Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Theology: Dr. Tuffy Love Andrews gives lecture on Bible Drag

By Antonio Machado Associate Editor Arts & Ideas hosted “Staging Belief: Performance, Identity, and Campus Encounters” on Oct. 29, in the Heineman Ecumenical Center. The event saw the return of Dr. Tuffy Love Andrews, known off stage as Professor Marc Settembrino, to discuss the tension caused by the surge of street evangelists on college campuses. Xavier Guadalupe-Diaz, professor of criminology, introduced Andrews as “a sociologist, performer, and community organizer whose work bridges academic scholarship, activism, and drag.” He said Settembrino teaches courses on social movement, gender, sexuality, and social inequality and noted the importance of her message against the backdrop of the current political state of the world. He said,“The art of drag remains a flashpoint in contemporary politics, often serving as a proxy for broader anti-transgender and anti-queer politics, all part of a rising tide of neo-fascism, white supremacy, and authoritarianism extending far beyond our borders, reaching many parts of the world. “Drag also offers a powerful vehicle for resistance, activism, community building, and critical reflection. I hope today's talk inspires us to embrace that joyful rebellion against the forces of hatred and division,” Guadalupe-Diaz added. Andrews took the stage and described herself as a scholar, showgirl, and menace to higher education. She added that her presentation would focus on highlighting the intersections of drag and religious performance and her experiences with religious campus encounters as a queer person living in the Bible Belt. “I am a professor of sociology at Southeastern Louisiana University, and I began there in the fall of 2013. And halfway through the semester, a colleague of mine warned me. She said, ‘Before you go out to the quad, be aware - the wing nuts are here today,’” she said. She said there were roughly 100 members from a church called Consuming Fire Fellowship in the quad awaiting her. Andrews said, “You have men with these giant signs who were shouting sermons. As you walk through the quad, people would shout at you. They call women students sluts and whores, and if they perceive you to be queer, they'll call you all sorts of other slurs. And I was just in shell shock.” She said she returned to her office afterward and met with a student who was distraught after being harassed by some of the preachers. She emailed her dean, “We need to do something about this.” She said her dean responded, “I'm very sorry that that student had that experience, but you have to understand these groups have been coming to campus for many years now, and there's nothing we can do about it. I'll bring this up at the next deans council meeting, but I'm not sure that we're gonna be able to do anything moving forward.” Andrews said that was her introduction to the cycle she lives through - students being harassed by religious groups, and her complaints on their behalf being met with no response. “I probably should have begun by saying that the opinions that I'm sharing with you today are not necessarily those of my employer. Because academic freedom is also under attack in Louisiana,” she said. She said she experiences “compulsory Christianity,” where people around her assume everyone is or should be Christian, which creates a feeling that the preachers and religious groups around her are “untouchable.” Andrews said, “That's due to our First Amendment, right? It's great that we have the First Amendment, which allows people to express themselves and their religious beliefs, because if we didn't have that, I couldn't be dressed like this, speaking to you today. “At the same time, because of the context of compulsory Christianity that they exist in, those ‘creatures’ receive an additional moral armor, right? So in the same way that as a drag queen, I can say and do things when I’m in drag that might be a little outrageous if I was not in drag, preachers can afford some extra leeway in their behavior,” she added. She said the state of Texas is revolutionizing higher education. “By that, I mean, cracking down on free speech and academic freedom, in particular,” she said. She said multiple universities in Texas are restricting various forms of student speech and have tried to ban drag shows. “They said that it was equivalent to ‘womanface,’ right? So that's a thing that TERFs use to kind of push against drag queens. So, because it was degrading to women, we can’t have drag queens on campus. Other campuses thought that it was just sexually inappropriate to have a drag show on campus,” Andrews added. She pointed out the irony in attempting to ban these forms of self expression while administrators in her workplace tell her there is nothing they can do about the preachers harassing her students. She said, “Around the same time that all these drag bans were starting in 2022, that's when I decided I was going to do drag, right? I had just gotten tenure. I was feeling myself. I think I was actually floating around in my pool - not to make anyone jealous. And I was like, ‘You know what? I have time. I have a little bit of money. I want to be a drag queen because it's really going to make these people nervous locally.’” She said she saw drag as a way to organize her community while also pushing back against local governance. Andrews said drag helped her understand the sociological theories explaining how life is a social construct and gave her a deeper understanding of how often people perform in their daily lives. She said she subsequently realized the preachers who came to her campus were also performing in their own way. “These preachers that come to campus are not just expressing what may be their sincere religious beliefs, but they're putting on an exaggerated performance, creating these personas for an audience,” she said. She referred to this performance as “Bible Drag.” Andrews said, “Bible Drag, for me, becomes a tool for us to change the perspective when we're thinking about these street preachers. It's often referred to as confrontational evangelism, right? And so it becomes this framework through which I can analyze them sociologically and as an entertainer myself.” She said viewing these preachers through the lens of Bible Drag breaks down the religious barrier that disallows criticism. She said they are intentionally outrageous and attention grabbing, and use props and costumes to exacerbate the attention they receive. Andrews said, “They're performing, in very outrageous ways, sermons. They do stunts. Their goal is to build an audience. They want people around them. … What I've come to find is that the audiences are actually a big part of the show, the same way that if you go to a drag show, the audience is really important. “As an entertainer, I rely a lot on energy from the audience, and so do these preachers. They try to be intentionally outrageous to provoke an audience, right? That is their strategy, and that's going to be important for monetizing their shows,” she said. She said they use their “sermons” as ways to make money through solicitation and donations, but also through social media content and merchandise. Andrews said, “They want to get reactions from people that they can then put on social media, and this begins to raise the question of who is the real audience.” She said the students are baited into reacting so they can be used as props for social media content. “The outrage is the content,” she said. She said the shows Bible Drag performers put on are harmful. They are “putting on a show that is reaffirming this cis heteropatriarchy that we all kind of have to live in, which in my part of the world is very real and very tangible.” She said about a third of Americans have experienced religious trauma in some form, and these performances directly trigger those traumas. Andrews said administrators telling students and faculty to simply ignore or not engage with these groups is unhelpful. “That's actually quite disempowering. It begins to instill in people this idea that there's nothing we can do, and it's not worth my time,” she said. She said student-organized protests to Bible Drag artists are good opportunities for students to practice activism. “Those counter protests, even though they may be feeding into the outrage of the spectacle, become tools through which students, I believe, can become more active citizens,” Andrews said. “Now more than ever, we need young people to be active citizens.”