Ordain Transgender and Nonbinary Persons Now! [View all]

[The Great Open Dance]

Let's celebrate each other the way Jesus celebrates us. Gender identity is an aspect of human sexuality as inflammatory as it is misunderstood. Transgender and nonbinary persons tell stories of suffering; people comfortable with their assigned gender are confused as to why anyone would want to be other than they are. For people of faith, scripture offers little direct guidance; tradition offers almost none. In the meantime, people are suffering and lives are being lost. Here, I will argue for the full celebration of transgender and nonbinary persons in the church—for their ordination as ministers, for celebrating their love through marriage, and for accompanying them as they transition to their most authentic gender identity.

Genitalia don’t determine someone’s “God-given sexuality”. Science says that people are born with an array of neurological genders and genitalia, sometimes congruent, sometimes not. Current research suggests that humans are born hard-wired for an array of gender identities. “Male” brains and “female” brains and “transgender” brains and “nonbinary” brains are not standard issue. They are words that we apply to a field of neurological structures that generate a host of gender experiences. Their place in that field is already influenced in utero, partly through exposure to the hormones testosterone and estradiol. Most of the time, those hormones produce a brain that corresponds to the body’s genitalia, but sometimes it doesn’t. What should we do when someone is born with male genitalia but a female-ish brain? Or female genitalia but a male-ish brain? How should we then determine their gender identity?

Currently, there are two practices in this situation. One group demands that gender identity conform to genital identity, no matter what the person says. Even if the boy says he feels like a girl, their family tells them no—they have a penis, they must be a boy, because that’s their “God-given sexual identity”. Here, “God-given sexual identity” is shorthand for “what we can most easily see” and “what we can easily understand” and “what is familiar to us” and “what we have always thought” and “what doesn’t confuse us”. The other group waits for the child to grow up and tell them what the child’s gender identity is. This group feels that the best person to know someone’s gender identity is the person themself because, well, they’re that person.

A forced gender binary makes a complicated issue simple, which always causes suffering. At this point, anyone limiting gender identity to genital identity, and forcing that into a binary, is ignoring a vast amount of medical literature. Gender is probably best understood as a complex consisting of at least eight different aspects: 1. Societally designated sex (what sex the individual is told they are). 2. Sexual genetic karyotype (female: XX or male: XY). 3. Gonadal sex. 4. Hormonal sex. 5. Sex of internal sexual organs. 6. Sex of external genitalia. 7. Neurological gender. 8. Subjective gender (inner experience of one’s gender). Although these gender differentiations are usually congruent, any combination of these sexual differentiations may occur. Currently, science cannot determine which of these aspects are “God-given” and which aren’t. Nor can theology, I would argue.

Approximately 1.7% of persons are born intersexed, with a mixture of male and female characteristics. Medical science has a long list of intersex conditions, such as Klinefelter Syndrome or Adrenal Hyperplasia. Such intersexed conditions complicate references to an individual’s “God-given sexuality”. Disregarded by this simplification are the subject’s chromosomal sex, hormonal sex, sex of internal organs, neurophysiology, and subjective gender identity (internal experience of themselves), none of which will necessarily cohere with the sex of the genitals, none of which will necessarily fall into a neat binary. Some people refuse to recognize the internal truth of transgender and nonbinary persons. When religiously motivated, these people sometimes insist that the binaries they impose are biblical: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27 NRSV). This passage accurately describes perhaps the majority of the human population. But what about that minority who do not fit into the categories, who lie on the continuum rather than at either end, or who unite both ends? Did God also create them?

God is invisible, but Christians acknowledge God. In many quarters, the invisibility of transgender and nonbinary persons’ neurophysiology, and personal gender experience, is grounds for its denial. We can see genitals, but we can’t see brains, so we prioritize genitals over brains, even though it’s the person’s brain (mostly) that determines their own experience of their own gender. What this says to transgender and nonbinary persons, essentially, is that they should not have been born into a gender minority. Leslie Feinberg describes her experience of such rejection: “We wish you were invisible; we don’t accept you. We wish you would simply go away, and we will pretend that you don’t exist. We will ostracize and marginalize you. We will deny you any rights because you are different and we hate you” (Feinberg, Transliberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, 52). Attitudes like this, often articulated by Christians, caused one transgendered person to wear a T-shirt saying: “Jesus hates me, this I know, for the Christians tell me so.”

Christians follow Christ, who included the excluded precisely because he celebrated all. Therefore, Christians should include the excluded and celebrate all. As followers of Jesus the Healer (who is also Jesus the Christ) this essay will abide by the principle that Christians are called to ameliorate human suffering rather than exacerbate it. As Christ healed, so Christians are called to heal (Luke 9:11). And in our interpretation of the Bible, Christians are called to carry the cross, not erect it (Luke 14.27).

Gender identity is not produced by environment or upbringing. Here’s the proof. The argument that socialization (behavior and hormonal therapy) could determine or alter gender identity is subverted by the story of Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer. Bruce Reimer, as an infant, lost the totality of his penis to a botched electric circumcision. Phalloplasty (the construction of a new penis) was more experimental then than it is now, and was not even attempted. Instead, on the advice of Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University, Bruce’s parents, Ron and Janet, agreed to have Bruce undergo a sex change operation and hormone therapy, converting their little boy into a little girl. Throughout her childhood, with the most loving of intentions, Ron and Janet gave Brenda shots, dressed her in girls’ clothes, encouraged her to play as a girl, and totally – socially, surgically, and chemically, encouraged Brenda to identify with the female gender. In the meantime, John Money produced paper after paper commenting on the wonderful success of his experiment.

The problem was that Brenda Reimer felt like a boy, acted like a boy, and wanted to be a boy. She played with boys’ toys, built forts, had snowball fights, liked dumptrucks, wanted to be a Boy Scout instead of a Girl Scout, and played army. She avoided dolls, sewing machines, and the kitchen. She tried to urinate standing up. She was a tomboy, but unlike most of the tomboys, would never outgrow it. She wanted to shave like her father. The prospect of growing breasts terrified her. She was derided by her schoolmates as “butch” and “Cavewoman,” an insult to which she replied with punches. She was attracted to girls. As the girl grew older, and increasing hormones were needed to fully feminize her, she resisted more and more. When asked by her physician, “Don’t you want to be a woman?” Brenda just screamed, “No!”

At the age of fifteen, her father told her the truth: that she had been born a boy, that her penis had been burned off, that they had tried to raise her as a girl instead. She felt anger, disbelief, amazement – but primarily relief. Now she knew why she felt the way she did. Now she understood why she behaved the way she did. Now she knew why she wanted to be a boy, and that she should be a boy. She immediately demanded to be switched back, and was (Colapinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl).

The above summary is offered only to establish that socialization and hormone therapy cannot change brain structure. Although one story is not scientifically conclusive, many scientific studies imply that the brain’s sexual differentiation is inelastic; we are born with a gender, not as a blank slate. Thus the theory that behavior changes neurophysiology falls flat. More importantly, this theory ignores the life stories of transsexuals. No one has ever claimed: “I was born with a boy’s genitalia and I really enjoyed being a boy and really identified with my boyishness, but when I got to be an adult I decided to spend $100,000 for gender-affirming surgery so that I could be rejected by my society, my family, and my church.” Instead, in every story, transgender identity simply arises, just like cis-gendered identity. Transgender and nonbinary persons tell stories much like Leslie Feinberg’s:

I didn’t want to be different. I longed to be everything grownups wanted, so they would love me. I followed their rules, tried my best to please. But there was something about me that made them knit their eyebrows and frown. No one ever offered me a name for what was wrong with me. That’s what made me afraid it was really bad. I only came to recognize its melody through its constant refrain: “Is it a boy or girl?” “I’m sick of people asking me if she’s a boy or a girl,” I overheard my mother complain to my father. “Everywhere I take her, people ask me.” I was ten years old. I was no longer a little kid and I didn’t have a sliver of cuteness to hide behind. The world’s patience with me was fraying, and it panicked me. When I was really small I thought I would do anything to change whatever was wrong with me. Now I didn’t want to change. I just wanted people to stop being mad all the time.

Transgender and nonbinary persons report their experience of gender identity as something they were born with, and not as something chosen. Many try, for many years, to choose that gender identity which is congruent with their genitalia. But neurophysiology and personal authenticity prevent such a choice and force them back into their true gender identity. How should Christians address this very painful issue?

Short answer: with love and acceptance that celebrates the person as they are. As disciples of Jesus the Healer (who is also Jesus the Christ), Christians are called to the vocation and discipline of relieving suffering. We are not called to worsen suffering. Yet often, accidentally, we do. The means to alleviate the suffering of transgender and nonbinary persons is to recognize the biological reality (not psychopathology) of their condition, and to support them in the decisions they make.

We are proposing a church that manifests God’s agapic love of all humankind. Jesus is called “the express image of God’s person” (Hebrews 1:3), yet he never condemns anyone for being born a certain way. Jesus responds only to the disposition of the person’s spirit and the ethics produced by that spirit. What he condemns is the spirit of compassionless legalism; what he embraces is the spirit of fearless generosity. And when Jesus seeks examples of faith, he finds them at the margins, not centers, of society: “He never refuses to love or accept anyone who came to him with a genuine desire to experience God’s presence and truth. He never tells people to go away and not bother him until they can find some way to be more socially acceptable (e.g., the thief on the cross, Luke 23:39-43)” (Sheridan, Crossing Over: Liberating the Transgendered Christian, 57).

Transgender and nonbinary persons have suffered and will continue to suffer from a society that fears the unusual and unknown, and from demagogues who feed those fears. A church in the image of Christ will not erect walls of painful exclusion, but will instead offer celebration and embrace. That celebration will ordain, marry, and accompany transgender and nonbinary persons as they seek to manifest their God-given authenticity. In doing so, the Church will best serve as the body of Christ and as the incarnation of the teachings of Jesus, who pleads: “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

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For more reading, please see:

Dowd, Chris and Christiana Beardsley. Trans Affirming Churches: How to Celebrate Gender-Variant People and Their Loved Ones. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2020.

Feinberg, Leslie. Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.

Sheridan, Vanessa. Crossing Over: Liberating the Transgendered Christian. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001.