PUBLIC SPEAKING – CURIOUS LISTENING

Liam is available to speak to groups, in large or small settings, on a range of topics related to the work he engages as a gender theorist, theological thinker-activist, and all around seeker of ways that we – together – might change our world through relational engagement, community-building, and brave, bold, imagination.

COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS – COURAGEOUS LEARNING

Liam offers a wide range of seminars/workshops on the following topics, as well as new topics that might emerge in collaborative imagination and discussion. Contact Liam to begin imagining together.

“Trans-Forming Proclamation” – Reading Scripture and World Across Trans-Queer Experience 
Drawing on trans-formed and informed experiences, que(e)rying a range of theological perspectives, scholarship, and disciplines, and embracing wisdom-seeking through multiple ways of knowing, Liam invites encounter with ways of reading scripture, and our world, that encourage wider, radically imaginative, and love-filled paths toward transforming how we think about Biblical texts, and perhaps God, that can enliven our shared humanality and relationality. These discussions are interactive, focused on co-creating shared learning communities, and are open to seekers of all identities, religious traditions, experiences, and cultures who, like Liam, keep searching for evidence, all around us, that the world is indeed built on hesed (lovingkindness) and we can all learn to be living expressions, co-conspiring to repair the world. 

“Reflections on the Big Things” – Considering Things That Matter 
In his book, Trans-Forming Proclamation: A Transgender Theology of Daring Existence, Liam asserts that each and every person (as well as all life, everywhere) matters because every human person is matter – the Divine-particle-consisting matter of creation, of the cosmos, of all that is, was, or ever will be. 
In this community learning conversation, Liam invites participants into an exploration of the big things, the questions this perspective invites: What does it mean to be a human being? What is sex, gender, and sexuality … and what do these embodiments have to do with being a person? What is identity … how are identities manipulated to marginalize, disenfranchise, and often oppress individuals and groups of peoples? How is religion manipulated to justify exclusion? What is justice? How might we begin to learn from others, particularly those who are difference from ourselves, ways to live compassionately together and, perhaps, learn to love one another in ways that celebrate and value our differences? Knowing we won’t answer these questions fully in one conversation, Liam confronts erroneous and harmful mythologies we’ve been taught, shares interesting science, and explores core scriptures to propose guiding perspectives on paths of collective, communal and collaborative imagining. 

Other Topics: 
“Love: A Radical Ethic” – a values-based consideration of love as a verb and an action-based ethical practice.

“Bringing Home the Exile” – exploring the principles of acceptance, affirmation, and accommodation as practical means for meaningful and measurable social and cultural change-making.

“Tikun Olam: What If the World to Come is Here?” – considering the tasks of repairing, or perfecting, the world; correcting misconceptions from Christendom, while considering Jewish teachings regarding justice, holiness, and ethics for applied practice in our own time and conditions.

“Why – and How – Should We Read ‘The Bible?'” – with other fearless seekers among us, Liam makes space for deep and curious conversations about how we have been conditioned and “trained” to read texts held as sacred, historical basics of how the Abrahamic texts came to us, and offers models for liberating these texts and ourselves into other ways of reading, thinking about, and applying the literature of our ancestors. 

Choose Your Own: the sages observed long ago that we teach best what we most need to learn. In his desire to participate with others in creating communities of shared learning, Liam welcomes proposals for topics to engage in community together. If you have a topic or question you would like to co-create learning around, make a suggestion.  

To schedule an event with Liam, and for information regarding fees/honorariums, contact Liam Hooper using this form.