Reviewer Rebecca Foster Interviews Davis Shoulders, Editor of Queer Communion: Religion in Appalachia
“The expectation that queer folks have to defend or explain their migration of faith betrays a core sense of belonging… . Our queer spirituality isn’t marginalized from ourselves; Christianity has—for the most part—marginalized us.’’ —Davis Shoulders
The quote above caused us a flash of insight into the word belong. Is it not true that we can belong to whatever belief system we want? Is it not preposterous to think that someone could stop us from doing so? Yes and yes. You are a Christian if you choose to be. There’s no gatekeepers other than Jesus and we know how accepting he was of “outcasts and marginalized individuals, and that likely included queer people,” Davis Shoulders emphasizes.
Davis joins us today to talk with Rebecca Foster about Queer Communion, the spirited collection of essays, stories, and poems they edited and published with the University Press of Kentucky. In her review for Foreword’s September/October issue, Rebecca says that the book highlights the “contradictions and unexpected blessings of squaring queerness with Christianity in Appalachia,” while “shedding light on the crossovers between faith and sexuality.” We salute Davis and every one of those thirteen contributors for sharing their stories.
These four INDIES Book of the Year Awards winners in the Religious category also deserve your attention.
What convinced you that Appalachian religion needed its own essay anthology? How do you see your book fitting into the “Appalachian Futures” series?
Simply put—to fill a gap. This was the goal of the series in general. We knew diverse voices were present in our community and we weren’t seeing enough of them in books. Religion has been covered in our regional literature, maybe more so through fiction at this point. But I wanted to expand the question of religious identity in Appalachia when paired with queer identity. It’s often assumed that those two things don’t go together, but I believe these essays prove how much religious identity affects our queer lives either in terms of acceptance or complete rejection of faith. There is an interwoven narrative being played out. This book series has covered queer ecology in Deviant Hollers and queer, trans and two-spirit identities in To Belong Here and we’ve had some great memoirs like No Son of Mine addressing the personal reckoning with familial rejection, but it felt right to have an entire anthology devoted to the complication of religion. And as I’ve said recently in the Read Appalachia podcast, Queer Communion is hopefully just a preliminary foray opening the door for more collections and pieces of writing unpacking queer spirituality in all its permutations.
What was the process like of narrowing down the pool of submissions and trying to ensure a diversity of forms/styles and representation of all sexualities?
This was a tough process, as anthology work always is. It felt like we had just started collecting stories by the time we reached a stopping point to build a manuscript. A lot of it had to do with people feeling comfortable sharing this type of vulnerable story. There’s so much sensitivity around religion in the South and Appalachia. To have a queer voice comment on it feels a bit like self-surgery. So we had several people turn us down even though they were interested, but just not quite ready. Some of those would’ve stretched the range of diversity and representation, especially in religious paradigms other than Christianity. But what I ended up searching for in representation was not necessarily an identity politics framing of diversity but a diversity of responses to the impact of religion. So we have some more commemorative and adoring pieces, and in others we stare down the sense of complete rejection. Most of the essays covered the complication of family or the struggle of continued faith. But I think this collection hits its stride in the artistic reimagination of faith. Queerness in Appalachia becomes its own faith, regardless of the way contributors individually relate to traditional religious structures.
In multiple pieces, there’s a tension between queer people sticking with religion or leaving it to find freedom. How has that struggle played out in your own life, and how do you see it as providing an overarching structure for the anthology?
I have found my peace with that tension through a more mystical paradigm of spirituality. I don’t see myself as having “left” anything. I just don’t attend that convening of folks anymore, and I’ve developed a cosmology and theology that would be limited by remaining in those spaces. I experienced a fundamental evangelical religious paradigm in childhood as a preacher’s kid in a multigenerational connection to that faith tradition on both sides of my genealogy. By the time I was an adult and outside of that bubble, it’s like I had to learn the world from scratch. The leap required to explore your own identity as an adult means that we can be drawn to certain safe spaces and easy landing pads that imitate those early communities of faith. There’s a psychological understanding that being raised in a religious cult or an abusive household makes you more susceptible to being taken advantage of again. I was so entrenched in a religious paradigm that I find myself highly critical of other options. I’ve had to do all this creativity in expressing my own queer identity, so it feels equally complicated finding a “new home” for all of my spiritual energy to go. The expectation that queer folks have to defend or explain their migration of faith betrays a core sense of belonging. I think all religious structures could learn from this collection and queer voices in general about how we make meaning out of ritual and mythology. Our queer spirituality isn’t marginalized from ourselves; Christianity has—for the most part—marginalized us.
Given the regional focus, was it a challenge to balance commonality and breadth of experience?
I don’t know if it just happened or I got lucky as an editor, but I really feel like this wasn’t an issue. Each author focused on their vantage point towards external structures of faith and their proximity to Appalachia across a multi-state region. The resonance of queerness and faith experience just seemed to meld perfectly, while still making an accessible storytelling collection as a whole. It was a real act of communion, of coming together; the puzzle pieces fit so nicely.
J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is still influential in how people perceive Appalachia. How did you hope to counter some of the damaging stereotypes that books like his might promulgate?
It may surprise folks, but in 2025 I don’t really factor him in my imagination at all. We’ve already given those damaging stereotypes too much airtime, even in the dutiful critique of his work. So, without dismissing this question, it’s really a non-starter for how I’m envisioning Appalachia for my people. Nothing is based on what he did or didn’t say. The stereotypes we are fighting are more pervasive and persistent than can even be traced back to the points he capitulated in that memoir. It’s just one memoir; while oddly popular, it’s just one voice. I’d rather focus on the healing side of our community and how we are growing without having to think about his negative impact. We are busy with other stuff. Important stuff. And people can access layers and layers of Appalachian literature to be curious about and learn how they improve their awareness of my people. So if you stop with J.D. Vance, you aren’t my audience anyway. Read deeper. Go deeper. There’s plenty to read just an arm’s length away.
Most of the essays engage with Christian traditions. Was there originally an intention to pull in other religions?
There was that intention. As we started to gather essays, there was such a readiness to address the Christian tradition in the contributors who reached out to us. I addressed this briefly in the question on narrowing the focus. I didn’t want to just tack on other religious groups to fill up the diversity quotient; though I explored inviting a few folks, they just didn’t materialize in time for the production of the book. It became clear that we needed to sufficiently handle the range of Christian responses and hopefully set an example for another anthology diving into other religious traditions in Appalachia. Just a beginning, just a start. In no way comprehensive. Not saying I’m the one to do it, but I’d love to see an edited collection of other religious traditions in Appalachia come out in the future!
In Willie Edward Taylor Carver, Jr.’s foreword, he talks about finding love and empathy for those who judge and hate you. How might one do that but, at the same time, stand up against injustice and harmful ideologies?
I think this all comes down to the relationship between empathy and boundaries. A term that comes up a lot in queer Appalachian circles is “code-switching.” Knowing which spaces are safe to be different versions of yourself. Family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. It’s a necessary social mapping we do. It’s a special talent as much as it is a coping mechanism. I think the empathy work that Willie expresses in the foreword comes from the interior of the self, so that it is easier to stand up against injustice when those moments arise. But to be real, it’s a hard balance to strike, but we still need to have empathy towards people who try to harm us so we can learn to dissolve that type of hatred and harm before it gets worse. There are ways to be strong and justice-oriented while also being empathetic. They are not opposites, though they often seem like it in these times. These essays are a way for folks to empathize with us, to get to know us better. People might be surprised, once they see our humanity and vulnerability, that we aren’t all that different. I do believe we can extend that empathy in both directions without foregoing our rights or claiming a centrist compromise lacking in justice. This collection’s posture is a holding of ground, taking up space, but staying soft and open always.
You and some of the other authors allude to finding God elsewhere—in rituals, in nature, in other people. Do you think writers such as Bryan Washington would recognize this impulse in their fiction as being spiritual?
I’m not familiar enough to comment on Bryan Washington’s oeuvre in this way, but I do believe most fiction writers and creative expression in general comes from this fascination with the divinity of craft. Wherever we land in belief, we are probably all searching for God in one way or another. An organizing principle of meaning that gives us that feeling of magic. Nature is the easiest universal concept adjacent to theistic religions. It seems like queer folks have to use this creative imagination anyway, even when we stay in Christian traditions. Or there is a deeper finding of the queerness in the cracks within the larger tradition. The parts of faith that get overlooked because we’ve been marginalized. I’d argue Jesus spent a lot of time with outcasts and marginalized individuals, and that likely included queer people. But that’s not the dominant narrative in Western Judeo-Christian thought. We have to find queer history in those in-between spaces, so it makes sense we would find God there too.
Rebecca Foster
