The Transgendered Journey: One Congregation's Experience

By Amy Ruth Schacht

January 1 we started a sermon series from Genesis:  "In the Beginning."The second Sunday of the new year, we tackled this famous passage, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…..so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  (NRSV) Not my favorite way of translating the scripture, but the one everyone is familiar with.  It seems pretty straightforward.Familiar words, but this year, I heard them differently. This year, a young family had struggled with the gender identity of their youngest.What do those words mean then?   Nine months before, I was at Sarah’s house preparing for the upcoming Confirmation Class, when she cautiously voiced her concerns about the sexual orientation of her younger child, who had just turned 4.  “I think Sophie might be gay,” she said.  She told me more, saying how from the time Sophie could talk, she wanted to go back to the hospital to get her real body, her boy body.  In that moment, I thanked God I loved to read, for I had read several memoirs that gave me the background to say, “It doesn’t sound like she is lesbian, but transgendered.”Chaz Bono’s appearance on Oprah and “Dancing with the Stars,” and his memoir about being transgendered, could not have come at a better time for this family.  Sarah and Yuri began educating themselves about what it means to have a child you suspect might be transgendered.  Sarah spent hours on-line, and found the TransFamily Alliance.  They kept talking, with each other, with their children, with me as their pastor, and they kept seeking out other families who have walked this journey.As the summer wore on, they allowed their youngest child to overhaul the entire wardrobe to boy clothes, including boy underwear, and that gorgeous head of hair was now a buzzcut.  They now had Olivia, their 7-year old daughter, and “Jake” at home, but only at home. They called Johns Hopkins for a consultation, only to be told that the wait list was so long, even if they waited 6 months there wouldn’t be anyone available to help them.  In a way, this was comforting – they weren’t alone here.  They headed to Philadelphia, where they consulted with a psychologist who specialized in gender identity and children.  They heard what is known at this point about transgendered children, and decided they were on the right path.  This was who their child was; this was the gift of the kid they had been given by God; this was the journey of parenting, and of trusting, “a child shall lead them.”   They came back home to continue the transition.For kids who express this disconnect between their physical body and their brain’s self-identity at such an early age, and so persistently, this is indeed who they are, and not as some would consider it, “a passing phase."  We can argue that this is how God made this child, and neurological research suggests just that.  The beauty of how we are made is that there is absolutely nothing permanent that needs to be done until the child is around 10, on the cusp of puberty.  There was nothing to be lost by letting Jake live as a boy.Well, except for culture’s rules and intolerance for gender ambiguity.  The year before a young trans-woman had been severely beaten in a McDonald’s in our area when she tried to use the women’s restroom.  Chaz Bono’s appearance on “Dancing with Stars” set off huge debates about how this would harm our children.Sarah asked me to write a letter in case Child Protective Services were called.  Older sister Olivia, an outspoken, articulate, mature 7-year old told, the neighborhood kids that Jake’s brain didn’t match his body, and Sarah and Yuri held their breaths, grateful they had my letter and the psychological evaluation on hand.  They worried about Jake’s last year in preschool, and the next, when Jake would join Olivia at the local private Friends’ School.  Already biracial, and now transgendered?  Sure, in this area biracial kids are a dime a dozen, but transgendered kids?  Allowed to transition fully?  But what bathroom would they use?Here at church, we realized that Jake had quietly transitioned, without a big deal, and that we were one of the very first public places this child was called “Jake.”  Sarah and Yuri’s opinion was this is how God made their child.  End of story.  This kid who had been born into this church and baptized as “Sophie” now looked like a boy, acted like a boy, dressed like a boy, and answered to “Jake.”  His parents quietly pulled his Sunday School teachers aside to explain the situation to them.  The Middle Youth girls who babysat these kids didn’t blink an eye, while their parents worried about how they would understand it all.  Although we are a medium, some say, awkward size congregation at just under 300 members, and although this family was very active, many people didn’t register that anything had changed.By the time this passage, “male and female he created them” showed up on my self-selected preaching schedule, several months had gone by.  Sarah and Yuri were involved with the local TransYouth Alliance and PFLAG chapter.  They had begun educating their extended families.  Olivia’s school, where Jake would attend Kindergarten, had requested a training seminar, and I asked if we could do the same here at church.The chair of education, mother of young teens, had been confused herself as to what was happening, but like most polite nice Christians, no one was asking Sarah and Yuri directly.  We had an informal discussion in the kitchen one Sunday morning about how to approach the congregation with this, and decided inviting everyone to a class in the sanctuary on this topic was the way to go.  We wouldn’t cancel any of the four Adult Sunday School classes as we had in the past when we held such seminars; we would allow everyone the choice.  However, given how this affected the children’s Sunday School teachers, all children met for a video in one large room so their teachers could attend.  Parents of Middle School Youth and Senior High Youth were highly encouraged to have their children come.We are not a More Light congregation.  We are not a Covenant Congregation.  We are not open and affirming.  We are quietly accepting; we have gays and lesbians who are openly out, and others who are quietly out.  Yet this is not an issue this congregation has tackled head on.  It is an exceptionally theologically diverse congregation, filled with highly educated people who span the continuum of scriptural interpretation from literal to metaphorical.We do live in a highly diverse area, where folk are exposed daily to people different from them in every sense of the word.Yet the past year had been filled with conflicts in the church – some the Session anticipated, others caught everyone off guard.  We had many disagreements, hurt feelings, confusion, anger.  Laurel Presbyterian Church is a solid, fantastic, unique congregation, but this latest round of conflict after conflict had left us weary, worn out.  As the pastor, I was hesitant, and unsure how this would be received after a season of struggling to live together in Christ.After almost 12 years with this congregation, I knew we had great trust in how Christ bound us as a community of faith despite theological differences.  We had lots of practice at that.  When it came to putting faith into action, however, the ground had seemed shakier lately.  I confess, I was thankful this issue was coming to us packaged in a cute little kid from a family everyone knew and respected and loved.That particular Sunday, when the scripture reading included the lines “male and female he created them,” I didn’t dwell on what that might mean for Sarah and Yuri, as they wrestled with their faith in the God who gave them this child with this particular issue.  The presentation was scheduled for several weeks away; it wasn’t a publicly open topic for discussion; I was focused on other things at the time.Then, the speaker came – a mother of a transgendered teen, who told her story of refusing to accept who her child was, and the pain and agony she now knows she put her child and herself through.  Then, a trans-woman and a trans-man told their stories.  At this point, everyone in the crowded sanctuary knew we had a family in the church struggling with this issue, and they knew it was Sarah and Yuri’s child.At the end, during questions and answers, one older gentleman asked entirely reasonably, “Why is it we insist on categorizing people into one or the other?”  And he voiced what many were now questioning about how we lived our lives.And yet, what do you do with this scripture?  How do we as faithful Christians, who have put our trust in the Word of God, reconcile what we were seeing unfold?  Were we being asked to turn our back on that particular passage?  Understand it as limited because of its pre-scientific context?  We had promised to nurture this child in our baptism promises.   How can we hold both scripture’s apparent message and our firm belief here at Laurel Presbyterian Church that “Whoever you are, there is a place for you here… Where we grow together to serve Christ,” as our two banners state.In fact, as I spoke with one of the presenters before the seminar began, I realized he was worried about the hostility he may be facing.  Church was obviously not a comfortable place for him, and I reassured him that this was a friendly place, where folk just wanted to learn more.  But I could tell my words didn’t put him at ease one bit.And why should they?  His fear and expectation was probably more realistic than mine.  And who could blame him?  Christian churches are not known in this day and age to welcome people such as him with open arms, at least not without demanding they confess their sin of being made this way.One of the first things the main presenter, the mother of the trans-teen, said was this:  “What an honor to be asked to speak not only at a church, but in the sanctuary.  Normally, we are asked to give our presentation in the basement, or some other room far away from the sanctuary.”I was stunned.  Not because they hadn’t been invited to speak in a sanctuary before.  I understand churches, and I knew this might have been because of people’s discomfort with the topic, and the way they feared it challenged their faith.  But I also knew that most churches hold such presentations in a fellowship hall.  We don’t have a fellowship hall.  We have a sanctuary with stackable chairs.  It didn’t occur to us to have this in any other space, because there is no other space.  And yet God had taken what to us had been an absolute albatross and headache of the “sanctuary shuffle,” and turned our sanctuary into holy and welcoming space for people who had so little experience of God’s hospitality.Afterwards, the man said to me, “I read that banner as I came in, and it struck me.  But now I know just how true that is, because you invited us here, into this sacred space, to tell our story.”  What went unsaid was this:  His story was one that most of society didn’t want to hear, or accept, or feel the suffering he had been through, or that his family and children and spouse had been through, because he had been forced to deny who God had made him to be for the first half of his life.  And here, at church, we listened, and heard, and opened our space in compassion and hospitality.  Almost in spite of ourselves.  Because as one elder, Sunday School Teacher, choir member said, “Here at LPC, it’s like we live the motto of doctors: First, do no harm.  Life is tough enough without us adding judgment and hate on top of it.”The following Sunday, we had an adult baptism.  Such a joyful sacrament, as this grandmother had all her grandchildren stand up with her.  And as I read the standard words from scripture, this time, I heard them completely differently:  “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  And the power of those words stunned me.  I realized that our scripture indeed is the living Word of God.  Because what good news is that – "In Christ there is no longer male and female.”  And I rejoiced at the new life to be found in scripture.  Perhaps there is no theological wrestling to be done.  Christ has done it for us.Hear more about Jake and his family and their love story in this It Gets Better video and in this program, "Becoming Me."