Christian Attitudes to Transgender People Are Changing

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/duncan-j-dormor/christian-attitudes-to-tr_b_8712462.html?utm_hp_ref=transgender

The Huffington Post/By Duncan J Dormor   12/04/2015

The truth is that the accepting Churches are a tiny minority when you consider Christianity as a whole.  Three denominations make up about 80% of the whole and those three are not accepting.  The remaining 20% are all over the map on every conceivable issue.


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Quote from: Deborah on December 04, 2015, 11:36:47 PM
The truth is that the accepting Churches are a tiny minority when you consider Christianity as a whole.  Three denominations make up about 80% of the whole and those three are not accepting.  The remaining 20% are all over the map on every conceivable issue.


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I was raised Catholic, Catholic grade school, Catholic High School, Catholic College Catholic University.  The only church I serve is the New Testament and the words handed down some 2000 years as printed in the text of the New Testament. I accept all , I'm an equal opportunity self ordained teacher of those who want to know Christ. Trans are welcome.

I think attitudes have changed noticeably for the better just in the last few years (at least in Scandinavia, where I live). Many in my extended family belong to very conservative Christian congregations, and they have been accepting. One of the most encouraging and supportive messages I got after coming out when I changed my name, was from a fairly traditional Catholic priest. I know people who ridiculed trans people less than ten years ago, while now respecting us. People are starting to get it - in my case, I haven't had one judgemental statement directed at me, though I do know there's probably some less than accepting chatter among those of my acquaintances who haven't said a word to me since I came out. Some people seem to think that "if you have nothing positive to say, don't say it to the person, but talk behind their backs instead". But anyhow, while trans-accepting churches may be in minority, there's a noticeable movement towards acceptance in the attitudes of their faithful, and that will over time also change the churches' attitudes.

Quote from: Rina on December 05, 2015, 05:25:35 AM
I think attitudes have changed noticeably for the better just in the last few years (at least in Scandinavia, where I live). Many in my extended family belong to very conservative Christian congregations, and they have been accepting. One of the most encouraging and supportive messages I got after coming out when I changed my name, was from a fairly traditional Catholic priest. I know people who ridiculed trans people less than ten years ago, while now respecting us. People are starting to get it - in my case, I haven't had one judgemental statement directed at me, though I do know there's probably some less than accepting chatter among those of my acquaintances who haven't said a word to me since I came out. Some people seem to think that "if you have nothing positive to say, don't say it to the person, but talk behind their backs instead". But anyhow, while trans-accepting churches may be in minority, there's a noticeable movement towards acceptance in the attitudes of their faithful, and that will over time also change the churches' attitudes.

Rina:
I think it's possibly due to the fact
they worried about some backlash from
a lot of LGBT Groups and other organizations.
OR:
The churches survive because people donate and most
of the time they do this at the service/mass.
If the church needs this they are more then likely
not going to be able to be stingy about who they let
in. Basically they need the funding so they, are like
ah let's just let em in. I also think some churches are remember
the words of CHRIST and not their own agendas.
Even after years of being out I still have not gotten
the guts to inform my pastor who baptized me.
One day I will. I will see how that pans out.
As for someone placing judgement if any of them ever
do, they are not supposed to and quote this to them directly:
Luke 6:37
"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven."
----
Mathew 3:7
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

     I was baptized, raised, and confirmed in the UCC Church.  They were at the forefront of gay marriage and as a statement of belief most have become ONA, open and affirming, churches.  This is an expression of the worth and total acceptance of LGBT people.  They were at the forefront of the gay marriage movement.  I am not trying to push the church but there is an interesting statement on their website;
"When new ONA churches attract new members, many of them are young straight couples starting new families: they identify with the values ONA represents, and want their children to learn the faith in a welcoming church."
      If you look at the demographics of the more conservative Christian churches you will find that baptisms are down dramatically.  The numbers in the pews may be fairly stable but their demographics are about the same as Faux News.  Old. If you search for demographics on acceptance levels/age you find that there is a direct association of age to acceptance.  Older people hate us; Younger people are far more accepting.  This translates to a major change in attitudes of the younger crowd to old, conservative, mainline churches which no longer reflect their beliefs and mores.  The fastest growing designation of this younger crowd is the SBNR church-Spiritual but not religious.  Couple this with rising educational levels and the fact that education is directly related to acceptance levels then you can see that the old ways are dying out. 
     I remember when divorce was a HUGE no no in the Conservative churches.  As it gained acceptance in the pews the Ministers railed against it, then some actually tried to come up with a two tier marriage scheme where the highest level would forbid divorce.  That went nowhere.  Finally, they realized that the "die had been cast" they lost, and they backed off.  I suspect mostly in order to maintain income levels.  But I am a cynic.  The recent fiasco in Tenn (?) with the clerk of court who refused to sign off on gay marriages had no problem signing divorce decrees, another one of her jobs.  Read what Jesus said about divorce.   
    The point I am trying to make is that the large numbers of more moderate ministers will have a "Paul on the road to Damascus" conversion as they watch the old people die off and collections go down.   

Quote from: CaptainxTatsuo on December 05, 2015, 05:45:00 AM
Rina:
I think it's possibly due to the fact
they worried about some backlash from
a lot of LGBT Groups and other organizations.
OR:
The churches survive because people donate and most
of the time they do this at the service/mass.
If the church needs this they are more then likely
not going to be able to be stingy about who they let
in. Basically they need the funding so they, are like
ah let's just let em in. I also think some churches are remember
the words of CHRIST and not their own agendas.
Even after years of being out I still have not gotten
the guts to inform my pastor who baptized me.
One day I will. I will see how that pans out.
As for someone placing judgement if any of them ever
do, they are not supposed to and quote this to them directly:
Luke 6:37
"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven."
----
Mathew 3:7
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

This may be true for some churches, but I'm primarily speaking of the people who are members of different non-accepting churches, and they have nothing to fear from organizations unless they're being very vocal in media. Also, I find few churches (except those with close ties to the state) to worry too much about backlash, except some perhaps calming their rethoric to avoid attention.

So I believe the reactions I got and the acceptance people expressed to be genuine - if anything, they did it without fear of repercussions from their conservative denominations. There are actually studies out there proving that members of conservative churches (or conservative groups within a church) fear repercussion from their church more than social backlash in greater society, since most of their social life is in their church. I don't have time to find it right now, but it's googlable.

As for the churches, I believe change will happen because of the faithful changing their attitude - I'm not as convinced money plays so big a part, except for the kind of "churches" (I prefer to call them corporations) where pastors have six-figure salaries, drive luxury cars and own private jets. And those churches are in the minority - most have problems making ends meet, and don't pressure their faithful to give money. Neither do I think societal pressure will make most churches change. This is why churches often are a generation or two "behind" - changes from within take time.

I hope they do change for all those that are still Christians.  For me it's too late.  While I still have some faith in Christ it has morphed into something not seen in Christianity for at least 700 years.  So while I can in good conscious pray to Christ I refuse to attach my name to the label Christian in this era where it has ceased to have any real meaning with its multitudinous competing and contradictory sects, each claiming the one divine truth.  That in itself has nullified any claim Christianity makes to being the "true path to the divine."


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Quote from: Deborah on December 05, 2015, 08:17:36 AM
I hope they do change for all those that are still Christians.  For me it's too late.  While I still have some faith in Christ it has morphed into something not seen in Christianity for at least 700 years.  So while I can in good conscious pray to Christ I refuse to attach my name to the label Christian in this era where it has ceased to have any real meaning with its multitudinous competing and contradictory sects, each claiming the one divine truth.  That in itself has nullified any claim Christianity makes to being the "true path to the divine."


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I think the important point is Christ not what others have created

Quote from: Deborah on December 05, 2015, 08:17:36 AM
While I still have some faith in Christ it has morphed into something not seen in Christianity for at least 700 years. 
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Please elucidate.

Quote from: Aviya on December 20, 2015, 09:42:09 PM

Please elucidate.

Ok.  But I'll admit up front that my current beliefs are not yet fully formed.  I am still thinking about it all.

First, I finally rejected Christianity about a year ago after several years of feeling dejected by it all.  And I did know fully what I was rejecting because I ad been very active in church leadership for years and had studied at a seminary. 

So I tried to convince myself that was an atheist.  But I found I didn't really believe that deep down primarily because of one particularly powerful experience I had about 20 years ago.  It can be described as a mystical experience along the lines of what I have read from others.  There was that and the fact of my mother's near death experience of the eternal realm she described to me in great detail.

So I have fallen back to something else, Gnostic thought.  I said it hadn't been seen in Christianity for 700 years because that was when the last significant Gnostic Christian group was forced out of existence during the Albigensian Crusade.

So a broad outline of my forming faith is I do believe there is a supreme God and a piece of his divine Spirit "light" is in each of us and that we reunite ourselves with God by recognizing, knowing, and cultivating that light.

Most people remain ignorant of it and instead go off worshiping lesser deficient entities that keep them imprisoned in spiritual ignorance.  I believe that the God of the Old Testament and of all three Abrahamic faiths is a particularly malevolent and ignorant entity that people falsely worship as the God of Light.  Simply reading the Old Testament in its entirety is enough to reveal him as such and yes, we as humans are equipped to give that judgement.

Genesis 3.22. "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:"

Our original sin was no sin at all.  It was instead a spiritual awakening that exposes his evil character and enables us to see the true light.  Most people remain blind to it.

In the early years of Christianity there were many who believed this to be what The Christ came to teach.  I believe this too.  They lost the battle to the orthodoxy of what became the established church beginning in the late second century and most of their writings were destroyed by the Church.  They reemerged several times over the centuries, the last major group being the Cathars in 13th century France who were all massacred or forcibly converted by the Church during the Albigensian Crusade.

So, that's a very brief synopsis of where my spiritual beliefs are headed towards.  I believe in The Christ and I am not a Christian.





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I'm going to think about that for a while. Thanks for sharing.

The Church we attend is an Anglo/Catholic High church and they are fine with Me being Trans .I am often asked to do the Readings and am also fully welcome to their Woman's coffee meetings  help out in the Kitchen at church events and there has never been a single problem with anybody especially considering that My Wife still uses my Male name to address me there They all call me Steve but treat me like a woman . They are all wonderful