A review by acornsbooksandcoffee
Broke the Bread, Spilled the Tea by Mitchell Kesller

hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

 

Broke the Bread, Spilled the Tea is well researched deep dive into scripture and how it pertains to the modern Queer Experience. The book is broken down into several sections, beginning with the context of who the author is and his background with Christianity and his struggles with it as a child and as a young man. He then provides a historical context to the Church as a whole, beginning with ancient times and proceeding the modern era. He then does a fantastic analysis of the bible as a concept and who and what God is, historically and personally. 

My favorite part is “The Gay Bashers.” Here, Kesller breaks down the major verses in the bible that are used to invalidate queer identity and justify queer bashing, to put it bluntly. Each verse is put into a historical context and a literary context, meaning we also examine the verses around the inflammatory passage to see that many of these have been cherrypicked to prove a specific argument, rather than a legitimate analysis of the passage itself. At the end of each of these analyses, Kesller provides a bite sized summary, which explains the popular interpretation of the passage that has been used to justify hate versus Kesller’s interpretation of the meaning of the passage. 

He also dives into historical parallels in which other passages of the Bible have been used to justify horrible things, in particular those stance that have since fallen out of favor and been abandoned by the Church. 

This was a great read as a queer person who doesn’t quite know where they stand with their faith.