"RMN launches new Trans Community Organizer position and releases report on Annual Conference Season" Reconciling Ministries Network in Chicago, Illinois, United States "Learn the good, bad, ugly, and beautiful of Annual Conference Season 2016!" for Tuesday, 9 August 2016Pivitol new position to resource the Reconciling Movement
Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) is delighted to announce that Rev. Liam Hooper has joined the RMN staff in the newly created role of Transgender Community Organizer.
As transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) people are being targeted more than ever by the religious right, RMN recognizes the crucial role progressive faith communities can play in offering an alternative Christian approach that reflects God’s expansive love. Matt Berryman, executive director of RMN stated, “All too often, welcoming movements have fallen short of true inclusion by marginalizing our trans and GNC siblings. RMN wants to change that. Hiring Liam signals our commitment to centering transgender ministry and advocacy in the core of our organizational priorities.”
Read the full statement about this new position at RMN
RMN launches new position to center trans organizing in progressive faith communities by Reconciling Ministries Network
Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) is delighted to announce that Rev. Liam Hooper has joined the RMN staff in the newly created role of Transgender Community Organizer.
Hailing from North Carolina, Liam has been involved in mental health counseling, program development, and professional training. He is the founder of GRASP (Gender Revisioning and Sexuality Pathways), which aims to improve the lives of trans people in the community through public education, advocacy, activism, and general support activities. As an openly trans man, Liam takes seriously the call to freely tell his story, to be as authentically who he is as possible, to engage in responsible education and advocacy, and to hear and respect the stories of others.
As transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) people are being targeted more than ever by the religious right, RMN recognizes the crucial role progressive faith communities can play in offering an alternative Christian approach that reflects God’s expansive love. Matt Berryman, executive director of RMN stated, “All too often, welcoming movements have fallen short of true inclusion by marginalizing our trans and GNC siblings. RMN wants to change that. Hiring Liam signals our commitment to centering transgender ministry and advocacy in the core of our organizational priorities.”
C. Kristian Clauser, chair of the United Methodist Alliance for Transgender Inclusion, recognizes this position as a vital means of ensuring a welcoming place for trans people within and beyond the church. “Rev. Hooper will provide a year-round, consistent focus on transgender ministry for RMN in a way that the volunteers of UMATI haven’t been able to on their own. His skills as an organizer, trainer, and pastor will be invaluable as we collaborate to share the good news that trans people are beloved children of God who are equally deserving of abundant life and justice in our churches and in society.”
Liam expresses his own excitement about the abundant possibilities of the transgender community organizer position. “I am interested in finding ways to connect a theology of transgender welcome, ministry, and advocacy to United Methodist and Wesleyan theology in an active way–meeting people, making connections and building relationships that offer nurturing support and fellowship to transgender persons and their loved ones. I see this work as central to the goal of providing tools, resources, support and strategies for creating meaningful inclusion of transgender people in our churches, communities, and common world.”
Send Liam a welcome message at liam@rmnetwork.org.
To read a blog written by Liam, click here.
To make a donation in support of this pivotal new ministry, click here.
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This report is a glimpse of the many actions that were taken across the United Methodist connection during the Annual Conference season related to LGBTQ inclusion and discrimination. Many courageous speeches and witnesses took place and powerful resolutions which promised not to conform with discrimination in the church were passed by numerous conferences. Click here to read the full report.
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In my own journey, I have learned what Jacob learned. At some point, all our striving, all of our heel-grabbing a world that doesn’t fit us, brings us face-to- face with ourselves. And, because God is ever with us, in us, we are brought fully into the presence of God. What we find there is staggeringly profound.
Click here to read more.
"Getting Dusty with Jacob" by Rev. Liam Hooper
An ancient wisdom asserts that the whole universe is in the Torah, we just have to keep turning it to see it more fully. I believe this to be true—even as a transgender person of faith, even in light of the many ways our sacred texts have been used to exclude trans and LGB people. Perhaps, it is precisely because of the hurt arising from the misuse of scripture that I have come to hear refrains of our diverse human conditions sounding forth from Biblical narratives. It is what keeps me turning again to look closer, then, turning the text, to find stories that connect even with my own.
One story that speaks profoundly to me is the story of Jacob wrestling until daybreak in the desert. Most of us know the story, at least generally.
After a life of falling behind, living under the influence of others, making questionable decisions, controlling circumstances, suffering consequences, and trying to live with himself and others in a life made running from himself, from his past, Jacob—the heel grabber—realized things needed to change. More, he had reached a point where he finally had no choice but to go home. Going home meant setting things right.
And, setting things right almost always means, first, dealing with ourselves.
Setting things right. Amends. Making change. Starting over. Whatever we choose to call it, it is deep work. We often engage it only when we run out of other options. It is dusty, grappling, solitary work. In fact, the Hebrew word translated as “wrestle” comes from the word for dust. In the verb sense, it means to become or to get dusty. In this passage, the verb is reflexive, telling us Jacob wrestled withhimself. With his conscience. His past. Jacob was alone in the desert of his life, getting dusty. Struggling. Yet, some kind of presence was with him—some unknown man—who did not prevail against him. As he tussled and skirmished in the dust, Jacob held his own. In all his desert grappling, his hip was knocked out of socket. He was forever changed. Transformed.
Yet, there is more to the story. Jacob perceived this unnamed other getting dusty with him to be some manifestation of God. His experience left him with the understanding he had contended with God and humans, including, himself. Not only that, he prevailed. As if he somehow understood the significance of his striving, Jacob asked for a blessing. Perhaps because he asked, because he persisted, he was granted the blessing of affirmation—the thing he had been seeking all along. And, his name was changed to Israel: one who strives with God.
In my own journey, I have learned what Jacob learned. At some point, all our striving, all of our heel-grabbing a world that doesn’t fit us, brings us face-to- face with ourselves. And, because God is ever with us, in us, we are brought fully into the presence of God. What we find there is staggeringly profound.
Not only is it acceptable for us to wrestle with God as well as ourselves, but it seems to be in some way part of the process of being in relationship with God.
Striving with self and God seem, also, to be essentially the same thing. And, if we dare to face ourselves—to grapple in our desert dust—we come face-to- face with all that is the Holy One. We will, doubtless, walk away changed, perhaps limping, but we are assured the sun will rise upon us. Somehow, this being changed makes us more who we are. It is a coming home. The way we are known, our very name, changes forever as we are changed. And, a way is made for setting things right. This is how it is with transformation, Jacob teaches. We bear it. In our skin. In our walking. In our name. And in our going forth. We come home, limping, joyfully, as the sun comes up before us.
Reverend Liam M. Hooper, M.Div., is the founder of GRASP (Gender Revisioning and Sexuality Pathways), which aims to improve the lives of trans people in the community through public education, advocacy, activism, and general support activities. As an openly trans man, Li takes seriously the call to freely tell his story, to be as authentically who he is as possible, to engage in responsible education and advocacy, and to hear and respect the stories of others. Through trans advocacy work, awareness-raising, social justice work, education, and theological activism, Li strives to work for greater safety, freedom, and acceptance for trans people and all those in the vast, diverse continuum of persons.Liam Hooper lives in the deep south with his wife, Diana, a freelance publishing professional who keeps his calendar in line, and their teenage son, who keeps them on their toes.
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What I learned decades ago, and continue to reinforce, is that nonviolent disobedience is not an act of defiance, it is an act of conscience. It is acting on the deeply-held conviction that a particular current reality is an impediment to the realization of the Beloved Community, understood in Christianity essentially as the Kingdom of God.
Click here to read more.Oboedire: A Site for Attentive Spiritual Formation
Loyal Disobedience" by J. Steven Harper
The various acts of non-conformity which have followed The United Methodist General Conference have been swiftly described as acts of disobedience, which are then promptly labeled as manifestations of disloyalty. Various groups and bodies have attempted to frame the issue this way.Unfortunately, to do so is to misunderstand resistance as a study of nonviolence reveals.
Of course, there are forms of disobedience that are reflective of disloyalty, but to name every act of disobedience as disloyalty is to caricature it–which essentially means dismissing the necessity and validity of nonviolent resistance, and treating it rather as something to be punished. It is crucial to distinguish between disloyal and loyal disobedience.
I first learned about nonviolent resistance as a student at Asbury Theological Seminary under the guidance of Dr. Robert Lyon, who organized the L.O. Society (Loyal Opposition). He used the group to teach the principles of nonviolence and to train interested students in the practice of resistance within the context of loyalty. From Bob (as he wanted us to call him), we learned how to be disobedient and loyal at the same time. We learned, in fact, that sometimes the highest expression of loyalty is to disobey a particular current reality.
It was the L.O. Society which connected us to the literature of non-violence, particularly the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other nonviolent leaders in the civil rights movement. We were still in the wake of racial violence (the early 1970’s), and reeling from the murder of Dr. King, so these sources spoke powerfully to our lived experience. King’s “I Have a Dream” address ignited our vision (as did his speech, “The Power of Nonviolence”), and his book, ‘Strength to Love’ provided a curriculum for the mission to study and practice.
E. Stanley Jones, an Asbury College alum, was additionally instructive through his books, ‘The Christ of the Indian Road,’–‘Christ at the Round Table’–and ‘Ghandhi: Portrait of a Friend.’ Jones introduced me to ahimsa (“no wounding”), and he wrote about how he put it into practice in his Methodist missionary ministry in India, frequently being called disloyal by many of his colleagues in India and elsewhere.
Since those initial learnings about loyal opposition, I have expanded my knowledge of nonviolent resistance through the writings of such people as Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Nelson Mandella, and John Lewis. Over the summer, I have returned to their writings and refreshed my spirit by my reading of their words.
What I learned decades ago, and continue to reinforce, is that nonviolent disobedience is not an act of defiance, it is an act of conscience. It is acting on the deeply-held conviction that a particular current reality is an impediment to the realization of the Beloved Community, understood in Christianity essentially as the Kingdom of God. It is acting in relation to agapé, as Jones, King, and even Gandhi emphasized.
I have learned that advocates of a current reality always paint the acceptance of the regulated status quo as a virtue, but it is never virtuous to accept something which does harm to others. Accepting that is a vice. Love refuses to do that and becomes confrontational, as Jim Lawson taught, not in physical aggression, but in intellectual and spiritual response.
Moreover, advocates of a controversial current reality misrepresent loyal opposition as an impediment to negotiation, when the fact is, it is a sign that the need to talk is overdue. Paradoxically, it is the nonviolent resistors who are more willing to talk than the advocates of a current reality, who want opponents to be silent and blend back into the woodwork, or maybe even go away.
E. Stanley Jones experienced this, as advocates of the British and Christian status quo (the two cultures overlapped) no longer invited him to their table. In response he created his own table–a Round Table–where the Kingdom values of respect, inclusion, and conversation became means for the fruit of the Spirit to exist and have influence. In the end, the Round Table was more representative of Kingdom values that the cultural tables were.
As Jones and these others make clear, nonviolent disobedience refuses to be quiet or disappear. and all because the love of God and neighbor compels a resistance to attitudes and actions that degrade, divide, and discriminate. This disobedience is not disloyal; it is profoundly loyal. And when it is rooted in love and expressive of the other eight aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, it reflects the commitment of the first apostles who, when told by the religious establishment to stop talking, responded by saying, “We must obey God rather than men” (yes, ‘men’ in that context) and then went out from the court continuing their alleged disobedience. There is nothing more loyal than that.
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