When I first came out as non-binary and trans eight years ago, some people tried to tell me I should ‘find my identity in Christ’ - not in my transness or my non- binary gender. I didn’t understand why they thought my gender and my identity in Christ were mutually exclusive, especially when they didn’t say the same to all the cis people happily identifying with their various genders. Now I know that actually the opposite is true: my transness is part of my identity in Christ, because it is one of the things God has called me into.
Someone’s transness is not irrelevant to or in competition with their life with God, it is part of their vocation. For me, understanding my transness as vocation has been an inevitable result of my experience. I’ve been exploring a sense of vocation for as long as I’ve understood myself to be non binary, and since I feel called to monastic life, where gender is a primary dividing line between monks and nuns, brothers and sisters, my transness and my non-binary identity have always had to be a central consideration in that exploration. At times, it’s felt like my gender was just getting in the way of my real vocation, and it’s been tempting to believe that idea that trans identity is incompatible with identity in Christ. But, as I’ve navigated the journeys of my transness and my sense of monastic vocation side by side, I’ve had to realise that vocation is a bigger thing than I’d thought, and that my transness is part of my monastic vocation and my monastic vocation is part of my transness.
Vocation is a big idea, but at its most basic level, it’s about what God is calling us to. That might be a particular way of life, a job, a relationship - or it might be personal, God calling us into the fullness of who They made us to be, in Their image, by Their love. This is what I have found my transness to be. A calling into a fuller version of who I am as God’s child, a calling which brings things together into unity: my body and my soul, me and my trans siblings, me and the rest of the body of Christ, me and God.
A conservative theological argument I have often heard against trans people is that by transitioning, especially medically, we are denying our bodies in favour of our souls,splitting our bodies and souls apart and therefore practising a kind of dualism that goes against Christianity.
But, in reality, transitioning has brought together my body and soul in a way I didn’t even realise was possible before. Having top surgery enabled me to ‘bring my body home’ (to quote Henri Nouwen), to recognise it as part of myself just as much as my soul is, and to trust it in my discernment. Transitioning is not denying our bodies, it is treating them as temples - or, to borrow the metaphor of Jay Hulme, it is treating them as cathedrals, which are rebuilt and restored and repurposed constantly, adapting to need yet always filled with prayer, seeking God, following God’s call.
Our identity in Christ must be an embodied identity, because we are the body of Christ. Since we are all members of the body of Christ, it is a multi-gendered body, a singular body that contains diversity. It is also a body that takes the gender-neutral form of bread (depending on your Eucharistic theology), and a body that birthed the church through the wound in its side. The body of Christ is expansive enough for its trans members, and it is into this expansive, diverse, queerly-gendered body of Christ that God calls us, to live out our vocations, our transness, our belovedness.
Written by Jem Parker (they/them), a member of SCM's Trans* Theology Group. This reflection was originally included in SCM's resource, The Little Book of Trans Theology, Affirmation, and Joy.