Virginia Ramey Mollenkott graced last month’s Transforming Faith–Divining Gender conference not only with her warm and wise presence, but with a wonderful keynote address. In it she laid out seven reasons that religious groups should embrace their transgender members. Here’s a summary, taken from my notes:

1. The scriptures are trans-friendly; people who value them should be as well. For example, note the Yahwist creation account, in which God’s original creative impulse is toward a hermaphroditic creation. Jesus speaks well of eunuchs and condemns the use of “Raca,” which scholarship has shown means “effeminate” or “sissy.” Once we shed our cultural proclivities, we can see an ethos in scripture that takes a favorable view of gender variance and diversity.
2. Transgender members help congregations transcend gender stereotypes. The binary gender construct does not merely differentiate between genders, but unjustly elevates one over the other. Transgender people provide congregations with a unique reminder that stereotypes are not objectively concrete and need not bind us.
3. Transgender members remind congregations to use diverse and inclusive language when speaking about God. In Mollenkott’s words, “If God is male, then male is god.” Transgender people are particularly sensitive to the injustices caused by gendering God inappropriately. Transgender people do congregations a great service when they insist upon more accurate language for God.
4. Transgender people have traditionally been recognized in many cultures as bridges between the seen and unseen worlds. Mollenkott made particular note of how Milton genders his angel characters in Paradise Lost. There is tremendous depth to this tradition.
5. Transgender people have often reflected deeply on the connections between faith, justice, gender, and sex. Our congregations’ hang-ups on these topics have distracted them from far more important matters. Transgender people can educate their congregations on our lives and issues; they are “particularly suited to teach congregations about the multiple connections between sex, gender, and justice.” As outsiders, we bring a perspective our congregations need. Jesus himself defied many gender norms, and yet in spite of his gender transgression, subordinationism holds sway in many congregations. (Mollenkott drew very interesting linkages between the lengths to which some churches and theologians go to justify subordinationism and the reappearance of Arianism.)
6. As occupiers of the “forgotten middle,” transgender people can help congregations get over their addiction to certainty. Our dualistic, “good vs. evil” worldview threatens to destroy humanity and the world. (I was reminded here of Karen Armstrong’s work on the Axial Age, a period of history marked by terrible violence out of which arose today’s great religious traditions with their focus on selflessness and compassion.) “Sympathy cannot be confined to our own group,” Mollenkott said. Transgender people know what it means to occupy a middle that defies artificial dualism. This makes us particularly well suited to teach others to love the Other across dualistic divides; we’ve learned to let our pain express itself as support for others. (She made note here of the Drag Mothers who mentor young trans people in Chris Beam’s Transparent.)
7. Transgender people demonstrate powerfully that just as all races share one blood, so do all genders. Mollenkott reminded us of the old “one drop” rule of race, by which anyone who had one drop of African American blood was considered African American and a legitimate target of bigotry. The same rule, she said, holds today for gender norms. One drop of femininity equals feminine or “sissy,” as opposed to the pure or normative male. If we lined up the entire human race from darkest skin to lightest skin, she asked, where would “black” end and “white” begin? Similarly, if we lined up from most masculine to most feminine, where would “masculine” begin and “feminine” end? And, more importantly, what would those distinctions even mean in that context?

Check out this surprisingly rigorous critique of the “New Masculinity” movement among evangelicals in this month’s Christianity Today.  What scares me most about this kind of theology is not that it calls men to be bold, but that it implies women cannot and should not be. 

No, wait.  What scares me most about it is the way it blames women for everything that’s wrong with the church.

No, that’s not it either.  What scares me most is how, by so blatantly defining Jesus according to marketing strategies (i.e. by what will bring men back to church) rather than allowing him to define himself, the “New Masculinity” movement actually contributes to the decline of the church rather than ameliorating it.

For those who would like to learn more about how the binary gender construct is screwing up the church (and basically everything else), I recommend Virginia Ramey Mollenkott’s Omnigender: A Trans-religious Approach. 

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog.)

I’m off today for Portland, Oregon, to attend the Transforming Faith, Divining Gender conference, sponsored by the Community of Welcoming Congregations. Aside from enjoying the company of old friends and making new ones, I’ll also be presenting a workshop with my dear friend Peterson Toscano entitled “Unearthing Transgressive Taboos and Transformative Texts in Scripture.” Here’s a description of the conference, from the official website:

Transforming Faith: Divining Gender - A three-day interfaith gathering in Portland, Oregon that seeks to:

• Educate communities of faith in the spectrum of gender identities and gender expressions
• Give tools and resources for supporting gender variant youth
• Dismantle binary gender constructs and their reign in misogyny and homophobia
• Nurture and empower transgender leadership.

The keynote address will be offered by Dr. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, author of 12 books, including Omnigender.

Plenary sessions will feature:

• New Testament scholar Dr. Mary Ann Tolbert, George H. Atkinson Professor of Biblical Studies at the Pacific School of Religion and Executive Director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry, who will address Gender and the Bible.
• Jenn Burleton, Executive Director of TransActive will present a panel of youth and resources for supporting gender variant children and teens
• Faisal Alam, founder of Al Fatiha (a network for LGBTQ Muslims), will be exploring the complex diversity within the Muslim world and will illustrate the many challenges facing queer Muslims.

The conference will feature:

• Peterson Toscano performing his play, Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender and the Bible.
• A film/video festival
• Interfaith worship experiences, workshops, forums and social gatherings.

If you’re coming to Portland, I can’t wait to see you! If you’re not, don’t worry–I’ll be blogging as much of it as I can. It’s what I do.