Queer Sacred Music

I often use the term "love" rather than the term "God" to make my hymns more inclusive. Feel free to replace "love" with "God" (or "God" with "love" where relevant), or to make other textual changes to allow the hymns to speak to (and be sung by) as diverse a set of people as possible. In fact, feel free to modify my language in your use of these or other hymns in ways that work for you. My goal is always to maximize joy, love, compassion, gratitude, and courage to transform the world; please sing these hymns in ways that make that goal meaningful for you. 

In general, I do my (flawed) best to remove any language from my texts that might unintentionally reproduce rlinguistic acism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, gender dualisms, anti-Judaism, xenophobia, ageism, ableism, and other forms of systemic inequality. I'm sure I fail often. If you notice racist, sexist, ableist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise harmful language in any of the pieces on this website, please contact me and inform me. All of us have much to learn in this work, and many opportunities to grow. I will rewrite any texts that reproduce any form of inequality.

I have been granted permission to share a beautiful document about using expansive language in the Mennonite hymnal Voices Together. Please consider reading it: "Expansive Language in Voices Together."

I encourage you to change the language in your traditional hymns to make that language more inclusive in any way possible (changing "men" to "those" or "all" or some other appropriate equivalent, avoiding hymn texts that treat darkness as equivalent to evil and light as equivalent to good, changing "Father" language to "Mother" language some (or much) of the time, etc.). This may be uncomfortable for people who have grown up with the traditional language, but this is a discomfort worth engaging in the spirit of solidarity with devalued people and as a way of following in the way of those prophets and spiritual teachers for whom discomfort was simply part of spiritual growth.