At their most recent General Assembly, the Episcopal church passed resolutions supporting gender affirmative care and developing resources to welcome and support transgender and non-binary people.
Celeste Noche for NPR
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Celeste Noche for NPR
At their most recent General Assembly, the Episcopal church passed resolutions supporting gender affirmative care and developing resources to welcome and support transgender and non-binary people.
Celeste Noche for NPR
PORTLAND, Ore.— Something as small as “men” and “women” signs on bathrooms in a house of worship could be closed to transgender people.
“For me as a non-binary person, I went to so many churches where they didn’t have a bathroom that I felt like I was,” said AJ Buckley, a priest with the Bishops’ Conference in Portland, Ore. can use. I wouldn’t go to the bathroom there. “
Churches are tasked with carrying out the message of the Bible both from the pulpit and on the benches.
And it’s hard to connect with spiritual concerns if the people who sing and pray aren’t physically comfortable.
That’s why Church of Saint David of Wales Episcopal in Portland, where Buckley has been the vice principal for the past eight years, made changes such as placing signs saying anyone can use any bathroom, including pronouns on name tags, and preaching to “brothers and sisters in Christ” not are siblings.
“Sometimes we’ll say, ‘God loves you,’ but then we don’t always live like that in church,” Buckley said. “And so those things say you really want to be here, [means] We are so glad you are here. “
Pastor AJ Buckley is vice-chancellor at St David of Wales Episcopal Church and on the Diocese of Oregon task force implementing gender change and education.
Celeste Noche for NPR
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Celeste Noche for NPR
Pastor AJ Buckley is vice-chancellor at St David of Wales Episcopal Church and on the Diocese of Oregon task force implementing gender change and education.
Celeste Noche for NPR
Supportive voices are emerging in Christianity
Evangelical Christianity has played a large role in the political debate surrounding transgender issues, and law it is led to. And so that position is well known: God created man, separated into male and female – innate and immutable categories.
But religions speak with more than one voice. And other Christians are using their sacred texts to capture a broader understanding of gender.
Shannon TL Kearns was the first openly transgender man to be ordained in the Old Catholic Church, a denomination that broke away from Rome after the First Vatican Council in the 19th century. He was a co-founder of the Catholic Church. QueerTheology.comand the author of the book In the Margin: A Transgender Man’s Journey with the Bible.
“The biblical world of gender is much more complex than I was raised as a missionary,” says Kearns, pointing out the numerous stories of biblical figures violating gender standards.
“We have women who are judges. We have men who spend their time in the kitchen,” he said. “There are eunuchs, who are considered one kind of another third gender,” he said. he said.
Many Christians are rethinking Bible stories they thought they knew
Theology is stories. And Kearns says that finding the Bible’s message to transgender people is in part a rediscovery of these specific stories. But, in a larger sense, it is asking harder questions about the stories Christians think they already know.
For example, in Genesis, angels come to Sodom and Gomorrah, and the townspeople threaten to rape them. The destruction of those cities is often seen as God’s condemnation of homosexuality. But it can be read as a lesson in welcoming strangers.
“When we look at a passage like Sodom and Gomorrah, are we looking at places – where can we still be hospitable to people today?” Kearns asked. “Are we benefiting from systems that are hurting other people?”
Sometimes, showing hospitality is as easy as a sign on the bathroom door. And sometimes it’s harder. Not every church, not every Christian, welcomes these changes. Ordained Baptist theologian and minister Robyn Henderson-Espinoza says conflict is not new to Christianity and that it is central to understanding the story of Jesus.
“I followed the story of a brown, Palestinian Jew who was executed by the Roman Empire,” says Henderson-Espinoza. “And that story is painful.”
But Henderson-Espinoza, the author of the book Becoming a Body: The Path to Our Liberation, refocusing this story from the point of view of the powerless instead of the point of view of the strong is the work of Christianity. And that re-centering has implications for transgender people today.
“I think that’s how we bring heaven to Earth: Having these tough conversations and creating more relationships, and creating more opportunities to have relationships with differences.”
Pastor AJ Buckley wears transgender pride-themed shoes at St. David of Wales. Signposts at the church welcome people to use the bathroom of their choice.
Celeste Noche for NPR
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Transgender people read their own bible the same way everyone sees themselves in biblical characters
If you look in the Bible, the stories of differences also say that Kearns theologian. The arc of the scriptures that put the most disadvantaged at the center has always been there. But he’s not surprised it’s not always said that way.
“White heterosexual men, having sex – they’re reading their distinctive and distinctive magnetism and calling it universal. And that’s the real damage,” Kearns said.
Kearns says it’s not good to read from a particular point of view, a particular experience – that’s how the bible has always been read and interpreted. People just need to be aware of what they’re doing. And to expand the conversation to include all voices.
“I think we all read the bible ourselves,” Kearns said. “I think the initiators are people from marginalized communities who are being honest about the fact that that’s what they’re doing.”
Christian converts practice a faith that suits their bodies
Good stories exist because they welcome more readers into their world. They don’t define the meaning – they reveal it to those who enter the story.
Austen Hartkea Lutheran theologian and founder Collective of the Ministry of Transmissionask, “Like me, if you believe that God purposely made me transgender, what does that mean I’m allowed to do to manage my body, to live a healthy and fulfilling life? ?”
Hartke, also the author of Conversion: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christianssaid, “In the same way that if God makes someone nearsighted, they’re allowed to wear glasses.”
He said it was part of Jesus’ call to have life abundantly. It is not a desecration; it’s co-creation. Holy work.
“Yes, our bodies are temples,” says Hartke. “But the temple changes.”
And Hartke says the blueprint for that change is in the text.
Church of St. David of Wales Episcopal sees it as his mission to take ordinary things (bread, wine, congregation) and make them holy through prayer, song and story.
Celeste Noche for NPR
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Church of St. David of Wales Episcopal sees it as his mission to take ordinary things (bread, wine, congregation) and make them holy through prayer, song and story.
Celeste Noche for NPR
“While Genesis One is about the world’s binaries, we know that binaries aren’t as clear-cut as in this one article.”
It is not only man and woman, earth and water.
“For example,” he said, “God made day and night – it says nothing about sunrise or sunset.”
But these places in between do exist. Hartke says there is a richness to them and the theology that emerges from them. Because they tell a fuller story of existence in this sacred world.
“If we say God is alpha and omega, we don’t mean God is just A and Z,” Hartke said. “We mean God is everything.”
Pastor AJ Buckley preaches at St. David of Wales.
Celeste Noche for NPR
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Celeste Noche for NPR
Pastor AJ Buckley preaches at St. David of Wales.
Celeste Noche for NPR
