Austen Hartke
Austen Hartke is the creator of the YouTube series “Transgender and Christian,” which seeks to understand, interpret, and share parts of the Bible that relate to gender identity and the lives of transgender individuals. Austen is a graduate of Luther Seminary’s Master of Arts program in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible Studies, and is the winner of the 2010 John Milton Prize in Old Testament Writing from the same institution. As a transgender person of faith, his greatest passion is helping other trans and gender-non-conforming people see themselves in scripture. Austen spends his time advocating for transgender inclusion in churches, and helping communities find ways to grow in love and justice together. Connect with him on Twitter @AustenLionheart.
Breaking Binaries: God-talk from Liminal Spaces
In this workshop, Hebrew Bible scholar and trans YouTuber Austen Hartke and Japanese American liturgist Kenji Kuramitsu will share their own stories of liminality along the lines of race, gender, and sexuality, uplifting relevant characters from across the witness of church and scripture throughout. This will be a “mixed-methods” workshop encouraging participants who inhabit borderlands, “middle-identity” spaces in/between dominant psychic ways of being to explore and voice their own valid social locations – and to utilize their own stories as a point of departure for creating healing theology from positions of liminality.
