夏叔安 Sue Ann Shiah
台灣大學音樂學研究所 Masters Degree Graduate Student

題目：Musical Healing: The Way LGBTQI Christians in Asia Are Reclaiming Western Worship Music in Their Liberation Movements

 

Colonial Christianity has been the greatest force for spreading homophobia and violence against LGBTQI people around the world, and as many countries in Asia deal with their postcolonial legacies, decriminalization of homosexuality is a topic of great concern.  In the most recent elections in Taiwan in 2018, referendums against same sex marriage were most vocally supported by a small Taiwanese Christian minority and financially supported by conservative Christians in America.  It is at this intersection of tension that this paper explores the musical worship practices of LGBTQI Christians at a particular LGBTQI Christian conference called Amplify that occurred in Taipei, Taiwan during Pride weekend in 2018.  This paper features field recordings and analyzes the musical repertoire, stylistic choices/context, and the responses by participants in relationship to a Western, English, postcolonial Christian hegemony.  The Asian Christian LGBTQI participants have been the victims of persecution of the Christian church, but not only do they stay in the Christian faith, but they continue to devote their lives and bodies to the worship of Jesus Christ.  By participating in the corporate worship of the “global” and “invisible” church, LGBTQI Asian Christians are reinserting themselves into a narrative that only seeks to benefit from their erasure by making LGBTQI inclusion a war against religion, namely Christians and Christianity.  This paper explores the way worship music is used both in personal devotional life and congregational corporate worship to subvert, challenge, and reappropriate not only musical texts that belong to a repertoire of exclusion but also assert belonging for the LGBTQI Asian bodies that have been excluded from the Body of Christ (the Christian church).  The multi-denominational, multinational, and multilingual musical practices of these LGBTQI Asian Christians reveal an opportunity for the possibilities of future reclamation and navigation of other Western and colonial musical traditions.