A Queer Orthodoxy: Monastic Socialism and Celibate Sexuality in Vida Dutton Scudder and Ralph Adams Cram

Abstract

This essay analyzes the writings of two American Anglo-Catholic socialists, Vida Dutton Scudder and Ralph Adams Cram, on medieval monasticism. Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, Scudder and Cram appealed to monasticism to fold together their nonnormative sexualities with their radical anticapitalism. Nevertheless, they rejected the ideology of social progress common to most forms of liberalism and socialism. By attending to the past examples of St. Francis and St. Benedict, they produced surprisingly forward-looking critiques of modern capitalist society.