Constructive Theology and Gender Variance
Transformative Creatures

Reframes gender variance and transition in positive, non-oppositional terms, informed by Christian constructive theologies of creation and personhood.

Susannah Cornwall (Author)

9781108496315, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 November 2022

300 pages
22.2 x 14.6 x 3.1 cm, 0.69 kg

Some Christians are anxious and uncomfortable about gender diversity and transition. Sometimes, they understand these issues as a rejection of God's intention for creation. Gender diversity has also been assumed to entail self-deception, mental ill-health, and dysphoria. Yet, humans are inherently transformative creatures with a vocation to shape their own worlds and traditions. Transformative creaturely theology recognizes the capacity of gender to shape humans even as we also question it. In this book, Susannah Cornwall reframes the issues of gender diversity and transition in constructive Christian theological terms. Resisting deficit-based discourses, she presents gender diversity in a way that is positive and non-oppositional. Her volume explores questions of the licit limits of technological interventions for human bodies, how gender diversity maps onto understandings of health, and the ethics of disclosure of gender diversity. It also brings these topics into critical conversation with constructive Christian theologies of creation, theological anthropology, Christology, and eschatology.

Part I. Setting the Scene: 1. Introduction: transformative creatures
2. Detransition, impermanence, and the innocence of changing one's mind
3. Existing Christian theological responses to transition: being transformed/being, transformed
Part II. Telling Truths: 4. Autonomy and trans people: authenticity, responsibility, recognition
5. Gender transition, truth-telling and artifice
6. Self-protection or 'gender fraud'? Ethics and the burden of disclosure
Part III. Limits, Technology, and Health: 7. Technological interventions and licit limits: on the alteration and augmentation of bodies
8. Trans people, health, and diversities of order
9. Fertility, generativity, and gender theology in the operative mood
10. Transforming humanity: gender, race, and animality
11. In Christ, everything has changed: Christology and creation
12. Transformative creatures reprised: theological anthropology and eschatology.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: transsexuals & hermaphroditism [JFSJ5], Religious aspects of sexuality, gender & relationships [HRLM7], Christian aspects of sexuality, gender & relationships [HRCV4], Christian theology [HRCM], Religion & politics [HRAM2]