape culture and is currently writing eco-queer ethics against capitalism. He is a member of the committee that oversees the largest gathering of religion scholars in the world and has twice been selected as a fellow of the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion.