Queer Kairos

A QUEER KAIROS DOCUMENT: A CALL TO JUSTICE, TRANSFORMATION, AND LOVE IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN CHURCHES AND BEYOND

Background: A Moment of Truth in the Face of Rejection

On 26 September 2024, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s Provincial Synod rejected a proposal to allow bishops to bless same-sex unions and to offer pastoral prayers for those in civil unions.

This decision, though devastating, is not an isolated moment of exclusion. It is part of a broader theological crisis facing the Church in South Africa and beyond. The Church’s refusal to affirm sexually diverse love—beyond heteronormative constructs—reveals a failure to embrace the fullness of the gospel’s call to justice, radical love, and transformative inclusion.

Preamble: We stand within and beyond the South African Kairos tradition

This Queer Kairos Document emerges from the legacy of the original Kairos Document, which prophetically addressed the Church’s complicity in Apartheid. In that same spirit, we declare this a queer kairos moment—a decisive moment where God’s purposes intersect with human history, offering the Church the opportunity to break from patriarchal and heteronormative theology and to embody the radical love of Jesus. By rejecting the proposal for same-sex blessings and pastoral prayers, the Provincial Synod has missed this moment, choosing to remain bound by outdated doctrines that perpetuate harm and deny the fullness of God’s creation. Yet it is not too late. The Church can still repent, embrace this moment of justice, and live into the liberating vision of the gospel.

While the original Kairos Document powerfully addressed racial injustice, it neglected the intersections of gender and sexuality. Therefore, this document while building upon that legacy, also aligns with later documents like the Gatvol Statement of 2020, which addressed gender-based violence, where women scholars, clergy and laity, declared that they are gatvol/fed up with the church’s empty rhetoric on gender-based violence.

We declare, in this queer kairos moment, that the Church’s rejection of sexually diverse unions is not only an act of exclusion but also a form of gender-based violence. Contrary to popular opinion, gender-based violence is not limited to physical harm; theological and spiritual violence, manifests in the denial of queer identities and relationships, and harms LGBTQIA+ people. Moreover, the exclusionary decisions, such as those taken by the Synod, serves as legitimation for  outright violence such as those enacted against lesbian women through despicable practices such as “corrective rape.” We must name the connections between our theological beliefs and the violence we witness against queer siblings.

This moment transcends one denomination and one synod, calling all South African churches, and the broader global church, to embrace an intersectional, radically inclusive theology that affirms the full humanity of all people. This is not just an Anglican crisis but a Christian crisis, demanding an ecumenical response.

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu declared that, after the victories of women’s ordination and the end of Apartheid, the church’s next challenge was the full inclusion of queer people. While he lived to see the end of Apartheid and the ordination of women, he lamented that freedom for queer siblings remained out of reach. Now, after his passing, we carry both his disappointment and his prophetic hope for the future.

This document stands on three biblical pillars: lament, righteous anger, and prophecy, aligned with the see, judge, act methodology of liberation theology. We lament the Church’s refusal to do the deep theological work necessary to seek justice. We are filled with righteous anger, ready to overturn the tables of injustice. And we prophesy, calling the Church to embrace this queer kairos moment and stand with the marginalized and excluded, just as the prophets of old stood for the oppressed.

1. Lament: The Church’s Gatekeeping of Blessings

We lament the decision of the Anglican Provincial Synod to withhold blessings and prayers for sexually diverse couples, not simply because it represents a single failure but because it reflects a deeper theological crisis. Blessings and prayers are gifts of grace, not commodities that the church has the right to withhold or distribute selectively. In the Christian tradition, blessings and prayers are acts of divine recognition, calling forth God’s presence and love over people and their lives. They are meant to be outward signs of God’s limitless love, not tools of control or exclusion. The irony is profound: while the church proclaims that God’s grace is freely given and cannot be earned, it has taken to trading in blessings as if they were something it owns. Blessings are not transactional; they are expressions of God’s abundance and the church’s role is to mediate, not gatekeep, this grace.

Our lament is not merely sorrowful; it is a cry for justice because to withhold blessings from couples who wish to be in covenantal love, is a contradiction to the gospel, for it assumes that God’s love can be portioned out based on human prejudice. We must lament the deep injustice in treating blessings and prayers as property to be traded. We lament that, despite years of struggle, queer people remain marginalized in a Church that continues to act as if some people are more worthy of love, more worthy of blessing, more worthy of inclusion than others.

2. Anger: A Righteous Indignation in the Spirit of Christ

We are angry, and our anger is righteous. It is the same righteous indignation that burned in Jesus when he overturned the tables of injustice in the temple. We are gatvol—completely fed up—with the Church’s refusal to recognize the image of God in all people. This is not just a theological disagreement; it is a matter of life and death, of dignity and dehumanization.

As long as the Church continues to marginalize and exclude, it is not the Church of Christ but a table of exclusion that Jesus himself would condemn.

The rhetoric of purity and tradition, that the Church clings to is not a theology of liberation; it is a theology of control. It is a theology that upholds the status quo of heteropatriarchy and allows injustice to flourish. The so-called moderate approach of “love the sinner, hate the sin” is equally harmful, as it disguises discrimination under the guise of love, failing to affirm the full humanity of queer people. Just as the end of apartheid judged both its overt supporters and its moderate defenders, so too will the end of queerphobia reveal the legacy of those who resisted the full inclusion of all God’s people.

The Church, which should be a sanctuary of grace and radical inclusion, is becoming a gatekeeper of exclusion and judgment. It has chosen to cling to outdated theologies, failing to recognize the movement of the Spirit in the cries of the marginalized. We demand a Church that looks more like the kin-dom of God, where all people are affirmed in their full humanity. The time to act is now, for the church must embody Christ’s love by blessing and affirming all who seek to live in covenantal, loving relationships.

3. Prophecy: A Call to All Churches in South Africa and beyond

The Kairos Document drew a crucial distinction between state theology, church theology, and prophetic theology. During apartheid, state theology was overtly racist, while church theology often remained neutral, neither opposing nor challenging the injustice. This gave rise to the need for prophetic theology—a theology that actively resisted oppression and called the Church to embody justice. In this contemporary queer kairos moment, the roles have shifted: state theology, through the constitutional freedoms granted to queer people, is now leading the way in affirming human dignity, while church theology remains hopelessly queerphobic and entrenched in heteronormative ideologies. The Church’s theology, much like during apartheid, fails to rise to the call for justice and radical inclusion.

The Church’s refusal to bless sexually diverse unions mirrors past justifications for denying or recognising the ordination of women, as both rely on selective interpretations of scripture and tradition to uphold oppressive structures. This same framework was used to defend slavery and apartheid, each of which twisted the gospel to support unjust hierarchies. As Christians came to recognize racism and sexism as heresies that denied the image of God in all people, so too must queerphobia be named a heresy, for it distorts the gospel’s core message of love, dignity, and justice. Racism, sexism, and queerphobia are interconnected, all spinning on the same axis of oppression and discrimination. To address sexual diversity without an intersectional lens is to miss how these systems reinforce one another.

Just as the original Kairos Document called for a radical rethinking of the Church’s role in the struggle for justice during apartheid, and named racism a heresy, today we call for a radical rethinking of the Church’s theology and practice, regarding gender and sexuality, and name heteropatriarchy a heresy.

The call for the church to offer blessings to sexually diverse couples, is a kairos moment in the life of faith, requiring deep theological reflection grounded in scripture and love. In the creation narratives of Genesis, we find that human beings are made in the image of God (Gen 1:27), a truth that speaks to the inherent dignity of all people, regardless of sexual orientation. Jesus’ teachings affirm the centrality of love as the fulfillment of the law (Matt 22:37-40), placing relationships based on mutual love and commitment at the heart of Christian ethics. Moreover, Galatians 3:28 declares that in Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for all are one, suggesting that divisions and hierarchies, including those based on sexuality, are dissolved in the new creation.

We therefore  call on all churches in South Africa to:

1. Embrace Intersectional Justice: The struggle for queer rights is not separate from the struggle against racism, sexism, and all other forms of oppression. The Church must recognize the interconnectedness of these struggles and commit to a truly intersectional theology of liberation.
2. Bless Same-Sex Unions: All churches must bless same-sex unions and recognize the sacredness of queer love. To refuse to bless these unions is to deny the full humanity of LGBTQIA+ people and to perpetuate a theology of exclusion.
3. Provide Pastoral Care for Queer People: The Church’s refusal to provide pastoral care for queer people is a failure of love. All churches must offer prayers, pastoral support, and sacramental inclusion to all people, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
4. Repent of Queerphobic Theology: The Church must repent of the harm it has caused through its teachings on gender and sexuality. This is not just about making policy changes; it is about transforming the Church’s entire approach to theology and ministry.
5. Dismantle Heteropatriarchy: Churches must commit to dismantling heteropatriarchy at all levels of leadership and ministry. This includes ordaining queer clergy, ensuring that queer voices are heard and respected, and reforming liturgical practices to reflect the diversity of God’s people.

Summary: A Call to Overturn Tables of Exclusion

We are living in a queer kairos moment—a moment of decision, a moment of truth. The Church is at a crossroads. It can choose to continue down the path of exclusion, or it can choose to embrace the radical, transformative love of Christ. The decision of the Anglican Synod is a reminder that not just the Anglican Church, but the wider ecumenical church,  is not yet where it needs to be, but it is also a reminder of the urgency of this moment. When Jesus overturned the tables in the temple, he condemned the commodification of faith, proclaiming, “It is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves” (Matt. 21:13). The Church today is guilty of a similar crime—stealing the rights of queer people to receive blessings for relationships that embody covenantal love, mutual respect, and fidelity, regardless of gender.

This is a kairos moment, where the Church must act decisively to overturn the tables of exclusion. We call on all churches in South Africa and beyond to reject the commodification of blessings, repent of the violence and harm caused by queerphobia, and embrace a radical, inclusive love that reflects the true gospel of Christ. The kin-dom of God is a place where all are welcome, all are affirmed, and all are loved. It is time for the Church to live into that vision.

Written by Professor Sarojini Nadar

Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice, University of the Western Cape

Endorsed by:

Gatvol#Churchtoo Collective

IAM – Inclusive and Affirming Ministries

Ujamaa Centre, University of Kwazulu-Natal

Centre for Black Thought and African Studies, Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary

Gender Dynamix

Triangle Project

Hope Africa, The Social Development Programme of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa

Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation

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See: GATVOL YET HOPEFUL! WOMEN CALL THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF SOUTHERN AFRICA TO ACTION