This week, we remind our listeners to listen to Indigenous people!
Special Guest: (4:45)
Austen Hartke, Author & Founder of Transmission Ministry Collective
Guest Question:
What are the major myths and misunderstandings that people have around transgender identity, faith, and the Church? How have you seen things change or develop (both positively and negatively) since you first published your book in 2018?
Austen's Website
Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians
LGBTQ Centers.Org
Washington Post Article
For Listening Guides, click here!
Got a question for us? Send them to faithpodcast@pcusa.org!
A Matter of Faith website
This week, we remind our listeners to listen to Indigenous people!
Special Guest: (4:45)
Austen Hartke, Author & Founder of Transmission Ministry Collective
Guest Question:
What are the major myths and misunderstandings that people have around transgender identity, faith, and the Church? How have you seen things change or develop (both positively and negatively) since you first published your book in 2018?
Austen's Website
Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians
LGBTQ Centers.Org
Washington Post Article
For Listening Guides, click here!
Got a question for us? Send them to faithpodcast@pcusa.org!
A Matter of Faith website
Well, hello everyone and welcome to a Matter of Faith, the Presby podcast, the podcast where we respond to your questions about faith, justice, and church life. Don't forget to send in your questions because if it matters to you, it matters to us, and it just might be a matter of fate. And as you may notice, Simon is not here with us this week. Simon is doing the Lord's work, traveling and doing some work with his other job. So we will miss you Simon, sending you love, and hopefully everything is going great on your travels, but we miss you. But it is just me for this week, and we hope you all are doing well. And it's kind of weird being by myself and not talking to Simon and kind of just talking into this microphone. But I did want to, to mention, of course, always check out our, our website, a matter of fake podcast.com and subscribe. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. We always want to hear from you. And if you have any questions, of course, send them to fake podcast at P C U S a.org. But I hope everyone is doing well. And I wanted to kind of mention something that's everyone should be reminded of. And I was just reading this Washington Post article that's entitled The World's Best Rainforest Guardians Already lived there. And it's an article about indigenous people doing the work to preserve the earth and noticing the impacts that we as humanity are placing upon this earth. And knowing the impacts and seeing the impacts in their everyday lives of the climate crisis and climate change. And being the ones that are disproportionately impacted by this, specifically people who are in island nations, specifically people who are in the areas of the rainforest. And I'm gonna put a link to this in the show notes for everybody to read, but I think as people of faith, we are, and we should always be reminded that we don't always know the answers to things or we always don't know how to respond to things. And I think oftentimes in the church, we think we need to reinvent the wheel or we think we need to claim something to make something better. And there's a lot of egos that go around in that. But I think oftentimes it is the people within the community, it's the people that, that are experiencing injustice, that have lived in communities for so long and have been a part of the earth for so long that actually if we listen to and work alongside with that they are the ones that we should be listening to and taking the lead from. And I think that this article really does speak to that, and it speaks to a lot of reports, a lot of global studies and some un analyses that really do speak to the fact that indigenous people are the ones that we need to be listening to. And they are the ones that know how to fully preserve this earth. And those traditions and those ways of preserving preservation have been instilled to them for thousands of years. And so I'm gonna put a link to that and the show notes and just sound a reminder to people of faith out there, you know, listen to people. And it really does go a long way, especially in this time of the climate crisis where we need to be doing stuff right now. And so that is just a little bit of news that is going on. We are not gonna respond to a question, just me, I'm not gonna respond to just a question, but I am going to remind everyone that this week's guest is Austin Harkey, who is the founder and author of Transmission Ministry Collective. And he is gonna be talking to us about how we as people of faith walk with our trans siblings, how we as people of faith should be calling out anti-trans legislation, and how we as people of faith are called to empower our trans siblings and to be in solidarity with them and to actually do and be in this fight with them for trans rights and how we are to do that in our everyday lives as people of faith. So Austin, thank you for being with us and we hope you enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, we are so excited to be joined on this episode of a matter of Faith of Presby podcast by a very, very special guest. Joining us is Austin Harkey, the Inau and founder of Transmission Ministry Collective. Austin, thank you so much for being with us.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1:Austin, it's good to meet you. And we do have a question, well, we actually have a couple questions for you written in, and we'll throw'em out there and see where things go, but the questions are, what are the major myths and misunderstandings that people have around transgender identity, faith, and the church? How have you seen things change or develop both positively and negatively since you first published your book in 2018?
Speaker 3:So yeah,
Speaker 1:That's a lot. But
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is a lot. I, right. I think the major, let's talk major myths. Let's talk major myths and misunderstanding. So I think the first major thing that I come up against when I'm talking with churches and faith communities, Christian communities specifically, uh, today, is the misconception that you can't be a transgender Christian, right? Like, that's the first thing you run up against is people who are like, wait, is that even possible? Um,<laugh>, is that even a thing that can happen? Uh, and they answer, of course is yes, there are lots and lots of transgender Christians out there. Um, and a lot of what we do at Transmission Ministry Collective is provide support and community for those folks because, you know, not all churches, lots of churches are still on the path of trying to figure out where they stand on orientation and gender diversity. And so, you know, they're, sometimes it's hard to find a church if you're a transgender person, but also because even if you do find a church that is affirming a lot of churches, especially mainline churches that went through an affirming process years ago when it came to things like, like being gay or lesbian or bisexual and marriage equality haven't kept up with things as they've continued on. So even churches that were affirming, you know, and became affirming years and years ago, don't know very much about transgender people today. So a lot of my work kind of focuses around that. So that's, that's the first misconception is that we don't even exist, but we do<laugh>, we're real and we're out here. A second misconception, uh, that I run into is that trans people are new. That this is a new thing, right? That like we haven't always existed. And, and we have, um, with churches especially, I love talking about examples of gender diversity in the Bible, like where we see gender diversity show up in scripture and where we see it within Christian history, because so often I think even Christians and churches, when we talk about like Christian history or, or what Christianity looks like, our kind of cultural memory goes back to about maybe like 1910<laugh>. And that's about as far as it goes back, right? Yeah. So like really looking back and looking at like, what was the early Christian Church like and what are the, who are the gender expansive saints? Because we have 10 tons of gender expansive saints who lived, um, in, uh, ways that we might not expect. And they're, they're part of our Christian history too. So that second sort of misconception is like, we've always been around both in societies all over the world, but also within Christian history itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Can can you, can you give the people a few examples of that? Because I feel like a lot of times yeah, we, we often it and, and especially now that a lot of the anti-trans bills are happening and you hear a lot of people of faith, whatever, if we can say that, but are hurling these things out and hurling these kind of myths and perpetuating these things. And I think it's always good for people to kind of have examples to kind of lean on, so mm-hmm.<affirmative> Yeah. Maybe educate the folk out there about it
Speaker 3:A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, you know, as a sort of scripture nerd and somebody with a background in Hebrew Bible studies, um, I love going back and looking at some of the, uh, passages in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament that talk about people outside of gender binaries and outside of gendered expectations. So we can talk about people like Joseph, right? Joseph is, um, somebody who's been seen as canonically gender nonconforming for hundreds of years,<laugh>. Um, and yeah, specifically like Joseph's, uh, when we talk about like Joseph's coat, right? Or Joseph's, uh, uh, dream coat, right? Um, that, that item, um, when we look at like how it's talked about inan, Hebrew is not a, a piece of clothing that anybody else wears in scripture. Uh, it shows up one other place, one other person wears it. And that's, uh, king David's daughter we're told in, in second Samuel the king's dater, uh, king David's daughter, Tamar wears it and it specifies that this thing that she's wearing is how like princesses were dressed, right? So when we kind of look back in scripture and we go, okay, so we've got this person, Joseph, who seems to be dressing in this thing that is specifically maybe more feminine coded in that time and place, what does that say about Joseph and how does Joseph act and what do Joseph sort of like mannerisms tell us about him? And so Joseph is one person that I think we can look at, but we also have a bajillion story as it feels like, of, uh, throughout the ancient world of Unix, right? Unix are often a group of people that we lift up. They show up in scripture all the time. There were people who were beyond the gender binary in their place in time. So it's not the same as saying like, they're trans, right? Uh, but they were beyond the gender binary because they weren't considered men or women. Many times people who were Unix were assigned male at birth and then castrated before puberty. So as they grew their secondary, like they didn't have masculine secondary sex characteristics, so they looked different than other people, and they went through their lives differently, and they were allowed into both men's and women's spaces. So throughout sort of Christian, uh, throughout like Christian understanding of those texts, we have some like examples of gender diversity there. And then we also, like I said, we have so many saints who lived outside of the bounds of gender. One of my favorite is Marus, the monk who wa lived in, I believe it was fifth century, Syria, uh, what is today's Syria. And Marus was a person who was assigned female at birth, entered a monastery, dressed as a boy with, uh, his father, and lived his whole life in this monastery living as male his whole life. So it's, you know, these people that we hold up as like examples of Christian faith are part of our history as well.
Speaker 1:And just to throw it out there, I think people may also need to be reminded that it is, you know, when all this stuff was written, not everybody could do. So not everybody was represented. There's a po there was a point of privilege that you could even even be accounted for in a way. And I think that we also should, I I think also sometimes we can invite people to think that, you know, this is a very small representative of the amount of people that were even on this earth at that time,<laugh> because of riding and because of all the privileges that come along with that. So statistically, I mean, people of multiple gender identities were probably around. Yeah. If that makes sense. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, like using the imagination of, because like, we don't have, they didn't have social media. We couldn't see everybody everywhere and every place, like at the, at the snap of a finger. I think that, I think that's why of, I'm not making an excuse about what, what people are saying, but I often think we can't go into our imagination big enough to say, well, of course there were, there were people here. Even if, even if nobody wrote about it, there were people here and they've been here. And I think that's also interesting because we don't talk about the, like, the privileges in writing and reading way back when things were accounted for that I think often can be misrepresented at
Speaker 3:Times. Yeah. I think about that a lot in especially the context of the, the story in Acts eight of the Ethiopian Munich, right? Like, we have this amazing story about like the beginning of the Christian Church and the affirmation of somebody whose gender was outside the binary and had so many other complex multi-layered identity pieces, right? And this person doesn't get a name<laugh> the fact that we have to call this person the Ethiopian Unic and not what their name would be, you know? Um, in, in some traditions they're known as Simon or Simeon, but like in our tradition, just reading straight out of, you know, most translations today, we don't get that. And so yeah, there's definitely a sense of who's named, who's accounted for, who's, uh, talked about that there, there is a layer of privilege there for
Speaker 2:Sure. And I appreciate one, you naming all of these examples again, just because, especially, and I'll just go ahead and say it as someone who identifies as Bo who is straight, heterosexual, all those, all of those things and all of those privileges, it's so easy for me to look into these stories and not be, and not think that these examples exist and not mm-hmm.<affirmative> know the history mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And it's a really important, I think, reminder, not just for myself, but for everyone, that there are these examples in our scriptures and in Christian history mm-hmm.<affirmative>, and I also appreciate that you started out by saying that one sort of maybe myth, or maybe it's just a misperception, is that, okay, our church is inclusive, we say that we're an affirming church. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, but there's, but in the end, that may not actually be fully true. There's a, there's a, and I even within our own denomination, the Presbyterian church usa, I think many people would say y for lack of a better words Yeah. People could get behind the L, the G and the, the and the B and sorry, back, I messed up the Y acronym, but L G B, but then the, the T,
Speaker 3:They kind of stopped there. Yeah.
Speaker 2:<laugh>, they kind of stopped there. And it's, I think, and, and I would like to think that within our denomination, the acceptance around transgender gender, individuals and communities is growing. I also could be wrong about that because again, I'm not, unfortunately, I'm privileged enough that I don't have to think about it all the time. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And I think that that is something that is a real challenge, that it's like, oh yes, we're affirming, we're inclusive. It's like, but are you really mm-hmm.<affirmative> and am I really, you know? Right. That's a, that is a, that is a tough thing to wrestle with. And it's like you only know when someone tests that mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And unfortunately it often can come at that individual's or that community's expense.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah. No, I, I totally agree. I think the, there's been a move, so one of the moves in, in language that I've made over the past few years since, uh, you know, we're talking about things that have changed. Like the, one of the moves I've made is to not, when I can help it, like linguistically, sometimes it doesn't quite work, right? But when I can help it, not referring to people as allies, but as people practicing allyship to make it an active thing. Um, and it's the same for churches that like, uh, are you an affirming church? Like, do you have that sort of, uh, you know, on your door, awesome, but like, what are you doing to back up that continual action that, that i n g, you know? Um, and it's something that we, we don't, we tend to sort of, especially if we go through a program like this, is not by any means a, uh, uh, harshing on the idea of affirming programs and different denominations, cuz they're really important. But if our church got stamped, you know, open and affirming or reconciling in Christ or, or whatever the thing is in your denomination, if you got that, you know, stamped in 2015 and you haven't done anything since then,<laugh>, you're no longer really in affirming church if you haven't actually practiced it. You know? So. Yeah. I, I totally agree, Simon.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's, it's one of those things, we, we have this conversation all the time because they'll throw it out there sometimes. I've, I've seen you throw it out there when it's beneficial
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:<affirmative> and a lot, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of follow through mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I think a lot of the times in churches specifically is like, what does this actually mean? Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. But it also makes me wonder about this conversation in general and how, and how oftentimes within communities, within trans communities, how, how you have to talk about this in a way that kind of humanizes your experience. You have to defend your humanity mm-hmm. Hmm.<affirmative>. And, and it's often hard when we have these conversations that we don't often name that, like, like how are we in a world to where people are defending their humanity for themselves mm-hmm.<affirmative> and, and how traumatizing that can be, how are retraumatizing that can be, and so I just wanted to name that in this space too, because I do, I do know our trans siblings have always, and especially right now, are defending their humanity mm-hmm.<affirmative> and, and how much energy that takes and how much work that takes for you to do that. And so I just wanted to name that and to thank you for having this conversation with us, um, and using that energy. But I think oftentimes the church doesn't realize the amount of education and the amount of work that it needs to do mm-hmm.<affirmative> to do and to, and to be an affirming entity in the world mm-hmm.<affirmative> specifically with our trans community, because I don't think we've done hardly anything. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I mean, even within the community, the l the G the B haven't done the work, I don't think in full inclusion of our trans siblings, even within the community. And I wonder about your experience with that too, cuz as a person myself, but as a cis person and who identifies as, but also know people within our community that have not done that work for themselves because it's, it's in some way it's a very different conversation. It's a very different way<laugh>. It's a very different expression of identity, I think. And I don't often think we've done the work either. So I wonder about your experience in that too, and how might the community also do the work as well, because I don't think we've done enough either.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I, I totally agree with you that, um, well, I appreciate first of all just naming the, the, uh, I dunno, fortitude that it takes to keep having these conversations when your identity is the one that's being debated<laugh>. It's, uh, it's exhausting. And I think especially of, of trans youth right now who are the ones leading protests in their schools and are the ones going and speaking in front of legislatures and are the one, like, they're 16, 17, you know, years old, they should not, they're 12 years old. They should not have to go in front of a group of adults and plead for their life. You know, like, this is messed up that we're making them do this. And so I I really appreciate that acknowledgement, um, because, um, I think, you know, in, in the communities that I work in and the trans communities I work in, the overwhelming feeling at this point is just like, you know what? We'd almost rather go back to just being ignored.<laugh>, maybe that would be better than this<laugh>. So yeah, there's a feeling of exhaustion around it for sure. Yeah. I think in terms of like what communities can do, right? Like how I, I just gave a, a talk at, uh, an organization a couple of weeks ago that is an organization that, um, is primarily made up of cisgender gay men. Um, and like it's a, it's a really good space for them to be in. And they asked me to come talk about like, what can we do to support our trans siblings? And I'm so glad that they asked<laugh>. Um, and so we kind of, we talked about a whole lot of things. We talked about, we talked about the history in movements for justice and recognition and, and legal rights, the co the sort of consistent theme throughout history of people being like, okay, we want rights. But anybody who does not stand, like the sort of respectability politics that goes around it, that makes us go, okay, but not like, you need to just be a little bit quieter though because we're trying to get rights. And then eventually you'll get it too. You know, the sort of like, wait your turn mentality. And that's something that like we've seen throughout history, like we, we saw it in like second wave and first wave feminism where it was just sort of like, okay, women were working together, but they didn't want lesbians to be a part of that. Right. Cuz that would bring their movement down. And then lesbians started like organizing and then it was like a question about do we include trans women in that? Right. And so then that's a question and it's always the sort of one, one group saying to another marginalized group, you have to wait your turn. And so I think one of the big things that we need to remember to do as communities is to say nobody has to wait their turn. Like we, we're not free until every single person is free. And when we lift from the bottom from the people that are most marginalized, that makes things better for everybody. Right? So we don't have to do that in that sort of, um, segmented out way. I think another thing like speaking to what you were saying, Lee, the sort of like work that we can do internally, um, is thinking about how our experiences are, uh, even though our experiences are different, there's overlap in those. So I think we've done a lot of talking in the past, I don't know, 10 years or so about like the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity, right? Because we've had to explain to people that don't get it, that those are two different things. That being trans is not gay 2.0<laugh>, like how to explain that to people.<laugh>, we've, we've had to do that. But I think in one way that's important as an educational data point that like these are two different things that intersect in different ways, but we also then tend to accidentally segregate ourselves. And the average straight cisgender person with no knowledge of our larger community doesn't care if the person, wa person walking down the street is a butch lesbian or a trans man. They're reading them in a very specific way, even though we understand the difference, right? So recognizing that even though we have different experiences internally and different experiences externally in some ways are the sort of layers of oppression that we experience don't recognize those differences. So how do we push back knowing that that's the case?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's knowing the history too, I think in the community, like going all the way back to like, like gay rights and like Stonewall and like who actually started those movements?<laugh>, I think we very much whitewash. I mean they're not teaching history in any right.<laugh>, I mean they're trying to fight against that anyway. But I think even what we have learned and what I learned was very whitewashed in a way too. So the intersection of race and a lot of trans mm-hmm.<affirmative> women of color were, started the movement mm-hmm.<affirmative> and then it was a lot of privileged gay men who kind of co-opted it in a way. And so there's also the history that I think we all have to grapple with there too is, is what it means to really be a part of this community as well. And to actually know the history mm-hmm.<affirmative> and the real history behind it. And kind of grapple with that too. Cuz I think it's often we like to compartmentalize oppression mm-hmm.<affirmative> in a way. And like you were saying, it's, it's all about like, let me get mine first mm-hmm.<affirmative>, or well, I'm an oppressed person too, so it's oppression Olympics in a way, right? Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And it's like, it's, it's not helpful when we're trying to, for liberation for all and to also understand the history of it and grapple with that too, because it is also in many ways a very racist history, what even within the community too, so mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Yeah. That's very helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I also want to go back to this point you made earlier about practicing allyship mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And you are the, you are the author of transforming the Bible in the life of transgender Christians, which came out originally in 2018 and is now about to be re-released in updated, or is re-released in updated form. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It just came out, uh, two weeks ago. So the new version is out there and alive in the world.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Uh, we'll have a link to it in the show notes for everyone to be able to check out. And I'm curious how, since the book originally came out in 2018, back to sort of our original question, how have you seen things change both positively and negatively? Have you seen folks sort of come to the realization that there is a difference between being an ally and practicing allyship? Have you seen that an increase in the number of people and churches and communities practicing allyship? Or maybe that hasn't happened as much and I think especially in our current political context in the United States, I mean in this exact moment as we're recording, there are so many, so many discouraging political actions. Okay. So it's definitely a mixed bag, but I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of your take on what is that mixed bag look like, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, so I started, I started the very early work on transforming in 2014 right after I graduated from seminary. And that was the year that the big time cover with Laverne Cox came out that said, you know, it's the transgender tipping point, right? And then when the book was published in 2018, right? That's four years later, right? And now we're almost to 2024. So we're almost 10 years after the beginning work of this book. And it's been<laugh>, there's been such a movement for visibility for trans folks that has been necessary. Visibility is important because, you know, in terms of modeling, being able, being able to know that there are other people like you in, uh, being able to have the language to explain who you are to yourself. Um, I, I would've come out as trans a lot younger if I would've just had the language to tell people about what I was experiencing, you know? So like the visibility is great in terms of finding those other people like you in terms of finding community, in terms of knowing who you are and having the language for that. But visibility doesn't keep us safe and it doesn't get us justice<laugh> all by itself, right? So the huge climb in visibility from 2014 through, you know, 2016 ish really sort of meteoric in terms of people's awareness of trans folks. And that was great. But then there was this huge backlash that we're currently in the middle of, which was essentially saying, oh, we see you now and we don't like it<laugh>. And so the, the huge backlash that we've seen, and especially this year, you know, last year, um, uh, in, in 2022, the, I think it was like something like 200, 250 bills in the legislature that were anti L G B T Q and the majority of them are specifically anti-trans. And everybody was like, oh my gosh, 250, that's huge, right? We're already at like 4 25 for this year and it's just April<laugh>. So the building blocks, um, that we have that are being set up against trans folks are being set up as a backlash to that visibility that we were experiencing in, in the early 2010s. In terms of how churches are responding to that, I think a lot of churches are doing a really great job in terms of like learning more about trans folks and realizing how important this is. And they're doing that because they have trans folks in their church, uh, trans folks in their community, right? Um, parents are doing a great job because their kids are telling them who they are and the parents are believing their kids, right? That's great. So it's like the, the practicing allyship aspect has definitely grown, but I think the thing that we're struggling against is, there used to be some really great statistics that showed that knowing, and this was true for gay and lesbian folks too, which is why they knew to do the same studies again with trans folks, that knowing somebody who is trans makes you more likely to be affirming of trans people, right? And they, they did these studies that showed that that was true for folks, um, for basically everybody across demographics. The only demographic for whom that was not true, for whom knowing a trans person didn't automatically make you more affirming was, uh, white evangelical Christians<laugh>. They were the only group for whom knowing a trans person didn't necessarily help. And the reason for that was because there was a sort of almost theological, I, I hate to use the term like<laugh>, like vaccination, because vaccinations are good<laugh>, but like there was almost a sense of like, they had already been given the theology that said trans people are bad before they met a trans person. And so that made that knowledge, that relationship less able to move them in their theology and their understanding. And so the problem now today is that the sort of conservative, especially evangelical movement has started focusing so hard on trans folks that now that's just like part of the social zeitgeist, that it's part of people's understanding of what it means to be Christian or what it means to be an American<laugh>, is this idea of like, you have to hate trans people as that part of your identity. Um, so yeah, we're in the middle of, of a really dangerous time, a really difficult time. I think it does help knowing that it's a pushback to the huge gains that we made in like the 2010s, early 2010s. But yeah, it's definitely a hard time to be a trans person and it's a hard time to be a trans Christian.
Speaker 1:And so yeah, just seeing the, like seeing the anti-trans bills coming up and, you know, I watched Pose, pose was one of my favorite shows mm-hmm.<affirmative> when it was out, and I remember watching that show and, and learning a lot about a culture within New York that I didn't know a lot about, but also how much visibility that did give to a lot of trans people of color out there to see themselves in that way. And the power that TV and movies and the power that broad media and things like that have on us as a society. And, and we have this conversation all the time, Simon and I like the power of the creative arts and the media and, and how it expresses things in a way that really connects with people. And so I wonder about like, moving forward in this, because there's always gonna be, we all, I mean, we have to resist what's happening right now, and we have to show allyship in ways that, you know, I think make a big impact. And so, and moving forward, how are we to like move forward in ways that are productive? And I mean advocating for like more representation within these medias, but also within our churches. That is one thing I think about the church that I can't fully understand is, is how we lift up those who are transgender in our churches and denominations and adequately resource them in ways that increases visibility without tokenizing, I don't want to say that, but also there has to be ways to broaden the message and combat this very well organized and well funded media campaign and political campaign against our trans siblings, because I do think it's well funded and well-planned. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, that is the one thing they got going for them Yeah. Is it's very intentional and well-planned. They know what they're doing mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And so how, how do we begin to kind of, you know, resist that in ways that that can combat it some mm-hmm.<affirmative> because it is pretty intentional. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:<affirmative> No, definitely. Yeah. I mean, the number of the, the fact that so many of these bills in state legislatures are just copy pasted from each other mm-hmm.<affirmative> from like the, the, you know, the alliance defending Freedom and all these other huge Christian organizations that they basically just say, here, pass this law. And half the time the legislatures, the legislators that are trying to, uh, introduce a bill haven't even fully read the bill. They're just like, well, this people handed it to me, so now I'll try to get it passed. You know, so it's, yeah, it's very well organized.<laugh> very well funded, but yeah. What can we do as churches and as as communities? I think one thing I always really encourage people to do is to connect with their local L G B T Center, um, and there's a website, lgbtq centers.org, um, and they're a great organization. If you check them out, they will help you find where your nearest LGBTQ center is near you. So check in with them about like, Hey, what kind of programming do you have going on? How can we as a church support it? Right? Um, what are you hearing from people in your community about what they need and how can we as a church help provide that? Right. Um, the same thing goes for any, um, advocacy organization that you have in your state. Like in Minnesota here we have outfront, Minnesota, which is our like L G B T advocacy, legal advocacy group here. And every state, almost every state has one. So connect with your L G B T centers and your advocacy, uh, organizations and just ask them, what are you hearing from your people about what you need and what programming do you have that we can support you with? Because, um, you don't, what you don't wanna do is go to, you know, if you have one trans person in your church, go to that one trans person and be like, please tell me what trans people need<laugh>. Um, because you know, that's really putting them on the spot that's tokenizing. Right. And you, like you said, Lee, we wanna avoid that. But having said that, um, if there are, for instance, you know, several transgender expansive people in your church, um, it wouldn't be completely, uh, uh, outrageous for you as a, as a pastor especially or, or any sort of leader in the church to, you know, ask them, are there specific things that we as a church can do to support you, like as an individual<laugh>? Um, not necessarily saying like you as a representative of all trans people, but like, what do you need as a parishioner of this church? Um, so I've seen churches do all kinds of great things. I've seen them play, uh, you know, designate one closet in the church building as a clothing exchange that's like, here we're gonna bring all the, all of our clothing here. And like, especially folks who are transitioning, who are, um, doing any kind of social transition with clothing, you can't really afford to go out and buy an entirely new wardrobe. So like, how are we gonna source that in our church? Right? I've seen some great examples of churches that have, uh, folks in their congregation who are like retired lawyers. If you have reto retired lawyers in your congregation who know how to help somebody submit the, uh, forms for a change of name and gender marker in your state, that's a great thing you can do just like as a volunteer in your congregation, right? So we wanna get creative, we wanna ask the organizations near us, what do people need? And then we wanna get creative in how we as a community think up ways to provide that for our congregation. Because, you know, those people are parts of our congregation, whether we know it or not, whether they're out or not. These folks are in our congregations. And so, you know, as Simon said earlier, a lot of times churches don't think about this stuff until somebody comes out in their church. And I mean, the number of times that I've been called into a church because it's like, oh my gosh, a kid in our youth group just came out as trans and we have not thought about this at all.<laugh>, that first person ends up being the Guinea pig for all of this, right? And that's really hard. It's hard to be the Guinea pig<laugh>. So think about this stuff before you have people coming to you if you can. Uh, and I know that's, you know, you don't know what you don't know, but that's why we get connected with other organizations that do know, and we can ask them questions.
Speaker 2:I love that. I think that's a, those are also just, again, great examples of practicing allyship, and I appreciate that you said be creative, because I think it's easy to be like, oh, this is gonna add x number of things that we have to do, right? And it's either very procedural or it's all very abstract, or it's all advocacy and the, and when people hear that, they immediately think to like shouting and marching, which is definitely a part of it, but it's not the only thing that you can do, right?<laugh>. And so I appreciate that you've outlined that there are a variety of things and activities that churches, individuals, and communities can do to support and be inclusive and affirming of our, our of our transgender siblings in our, in our faith communities. So thank you for that. I also wanted to give you a chance to just shout out your book a bit. Yeah. Because again, this is updated since 2018, and I think that, I mean, even if I think back to 2018 in terms of just my, I'll be honest, in terms of my own growth in knowledge, that's me personally. And I'm grateful that you're continuing sort of continuing the charge with your book to come back and update it to be like, Hey, the context has changed, the, the, there have been developments. So tell us a little bit more about your book. And again, we'll have a link to it in the show notes so people can check it out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. I'm really, really proud of this second edition. I mean, I was proud of the first edition too, but<laugh>, I'm especially proud of this second edition. I mean, I, we started out with the, the thing that started this new edition was people emailing me and asking, do you have a study guide for your book so the churches can read it as part of like a, a book club? Um, which I love. I am all for that. You know, if you wanna know about trans people's lives and their experiences, don't tokenize the person in your congregation. Have a book club, watch a documentary, right? That's a great way to do it. So I was very excited about that. And so I went to my publisher and I said, Hey, can we create a, uh, book study guide for, for transforming? And she said, you know, I think it's about time to do an update anyway. Let's do an update and then add the study guide. And I was like, that's a great idea. So yeah, there's a study guide and a sermon guide in there, both, um, if you're thinking about like how to talk about transforming with your church. The second thing was I was like, I need to essentially rewrite the chapter on gender language. There's a, a chapter called, uh, the, it's like the armchairs guide, uh, the Armchair Theologians Guide to Gender<laugh>. Like how do you understand the language that we're using if you're not somebody who's familiar with it? And language has changed so much since 2018 in the last five years, and it's gonna continue to change, and that's a good thing. So I'm very specific about like, you know, here's the language we're using right now, be open to change in the future<laugh>. But the way that we talk about gender has really expanded. We used to talk about sort of like separating everything into a sort of assigned sex, like our bodies, the body section, and then like gender identity and making sure people understood that those two things are very separate, right? But the newer models for understanding gender that we're, that I'm currently using and that many people are using are really, they help integrate, like, understand those differences in different parts of who we are, while also acknowledging the holistic person and how these things work together. And so I'm really proud of the, the new chapter on gender language. Because of that, I think it'll help us understand ourselves and each other a little bit better. And then to add on to that, we have a new introduction or a new, uh, forward by Jamie and Rebecca Breloff, who are amazing. And they are gonna have a book out soon too. So I'm excited for them. Um, Rebecca Brusa Hoff is a young trans girl. She's not so young anymore. I think she's 16 now, but she and her mom have been fighting for trans rights since she was a preteen. Like specifically their work within Christian churches is really amazing. And so they wrote the introduction about what being part of an affirming church growing up can mean for somebody, why that's important for a trans kid growing up. So that's there. And then the afterward I'm really excited about, which was, uh, with, uh, Dr. Susanna Cornwall, who's, uh, a professor over in the uk and we talked specifically about the research she's done about pastoral care for trans people. So how do we provide trans-affirming and knowledgeable pastoral care? And as part of that conversation, we also talked about this sort of rising anti-trans sentiment, both in the UK and the US and how we respond to that. So all those things are new, uh, adding into what the original book was. And I'm just, I'm really proud and I hope that people get it and read it with other folks. I'm a big fan of communal reading because people see different things in texts. Uh, so when we read together, we tend to, to get more of that out of our community and out of our books.
Speaker 1:Well, Austen, thank you for being with us. And again, thank you for the energy that it took to be a part of this, uh, podcast today. And for Yeah, bringing your full self and, and all the work that you do. And we will make sure to also have links in the show notes with all the things headed to your book and all the work that you do. And we also just, you know, taking the time out to send love and good energy and all the things life giving to our trans siblings out there. It is a time, and that's the only thing I can describe it as for, for for the community and for our trans siblings. So we're sending love to all of you out there and we stand with you. But Austin, thank you for being with us today.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks everyone for listening to this episode of a Matter of Fate, the Presby podcast, and thanks to Austin for being our guest this week. Thank you for that conversation. And we also wanna remind each of you to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and leave us a review. It really does help the podcast a lot, especially five stars. And if you have any questions for us, send'em the podcast@peaceusa.org. Visit our website, I matter our fake podcast.com. There you'll find our Spanish speaking podcast and our Korean speaking podcast now. And of course, we will talk to you again, as always next week.