This paper explores sensuality as a framework for understanding human experience, embodiment, and spirituality, focusing on the perspectives of queer people in the Church of England. It examines how sensual theology—the idea that human perception serves as a medium through which we encounter the divine—can challenge traditional theological boundaries while enriching Christian vocation and spiritual life.
Queer individuals, often navigating the repression of their sexuality within religious contexts, bring unique insights into desire, identity, and embodiment. Their lived experiences illuminate how sensuality, far from being separate from spirituality, can deepen our understanding of the Spirit's movement in the world. In particular, the Holy Spirit is presented as animating human sensory experiences, guiding believers to discern the sacred within themselves and in the everyday.
This paper argues that reclaiming sensuality, which has been marginalised in traditional theology, offers a way to bridge the material and the metaphysical. Queer lives and perspectives challenge reductive binaries of sacred and profane, opening new dimensions of divine encounter in ordinary human experiences.
Drawing on in-depth interviews as well as grounded in queer theology, theory, and anthropology, the paper contends that sensuality is both fully human and deeply spiritual. By embracing a theology that honours human sensuality, we can invite a richer, more inclusive understanding of what it means to be human and to encounter God. Ultimately, this proposal suggests that sensual theology offers a pathway toward becoming fully alive, fully human, and fully attuned to the divine.