Glorious Bodies

A prehistory of transness that recovers early modern theological resources for trans lifeworlds. In this striking contribution to trans history, Colby Gordon challenges the prevailing assumption that trans life is a byproduct of recent medical innovation by locating a cultural imaginary of transition in the religious writing of the English Renaissance. Marking a major intervention in early modern gender studies, Glorious Bodies insists that transition happened, both socially and surgically, hundreds of years before the nineteenth-century advent of sexology. Pairing literary texts by Shakespeare, Webster, Donne, and Milton with a broad range of primary sources, Gordon examines the religious tropes available to early modern subjects for imagining how gender could change. From George Herbert’s invaginated Jesus and Milton’s gestational Adam to the ungendered “glorious body” of the resurrection, early modern theology offers a rich conceptual reservoir of trans imagery. In uncovering early modern trans theology, Glorious Bodies mounts a critique of the broad consensus that secularism is a necessary precondition for trans life, while also combating contemporary transphobia and the right-wing Christian culture war seeking to criminalize transition. Developing a rehabilitative account of theology’s value for positing trans lifeworlds, this book leverages premodern religion to imagine a postsecular transness in the present.

Paperback reissue of one volume of the English Dominicans' Latin/English edition of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae.

At a time such as the one we are in, people need answers to many questions about life and its worth and require solutions to the challenges that it poses. This illuminating book equips the reader with seven practical principles that constitute a solid foundation for a life of glory in Jesus Christ. It gives the reader the hope and optimism that is required to live life meaningfully in the face of adversity. The 7 Pillars of Glorious Living provides a timely and much-needed survival toolkit that every person must have in order to live gloriously during inglorious times!