Understanding Gender Dysphoria, page 18
It is important to realize that, in cases like these, if a person were to go to a mental health professional today and meet existing diagnostic criteria, they would likely be diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria. As an adult, they would hear about strategies for living into one’s cross-gender identification. If that were male-to-female, for example, the person would consider hair removal, voice/vocal training, cross-dressing part time or full time, and options would also include hormonal treatment and sex-reassignment surgery. Such procedures might not be indicated, and not everyone who may qualify for hormones and surgery will make the decision to pursue them. Or they might do some surgical options but not many or not all of the options that are before them.
There are also children and adolescents who are faced with gender identity conflicts of one kind or another. It is an extremely rare presentation, but it is one with great sociocultural significant today, and most Christians and Christian communities are simply not prepared to have a thoughtful discussion around it. What is the best way to proceed?4
Let me say at the outset that there is no one way that will satisfy the number of stakeholders in these discussions—even not thinking of the broader culture but just the Christian community. Let me start by mapping out different experiences within the transgender community that have to be taken into consideration when Christians think about the best way to relate.
Relating to the Transgender Community
When Christians think about the transgender community, it may be helpful to recognize the range of ways in which transgender persons may relate to the church. There are going to be those who are unchurched or dechurched; there will be those who are traditionally believing Christians who are trying to navigate gender identity issues in their lives; and there will be those who are transgender and Christian but are navigating gender identity as essentially an expression of their preferred gender identity and have found identity and support within the LGBT community. Also, churches will want to think about how to respond to youth as well as adults in each of these areas. What if an adolescent describes him- or herself as genderfluid or otherwise engages in gender-bending behaviors in a way that suggests some questioning or experience of their gender identity being in flux?
In response to the unchurched and dechurched transgender community, the Christian community needs to ask what it will look like to be missional in the years to come. Keep in mind that this is a group that will be asking, “What does the church have to offer me?” The perception (and too often the reality) is that transgender persons who have nothing to do with the church perceive that the church would reject them out of hand. They have either had poor experiences with the church or they view the church as largely unimportant or irrelevant in their lives.
It has been observed that a traditional evangelical church focuses on behavior first, followed by belief in Christ and a sense of Christian community. It essentially looks like this:
Behave → Believe → Belong
This approach5 begins with communicating expectations for change in how others behave. This may not be explicit, but it often has more to do with the comfort level of evangelicals who are sitting in the pews. They may believe the gospel is for those outside the church, but they do not want those outside the church to actually cross into the church until their behaviors change. What follows the expectation of behavior change is belief in Christ. Unfortunately, on the heels of the expectation of behavioral compliance, it can come across to those outside the church as, “Think the way we think,” which is a hard message after the expectation to conform to behavioral norms. Then the message is: Now you belong. It is a remarkably conditional approach to the world, and one that, in my view, is not sustainable in our changing sociocultural context.
A missional church model offers a different outline:
Belong → Believe → Become
A missional church6 focuses on first being in relationship (belong) then moves toward an opportunity to live one’s testimony to an unbelieving culture (believe). Only when a person enters into that relationship is there any thought given to who a person becomes over time as they grow in their relationship with Christ (become). Some people will insert the word behave where I have become, but I prefer the designation become to behave, as it reminds evangelicals that the process of sanctification is not a checklist of behaviors but a dynamic process of growing in Christlikeness.
What does “become” look like? It is difficult to say. Although some people who experience gender dysphoria along a continuum may be able to live into their birth sex, some are not able to. Their dysphoria is significant and sustained. For some, it has been life threatening. Some people will manage their gender dysphoria through various, creative ways, and I encourage the least-invasive steps if possible. Still others may elect more invasive steps in keeping with current mental and medical health options and recommendations. Perhaps these steps will be seen more as pastoral accommodations (drawing more from the integrity and disability frameworks) rather than an affirmation, as seen in diversity framework.
But missional models of church are messy and much more complicated than many churches realize. Just the fact that there are multiple stakeholders in a church that considers following a missional model is often a tremendous challenge. Stakeholders include current members who range in age across multiple generations, and these cohorts bring with them different assumptions and attitudes that must be taken into account. In other words, people who have been comfortable in church will not be comfortable in church. And every missional church I have met with faces difficult decisions on where to draw the line that has to do with community standards for things like Communion or the Lord’s Supper (is it an open table or a closed table?), service to others (e.g., greeter, parking attendant), childcare, teaching, leading small groups and leadership (e.g., elder, deacon). Even the message of belonging can be lost when a person wants to serve—let’s say as a greeter—but is transgender and others in the church raise concerns about what message is being sent to the community.
Also, it should not be assumed that greater Christlikeness is the same as having experiences of gender dysphoria abate. Rather, many people who know and love Christ have besetting conditions that have simply not resolved as a result of their belief in Christ as their Savior. Indeed, it may very well be that it is in the context of these enduring conditions that God brings about greater Christlikeness.
On Drawing Lines
One church I consulted with wanted to discuss at what point church discipline takes place. We expanded the discussion beyond gender atypical presentations to a broader vision for shepherding believers in the local church. The leadership was thinking that they tend to draw a line for behavioral expectations of those who attend their church at membership, which the leadership saw as a clear indication a person was willing to sit under the teaching and shepherding influence of the church pastor and elders. As we discussed the idea further, however, they talked about how they allowed non-members to serve in several capacities, such as greeters and parking attendants. When they thought together how they would respond to a male-to-female transgender person who was not a member and wished to be a greeter, they acknowledged they had not thought through the complexities of the situation and had a difficult time coming up with a response, let alone a shared understanding of what they should expect from a person who wished to serve in that capacity. It is one of the challenges that comes up with drawing lines and having a clear idea who is making a mature and educated decision to sit under the leadership of the local church. These challenges include recognizing what that means to the person seeking membership and to those in leadership, as well as how to relate spiritual leadership to various issues that might arise in a cultural context in which cross-gender identification as one way of managing dysphoria or expressing oneself is and will be increasingly supported by medical and mental health professionals.
One woman I know who is a Christian and transgender likens this to the watchful waiting approach with a child who displays symptoms of gender dysphoria. For her, a new Christian is a spiritual child in Christ who is beginning a journey in terms of how that person’s faith shapes their experience of their gender identity questions and where they might go from where they are today. This would likely be experienced by a transgender person who is new to Christianity as quite gracious and supportive.
In discussions about people who are navigating gender identity issues, there will likely be disagreement as to what “become” looks like for the transgender person, in part because of different explanatory frameworks (integrity, disability and diversity frameworks). But what we can agree on is that helping a person grow in greater spiritual maturity brings that maturity to the decision-making process in a spirit of humility.
As the church thinks about transgender persons who are Christians and trying to navigate gender identity issues in keeping with their biological sex with an emphasis on managing their dysphoria in the least invasive way, we would do well to recognize how this approach often reflects the integrity framework and the disability framework, both of which see the phenomenon as a reflection of a fallen world. The emphasis in the disability framework is that, as a disability, it is not a reflection of personal sin but more a question of how to manage the dysphoria itself. What is missing here, however, is what is so helpful from the diversity framework.
Recall that the diversity framework provides messages about identity and community that provide that person with a genuinely meaningful sense of self and kinship that is not frequently experienced in the local church. This should help the local church grow in their empathy and compassion and give greater thought to how to be family—how to provide a kinship network—to the person who is navigating these concerns. When we fail to meet these needs, we essentially drive the person back to another message about self and other, about identity and community. Are Christians prepared to enter into a sustained relationship with someone who experiences gender dysphoria? Are Christians prepared to do so without the condition that the person manages that dysphoria in a way the Christian community would support? This will get complicated and messy, but are Christians prepared to communicate “We’re in this together” and “I’m with you on this journey”?
When we think about transgender persons who identify as Christian but are navigating their gender identity primarily as an expression of their felt gender identity and have found an identity and support within the LGBT community, we would do well to recognize ways in which “transgender” can function as a way of exercising resilience in response to marginalization and pain. Their identity as transgender and the view that they are expressing their true self has clearly provided a path through which they can find hope and life, and that may indeed contrast sharply with what they have found in the church.
What such an approach may not account for as well is what we find in the integrity and disability frameworks. These frameworks give us pause about movements away from biological sex and a gender binary, at least as anchor points for our understanding of creation norms. However, these frameworks can be held with humility, recognizing that we do not want to artificially endorse rigid gender stereotypes that make cultural normative expression of gender roles a marker of obedience to God or something along those lines. The disability framework provides another reference point that might underscore managing dysphoria rather than focusing on expression of the true self as such. This would not be held out as an expectation to the person but as an opportunity for exploration and consideration in the context of a sustained relationship with that person.
We can see that these three broad experiences within the transgender community draw forth very different responses. Different experiences of gender identity concerns will require different responses, so it takes time and discernment to understand how to proceed.
Care and Compassion in the Body of Christ
A young person walked through the side doors of the large church and into the hall where the youth group was about to meet for an evening event. This particular youth—a male, everyone would later say—was in clothing that was difficult to identify as belonging to either a guy or a girl; pretty androgynous clothing in hindsight. The youth pastor saw him enter and made a point to engage him. He walked right up to the teen and extended a warm greeting and engaged him in conversation for a minute or two. However, the youth pastor was called away; he had to attend to other details before the start of the evening meeting. He was away for no more than a few minutes, but it was during that time that three other kids from the youth group spoke to the visitor and things deteriorated quickly. Their focus was on his outfit; the perception that he was genderfluid in ways that went against local, conventional gender norms. They spoke to him about the ways guys are to dress, about what it means to be a guy and a follower of Christ. As you might imagine, the teen was long gone before the youth pastor knew what had happened.
In a study of transgender Christians, participants were asked about their experience with Christian faith communities. One male-to-female transgender Christian shared an exchange with a previous pastor:
I once explained to a pastor in a previous church my transgender situation and he rejected me totally. He said it was something that he could not cope with, so I have kept quiet about it ever since in subsequent churches as I would not wish to hurt those who cannot cope with who I am.7
To provide effective support today, there is a need for the church to be able to cope with the disclosure of gender dysphoria among those who experience it and have the courage to share what they are going through.
In light of these stories and dozens more I could share, it may be helpful in ministry to reflect on contrasting terms of inclusion from the transgender community and the Christian community. This helps the Christian community think about messages that are being sent, helps us scrutinize those messages, and helps us identify other messages we may want to convey.
Terms of Inclusion
The terms of inclusion for those who are navigating gender incongruence might be understood in the context of what has been referred to as identity politics. As Heyes observes,
Identity politics starts from analyses of oppression to recommend, variously, the reclaiming, redescription, or transformation of previously stigmatized accounts of group membership. Rather than accepting the negative scripts offered by a dominant culture about one’s own inferiority, one transforms one’s own sense of self and community, often through consciousness-raising.8
My observation has been that the terms of inclusion from the transgender community are not as rigid as in other communities. In some regards you might say that the term is the embrace of a transgender identity and being a part of the transgender community. But I have not seen this focus on identity organized in quite the same way (“around a single axis”) as it might be with other minorities:
To the extent that identity politics urges mobilization around a single axis, it will put pressure on participants to identify that axis as their defining feature, when in fact they may well understand themselves as integrated selves who cannot be represented so selectively or even reductively (Spelman 1988). The second form of essentialism is closely related to the first: generalizations made about particular social groups in the context of identity politics may come to have a disciplinary function within the group, not just describing but also dictating the self-understanding that its members should have.9
However, the range of experiences within the transgender community—the many ways in which gender is experienced and expressed, as well as private versus public expression—has meant there is no single axis; subsequently, there is great support for one another and for the many ways in which transgender people sort out gender identity issues and either manage dysphoria or express themselves. So the acceptance within the community is rather broad, in my experience, and it is important to keep in mind that the acceptance a person experiences there gives that person a much-needed sense of identity and community.
The terms of inclusion from the local church are that a person fit into the male-female binary and experience congruence between biological or birth sex and psychological and emotional experience of gender identity. To differing degrees in different settings, there can be more or less rigid stereotypes for gender roles and norms that may make gender identity conflicts that much more challenging.
Although there are multiple paths in front of any one person whose gender dysphoria rises to the level of significant distress or impairment, each person is going to benefit from a supportive community and related resources.
Mike was born biologically male. He has been a Christian essentially all of his life. He experienced some gender incongruence as a child but believed it had largely resolved by adolescence and certainly by the time he married his high school sweetheart. The experience of gender incongruence reemerged later in his middle adulthood. In his attempts to either manage that dysphoria or express his sense of self, his church community was unable to create an atmosphere of support for him and his family. He was confronted for how he had grown out his hair and his choice of more gender-ambiguous apparel. To make a long story short, he was not compliant with the church leadership’s expectations for his appearance, which he experienced as narrow and rigid in terms of gender stereotypes, and he was removed from his leadership role and essentially dis-fellowshipped from the faith community.
