Hidden Perspectives is delighted to welcome Dan Nield, from the University of Chester, as our guest speaker for this year’s World Aids Day Lecture: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hidden-perspectives-world-aids-day-lecture-2017-dan-nield-tickets-40028522388

Promoting joy and exorcising guilt: a queers nun’s approach to non-heteronormative shame.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are a global organisation, describing ourselves as a queer order of 21st Century nuns. We operate in queer (though not exclusively) communities according to our mission statement to “Promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt” through charity and pastoral work. As a practicing member of the Manchester House since 2016, I will interpret how our mission statement affects me as Dan the researcher and when I manifest as Sister Judy.

To unpack the meaning behind the Sister’s mission I discuss the relationship between guilt and shame. As a self-identifying Christian gay man, I will explore the possibility that guilt derives its power from a feeling of shame. This shame in turn stemming from a tacit cultural acceptance of a heterosexual male god against which morality is measured. Such a construct inevitably leaves queer people falling short of an ideal image of selfhood – providing a basis from which feelings of shame and guilt can grow.

I suggest that the Sisters manifestation and mission as queer nuns opens a crack in the divine closet door, one through which the Queer God can step to provide an alternative, image of selfhood.

Dan Nield is a PhD candidate at the University of Chester working through the department of Theology & Religious Studies and Chester’s newly formed Institute for Gender Studies under Dr Dawn Llewellyn and Prof Emma Rees. Dan’s PhD is an autoethnographic exploration of his role as Sister Judy de Ryder – a 21st Century drag nun and member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are an international order of 21st century nuns who operate under the mission to “Promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt”. Dan is exploring how manifesting as a drag nun affects his own theological and gendered positions as a gay Christian man and is on a mission to drag God out of the closet.

You can find out more about Dan by reading his interview with Hidden Perspectives on our website: https://hiddenperspectives.org/2017/11/16/introducing-dan-nield/

Book here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hidden-perspectives-world-aids-day-lecture-2017-dan-nield-tickets-40028522388