Harvard Divinity School course teaches students about 'Queering the World'

Harvard Divinity School is offering a course this semester on “Queering the World,” subtitled, “Dismantling Heteronormativity in Congregations, Communities, and Organizations.”

A four-credit seminar, the class instructs students about different approaches to “queering,” while examining the “heteronormative structures” of American society.

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“It proposes methods for restructuring, reimagining, and subverting heterosexist paradigms and binary assumptions that perpetuate oppression,” a course description reads.

The class also teaches students about topics like “Queer theology,” “Queer theory,” gender studies and “post-colonial method.”

The seminar is taught by Brandon Crowley, who serves as the senior pastor at Myrtle Baptist Church in West Newton, Massachusetts. He is “re-thinking the nature, mission, and practices of the Christian church at large,” according to his university biography. 

In 2023, Crowley released a book on Queering Black Churches: Dismantling Heteronormativity in African American Congregations.

“Crowley argues for a systematic approach to dismantling homophobia within African American congregations that moves beyond surface-level allyship toward actual structural renovation,” a book description states. 

Harvard Divinity School is also offering a variety of similar courses that incorporate religion, sexuality and gender.

Other Divinity School spring offerings consist of “Womanist and Black Feminist Approaches to Spiritual Care” and “Womanist Theology,” among others. 

Harvard Divinity School is also a strong proponent of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) ideology.

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“Rooted in love, the vision of the Harvard Divinity School Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging is of a restorative, anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS and Harvard University and of a world healed of racism and oppression,” the school’s website states.

“We center intersectionality, knowing that our experiences of racism, white supremacy, colorism, and white privilege are always simultaneously impacted by our other aspects of identity,” the web page continues.