You Can, If You Want to: Navigating Christian Faith, Conscience, and Matters LGBTQ+

What if Christianity was far more liberating than the culture wars suggest? Can the conflict concerning Christianity and homosexuality be viewed from a more interpretative lens? James Alison, a Catholic priest who is also a gay man, has been wrestling with the matter for over forty years.

This luminous and rigorous book dismantles the fear-based binaries which have dominated conversations in the Church. Striving to address potential concerns about accepting LGBTQ+ individuals within the church, James draws on scripture, tradition and his lived experience to form a broader understanding of faith and humanity.

James Alison is a Catholic theologian, priest and author. He has studied, lived and worked in Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Spain and the United States as well as his native England. James earned his doctorate in theology from the Jesuit Faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1994 and is a systematic theologian by training.

He is known for his firm but patient insistence on truthfulness in all matters gay as an ordinary part of basic Christianity, and for his pastoral outreach in the same sphere.

James now works as an itinerant preacher, lecturer and retreat giver. He is currently a Fellow of Imitatio. He accompanies a wide variety of publics, through academic lectures, undergraduate, postgraduate and professors’ seminars, adult catechesis courses, retreats for priests, parish groups, and Catholic and ecumenical gay and lesbian retreats.