What Does the Bible Say About Transgender People?
For several decades, political and theological debates related to LGBTQ+ issues have centered around same-sex relationships for lesbian, gay and bisexual people. While an exploration of that topic is important, the volume of faith resources dedicated to it have often excluded reflection on the unique considerations related to gender identity. Mistakenly, some Christians have suggested that taking the Bible seriously requires people of faith to stand in opposition to the existence, health and humanity of transgender people. Consequently, gender-expansive people of all demographics and Christian traditions have been made to feel that they must choose between their faith and living a whole, healthy and authentic life. Whether you are a ministry leader, the family member of a transgender person or a trans person of faith yourself, this page seeks to serve as a brief overview of the Bible’s precedent for affirming the full inclusion of transgender, non-binary and other gender-expansive people in the full life of a Christian community.
Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to learn new terms and new concepts, especially if we see those terms change in meaning or use from one context to another. Whether we are talking about transgender issues or about faith, this seems to be true. This blog aims only to offer a starting place for a dialogue on both. For the purposes of my writing, when I use gender identity I am referring to one’s internal sense of being male, female, both or neither. When I use the phrase “sex assigned at birth,” what I mean is the sex that was assigned by a doctor at birth based on some combination of sex chromosomes, genes, gonads and internal and external genitalia, as well as physiological hormones. When I use the word transgender, I am describing a person whose gender identity is different than the sex they were assigned at birth. It is an adjective, a descriptive word, and can encompass any variety of non-binary and gender-expansive identities. For example, consider Josh, a transgender man who grew up with his parents assuming he was a girl. For as long as he could remember, he knew himself to be a boy. But he didn’t know about transgender people until he was older and could finally see himself in their stories and come out. Or consider Sam, a non-binary person who uses they/them pronouns. Sam grew up being told they were a boy but they never knew themselves to be a boy. They came out as non-binary to reflect their authentic experience with their gender identity.
When I use gender expression, I am talking about the way that a person may outwardly reflect their internal sense of gender through presentation, such as through clothing, hair, voice and body language. Sexual orientation, which describes whom a person is physically and/or emotionally attracted to, is a separate category, and doesn’t influence someone’s gender identity or gender expression. It’s important to understand that gender expression and sexual orientation are different from gender identity. In my examples above, Josh could be a transgender man who is gay, bisexual or straight. Sam could be a non-binary person who expresses their gender consistently in a more traditionally masculine or feminine way, or neither or both at the same time.
When I use the term affirming, what I am referring to is the theological view that all expressions of gender are an integral part of God’s design for diversity within the created order. When I use non-affirming, I am referring to the theological view that transgender and other expressions of gender variance are either a) sinful within themselves or b) that they are morally neutral but nevertheless a kind of disorder, mental illness or other brokenness. Whether you already feel confident in your position or are searching for new possibilities, my hope is that researching, studying and wrestling with the Scriptures and questions most relevant to trans experiences are part and parcel of what it means for Christians to “love God with all of one’s heart, soul, and mind” (Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:7).
When Christians think about gender, they tend to go back to the beginning. In Genesis, we find two stories about how things came to be, one of which says “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27, NRSV). If you grew up hearing these stories and living with people who seemed to fit inside these gender boxes, the existence of transgender people might seem to fly in the face of God’s created order. However, when we look just a little closer at each of these passages we find a much more complex and beautiful world. For instance, when God creates men and women in Genesis 1, it’s after creating opposites in every other corner of creation--day and night, land and sea, flying birds and swimming fish. Humans, then, are also created in an opposite pair--male and female. But the problem with a literal reading of this text that even though Genesis 1 sets up these binaries, God’s creation exists in spectrums.
In between day and night we have dawn and dusk; between land and sea we have coral reefs and estuaries and beaches; between flying birds and swimming fish we have penguins and high jumping dolphins, not to mention that uncategorizable favorite the platypus! No one would argue that a penguin is an abomination for not fitting the categories of Genesis 1, or that an estuary isn’t pleasing to God because it’s neither land nor sea. In the same way, God gives every human a self that is unique and may not always fit neatly into a box or binary. Among cisgender people -- that is those whose gender identities align with the sex they were assigned at birth, or non-transgender people -- there is a wide variety in height, strength, hair distribution, size and shape of reproductive organs, and nearly all other physical characteristics, which makes it hard for every single person on earth to fit neatly inside one culture’s categories of man or woman. There is, too, a diversity among transgender and non-binary people when it comes to bodies, personalities, beliefs and experiences. But rather than writing Genesis 1 off as fiction that doesn’t match reality, many affirming Christians recognize that the stories set down in this chapter were never meant to catalogue all of creation (in which case, it would just be an encyclopedia), but rather to point us towards God’s power and love. Not every microbe and constellation must be named in this chapter in order to have a purpose and a blessing.
Genesis 2 gives us a different perspective on the creation story, and here a non-gendered human is created first and then later a piece of the first person, Adam, is made into the second person, Eve. Based on the order of creation in this story, some theologians argue that this passage upholds a structure called gender complementarity. Gender complementarity asserts that God created two fundamentally different genders which have strict corresponding societal roles; in short, men were created to lead and women were created to follow. I don’t have the time or the space here to explore the rich biblical scholarship that has demonstrated the theological and pastoral need for Christian Egalitarianism, but suffice to say these views, even when held with the best intentions, have a consistent history of leading to emotional, spiritual and physical violence against anyone, regardless of their assigned sex or their gender identity or presentation, who does not completely and unwaveringly conform to gendered expectations. Alternatively, moving away from gender complementarity frees Christians up to explore other biblical alternatives for identity, community and relationship--alternatives based on the example Jesus set and called for in his teachings, rather than on gender difference.
One of the ways that Christians have historically understood the existence of suffering in the world is to attribute it to the idea that things are not now as they were originally created before the sin of Adam and Eve later in Genesis. Since the Fall, humans have experienced and caused things that are out of sync with God’s plan, and some may question whether the existence of transgender people may be a result of the Fall, rather than something that God intended from the beginning. However, it’s important to know that transgender people have existed across cultures and times -- dating back thousands of years. We also know that when it comes to the suffering that transgender and non-binary people experience, most is linked to the stress and oppression caused by other people. Studies show that when transgender people are affirmed and loved, their well-being also benefits.. With this in mind, it would be more likely that sin is at play in the oppressive and damaging ways we treat each other, and not in the very fact of someone’s existence.