Baby, You Are My Religion

Baby, You Are My Religion: The Lesbian Bar as Sacred Space is a foundational work of lived lesbian and queer theology, which offers an exploration of how lesbian bars served as spiritual havens for queer women.

Drawing on more than 100 oral histories, Marie Cartier reveals how lesbian bars from the 1940s to the 1980s functioned as sacred spaces—churches in exile—for women cast out of traditional religion. Through these testimonies, Cartier situates the lesbian bar as a site of ritual, community, and spiritual resistance, where queer women fought to form community, forge family, and survive against the odds. This second edition expands on the original research with a new foreword and afterword addressing the disappearance of lesbian bars and the continuing need for sacred queer space post-millennium. Blending cultural history, feminist spirituality, and theology, the book introduces theelogy—a theology grounded in “thee” elevating community ties to the sacred.

Baby, You Are My Religion is ideal for scholars and students of queer studies, women’s history, theology, and religious studies, offering a framework for understanding how lesbian experiences shaped the very foundations of queer spiritual thought.