Resources on Transgender

I am a conservative Baptist pastor who sees the Bible as very clear on sexual ethics. However, with the current surge of news about transgenderism, I was looking for biblical scholarship on the issue. I have Collector's Edition and the Chaplain Bundle. Still, a search for the word "Transgender" only turned up 34 resources and 197 results (77 of which are in biblical abstracts, and nearly all of which are passing references). No systematic theology I have comes up, except a footnote in Erickson. Can anyone recommend a resource which engages this issue seriously and with respect to biblical authority?

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Everett Headley

Sadly there is little to nothing from our perpsective in Logos. There are several that I would recommend in dead tree.

FWIW, this is one you will want to have on your shelf, it comes from a conference Golden Gate had, Ministry in a New Marriage Culture: http://www.bhpublishinggroup.com/products/ministry-in-the-new-marriage-culture/

RyanB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721227#Comment_721227

FWIW, this is one you will want to have on your shelf, it comes from a conference Golden Gate had, Ministry in a New Marriage Culture: http://www.bhpublishinggroup.com/products/ministry-in-the-new-marriage-culture/

If you don't want to wait for the book you can watch the 5 keynote sessions from the conference at: https://vimeo.com/channels/ggbtsmarriage

Everett Headley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721232#Comment_721232

Just saw this on vyrso: Conviction without Compromise

David Paul

People who get agitated enough to write on this subject usually zero in on what they consider to be what's "right and wrong". They then get red-faced about insisting people conform to this perspective. This isn't the correct way to address this topic. YHWH sets before mankind "a choice"--Deut. 30:15--life or death, blessing or cursing. Christians seem to constantly overlook the "choice" part of this equation (of course, in reality this is an inequality). YHWH sets the parameters, but allows folks to choose their own paths. Most of those paths will end in a denial of the kingdom and eternal life...but the choice is theirs to make. I would suggest looking for resources that frame this issue in this way, spelling out the cost for choosing the path that doesn't lead to blessing and life...and then acknowledging that the chips must be allowed to fall where they may. Pounding on "right or wrong" can't work, because for some people, the right choice--regardless of what you, I, or the Bible says about it--will be to choose their own path and take the reward of death. Does that mean they are choosing "what is right in their own eyes"? Of course, it does! But as long as they are choosing with their eyes wide open to the pitfalls and consequences, it's their call to make. YHWH says so.

Dave Moser

The Center for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (I have their journal pre-ordered but I'm not sure if there are a lot of articles on transgender issues) recently put out a very helpful article about transgender issues written by a Christian M.D. and one of the editors that I highly recommend. It discusses medical topics, touches on psychology, and concludes with some excellent Christian response.

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721241#Comment_721241

Just saw this on vyrso: Conviction without Compromise

But it reads Compassion without Compromise - Subtitle: How the Gospel Frees Us to Love Our Gay Friends Without Losing the Truth

Everett Headley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721255#Comment_721255

oops

Dan Francis

I do not own this resource but The Complete Christian Guide to Understanding Homosexuality-Joe Dallas (Author, Editor), Nancy Heche (Author, Editor) [Kindle Edition available] has the following endorsement:

"The book that should be on every pastor's desk, every Christian worker and anyone at all who recognizes the need to be better informed about the most crucial cultural challenge facing the church today is The Complete Christian Guide to Understanding Homosexuality."
--Bob Stith, National Strategist for Gender Issues, Southern Baptist Convention

Leading me to believe it might contain the best information for you. Being available in kindle you can easily download the sample to get a better feel.

-Dan

Richard Villanueva

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721265#Comment_721265

I'd second Dan on his recommendation. I own the print copy of "The Complete Guide" (and we keep several copies in our resource cabinets of Pastoral Care References at our Church) and have also heard Joe Dallas and Dr Heche speak at a conference on the topic of ministry to those with Same Sex Attractions (SSA). I've been waiting for it to come to Logos, personally! Unfortunately, the guide only really has one article specifically detailing Transgender issues, but the issue is enmeshed in the entirety of the SSA and LBTQ lifestyle. Its a great resource to own.

Searching for SSA and LGBT ministry resources would be a great start. You may also want to look up resources regarding ministering to people suffering from Gender Dysphoria and Body Dysmorphic Disorder. This arena of ministry is definitely in great need of study, compassion, and resources!

As a side note, I've really enjoyed listening to a fellow named Sy Rogers share his testimony. He lived a gay lifestyle, and even as woman in preparation for a gender reassignment surgery until he had a revelation of God's love and plan for his life. He has overcame the lifestyle, eventually married, has children (and grandchildren) and travels sharing the hope that Christ can recuse people from this lifestyle. I'm sure you can find him on iTunes.

David Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721296#Comment_721296

sharing the hope that Christ can recuse people from this lifestyle.

Interesting word here...whether intentional or not, I suppose it fits.

Richard Villanueva

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721316#Comment_721316

[:|] Ha!

I meant rescue, though I do figure both are apt!! Depending on which way you respond to God's call to repentance!

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721324#Comment_721324

For starters - don't confuse transgender issues with issues of homosexuality, bisexuality, marriage equality etc. Think more along the lines of hermaphrodites. You can find a number of resources including bibliographic material at http://www.religioustolerance.org/transsexu.htm

GaoLu

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721342#Comment_721342

Best Resource might be the plain old fashioned Bible: Gen 1:27

Justin Gatlin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721342#Comment_721342

Thanks for all of the help, everyone. It seems like there is not much in Logos. But I guess the issue is relatively new. I think that is made clear by the Transsexuals in history page on ReligiousTolerance, which is mostly a list of transvestites, with exactly 0 cases listed of what we would call transsexuality. I will have to look into the dead tree books and the lecture, but I was really hoping for some kind of a systematic theology which dealt with these kinds of problems as a part of anthropology (and hamartiology), instead of as an island. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers.

MJ, I understand what you mean. But I am not the one who put them all together (and not hermaphrodites) in the popular acronym.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721363#Comment_721363

Yes, Justin, I know you didn't ... but some of the responses did. I suspect that there are few in history because they were generally not identified as "different" see http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/02/us/musician-s-death-at-74-reveals-he-was-a-woman.html

Rayner

I am a conservative Baptist pastor who sees the Bible as very clear on sexual ethics. However, with the current surge of news about transgenderism, I was looking for biblical scholarship on the issue.

I don't think that you are necessarily looking for anything that would contradict your initially stated position, but these are the books I think look the most interesting:

Omnigender: A Trans-Religious approach - Virginia Ramey Mollenkott

Trans/formations - Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood

Dan Francis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721380#Comment_721380

One thing to also remember is 1/1000 births are ambiguous sex (can not determine 100% birth sex).... these children are almost always raised female after corrective surgery. Please keep in mind being raised the wrong sex can be extremely confusing and frustrating. I did not recommend items that I suspected would be highly disagreeable with your position. Even for people who are genetically identified properly it is no less upsetting to feel so uncomfortable in one's skin as to be disgusted with it. I am not trying to defend their feelings but hope you can understand how it drives many to despair.

-Dan

Richard Villanueva

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721388#Comment_721388

Homosexuality and Transgender issues are definitely two different subjects to tackle (ministering to a lesbian woman and a gay man would benefit from a different approach, as well). It's seems they get lumped together because the community shares a similar cause, especially in their pursuit of Civil Liberties. Understanding the different terms would probably help hone a search in Logos (or online and on Amazon, for that matter.)

Ministering to a hermaphrodite/intersex person would differ from someone that is transgender in that a transgender person has or is in the process of reassigning their birth gender by their own choice; whereas a hermaphrodite is born with both or an ambiguous physical sex. But, like Dan mentioned, someone assigned a female gender at birth without having a choice or say in it could deal a person some extreme trauma and identity confusion! It's something my mind can't grasp. Mercy, patience, and understanding would be necessary, to say the very least.

I appreciate the resources listed above! If anyone has others, please do share! With the way our culture's current state of reasoning is going, I think it's a matter of "when", not "if" we come across transgender people entering and seeking ministry in many of our churches. I'm not thrilled it's a subject we have to talk about, but I am glad that we as a biblical community ARE talking about it and sharing resources.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721411#Comment_721411

I don't think someone has to be transitioning or transitioned to be transgendered. I know an individual who by the time they were 3 their playmates were confused as to the individual's gender. It was 30 years later that it occurred to the individual that "transgender" might apply to them.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721368#Comment_721368

The first transgender person I ever heard of was Walter Carlos, the composer and electronic musician, who became Wendy Carlos. Back then it was unheard of. I knew her back when she was a "him" from his Switched-On Bach recordings (synthesizer versions of Bach's music), and then was pretty shocked to hear of her conversion to a female. You could still tell by looking at her wrists, that she had been a man, because they were much larger than a woman's more delicate wrists.

Of course now it's more commonplace, but still makes many people uncomfortable. Christians in particular, because we're not quite sure what to make of this phenomenon in light of "male and female he created them." Did God make a mistake in some people and make them male on the outside but with a female soul (as Bruce Jenner claims s/he has always felt s/he had). I'm not sure about this female soul thing, but there definitely are intersex people, who have either both male and female organs, or have the organs of one gender but chromosomally or hormonally they are the other gender. So it isn't just a matter of how a person "feels" about what gender they are. I've seen a helpful chart that shows gender/sexuality as multiple continuums not just one.

One of the couples in my church has a daughter who was born male and transitioned to female, and they have fully accepted her new identity, though it took them a while to come to terms with it.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721424#Comment_721424

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_sworn_virgins

http://www.featureshoot.com/2012/12/fascinating-portraits-of-women-living-as-men-to-escape-oppression-in-the-balkans/

The above deal with Albanian burrnesha which while not specifically transgendered provides a social position for a portion of the transgendered community.

GaoLu

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721442#Comment_721442

I had (back during the hippie era) a friend who self-identified as being asparagus or something like that. I wonder if there is a chart for that?

He even wrote an autobiography and gave me a free signed copy which I can't find. Tolly Burkan, AKA Tolly the clown, sort of started the global fire-walking interest. Years ago I think he called it "On fire for the Lord," or something like that. He claimed to be a Christian at some point, though I don't know his current status.

His case isn't really transgender, but it might be trans--[what]?

Dan Francis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/723175#Comment_723175

That would be, I suppose, trans-species.[:P] It has been said God makes no mistakes but in a fallen creation many things go awry... I just hope all God's children can find happiness and wholeness.

-Dan

Everett Headley

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/721442#Comment_721442

MJ,

Thanks for the article on Sworn Virgins, I had never heard of that. Very interesting.

Dan Starcevich

I think Robert Gagnon's work is the definitive source for dealing with historical, grammatical, issues http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-Homosexual-Practice-Hermeneutics/dp/0687022797

He was also on a recent Unbelievable! podcast in a heated discussion with a gay affirming anglican theologian. It is worth a listen.

James Hiddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/723175#Comment_723175

I had (back during the hippie era) a friend who self-identified as being asparagus

Wow I had a friend that self-identified himself as being broccoli [:P] [:D]

Sorry couldn't resist. I think you meant aspergers.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/723518#Comment_723518

I had (back during the hippie era) a friend who self-identified as being asparagus

Wow I had a friend that self-identified himself as being broccoli

Sorry couldn't resist. I think you meant aspergers.

No, he probably really meant asparagus. He added the parenthetical comment "(back during the hippie era)" so the friend was probably doing drugs.

Asperger's was virtually unknown back then anyway. Hans Asperger described the symptoms in the 1940s in German, but the term "Asperger's Syndrome" was not in use in Dr. Asperger's lifetime (he died in 1980). It was popularized by a paper published in 1981. It only entered the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in 1994.

Veli Voipio

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/723951#Comment_723951

I received the NEAR EAST ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN journal set some days ago. It has an interesting review:

Eva Cantarella. Bisexuality in the Ancient World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Translated by Cormac O Cuilleanain. 284 pp.

Mark K. Fulk,
Department of English,
Miami University,
Oxford, OH 45056

In academics, the subject of homosexuality has recently become a major area of interest, due in large part to the fight at the political and social level for rights and status. With the discovering of “Gay Studies” at many universities, academics have also turned their attention to the status of the homosexual and bisexual in societies previous to our own. Though much of this type of scholarship is devoted to furthering current political aims, Eva Cantarella’s volume resists an overemphasis on contemporary trends and agendas in favor of solid and informative scholarship and documentation.

In truth, this text could become a standard for the discussion of homosexuality in the ancient world. Surveying with depth and detail the many different discourses concerning sexuality in Greece and Rome, Cantarella considers numerous kinds of texts and histories. In her consideration of Greece, for instance, she gives prominent attention to legal arguments alongside more traditional considerations of Plato, Sappho and the lyric poetic traditions. One of her key texts in this section is Aeschine’s court speech Against Timarchus. Reading this work as an “expression of popular morality,” (p. 21) Cantarella uses the text to structure her understanding of the boundaries of the socially sanctioned practice of pederasty in the education of young men.

A large portion of Cantarella’s work on ancient Greece centers on a detailed historical compiling and reading of references to homosexuality in prominent as well as less familiar authors. Along with close attention to Plato and Aeschines, Cantarella also considers in detail Xenophon, Plutarch, Aristotle and others. Her survey and readings provide the range of sources and issues involved in any discussion of homosexuality in ancient Greece.

Not only does she consider male-male forms of homosexuality, but she also gives ample attention to lesbianism and impressions of lesbianism by contemporary male writers. Giving detailed attention to Sappho, Cantarella concludes that female-female homosexuality provided more of a “counterculture” for ancient Greeks than the socializing influences of male-male homosexuality (p. 86). Her conclusions regarding lesbianism in ancient Greece are as follows:

The homosexual relationship (between women), although linked by context and culture to the period of a woman’s life when girls changed from the status of virgin to the status of married women, seems to me devoid of the institutional education value which was attached, in male initiations, to intercourse with another man (p. 84).

When she turns to ancient Rome, again Cantarella surveys the range of different discourses about homosexuality. Using the Greeks as a point of comparison, Cantarella demonstrates how a shift in the use of homosexuality occurred.

Cantarella once again relies heavily on legal sources, though she by no means neglects literary and other historical documents. Two legal pronouncements that she gives significant attention to are the Lex Scatinia, passed in 149 B.C., and the Lex lulia de adulteries coercendis, passed in 18 B.C. With these and other documents, Cantarella surveys the different attitudes towards homosexuality in the ancient Roman society. Using these sources to construct the attitudes, she turns to key passages in some of the major Roman poets (particularly Catullus, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace and Ovid). In her analysis of Catullus, for instance, she demonstrates how his poetry situates itself between the two cultures of Greece and Rome, giving nuance and insight to some of the more obscure portions of his verse. In conclusion, she claims that “Catullus … lives out his heterosexual and homosexual love affairs in an absolutely identical way” and truly typifies a more modern understanding of the idea of bisexuality (p. 128). Likewise, Cantarella manages to offer insight and depth of interpretation to the other authors she considers in this section of her history.

Finally, and perhaps most remarkably given the current political climate, Cantarella historicizes the Biblical (particularly the Pauline) injunctions against homosexual behavior. Without either arguing that they are misinterpreted and apply only to a specific subset of male-male homosexuality, or dismissing them, Cantarella places them in their historical context and shows why and how Paul could arrive at this injunction that applies to all male-male homosexual behavior.

Always providing ample translations of the more important excerpts under consideration Cantarella’s volume stands as a hallmark of the type of scholarship needed to more objectively discuss issues still volatile today. I would highly recommend this book to the scholar of ancient Greece, Rome, and Biblical studies. However I would also recommend this text as appropriate for undergraduates and graduates interested in ancient articulations of homosexuality and also as an excellent way of isolating key texts and references to these notions in the ancient world.

Fulk, M. K. (1996). Review of Bisexuality in the Ancient World by Eva Cantarella. Translated by Cormac O Cuilleanain. The Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin, 41, 90–91.

*****

Amazon seems to have a newer edition http://www.amazon.com/Bisexuality-Ancient-World-Eva-Cantarella/dp/0300093020/

Matthew

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/723951#Comment_723951

It only entered the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in 1994.

And you may already know this, but it has been removed in the current 5th edition of the DSM. Or I suppose I should more accurately state it was merged and has become part of autism spectrum disorder.