Andrew and Debbie James are evangelical Christians. Born in England, the couple moved to Denver, Colorado, years ago and raised their children there. Their large ecumenical church became the center of their lives.
According to the criteria of
“We always joked that we had this perfect little stage,” Debbie James said. “We had our son, then we had our daughter, and they were two years apart and they were just perfect.”
When the couple’s oldest child was 19 and living at home attending college, Debbie James received a call from the pharmacy informing her that her estrogen prescription was ready. Panicking, she searched her room, confronting him that night. It was not nice. The Jameses initially refused to use the name chosen by their daughter, Lilia. Then, a pastor from the church urged them to run his daughter out of the house.
“This must be biblical advice,” Debbie James recalled thinking. “This must be what we’re supposed to do.”
Many progressive and traditional Christian congregations have taken steps to affirm transgender and non-binary members. But for many conservative Christians, the rise in transgender identities, both in visibility and numbers, especially among young people, has been destabilizing. Nearly 90 percent of white evangelicals in the United States believe that gender is determined by sex at birth, according to the Pew Research Center, compared to 60 percent of the population as a whole.
Austen Hartke realized she was transgender in seminary; He came out of the closet as soon as he graduated. It was 2014, the same year that transgender actress Laverne Cox appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and Hartke felt that the culture was consistently improving, that awareness and acceptance would go hand in hand, even in conservative spaces.
It didn’t happen like that. If trans people in conservative churches faced awkwardness and ignorance around issues like pronouns back then, they now face outright hostility. “If you’re afraid of change, that’s what trans people represent now,” he said.
Transgender youth from conservative Christian families have shared stories of being banished. In many ways, conservative Christians have become the face of the American anti-trans movement.
But in the sanctuaries of churches, in counseling offices and in living rooms there are searches for understanding. Churches are hosting panel discussions, rewriting their faith statements and reconsidering how they label bathrooms. Even those who continue to take a hard line against homosexuality are grappling with new questions raised by gender identity.
And in a landscape where angry rhetoric rages in legislatures and on social media, some are looking for a middle ground. Takes seriously the moral and theological concerns of many Christians. But it also guides them to accept the reality of gender dysphoria, or anxiety about one’s sex, and to remain open to a range of outcomes.
Julia Sadusky, a Colorado psychologist, is one of the relatively few expert voices who has ventured into that tense territory between fear and anti-trans zeal on the right, and what some see as a progressive orthodoxy on the left that leaves little room for parental doubts. Her degrees come from conservative Catholic and evangelical universities, and she spends most of her time talking to conservative Christians.
In her private practice in a Denver suburb, she sees bewildered and angry clients whose children are transgender or nonbinary. He also speaks to audiences of churchgoers trying to process the cultural changes around them.
The theological foundation of Christian opposition to the concept of transgender identities is announced in the first chapter of Genesis. “And God created humanity in his image, in the image of God he created them,” he says. “Male and female he created them.”
Christians who advocate for transgender people They point out that the Bible describes a variety of gender diversity without apparent judgment. Jacob, a patriarch of the nation of Israel, is described as a “delicate” young man who is favored by God over his more traditionally masculine brother, the hunter Esau. Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew that some men are born eunuchs.
But in the New Testament, several passages establish clear roles for men and women. Women must submit to their husbands; Men must lead their families. Although debated by experts and ordinary Christians, these texts have shaped the family structures, career paths, and spiritual lives of billions of people. For some, the emergence of transgender identities represents a danger and potentially undermines family stability.
Mark Yarhouse, a clinical psychologist who directs the Sexual and Gender Identity Institute at the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois, has identified three broad frameworks through which Christians tend to view gender identity: At one end of the spectrum is the conservative view. tradition that states that men and women are God-ordained categories to which people must conform. In the other, new identities are welcomed. In the middle is the view that inconsistencies between gender identity and biological sex are an unfortunate deviation from the norm, but not a moral failure.
Finding a foothold for a compromise in such a desolate landscape may seem impossible. This is why many Christians with non-traditional gender identities end up leaving their conservative churches.
Most people, including conservatives, Sadusky said, are relatively comfortable with the idea of an adult who was raised male and began to understand himself as female early in childhood, with little relief over the course of many years. years. These people may have different opinions about appropriate responses to that distress, but they do not feel as threatened by its existence as a phenomenon experienced by a small minority of individuals.
The biggest threat to many conservatives, he said, is the notion that responding compassionately to such distress means dismissing all beliefs about the differences between men and women.
Many progressive Christians feel that Sadusky’s balancing act does not go far enough to fully embrace people in the LGBTQ community.
Hartke, who later founded Transmission Ministry Collective, a group that supports transgender and “gender-expansive” Christians and is active in a Lutheran church, said he would prefer Christians listen more carefully to transgender doctors, academics and psychiatrists, that combine experience and knowledge.
In the end, Andrew and Debbie James defied their pastor’s advice to chase their daughter away. But Lilia left anyway. Her parents began reading, including books by Yarhouse and David Gushee, a Christian ethicist who has advocated for rethinking traditional Christian approaches to inclusion. They prayed. And they participated in a support group through Embracing the Journey, a network aimed at “building bridges” between LGBTQ people, their families and the church.
Lilia James is now 25 years old and lives in Wisconsin. She has a strong relationship with her parents. She got engaged to her girlfriend last year.
Like many families with gender-anxious children, the Jameses eventually left their church. They remain committed to their faith, but do not consider themselves to have a “house church.” Now they are concerned about the hostile political climate toward their daughter and the fact that both children have abandoned Christianity.
For a long time, “we were good little soldiers,” Debbie James said. Now “we live in the gray.”
#Christian #families #advocating #transgender #people #conservative #circles