Media and Communication Ph.D. Dissertations

Contested Fidelities: An Analysis of Mononormativity and Polyamory in Christian Discourse

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

Media and Communication

First Advisor

Sandra Faulkner (Committee Chair)

Second Advisor

Jenjira Yahirun (Other)

Third Advisor

Joshua Atkinson (Committee Member)

Fourth Advisor

Lisa Hanasono (Committee Member)

Abstract

Christianity has consistently played a key role in shaping the politics of sexuality in the United States, from debates over LGBT rights (Krutzsch, 2019; Petro, 2015; White, 2015) to shaping sexual norms through the life of local congregations (McQueeney, 2009; Perry & Whitehead, 2016; Tranby & Zulkowski, 2012). Polyamory, a form of consensual non-monogamy, has been a frequent staple of the Christian right’s “slippery slope” rhetoric suggesting that marriage equality will inevitably lead to further forms of experimentation in the form of families and marriages (Sheff, 2011). Since the legalization of same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, there are signs that polyamory is increasingly seen as a focus of concern rather than a secondary threat, with Christian public figures seeking to prepare pastors and laypeople to respond to polyamorous people showing up in congregations (Leake, 2021; Sprinkle & Parler, 2019; Strachan, 2020). In this present study, I sought to gain an understanding of the current relationship between polyamory and Christianity through a critical interpersonal and family communication lens. I approached this task from two directions. First, I conducted a qualitative content analysis of 118 articles in the online Christian publications The Christian Post and CrossWalk. This analysis was oriented by framing theory, which examines how issues are constructed in the media through the selection of key organizing ideas. Second, I conducted a critical thematic analysis of conversations with polyamorous Christians in the form of 17 podcast episodes and 18 original research interviews. This analysis was guided by the framework of relational spirituality, which organizes phenomena in which individuals’ pursuits of spirituality and intimate relationships become intertwined. The findings from both of these studies were analyzed through a queer theoretical lens, examining mononormative hegemony and resistance by blending Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology and Steve Duck’s rhetorical approach to relationships. I argue that the contestation of Christian ways of knowing and being at the heart of these discourses is entangled with the question of how Christians relate to their cultural Others. Mononormative Christian discourses in The Christian Post and CrossWalk draw strong and comprehensive in-group/out-group distinctions between conservative Christians and their Others, monitoring the boundaries of Christian ways of knowing and being in order to maintain these group distinctions. Polyamorous Christians emerge as a threat to these intergroup boundaries. For their own part, polyamorous Christians navigate relational spirituality by unsettling fixed notions of Christian truth and existence, expanding the voices that are valued in the construction of knowledge and the lives that are valued as livable. The potential for this kind of transformation reinforces the importance of attending to the bidirectional influence between the public and the private in interpersonal and family communication studies (Suter, 2018). While recognizing the potential limitations posed by this sample’s overall privileged racial and class positioning, I argue that the routes of polyamorous Christian resistance to Christian mononormativity also have the potential to pose challenges to Christian hegemony and exclusivity in American social life.

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