Looking for a place where you can talk about your faith and your gender? We’re an online community of transgender and gender-expansive Christians committed to growing our faith, supporting each other, and healing the world. From text-based chat servers to video-based support groups to online Bible study —we’ve got a place for you.
Looking for books and online resources about being trans or gender-expansive and Christian? We’ve got those.
For all this and more, visit the Transmission Ministry Collective
The Institute for Welcoming Resources (IWR), a program of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, today announced the release of transACTION, a new curriculum designed for churches and religious institutions to help congregants and members understand and welcome transgender persons into their congregations and faith settings.
“Too often transgender people looking for a place to worship can’t find one to call their spiritual home because most congregations and religious institutions are not ready to welcome them as their companions in faith,” says the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, Institute for Welcoming Resources and faith work director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Yet, many transgender people of faith are searching for the same things that other believers want: a loving community where worship and working for equality and justice are the focus of their faith experience.”
transACTION is designed to help churches and institutions address this issue of understanding and welcome by providing step-by-step training about the needs, apprehensions and fears of transgender people — as well as the wealth of gifts and graces they bring — while responding to the concerns of the church or religious institution.
The program can be used in three sessions: How Do We Get to Understanding, How Do We Get to Acceptance, and How Do We Get to Welcoming. All sessions include discussions and activities to go along with the information provided in the curriculum.
“We tried to make this a learning experience that would go beyond just the basics of gender identity and gender expression in order to give participants an understanding of the issues and concerns that transgender people have when trying to express their faith and spirituality in a church or any religious setting,” says Barbara Satin, author of the curriculum and a transgender advocate around issues of faith and aging.
The Human Rights Campaign's Religion & Faith Program has just published online a new transgender resource for clergy:
In an effort to foster a dialogue with Latino/a families and churches on sexual orientation, gender identity and the Bible, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and UNID@S, unveiled today a new bilingual guide, A La Familia: A Conversation About Our Families, the Bible, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at a press conference during the League of United Latin American Citizens' 82nd National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people often face unique challenges in Latino/a families and churches. To help in the process of acceptance and inclusion, A La Familia is born out of a profound desire to faithfully integrate an excluded group of people back into the life of their churches and families. This guide is written for two primary audiences: heterosexual people honestly struggling with LGBT issues and the Bible, and those whose sexual orientation and gender identity have marginalized them within their family or church or even both.
In 2011, the Task Force’s Institute for Welcoming Resources, in close collaboration with Unid@s, the national Latin@ LGBT Human Rights Organization and the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program, jointly released A La Familia, a bilingual conversation about our families, the Bible, sexual orientation and gender identity. See the preview below.
For more information about Before God, We Are All Family, click here.
During the American Psychological Association's Annual Convention, August 14 to 17, 2008, the Council of Representatives adopted a resolution, Transgender, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression Non-Discrimination, urging psychologists to take a leading role in ending discrimination based on gender identity. The Council also received the final report of the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance. For further information on gender identity and gender variance, please see:
Transgender -- Use the gender pronoun (he/she) preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.
If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly.
When writing about a transgender person, use the name and personal pronouns that are consistent with the way the individual lives publicly.
This award winning documentary tells the story of the formation of Transcendence, the world's first transgender gospel choir from City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco. The film shows the dilemma of the choir members as they try to reconcile their gender identity with the message that has filled their lives that changing one's gender is against God's law.
The intimate personal stories shed light on the complexity of balancing social change, family history, religion and identity. At the heart of their challenge is a struggle for acceptance within two worlds historically at odds with one another. As one of the film's subjects eloquently says, "I'm living in a window. I get to see both sides."
Kade Farlow Collins is a sixteen year old FTM (female to male transgender person) residing in Tucson, Arizona. Kade's parents maintain a supportive and nurturing relationship to Kade regarding the many challenges facing their teenage child. However, it hasn't always been easy.
Just Call me Kade begins during Halloween weekend, 1999. Kade (then "Kate") was fourteen years old and beginning the initial stages of transition. Kate and family share their concerns, and all embark upon the path toward Kate's new identity as "Kade." Just Call me Kade concludes during St. Patrick's Day weekend, 2001 and Kade, having legally changed his name, is well into testosterone therapy. Friends and family candidly express their feelings about the transition, the changes in Kade and the impact on everyone involved.
Gender roles we all take for granted are broken apart in transparent, a documentary about 19 female-to-male transsexuals living in the United States who have given birth and, in all but a few stories, gone on to raise their biological children.
transparent focuses on its subjects' lives as parents, revealing the diverse ways in which each person reconciles giving birth and being a biological mother with his masculine identity. Traditional views of gender are further re-examined through the variety of genders the children use to conceive of their parents. The first-person stories in transparent explain how changing genders is dealt with and impacts the relationships, if at all, within these families.
While the Jewish mainstream still argues about homosexuality, transgender and gender-variant people have emerged as a distinct Jewish population and as a new chorus of voices. Inspired and nurtured by the successes of the feminist and LGBT movements in the Jewish world, Jews who identify with the “T” now sit in the congregation, marry under the chuppah, and create Jewish families. Balancing on the Mechitza offers a multifaceted portrait of this increasingly visible community.
The contributors—activists, theologians, scholars, and other transgender Jews—share for the first time in a printed volume their theoretical contemplations as well as rite-of-passage and other transformative stories. Balancing on the Mechitza introduces readers to a secular transwoman who interviews her Israeli and Palestinian peers and provides cutting-edge theory about the construction of Jewish personhood in Israel; a transman who serves as legal witness for a man (a role not typically open to persons designated female at birth) during a conversion ritual; a man deprived of testosterone by an illness who comes to identify himself with passion and pride as a Biblical eunuch; and a gender-variant person who explores how to adapt the masculine and feminine pronouns in Hebrew to reflect a non-binary gender reality.
A guide to understanding bullying in our communities, how to talk about it, and how to prevent it.
This anti-bullying curriculum is an introduction to what bullying is, how it functions, and why we as Christians are called to prevent it from happening in our communities. It was developed by Lutherans Concerned/North America with the help of the staff at the Pacific Violence Prevention Institute, from the pioneering research on bullying by Dan Olweus, and materials created by the United States government.
This curriculum is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to stopping bullying. However, this guide provides a basic understanding of how bullying works and offers suggestions for steps in creating a congregational bullying prevention plan.
Available for free download