ABSTRACT
There has been an increasing deal of energy devoted to music in the fields of religious studies and theology in the last couple of decades. The work on music in theology, however, has often been dismissive of the gains in cultural and ideological criticism made by musicologists since the 1990s, which included a great deal of work on music and sexuality. This chapter surveys some of the recent significant writings in music and theology, describes the work of feminist and queer musicology, and concludes with some voices that integrate the two perspectives. One of the major insights that recent scholarship on music and religion or theology brings to the table is that because music has the capacity to signify, theological discussion of music must treat it as communicative in its own right. By bringing queer musicology into conversation with contemporary theologies of music, the full implications of theological thought on music for embodiment can be explored.
