Father Shannon Kearns
Priest, North American Old Catholic Church
How I Found My Calling as the North American Old Catholic Church's First Transgender Priest
Posted: 01/25/2013 9:31 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/father-shannon-kearns/transgender-priest_b_2546319.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/father-shannon-kearns/transgender-priest_b_2546319.html)
On Jan. 19, 2013, I was ordained as a the first transgender priest in the North American Old Catholic Church. I am a rather unlikely priest. I grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical church that taught that women should not be ministers and that LGBT people were going to hell. My gender was assumed to be female at birth, but something about that never felt right to me. Around puberty I started to feel a discomfort with my body, but I had no words to explain what was going on. Around this same time I started to feel called to be a pastor. These two realizations about myself would continue to grow together and complicate one another.
I desperately wanted to be a part of the church, but so often I felt pushed to the side. I never felt like I fit in. I didn't have the perfect, shiny life that it seemed everyone else had. I always felt like I was pretending to be something I wasn't. I was pretending to be straight, pretending to be a woman, pretending to be happy. I feared that if I told people who I really was, I would be rejected. I struggled with my gender identity (even though I didn't even know those words at the time) and my attractions to women. I left the church of my childhood after I graduated from college. I came out as a lesbian (even though that identity never really seemed to fit). When I was in my 20s, I first learned about transgender people. I read everything I could get my hands on, and the pieces finally clicked into place. Finally I had words to describe the discomfort I had felt growing up. I transitioned to male when I was in seminary, studying to be a minister.
My congratulations to Father Kearns.
I pray that his church will be a blessing to many.
:)