“Reclamation: A Queer Pastor’s Guide to Finding Spiritual Growth in the Passages Used to Harm Us”
by Kali Cawthon-Freels
Nurturing Faith Books, 2022, 118 pages

At A Glance: “Reclamation” takes the “clobber” passages long used against 2SLGBTQIA+ people and turns them into tools for spiritual growth and healing.

Overview: A handful of Bible passages have done outsized damage. Religious conservatives have leaned on them for decades to condemn 2SLGBTQIA+ people, and many queer Christians carry the weight of those verses long after they’ve left the churches that quoted them.

Kali Cawthon-Freels takes those same passages back. Instead of avoiding them or handing them over to the people who’ve weaponized them, she works through each one, unpacking where the harmful readings came from and what the text actually offers when it isn’t being used as a weapon. What emerges is less a rebuttal and more a reclamation, passages that once signaled exclusion become sources of spiritual grounding.

“Reclamation” is written for queer Christians still working through the damage these verses have done, and for pastors and church leaders who want a better way to handle them than silence or avoidance. It doesn’t ask readers to forget what these passages have been used for. It asks what happens when queer people take them back.

Also by Kali Cawthon-Freels:

A Queer Gospel: Jesus’s Life through Rainbow Eyes

Thoughts from Readers: