Timothy Couper

Education

B.A. Philosophy and Psychology - Gordon College, 2009

M.A. Theology - Fuller Theological Seminary, 2018

S.T.M. Theological and Philosophical Studies of Religion - Drew University, 2019

Biography

Timothy “Coup” Couper is a third-year doctoral student in systematic theology with research interests at the intersection of constructive and political theology, queer theory, continental philosophy of religion, and both queer and continental varieties of metaphysics. Coup’s overarching project is a deconstructive rendering of the Trinity weaving three distinct philosophies of time into a queer cloud that Catherine Keller would call “plurisingularity.” Searching within the apophasis of the orthodox Trinitarian formulations, the philosophies and theologies of C.S. Peirce, Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Elizabeth Freeman, and Marcella Althaus-Reid entwine to cultivate temporal multiplicity and fluidity. In addition to creative and contextual renderings of God, Coup is fascinated by perspectives on queerness within contemporary communities of witches. 

In the midst of the ongoing temporalities of the pandemic, Coup is also focused on the queer conceptions of exile both as the simultaneous opening of new livable worlds and as what Edward Said calls a traumatic “unhealable rift,” a “crippling sorrow of estrangement,” and a “condition of terminal loss.” As trauma slows, bends, and queers temporal linearity, multiplicities embody themselves in grief and hope, in precarity and assemblage, in the destabilizing of identities and in coalescences amidst difference - political perichoresis.

Coup received a Bachelor of Arts from Gordon College in 2009 with a double major in philosophy and psychology. While spending 7 years working part-time as a musical and technical director at various churches ranging from Anglican to Nondenominational serving for 5 years as the full-time caregiver for their grandmother who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease, Coup completed a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary in 2018 and a Master of Sacred Theology in Theological and Philosophical Studies of Religion from Drew University in 2019. Coup is happily married to Jess, a hippy nurse midwife & witch who makes brooms and herbal products for fun. Together they have a daughter named Juniper Snow (Ginny for short) and goldendoodle named Ellie.