The reconciliation of one’s faith and LGBT identity has been a challenging journey for countless individuals, including many in the transgender community.
The lack of resources available to trans individuals looking to explore their faith is a challenge being addressed by Transfaith, headquartered in Philly and founded by New Jersey resident Chris Paige.
Paige’s own journey was jumpstarted at a women’s spirituality event in 1998. At the time, Paige, who identified as a lesbian, was doing Christian-organizing work.
“I came to the conclusion that the boxes of female and male were equally oppressive, but moving from the female to the male box was not helpful either,” Paige said. “So I landed on the word, ‘otherWise,’ which is how I identify; it’s a non-binary gender identity that is both about gender and spirituality.”
During that discovery process, however, Paige found few resources tailored to faithful who were exploring their gender identity.
“There was a list of LGBT Christian organizations I found and went to those organizations and said, ‘I looked at your site but I don’t see any trans resources, so who I can talk to about that?’ And I got very little productive response. People at these national organizations just didn’t know any trans people,” Paige said.
So in 1999, Paige did the legwork, compiling lists of what resources were available on an Angelfire site and then returning to those national organizations and asking them to link to the site.
Paige proceeded to take on other ventures, get married and adopt a child, and the site fell by the wayside but, in preparation for a talk at a Presbyterian event in 2007, did a Google search for trans Christian resources — and the Angelfire website was the number-one search result.
“That was part of my realizing that there is still so much work yet to be done, and maybe I have a place in it. Things aligned and I started to rebuild the site and invite the community more into the work.”
Transfaith is now a comprehensive online community that also has a presence at LGBT and faith-focused events and conferences around the country.
While the organization is working on a regional and national level, Paige said there are steps local congregations and faith communities can take to open their doors to trans individuals.
In particular, Paige noted, they should not put the work of educating their communities about trans identities on the shoulders of trans individuals themselves, a trend that happens too often.
“It’s important for faith communities to do their own work and do it proactively. If they’re waiting for the first trans person to come walking through their doors, they’re too late and they’re putting too much pressure on that person. The goal should be for the community to do the work in advance,” Paige said. “Reach out to trans organizations and say, ‘Help us learn what needs to be learned.’ If there becomes an important moment for education in a congregation, and it’s expected that a trans member is supposed to step up and take that on, that’s not what everyone wants or is equipped for.”
Targeted conversations about trans-affirming theology and narratives are an important starting point, Paige noted.
At a recent conference discussion about trans stigma in faith communities, Paige said a trans community member voiced the need for such focused dialogue.
“They said, ‘I wish they would talk to me about the Bible.’ For so long, the dialogue hasn’t moved beyond the junior-high level that trans people are freaks and scary and dangerous. So affirming theology to show that this is not new, we’re not sick or deviant, that this is something Jesus was familiar with, that we’re part of God’s plan is so powerful,” Paige said. “We need to bridge that isolation and the stigma that so many people experience. For them to read these sacred traditions and say, ‘Wow, there have always been people like me as part of society, making positive change in the world.’ And for them to then further realize, God loves me and knows me, those conversations are just transformational.”
Paige said Transfaith is pursuing funding to promote these ideas through regional coalitions.
“We want to gather people in a more regional basis,” Paige said. “The issues going on in Arizona or New Mexico may play out differently than in New England or the Northeast or in Georgia and Mississippi. We want to gather people to have regional conversations that allow face-to-face contact and organizing.”
For more information, visit www.transfaithonline.org.