Tag: Transgender Issues
OtherWise Christian — A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation
"There is a lot to like in OtherWise Christian, like Chris’s enthusiasm about the way biblical interpretation will be enriched as people learn to read through liberated lenses. I like the emphasis on wisdom, which suggests the healing wisdom that ancient native people saw in their two-spirit leaders."
My Name
Is my authentic self who I had become, or is my authentic self who I once thought I was? Could I continue to live the rest of my life without ever fully embracing the person I once knew myself to be? Is it worth giving up me on the inside so as not to disrupt everything and everyone on the outside?
Retreating Forward: A Spiritual Practice with Transgender Persons
An ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and an openly transgender man, Weekley... operates within the framework of participatory action research, a methodology directly involving the people under study (in this case, transgender persons) in formulating solutions for their problems, making plans, reflecting theologically, and acting accordingly.
What Paula Stone Williams Knows about Gender
January 8, 2018
I know Paula Stone Williams from CFT's involvement with the Gay Christian Network's WomenConnect retreat. In 2017 Paula was one of the...
LGBTQ Elders Meet the Next Generation of Christian Activists
December 18, 2017
There was a great conference held in St. Louis at the end of October you may not have heard about. The Rolling...
Growing Up Trans — #TransWeek
November 18, 2017
"Just a generation ago, it was adults, not kids, who changed genders. But today, many children are transitioning, too — with new...
Trans Seminarians — #TransWeek
November 17, 2017
As we raise awareness of transgender individuals in our communities, let’s not forget about those training to be religious leaders.
The growing number...
Transgender Christians — #TransWeek
November 16, 2017
Today, for the fourth post in CFT's 2017 Transgender Awareness Week series, we're featuring links to information by and about a few...
Christianity and Transgender People — #TransWeek
November 15, 2017
Even as scientific research continues to reinforce the "biological basis for transgender identity" (read this Scientific American article for just one example),...
Rev. Dr. David Weekley — Transgender Awareness Week (#TransWeek)
November 14, 2017
Rev. Dr. David Weekley is the only openly-out transgender elder appointed to a UMC church.
His 2011 book, In from the Wilderness: Sherman: She-r-man, is...
Transgender Awareness Week (#TransWeek)
November 13, 2017
Today starts Transgender Awareness Week (#TransWeek). Here on the Link of the Day blog we'll be featuring articles of interest to trans...
Born Both: An Intersex Life
Hida Viloria has recognized that “intersex people are in the front lines of homophobia and transphobia because if our differences are detected at birth, we’re often mutilated in an effort that we’ll grow up to be gender normative and heterosexual—efforts that are misguided, because lots of us who were mutilated still grow up to be L, G, B, or T” (p. 302).
Shattering Masks: Affirming My Identity, Transitioning My Faith
... as we read Shattering Masks, we can rejoice with its author that the intersexual transwoman Laura Bethany Taylor is indeed “God’s own child,” resembling and revealing her divine Mother/Father precisely as she was created to do.
My First Gay Pride Parade— #ResistMarch
My Episcopal church participated, as did many other churches. Quite a few signs were carried by people coming from a specifically Christian perspective. “This is the gay that the Lord hath made” was my favorite, carried by a young man.
Transgender, Intersex, and Biblical Interpretation
Like the dark chaos, transgender bodies stir up boundary anxiety in many people. Consciously or unconsciously, people who fear uncertainty are alerted by transpeople to the awareness that “the binary cannot hold; the monstrous is already always within the ordered.
Jennifer Finney Boylan: “I’m all done explaining my humanity.”
March 10, 2017
Jennifer Finney Boylan has a few words for the cisgendered people who think they know all about the trans experience. From her article:
"Another...
Bathroom Legislation: Unconstitutionality Is Only Part of the Story
In this article, I explain why HB2 is clearly unconstitutional. But I will also stress that constitutionality is always only one small part of understanding why legislators do what they do. A hostile feeling (or animus) toward transgender people becomes an important part of the legal discussion.
Backlash Against What?: RFRAs and Bathroom Bills
[The LGBTQ backlash is] "about outdated concepts like spiritual hierarchies and binaries, as in 'this group is saved, but this group is damned.' Outdated concepts like a magical book in which every inerrant word is completely applicable to the present time, even though is was written thousands of years ago in a very different cultural context."
2016 #GCNConf – First Timer Reflections – Sam Koster
I worshiped in a community of strangers that felt like family. I cried in front of a crowd of parents who held me in their arms like I was their own child. I felt like I was being given a glimpse of what heaven feels like, or maybe what I hope heaven feels like: open arms of strangers full of love and grace.
2016 Gay Christian Network Conference — Introduction
This year’s GCN speakers will include: Allyson Robinson, Baptist preacher and national trans leader; Broderick Greer, Episcopal curate and social justice advocate; Misty Irons, nationally-acclaimed blogger and theologian; and Justin Lee, the Gay Christian Network Executive Director.
Remembering All We Have Lost — #TDOR
For many of you, the gender binary simply exists as a pervasive framework around which you build your life. As a child, you accepted it. You existed within it. It wasn’t until adolescence or adulthood that you were required to understand it and decide how to respond to it.
Making Space for Intersexuals — Megan DeFranza’s “Sex Differences in Christian Theology”
DeFranza builds her case for intersexual inclusion with a thorough description of various forms of intersexuality from a medical and sociological viewpoint. She provides an extensive and very helpful discussion of eunuchs in the Bible, especially Jesus’ remarks in Matthew 19:12.
Fruitful Embraces: Sexuality, Love, and Justice
The authors recognize that for Catholics, who live within “an institution… wedded to historical precedent” (p. 185), it can be terrifying to be challenged to make moves never made before. Yet many Catholic Christians, “their imaginations shaped by biblical convictions, see immigrants, homosexuals, and transgender persons in a new light” (p. 186).
A Third Gender: Coming to a University Near You
Julie Scelfo writes a very accessible article in the New York Times about the increasing number of people unwilling to to be defined by the gender labels of "male" or "female," and how one college, the University of Vermont, is accommodating them.
The Deadly Result of Conservative Christian Trans* Rejection
Trans* teenager Leelah Alcorn, of Ohio, recently walked out into traffic where she was hit by a truck and killed. Her suicide note listed her conservative Christian family's inability to accept her trans* identity (they reportedly had taken her to Christian therapists intent on coercing her to accept her gender identity as a male).
The Trans Evangelist: The Life and Times of a Transgender Pentecostal Preacher
I strongly recommend Paula’s book to anyone who can bear to read an unvarnished account of how life has felt to a transsexual Christian living openly for many years before Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgender people began to agitate for justice.
Mom, I’m Gay: Loving Your LGBTQ Child without Sacrificing Your Faith
With books like Cottrell's, hopefully... hundreds of parents will be reassured that their children's sex or gender orientation is not about them, is certainly not their fault, and provides opportunity to show what unconditional love is all about.
weconnect – We are Broken
When we talk about brokenness I want to feel the pain of naked truth. I want the words to be untamed and un-groomed. I want to hear the crimson bloom of shame in our voices. I want to feel the emotional morass of untenable situations caused when we responded without grace, without patience, without compassion.
Equality as a Multiple Choice Test
I'd like it if everyone was very well aware that equal is equal, that anything else is greater than or less than. Because I want to believe that in my life I will experience at least a little time in which I am equal, not less than. But actually, how things are? Equality is more like a multiple choice test. And some people will circle every single answer, and some people will, miraculously, manage to circle one or two.
To Revere the Image of God in Every Person
It is my prayer that all of us will eventually learn to recognize and revere the image of God in every person of every conceivable gender identity, along with the many other diversities of appearance, belief systems, preferences, and whatsoever differences may occur to us.
The God We Serve – Adam Ackley, Azusa Pacific University, and EEWC
So, it is no surprise to me that Azusa Pacific University has asked Heath Adam Ackley to go away. And it is no surprise to me that the people who asked him to do so were apparently not concerned about the justice or righteousness of the request. As is usual, capitalistic considerations trumped all others.
Onmigender: A Trans-religious Approach
his book compassionately explores the dilemma faced daily by “both”, “neither” and “other” categories of humans and proposes that Christ and the Jewish and Christian scriptures demand compassionate acceptance of all people, regardless of their genital or sex chromosome configuration.
Latest Posts on CFT
New Noah
May 2023 Poetry Selection
We travel the waters;
the waters travel us, trace us,
turn us dark and dank. The
trip from pupil to lip: traversed
We travel the waters;
the waters travel us, trace us,
turn us dark and dank. The
trip from pupil to lip: traversed
