Reclaiming the Spirit

Homophobia, often enough in the guise of religion, extinguishes the spirit. This is a bouquet of stories about those who, against the odds, are managing to reclaim it. James and Evelyn Eaton Whitehead, authors of A Sense of Sexuality

This important book beautifully illuminates the ways in which spiritual development is strengthened by oneÆs acceptance of gay identity. Don Clark, author of Loving Someone Gay, third edition

Reclaiming the Spirit is like spending a weekend at a cozy retreat with a dozen new friends whose spiritual quests are as intriguing, endearing, and insightful as they are honest and varied. Shallenberger has carefully captured the spectrum of lesbian and gay religious experience within a cogent framework of interpretation and understanding. Chris Glaser, author of The Word Is Out and Uncommon Calling

David ShallenbergerÆs in-depth analyses of the spiritual journeys of sexual minority individuals are extremely insightful and well-grounded in the literature on faith development and lesbian and gay spirituality. His ability to explore problems and phenomena from a comprehensive, multidisciplinary prospective is outstanding, and his reflections are coherent, meaningful, and relevant. This is truly an excellent work! Kathleen Ritterco, author of Righteous Religion and Coming Out Within

Kudos to Rutgers University Press for publishing Shallenberger's new paradigm research! Allowing lesbian and gay people to describe their sexuality-spirituality connection in their own voices enables us readers to feel some of the grace, power, and growth that arises out of honest struggle. This book is a meaningful and joyous experience. Virginia Mollenkott, author of Sensuous Spirituality: Out from Fundamentalism

The voices that are allowed to speak in these pages are ones whose stories, in all of their emotional power, intricacy, emotional messiness, and spiritual depth, are seldom heard by religious or psychological professionals. Beyond being personally inspiring and existentially engaging, what this book provides is an invaluable resource for further clinical, pastoral, and theological reflection. Shallenberger has been appropriately restrained in the degree of interpretation or analysis which he providesùexcept to organize the accounts in such a way as to make it very apparent that a gay person's resolution of his or her relationship to formal religious life-ways is highly varied and follows no simple path. The women and men who entrusted their experience to the author's skillful interviewing are permitted to speak for themselves. Thus these stories have those moments of self-discovery and surprising revelation that can occur when one is given the rare opportunity to talk about matters deeply meaningful to a sensitive listener. John McDargh, Boston College