5.3. Parlance: Self-identity and Social identity
5.3.2. Parlance: Self-identity and Christian Identity
In section 5.3, I have discussed the usage of parlance and self-identity among participants.
Christian identity however will be used to denote persons that identify as Christians and profess to be Christian within Zambia. The study participants professed to being Christians (although some are not ‗active‘ Christians in institutional churches) and belonging to churches within urban Lusaka.
Although I interrogated how participants ―self-construct‖ their identities and sexualities, and since they are Christian by faith, they do not undergo this process without the influence of Christianity in the Zambian context. The participants displayed two paradoxical expressions of Christianity in the Zambian context and acceptability of gay identities and sexualities thereof, in urban Lusaka as discussed below. When I asked the study participants in Lusaka central to discuss the role of Christianity in how they ―self-construct‖ their identities and sexualities, all the participants except two disclosed that they do not feel welcome within the Christian faith and the language used negatively affects them. When the same question was asked of participants in the Kanyama group, the opposite views were expressed as all group members agreed that they feel very welcome within Christianity and the language used influences them positively. The following are some of the captured views that show these differences. I start by presenting views from three Lusaka central participants before moving on to reflect views by three Kanyama participants:
Taonga: Christianity does not help me at all…the everyday Christianity does not help me at all because they have all these rules…so I have to some extent to rely on my own interpretation of the Bible…how I think God makes everyone in their own image…[be]cause my own congregation is so traditional…so they have all these rules of how people should behave…if you are a guy, you should be like this…macho, which am not…I am expected to have a girlfriend in the choir and if I do not have that…then all these rumours start…oh, he talks with his hands a lot, he behaves like this…ahh nibakazi baja (that one is a woman)…so for me, I have to rely on my own…contemporary Christianity does not help me at all.
Diva: Growing up in a Catholic home and being raised as a boy when I identify as a transgender woman….it‟s kind of hard, because I was an altar boy but when I reached adolescence or adulthood, I discovered that I was transgender, I wasn‟t really a heterosexual man…so, it‟s kind of hard because they expect me to behave as a man…to have all these male roles that men perform in society…so I kind of stopped going to church because I feel like am being judged there…I feel like am attacked there.
Chris: I think I am comfortable with the church I go to…I used to be an altar boy but when I grew up, I had to stop…so I am so safe with that…I was born in Catholic, my family is still in Catholic.
Based on the two responses from Taonga and Diva, Christian identity is linked to rules on personal conduct and a traditionalist approach to life. However, some participants do not subscribe to this because they self-identify in a way that may not be in tandem with traditional Christianity‘s position. Although Taonga is not a devout Christian, he still finds the Bible useful in his own understanding of creation, thereby bringing to the fore a theology of creation. A theology of creation holds that God is the Creator of all things and that God creates from nothing (Morales 2001 and McFarland 2014). This theology has been informative to traditional Christianity as it denotes how creation is a product of God. In this regard, nothing is without God, hence, all creation comes into form out of the Creator‘s volition. Therefore, since all things were created by God, so are the study participants. It would seem Taonga‘s Christian identity is overshadowed by his sexual identity and self- identity although he finds certain Christian elements like the Bible useful. Both Taonga and Diva highlight how Christian identity is usually surrounded by an ideal of maleness which
gay Christians do not live up to. Taonga, who identifies as a male and gay, holds that he falls short of the Christian prescription of ideal maleness. Diva, who identifies as a transgender woman, also asserted how she does not fit within the ideal maleness expected of her in the Christian identity. Notably, the two study participants have resolved these dissonances by not being active Christians. Another dimension on the ambiguities of belonging and not belonging in the church is presented by participants like Chris who stopped being an altar boy not necessarily because he is gay but because of age. From observation, although Diva and Chris belong to different parishes of the Roman Catholic Church, their difference in approach towards Christian identity may largely be informed by the fact the Diva is an openly transgender woman while Chris maintains a public heterosexual façade and has a child. Thus, Diva‘s Christian identity is informed by the fact that her parish knows about her non- conforming sexual and gender identity whilst Chris‘ parish regards him as heterosexual.
Chris‘ position is similar to the position held by the Kanyama participants, despite them being openly gay. The Kanyama group decided to use Nyanja as a medium of communication – although two participants in this group used Nyanja and English. In spite of my question being phrased as how religion/Christianity shapes how they ―self-construct‖ their identities and sexualities, it was difficult for them to understand what was meant by Christianity. So the gatekeeper explained to the rest of the group members that Christianity meant church and thus, responses referred to Christianity as ―church‖. The following are some of the responses:
Pamera: ine mu church bananijaila, sibakamba vilivonse voipa pali ine…sibamani chita judge olo kuti banizonde awe…yenangu ma church ok bamalalikila voipa but church yanga baniziba…ni imbanoiba. (Loose trans: my church is used to me and my identity…they do not say anything bad about me…they do not judge me at all neither do they hate…yes, some churches do preach against our identity but that is not the case in my church…I do sing in my church).
Rihana: Ise muchurch si problem kuti tiliso…like ine banilemekeza…notisanka ma leaders batisanka…bamene bakukamba voipa muchurch kambili ninshi bakufuna…mong aba elder abo benangu, bananikambila voipa but manje nima order. (Loose trans: for me, it is not a problem that I am like this…like for me, I am respected…I can even be chosen as a leader…those that tease us or say bad things about us are usually attracted to you…like one elder who spoke ill about me
but now I am going out with him)…when my uncle chased me, the church took me for a short course.
Chipobabz: Awe ma church kuno sibakamba voipa pali ise…ok but niba one one bokakamba voipa but like ine my church, banichita understand. (Loose trans: The churches here do not speak ill of us…only a selected few speak ill about us…for me, my church understands).
From the discussion above, it is evident that Christianity‘s role is ambiguous. Some participants like Taonga submitted that contemporary Christianity does not help them at all, while Diva, among others, offered that Christianity has and does shape their identities and sexualities, until their identities and sexualities are ―outed‖ or at variance with their Christian identity. Some participants insisted that Christianity or the church positively impacts how they construct their identities and sexualities. Among some of the Christian elements cited as being unhelpful in the construction of gay identities and sexualities by participants are the rules – codified and uncodified, spoken and unspoken, Christian groups, Christian tradition and the heteronormative biblical hermeneutics. Participants who struggle with Christianity‘s role in constructions of gay identities and sexualities insisted that male identities and sexualities are framed within male heterosexual understandings, as every male within Christianity is expected to be macho, to date women and speak like a man without using too many gestures (which is considered feminine). Failure to fit into this proscription is enough to render one effeminate. Furthermore, as pointed out by Diva, every male is expected to take on male roles in society in spite of their identities and sexualities and these roles are determined within the heterosexual male framework.
The other participants noted that the parlance in Christianity positively influences their identities and sexualities, bringing to light how their piety is recognised within Christianity in spite of their identities and sexualities. Pamera, Rihana and Chipobabz show that their piety is recognized in their churches as they are members of choir groups, can be chosen as leaders and are respected, in spite of their identities and sexualities. The language within the churches they belong to embrace their identities and sexualities; what remains fundamental is their piety and not their gay identities and sexualities. All group members in Lusaka central except two felt that Christianity is not helpful in how they construct their identities and sexualities.
The Kanyama study participants unanimously agreed that Christianity is, or their churches are, very welcoming of their identities and sexualities. These observations underline the
intersections of class, sexuality and piety as the Lusaka central and Kanyama groups were from two different social and class backgrounds. As already established, Kanyama is a densely populated residential area while Lusaka central is a low density area; thus it can be argued the churches in these two localities have different priorities.
In their qualitative study among Christian homosexual men and women on the potential conflict between Christianity and homosexuality, Subhi and Geelan argue that:
many homosexual people have felt that they had to completely renounce their Christian identity when they identified as a homosexual. While renouncing religious faith may offer a solution to conflicts for some homosexuals, there are some people for whom both their sexuality and their religious faith are important facets of their lives (2012:1383-1384).
The participants who expressed that their piety is challenged by the churches sometimes opted to renounce their Christian identity as a way of resolving the dissonance between sexual identity and Christian identity. As observed by Conway (1991:27), at no point has the tension between piety and erotic attachment been more marked than in the case of homosexuality – as an orientation no less than a cluster of practices. The Christian identity usually does not readily accept gay identity as gay people are usually not expected to be Christian, especially in Zambia. Thus, my bringing gay and Christian together in addressing gay Christian identities and sexualities seemingly forces two worlds that are generally understood to be apart into the same room and to be discussed as one world. In his article
―‗Still Looking for my Jonathan‘: Gay Black Men‘s Management of Religious and Sexual Identity‖, Pitt agrees with findings by Subhi and Geelan (2012:1383-1384) and asserts that
―one approach that gays and lesbians use to alleviate conflict between their sexual and religious identities is to reject one or the other. Some attempt to reject the homosexual identity‖ (2010:44). In instances where Christian identity and sexual identities conflict, some participants opt to give up their Christian identity in preference for their sexual identities. In some instances, some participants manage to hold both their gay identities and Christian identity, as noted by Thumma who argues that ―while many persons may hold incongruent identities in a workable tension, these identities seldom both function as organizing ‗core identities‘ of the self-concept…the identities, as originally construed, are mutually exclusive;
however, they are also considered too important to surrender‖ (1991:334). As shown above,
some participants, especially from the Kanyama group, exhibited the ability to hold both gay identities and Christian identities simultaneously without raising a lot of inner tensions.
However, experiences of participants indicated that churches within Kanyama – a high density area in Lusaka – are tolerant of the piety of the study participants in spite of their identities and sexualities. Implicitly, what matters most for Christian expressions found in high density Kanyama is how religious or pious and active gay Christians are as well as their contributions to the churches, and not their identities and sexualities. Such differences in acceptability of participants in the two Christian communities I investigated could be because of the differences in class and education levels of church members and clergy found in these churches. I would therefore suggest that the more educated and socially upper-class a church is, the more unfriendly it is likely to be towards the study participants and their presence therein.
Having discussed how parlance within Christianity contributes to how participants ―self- construct‖ their identities and sexualities, I proceed to explore another theme which arose from focus group discussions, individual interviews and observation, namely, performance.