Fruitful bodies: Farley, Copeland, and Baldwin on sacred flesh

ABSTRACT This article uses the notion of theological imagination, a term describing how the divine interacts with the human on an emotional and embodied level, to bring Margaret Farley, M. Shawn Copeland, and James Baldwin into conversation with each other regarding sexual ethics. In trying to expand descriptions of grace to non-heterosexual relational configurations within the Roman Catholic tradition, Farley, in her book Just Love, suggests the term “pro-creative” should be formulated as “fruitful.” While this term validates the grace found in many relationships, her articulation of “commitment” reifies privileges afforded to monogamous marriages, thus marginalizing “queer” relationships. As a potential solution to this problem, this article uses the theological imagination of the writings of Copeland and Baldwin to illustrate how different forms of relational configurations can be “fruitful” without conforming to normative versions of “commitment.”