Pastor Comes Out at Pulpit: "...I'm Giving Up Pretending to Be a Man"

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

Pastor Comes Out at Pulpit: "I'm Not Becoming a Woman, I'm Giving Up Pretending to Be a Man"

https://www.them.us/story/methodist-pastor-comes-out-trans-north-chili-phillippa-phaneuf 🔗

Abby Monteil (2 Dec 2025)

A Methodist pastor in Rochester, New York recently came out as a transgender woman, telling her congregation, "The best way to put this is that I'm not becoming a woman, I'm giving up pretending to be a man."

At the end of North Chili United Methodist Church's November 23 Sunday morning worship, Pastor Phillippa Phaneuf addressed her congregation with a personal update from the church pulpit, while sporting a rainbow stole (during the November 30 worship service, she donned a trans flag stole).

"I am inviting you to join me in a season of creative transformation for myself, and, I think, for all of us," she said.

Phaneuf began with a medical analogy: "Imagine if your doctor came and told you that your quality and outlook on life could transform exponentially to the positive. Would you listen to that doctor? If you felt God's Holy Spirit surrounding you in ways that you haven't felt in years, would you have a sense that that might be something that God was okay with? Yeah."

"I get to announce with joy that I'm transitioning," she continued, noting that she was telling the congregation because this aspect of her personal life would "make it out" into the larger world...

She said that she's been receiving hormone replacement therapy for the past three months, adding, "That first week... I'm here to tell you that it was just within that first week that I was really truly happy for the first time in a very long time."

[Jillian-TG]

The Pharisee spirit of judgement will come out strongly in that congregation unfortunately but I hope she gets the support of the majority. I love God and consider myself to be a born again Christian attending a Pentecostal church but I'd be the first to say that the church and many Christians are way too judgmental and bigoted.

Each of us walk a unique path and it's between you and your creator. Nobody else gets to judge.

[Lori Dee ✅]

Each of us walk a unique path and it's between you and your creator. Nobody else gets to judge.

Exactly. It is no one's business. After praying for years for an answer, if the Divine wanted a different path for me, He had plenty of opportunity to show me. Instead, He brought me here to Susan's Place.