The Rev. Patrick Cheng.

Christian theology and queer theory might strike many as mutually exclusive. But the two disciplines are in fact intimately related, as a Massachusetts theologian will argue in a Bates College lecture at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 12, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

The Rev. Patrick Cheng offers the annual Zerby Lecture in Contemporary Religious Thought at Bates. The event is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

“Christian theology should listen and bridge different groups,” Cheng told the Swathmore College publication The Phoenix earlier this year. “In general, LGBT and Christian groups have a bad reputation for not listening and communicating.”

Cheng’s talk at Bates, Strange Bedfellows: On the Intersections of Christian Theology and Queer Theory, will make a case for a close relationship between the two and provide an overview of queer theology. Weaving together theology, philosophy, gender studies, and ethnic studies, Cheng will discuss issues of erasing boundaries, of race and sexuality, and of temporality.

Cheng is associate professor of historical and systematic theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. He is the author of the forthcoming Rainbow Theology: Bridging Race, Sexuality, and Spirit (Seabury Books, 2013), the first book-length treatment of theologies by LGBT people of color.

He also wrote From Sin to Amazing Grace: Discovering the Queer Christ (Seabury, 2012) and Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology (Seabury, 2011).

Cheng holds a doctorate in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary, a law degree from Harvard Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Yale. He is an ordained minister with the Metropolitan Community Churches and contributes to the Gay Voices sections of the Huffington Post.

The Rayborn Lindley Zerby Lectureship on Contemporary Religious Thought was established with a gift to Bates by the Campus Association in April 1965. The series was initiated the following year by the late Samuel Miller, dean of Harvard Divinity School.

The lectureship honors Zerby, a man who devoted many years to the growth of Bates College as a teacher and as dean of the faculty. As an instructor at Bates, he was promoted to assistant professor of religion in 1932, associate professor in 1935 and full professor in 1942.

Zerby chaired the Department of Religion and Philosophy from 1930 to 1945. He served as director of the College Chapel from 1945 until his retirement, in 1962, and was appointed dean of the faculty in 1958.

Gomes, known as the “Conscience of Harvard,” is a graduate of Bates College and Harvard Divinity School. He holds honorary degrees from 36 colleges and universities. [More...]

Eilhardt is thrilled at the opportunity though less thrilled that his time at Bates running short. “I’m annoyed, actually, that I have to graduate,” Eilhardt said. “I love learning about new things that I haven’t been exposed to yet, and I really think that’s what happened for me at Bates.”

Like many Bates alumni, his graduation won’t mark the end of his connections with Bates; his sister, Britt, has been accepted to the next year’s incoming class of 2005, Bates’ sesquicentennial class.

A native of East Brunswick, N.J., Eilhardt often visited Maine as a child with his family. He chose Bates over other regional schools, he says, because he liked the people and felt it was a place he could be himself. Eilhardt spent his junior year at Oxford in Bates’ junior-year abroad program.

Eilhardt thought he’d study German and political science before he came to Bates, but it took a while before he settled on his major. He’s been impressed with the level of passion his professors have had for their work, particularly with Margaret Imber, assistant professor of classical and medieval studies, and his senior honors thesis adviser, Michael Jones, professor of history. Eilhardt’s just completed thesis was a never-before translated Latin text written by an eighth-century monk called the Venerable Bede, a theologian, philosopher, historian and scientist who lived in northern England.

Eilhardt’s Fulbright path will follow Bates Assistant Professor of Biology Will Ambrose Jr. to the University of Oslo. Ambrose, working on a Fulbright Faculty Scholarship, has spent the last year in Norway studying Arctic sea-floor ecology.

Ambrose is now completing research on the relationships between processes occurring on the seafloor and in the overlying water and how they might contribute to global warming.

Last year, Ambrose accompanied two students on a month-long senior-thesis research project aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Polar Sea to the ice-covered Chukchi Sea, northeast of Alaska. Ambrose, the students and two other researchers studied the diversity of single-cell ice algae, the distribution of ice algae in ice-core samples and whether sea floor-based organisms consume ice algae.

Dorothy C. Bass, director of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith, will discuss The Fullness of Time: Patterns of Work, Rest and Renewal in Faith and Culture.

The project, a Lilly Endowment project based at Valparaiso University in Indiana, promotes the renewal of some ancient practices of the Jewish and Christian traditions as practical means to restore individuals and communities to spiritual balance and social responsibility. Such practices include the observance of regular rest periods, the exercise of hospitality as an act of community and the habit of personal fasting complemented by the act of social feasting.

Mary C. Boys, the Skinner and McAlpin Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary and adviser to the Valparaiso Project, will offer a response to Bass’s talk.

Copies of the book, Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, written by the Valparaiso Project participants — scholars and practitioners of faith — and edited by Bass, are on sale at the Bates College Bookstore in Chase Hall prior to the lecture.

Bass and Boys will also lead breakfast and luncheon seminar discussions of their work on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. in Hirasawa Lounge of Chase Hall and at 11:30 a.m. in the Peakes Room of Chase Hall. Those interested in attending these public seminars should register by calling the office of the college chaplain at 786-8272.

Bass is a historian of the Christian tradition who has written many essays on religion and American culture. A graduate of Wellesley College, Union Theological Seminary in New York and Brown University, she has taught at several colleges and theological schools. She is a minister in the United Church of Christ.

Boys joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in 1994 after 17 years at Boston College. The author of three books and numerous articles on religion and education, she serves as an adjunct member of the faculties of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and of Teachers College, Columbia University.

A fixture at Bates since 1975, the Andrews Lecture is a memorial to Bertha May Bell Andrews, who served on the Bates faculty from 1913 to 1917 and established the women’s physical education program at the college. The lectureship was established by her son, Dr. Carl B. Andrews of the Bates class of 1940.