Christians are the least likely group of people to be accepting of transgender individuals.
The most recent Pew Research Religious Landscape Study asked participants how they viewed greater social acceptance of people who are transgender. Of those who broadly identified as Christian, nearly half (47%) called it a change for the worse while only 29% viewed it as a change for the better. Even among relatively liberal and generally considered inclusive Mainline denominations, that number doesn’t raise too much — just 39% of Mainline Christians view increased acceptance of transgender people as a positive thing. Evangelicals are the most likely to call transgender acceptance a bad thing, with 64% of respondents calling acceptance a “change for the worse” in American society.
These religious views deeply affect American culture as a whole and are reflected in queer communities’ perceptions of transgender and nonbinary individuals. In another recent Pew survey, only 14% of LGBTQ adults said nonbinary people experience a “great deal” or “fair amount” of acceptance, and just 13% said the same for transgender people. About half of respondents said there was not much or no acceptance at all for transgender people in American society.
“These religious views deeply affect American culture as a whole and are reflected in queer communities’ perceptions of transgender and nonbinary individuals.”
When you look at the veritable onslaught of anti-trans legislation — the bulk of it spearheaded by Christian-based groups — it’s easy to see why transgender individuals feel this way. They have been branded as inherently violent, sexually predatory and mentally ill. Twenty-one states have passed legislation controlling where a transgender individual uses the toilet, with the state of Idaho imposing a penalty that could lead to life in prison. Twenty-seven have passed bans on gender-affirming care for minors, with some states limiting care for adults as well.
One major study, the U.S. Transgender Survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, found transgender and gender nonconforming individuals are subject to harassment: 78% were harassed while in grades K-12 with 35% being physically assaulted; 90% reported workplace harassment, with 47% saying their gender identity led to them being not hired, fired or denied a promotion.
Transgender and gender nonconforming individuals are, by and large, not accepted within Christianity for who they are and also are persecuted by Christian power within the larger American culture.
Christian nationalism
Daniel Miller
Daniel Miller, author of Queer Democracy, ties this lack of acceptance to Christian nationalism. He writes that transgender and gender nonconforming embodiment “uniquely threatens Christian nationalists’ sense of properly embodied social order, and is therefore perceived as a distinctive threat.”
Christian nationalism, he says, is a “totalizing experiential framework” that holds rigid and narrow perceptions of the idealized prototype of the “real American” — namely, white, Christian, heteronormative and patriarchal. Because of this, transgender folk are seen as an existential threat to Christian nationalism and must therefore conform or be removed from society.
The early church
But this was not how the church was started. The earliest days of Christianity were not defined by who was kept out, but by the shocking length God would go to bring the marginalized, persecuted and oppressed in. The very first chapters of the early church explicitly welcome one whose gender identity fell outside what was considered accepted in that day.
“The very first chapters of the early church explicitly welcome one whose gender identity fell outside what was considered accepted in that day.”
In Acts 8, we read of this encounter:
Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road — the desert road — that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means ‘queen of the Ethiopians’). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
What we know of this eunuch is very little, but also very informative. First, they were from Ethiopia and had come to Jerusalem to worship at Passover. This is a once-in-a-lifetime journey — more than 2,000 miles through the desert on a trip that would take months. And what a Passover to pick! We don’t know what they thought of the crucifixion of Jesus or even if they were aware, but now they are returning home on the desert road, reading the scroll of Isaiah.
We aren’t directly told directly what this person’s experience in Jerusalem was like, but we can make some educated guesses. Eunuchs were gender-liminal figures, with one foot in the world of men and the other in the world of women. The Jewish philosopher Philo, who lived at the time of Jesus, called eunuchs “neither male nor female” and wrote that, because of this, the law excluded them from the community of worship. Brittany Wilson, New Testament professor at Duke, writes that eunuchs were “gender-liminal figures” who “upset the male/female gender binary.”
Brittany Wilson
Most likely, when this person reached the temple to worship, they were denied entry. Deuteronomy 23:1 reads, “No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.”
Imagine you’ve finally made it. The God whom you’ve worshiped from afar, you are told, has their presence within these walls. You reach the gate called Beautiful.
And you are turned away because of who you are. Unmale. Unfemale. Eunuch. You may not enter into the presence. Not into the Holy of Holies, of course. Only the high priest could do that, and only once a year. Not into the Holy Place, only the priests could do that. Not into the Jewish Court, because you weren’t Jewish.
None of this you were expecting, but surely you would be allowed across the gate. A spiritual journey culminated in a resounding anticlimax because you did not fit the gender norms expected by the religious elite. Rejected because, as Wilson writes, they “did not have a distinctive place on the purity map of the social body.”
“The eunuch was rejected from worship for exactly the same reason transgender individuals are rejected from much of the church today.”
The eunuch, then, was rejected from worship for exactly the same reason transgender individuals are rejected from much of the church today.
A new revelation
At some point, the eunuch begins the long journey home. Maybe they purchased the scroll of Isaiah as a souvenir, a sort of consolation prize. Now they are returning home. They have been seeking God and now God is seeking them. Suddenly a man is running beside their chariot offering to interpret what is being read.
This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:
He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.
Acts 8 tells us the eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?”
And the Bible also says Philip “began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.”
Philip would not have gotten too far before he hit upon a passage in Isaiah 56:4-7 that feels personally directed at this foreign, gender-liminal eunuch:
For this is what the Lord says: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant — to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.”
Kept out of the community of worship by the law, the eunuch finds inclusion into the Christian community by grace through faith. They don’t have to change who they are. They don’t have to become male. They don’t have to become female. God accepts them in this liminality of gender identity. Not only accepts them, but through the feet of Philip literally runs after them to give them the presence denied in Jerusalem.
The chariot rolls on as Philip uses the book of Isaiah to speak about the messianic kingdom that is coming and is now here, inaugurating by Jesus and confirmed through his resurrection: “As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?’”
Just a few hours ago, “What can stand in the way?” held an obvious answer. The fact you are a eunuch — that you do not fit the gender binary — means you cannot be a true part of this religious community. You never can go into the presence of God in the temple. You never can have communion with the divine. The religious system would stand in your way. The prevailing culture would stand in your way. The law would stand in your way. History would stand in your way.
But that’s all been turned upside down by Jesus, who is building a new kingdom of inclusion, equality and grace.
“What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” Nothing.
Josh Olds
Josh Olds is a public theologian and pastor for those disillusioned with institutional church. He is the creator of the small-group video series “Year on the Mountaintop” and a featured contributor to Fostering Hope: A Prayerbook for Fostering and Adoptive Parents. Follow his work on Facebook or at JoshOlds.com.