The Bible & the Transgender Community

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. Welcome to week two of Pride Month! Each year June is dedicated to celebrating the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (or Questioning), Intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA) individuals who make up our society and their long fight for equality, respect, and freedom. As I continue last week’s work of breaking the myths surrounding how Christians can (and should) view Pride month, this week I want to talk about a specific community: transgender people. In particular, I want to talk about what the Bible says about transgender people. First, let me tell you why. Though we have made significant strides as a society and even as Christians when it comes to the welcome of gay and lesbian people, the transgender community still experiences profound discrimination, marginalization, and risk of violence. When my church hosted the first Pride-themed worship service in Grand Haven, I met several trans members of the community who came out to be with us. Many told me it was the first time they had felt safe being in downtown Grand Haven and presenting in their actual gender identity. Some even told me that while literally trembling with anxiety. No one should have to live like that. And if Christians read the Bible a bit more carefully on these questions, they would keep creating the death-dealing transphobic culture we have right now. I talked a while ago about how the creation story isn’t the binary narrative we often think of, how in between night and day there is dawn and dusk and twilight. I talked about how the same God who made fish for the sea and birds for the air, also created animals that break those norms: penguins that can swim but not fly and dolphins that can soar through the air. And, given the presence of a variety of genders in creation (including animals that can have both genders and animals that can literally transition their biological sex), it’s unsurprising that God creates humanity with that same gender diversity. That’s not something to be scared of, it’s not even a symbol of the fall: it’s a manifestation of a God who delights in diversity, who called a diverse creation good, a God who is neither male nor female but holds all genders within God’s self. As I love to say, God is the original they/them. One of the most important parts of the reality of transgender people is the experience of being assigned one sex and name at birth and, as you grow up, feeling like that’s not really who you are. This is actually a recurrent theme in Scripture. Over and over again we encounter people with one name and identity who later are given a new name and identity by God. And so Jacob, the swindler and trickster who steals his brother’s birthright, wrestles with God and comes out with a limp, a new blessing, and a new name: Israel. Simon the fisherman, who runs hot and is always speaking up (not always in the best way) becomes Peter, the rock and the one upon whose confession the whole church is built. And Saul, the well-trained rabbi who persecutes that new sect of Jesus followers who are violating his understanding of Scripture, becomes Paul, the greatest advocate for the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church and the author of much of the New Testament. And lest you think this just about names, there are other historical corollaries to the experience of trans people. Eunuchs, for instance, were usually people assigned male at birth who had their reproductive organs changed or removed. The term also referred to those we would now call intersex. In the older texts of Scripture, like Deuteronomy 23, eunuchs are forbidden from being a part of the community. However, after the exile (and after God’s people were exposed to eunuchs who functioned quite regularly in Babylonian and Persian society), that began to change. In Isaiah 56, God even promises that eunuchs will have a special place in the new Israel: “I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” And, of course, one of the first conversions early in the Book of Acts is that of the Ethiopian Eunuch who, after hearing the story of Jesus, asks Philip what prevents him from being baptized. He asks that because he likely think that in the same way he was turned away from the temple in Jerusalem, he would be turned away from this new community of Christians. Philip looks at him with love in his eyes and says, “Nothing at all,” and immediately baptizes him: making it clear that at the start of the church that those who had been historically excluded would be included in God’s kingdom. Psalm 139 says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that means that trans people are also a wonderful creation of God, that they should be celebrated and lifted up—especially for their courage in claiming their true identity in a far too often hostile world. Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.