Description

Trans-Forming Proclamation: A Transgender Theology of Daring Existence (2020) by Liam M. Hooper, M.Div. hazards to put the lived experience of gender-transcendent peoples (for instance, transgender, intersex, or gender non-conforming people) at the center of a creative and constructive theological project. In so doing, Hooper walks out of Church and Synagogue, even away from the Academy, into the Sacred Grove, the eternal Eden within each one of us, where we connect most directly with the kaleidoscopic God who Hooper calls the Abiding One.

To quote the author, "Trans-Forming Proclamation is an expression of diverse gender-transcendent embodiments daring to live on."

With Trans-Forming Proclamation, Hooper demonstrates his love of both the Hebrew language and the wisdom of nature itself, bouncing back and forth between the insights gleaned from his beloved Grandma Daught and sacred texts dear to both Jewish and Christian traditions. In this remarkable offering of both personal and scholarly importance, Hooper offers a manifesto of sort for gender-transcendent peoples.

Hooper's approach arguably emerges as a sort of Jewish process theology, but scholars may also notice obvious influences from Black, lesbian, Marxist-feminist, and Womanist schools of thought, as well as queer theory and queer theology. The result is as poetic as it is exegetical-as evocative and mystical as it is any kind of a traditional liberation of theology. Indeed, this deep reflection on what it means to be a gender-transcendent person engaging prophetically with a world that literally argues against our existence is, quite simply, a blessing in every turn of the phrase.