As Church Potluck makes its return from an extended break, we're setting the table to feast on a diversity of Christian experiences and insights. Our latest episode serves up an intimate look at the complex and controversial intersection of faith and transgender identity. We are joined by two transgender clergy members, Rev. Kimble Sorrells and Rev. Andi Woodworth, who each share their personal and spiritual journeys with us. We are also joined by students from my (Dale's) class on the sociology of sex, gender, and sexuality, with several of them asking questions. Regardless of where you fall on the theological spectrum, we hope you find the podcast informative.
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
As Church Potluck makes its return from an extended break, we're setting the table to feast on a diversity of Christian experiences and insights. Our latest episode serves up an intimate look at the complex and controversial intersection of faith and transgender identity. We are joined by two transgender clergy members, Rev. Kimble Sorrells and Rev. Andi Woodworth, who each share their personal and spiritual journeys with us. We are also joined by students from my (Dale's) class on the sociology of sex, gender, and sexuality, with several of them asking questions. Regardless of where you fall on the theological spectrum, we hope you find the podcast informative.
The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.
Hi, this is Dale McConkey, host of Church Pot. Look, I wanted to take a couple of minutes to share three news items with you before we start the episode. First, you may have noticed that we have been on hiatus for a few months and my apologies for that. I way overextended myself last semester. But we're back up and running and hopefully we'll be providing regular episodes with you all throughout the rest of the year. Second, what do you do when you just apologize for being overextended? You announce a new podcast. This will be an experimental podcast that tracks my deep dive this year, both personally and professionally, with Jesus Movies, and the podcast is going to be called Jesus Christ Movie Star. Jesus Christ Movie Star.
Speaker 1:This is going to be a very experimental thing. It may be a short-lived thing, it may be a sustainable thing we will find out but I'm going to focus on Jesus Movies this semester, so I thought of my as we'll go ahead and share them with you all. So stay tuned for an episode, definitely by next week sometime. And finally, today's episode was recorded back in October In my sex and gender class last semester. I invited two clergy friends who also identify as transgender and then they spoke to my class and in fact, you'll hear my class asking questions in this episode. But then our guests spoke at a campus lecture in the evening and the auditorium was filled with capacity. In fact, they had to turn some students away because of the fire codes, and I know this issue of transgenderism and everything around LGBTQ matters is a very controversial topic.
Speaker 1:My goal at Church Potluck is to provide opportunities to learn about a variety of religious perspectives, so I hope you enjoy hearing about these clergy's experiences, no matter where you fall on the theological spectrum. Okay, on with the show. Three, two, one. So how has the day been so far?
Speaker 3:It's been alright Good to go. Yeah, it's had a good drive. Chicken pop on.
Speaker 1:Right, Kimball, you are back on campus for not the first time since you were a student, but what's been the biggest striking thing for you? Oh?
Speaker 4:I was just telling you yeah, I walked in and Evans Hall still smells exactly the same and everything else is different.
Speaker 1:That's what you all have to look forward to. The college smells from Evans Hall. Well, welcome everyone to Church Potluck, where we are serving up a smorgasbord of Christian curiosity. I'm your host. Y'all can't laugh at that. Alright, this is going to be bad, bad, bad. I'm your host, dale McConkey, sociology professor and United Methodist pastor, and you know there are two keys to a good Church Potluck Plenty of variety and engaging conversation. And this is exactly what we are trying to do on Church Potluck sitting down with friends and sharing our ideas from a variety of topics, from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian traditions. We have two very special guests to introduce to you today. First of all, I just get open it up and just let you all introduce yourself from the beginning Sure.
Speaker 3:My name is Andy Woodworth and I use she they pronouns. I'm one of the pastors of Neighborhood Church in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'm also a United Methodist clergy person.
Speaker 1:That is awesome and we usually this is what we usually do when we introduce our guests but we have a live audience and so let's see if the live audience can out do the techno applause. So could you all just welcome Andy for us. Oh, that is not as good as this. This is much louder, so anyway, but thank you, that was a good effort. Okay, and our second guest we have Kimball Sorrells.
Speaker 4:Yes, my name's Kimball and I use they them pronouns or he him pronouns. Both are fine and I am a Barry alum and I am a ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and also my day job. I work at Emory's Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion Based Ethics, or as we like to just sometimes call it, the Compassion Center.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. Here's the automatic applause and now the class applause. All right, no cheering, though there was applause, but I didn't hear the cheering like I heard on the automatic applause there. So I can tell we're doing something very different than we've ever done on Church of Pollock before. We have a live audience where we are recording this.
Speaker 1:During my one of my upper level courses, the sociology of sex, gender and sexuality, and Andy and Kimball just finished talking to my sociology of religion class, and so we're working them hard and we brought them on campus to also do a lecture this evening, and the title of that lecture is Ministry of Transformation a conversation with Transclergy, and so by that title you might have been able to surmise by now that both Andy and Kimball identify as trans. And Andy and Kimball, we're going to start right now. I've already told you about this blue button here. This blue button is for you to press. I downloaded it especially.
Speaker 1:Usually we're very affirming on Church of Pollock and we use this whenever you get something right, but this blue button here is for you to press anytime I misgender you, anytime I use awkward or inappropriate wording. This is what you need to press this for, all right. So that is that my conversations with my son. Whenever we're talking about issues and I'm talking about someone I know who is trans, I'll say she goes them and then goes to the next thing with her. That's right, he doesn't have the button, but he just keeps correcting me. You use the term in elasticity in the last class. My brain, for whatever reason, tends to be very inelastic, despite whatever good intentions I have, and so you just practice right now.
Speaker 3:There you go. All right, we're having this button. I need one of these buttons.
Speaker 4:No, can we get this in church?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for all sorts of reasons, the congregation might want that for your sermon. Exactly right. All right, let's just start off by letting you all jump in. However you want to tell your stories as being trans, I'm sure, is a distinctive enough moniker. That was me that pressed that one that time, but that is as a very distinctive characteristic to have. But then to be trans and to be clergy, you must be in a very tiny sliver of the global population and the US population. So go ahead and tell us a little bit about your experiences, however you want.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's not a lot of us and we have meetings we do. Yeah, we've met at the meetings. We've met at the meetings, that's right. So, yeah, like this is Andy and I grew up in Atlanta and was a part of a pretty progressive United Methodist congregation, growing up and went into the Methodist ministry after seminary and, after a brief stint running a Presbyterian summer camp and then about seven years into my ministry as an elder of the United Methodist Church, I was given the opportunity to help start a new congregation called Neighborhood Church and around 40 years old. While I was serving at neighborhood, realized that I was trans and decided that I needed to transition for myself and just for my health and mental health and commitment to being who God made me to be, and so started that process not too many years ago, and so I'm about four years into my transition journey and all of that has gone remarkably well. Wow, yeah, so I'm blessed to be able to be trans and also still be a pastor.
Speaker 1:That's very interesting, and you said that it's about four year process. Is that also about as long as you sort of came out to your congregation, or has it been more recent than that?
Speaker 3:It's been a blended journey.
Speaker 3:So I started the process of transitioning right in January of 2020 and figured oh, I'll kind of explore some of this stuff.
Speaker 3:And then we had COVID, and so I was inside of my house for a very long time figuring some stuff out and going through the process of a medical transition, so doing hormone replacement therapy, and then when we started to come back to in-person stuff about a year and a half later actually I don't know how long other congregations did the stay away thing, but we did that for about a year and a half and when we started coming back in person, I showed up as myself because that's the best way to show up to a thing as it turns out and shared with folks that I was realizing that I was non-binary and I describe myself as trans, feminine, non-binary. I think if you saw me on the street you would say, oh my gosh, she looks just like Courtney Cox, except taller and maybe even more radiantly gorgeous. So this is a podcast. You can't really tell that, but everybody here in this room knows that right, how dazzlingly attractive I am. Yes, of course, that's the right answer, thank you.
Speaker 1:So the class knows they can't hear you on the podcast shaking your head up and down. You have to do something audible to make it work.
Speaker 3:Yes, oh you got a career in this here. Kim, you can buzz me for all that. I need stuff that I'm throwing in here. But once we came back to in-person stuff, I was able to just sort of show up as myself, but I was really concerned about telling too much about who I was learning myself to be to the internet. I didn't want to kind of come out in a sermon or something like that without knowing what the consequences would be with my congregation or with my denomination, and so I ended up having some conversation with my church leadership, my congregational leadership and then my bishop and some other leaders, and after getting basically affirmative answers from all of those folks very affirming answers then I decided to come out to the world in a not a sermon, but a testimonial moment in worship in March of 2022. So about a year and a half ago at this point.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I want to definitely talk more about that and coming out to the world on the internet a little bit later. But, kimball, you jump in here. I want to talk a little bit about your faith journey and your journey coming out as trans.
Speaker 4:Sure. So I grew up in Birmingham, alabama, and as a young kid wasn't necessarily going to church but eventually did start going to church in the Southern Baptist church in a youth group setting and at the time had sort of a I guess we might call it a sort of dramatic conversion experience where I was sort of praying for God to speak to me and then the pastor got up and talked about Romans one and not being gay and so I as a so did kind of the ex gay thing for a hot minute. And how long was a hot minute? Oh, several years. So that was kind of high school-ish time. And then I ended up coming here to Barry. College was in one shape program was still kind of deeply in the evangelical world.
Speaker 1:And probably all of you out there, know the wind shape program. We most of our listeners, I think have some kind of very connected connection. But the wind shape program how would you describe it? As someone who was an insider in the wind shape program?
Speaker 4:Sure, I would say that the short version is that and then maybe this is the official version is that it's a leadership, christian leadership program. It's funded by Chick-fil-A Everyone is on mountain campus I assume they still are these days. But that's sort of the short version and definitely in the evangelical kind of flavor of things. So came to Barry and was still trying to do that whole ex-gay thing and it wasn't really working and was studying psychology and sort of learning about the science of gender and sexuality and realizing that this is not something that I can change and really also I was a religion major and so studying religion and helping me to sort of deconstruct the understanding of the Bible that I had grown up with and that shifted through my time at college really to be able to see my at the time I didn't even have a concept of my gender, but at least my sexuality, as being something that wasn't an opposition of my faith.
Speaker 4:I won't go in too much detail now but I'll kind of skip to the head of the short version and fast forward. A few years went to seminary sort of late in seminary was when I was able to sort of start articulating my gender and kind of by for the first time, hearing other trans people's stories and saying, oh okay, that sounds like me, I came to understand myself as non-binary. I, at this point, had long since left the Evangelical Church and was in the ordination process of the United Church of Christ, which is a very affirming denomination.
Speaker 1:You made it in my sociology of religion class. You did a good job saying United Church of Christ is very different from Church of Christ. Those of you who are familiar with Church of Christ down here in the south, that's a very conservative denomination. The UCC United Church of Christ is more rooted in the north and much more of a actually probably one of the most progressive denominations in American Christianity.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's a very progressive Christian denomination. I think we are predominantly up north because we have so much of our history is tied to congregationalism basically. So people down in the south may not have heard of us, but I ended up in UCC. But even in this sort of very progressive, affirming denomination did experience some challenges in the ordination process kind of especially in my conference there hadn't been any ordained trans clergy yet. Even though we had been ordaining trans people in the denomination for some time, there definitely wasn't anyone that was non-binary.
Speaker 4:And so there's just some bumps in the road, which I always say, even in sort of a progressive setting, and I think in some ways that delayed a little bit of my transition, especially sort of my medical transition. So, even as I was kind of figuring out pronouns and stuff, I sort of a little bit held back and delayed, I think a little bit as I was kind of trying to also navigate this ordination process, but sort of as I was navigating that and was ordained in I think it was 2014. Oh man, where's my memory? Not long after that, I think felt a little bit more freedom to kind of more fully live into that and begin my medical transition not long after. And yeah, I guess the rest is history. And that's the short version. That's kind of short version, it's still long-winded.
Speaker 1:Let's take a step back, for I think my class probably knows these terms well. But for those who are listening on the podcast, who may not be as familiar, just a real quick definition of trans. Real quick definition of non-binary. What are you both meeting when you're using those terms?
Speaker 3:Sure, I think a really basic way of thinking about being trans and or being cis right, being transgender or being cisgender and cis is…. C-i-s correct it's, if you remember your Latin roots. Cis means….
Speaker 1:Which I don't.
Speaker 3:Oh no, if I ever knew them to begin with, but…. Cis means on the same side of, and trans means across or on the other side of, and, like in old Roman maps, they would have cis-alpine gall or trans-alpine gall, meaning the part of gall that was across the mountains or the part of gall that was on the close side of the mountains, this side of the mountains closer to the city of Rome. All that means is, if we're assigned a gender at birth, if you are cisgender, then you are on the same side of that gender that you were assigned at birth. So it's you identify with the gender you were assigned. And if you're transgender, then you don't identify with the gender that you were assigned at birth and you identify as some other gender, and that could be a binary gender, meaning male or female or masculine or feminine or some other position on some broader spectrum or 3D orb, or how do you want to envision that. It gets complicated, but that's sort of where we get into how we might describe folks as being non-binary.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So to give an example, if someone was born and the doctor said it's a girl, and they grow up and they were like yep, I'm a girl, that person is a cisgender person. If that person grows up and said, eh, actually I'm not a girl, and maybe they say I'm a boy, or maybe they say I'm non-binary, that person would be transgender or non-binary, depending on which language they prefer.
Speaker 1:Is there a distinction in your mind between non-binary and queer?
Speaker 4:Yes, I think so, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 3:Queer is an interesting term in that, like some other terms maybe originally was used very pejoratively and it has been reclaimed by a community and it was used originally as kind of a person that was funny right, Like they were queer, and so that was used in a pejorative sense that way and I think people are reclaiming it to say, yeah, I am not in the norm and that can mean both in terms of gender, or it could be in terms of sexuality or something else there are some ways it's even broader, and so, yeah, come out in the streets, dale.
Speaker 3:There's people who use the word queer for all kinds of stuff, and it is tricky to kind of even define or to set firm limits as to say, you know, you don't get to call yourself queer, right. But there's folks that would use the word queer to define themselves in terms of their sexuality or their gender or some other aspect of themselves, or both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you want to play a game show? I suppose I'll play a game show. All right, rapid fire. I'm going to ask you some questions and you're going to do this as fast as you can. It never ends up being rapid, so if we end up having conversations but the goal is rapid fire, all right. Biggest misconception people have regarding folks who have a transgender identity.
Speaker 4:The biggest? Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 1:So much for rapid fire.
Speaker 3:I'm going to shoot from the hip and say that one of the things that I come up against is actually the word transgender, meaning somebody that has, is picking up a gender other than what they were. If that makes sense, if you were assigned, like in my case, assigned male at birth and then you realize that you're not a boy, that you become transgender, and actually the way that I understand it and the way that I think a lot of people understand it is I was always not a boy. I just didn't know the words for that. So I haven't really changed my gender as much as recognized that my gender was incorrectly aligned with what they told me that I was when I was born.
Speaker 1:I thought you had very interesting points in the last class which our listeners did not hear, nor the class heard about just not having a word for it, not having a label for your identity and your sense of self, and then hearing other people describe it. All of a sudden gave you a category to describe this. I thought that was very interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, that's very much my experience. It took me going on a personal retreat to a friends like house and wandering through YouTube believe it or not, young people for the better part of a week, until I came across some YouTubers that describe themselves as both trans and non-binary and trans feminine. All those words were part of how they describe themselves and it helped me to realize what I was experiencing and to put my experience into those categories.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think we're I'm going to age us here, but back in my day we didn't have the TikTok, so it was actually, yeah, until several years after college that I Maybe really a year or two after college that I heard someone articulate a trans masculine experience and it was just like, oh, I look like that, that's me, which is one of the things that actually, as much as there's a lot of flack about social media, one of the things that I think is a wonderful gift with social media has allowed people to share their experiences and really start to find that language earlier.
Speaker 3:The very old, first uses of the internet to connect people are on bulletin boards, those kinds of groups where people are finding each other. That's still happening in some places Like Reddit. I mean other kind of things where people that are scattered all over the world that maybe would never ever find each other for a variety of reasons are able to find each other and to share the language around their experiences, and that's been a great gift to me, yeah.
Speaker 1:Great. Thank you all very much. Good answer, all right, most hurtful or insulting thing someone said to you because of your transgender identity.
Speaker 4:I guess I'll start with this, and I think this really goes kind of back to the misconceptions of. I think people can say things like I'm actually doing it so much mind if they say it's a sin as much as like. Sometimes people like really pathologize Is that a word?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And sometimes people and they say like you're sick or there's something wrong with you. And then sometimes there's worse things. Trying to not put gasling on the fire, but some of the things that really get kind of thrown at trans people that were. I won't go into that, but things get said about us, especially sort of in the kind of legislative atmosphere that we're in right now, that just thoughts, accusations that make us out to be these monsters. And I'm just over here trying to work, trying to pay the bills.
Speaker 3:Exactly right. I'm at Kroger, I'm buying stuff. That's my gay agenda. You know what I mean. The queer agenda at the Woodward House is like me finding some yogurt. That's kind of it. Sometimes it's out of stock too it is out of stock. Yes, they don't have the honey vanilla.
Speaker 4:I know.
Speaker 3:They just have the plain and I got to deal with it.
Speaker 4:I know it's tragic.
Speaker 3:It's awful.
Speaker 4:I'm like they think that we have these elaborate, scandalous lives and I'm like you do know I go to bed at 8.30, right, I was at an event Is it AM or PM?
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, okay, okay. I was at an event, a conference for reconciling Methodists, which is the queer affirming kind of organization that's working to work for queer inclusion in the United Methodist Church, and it was sort of scattered right and I was like I would really have appreciated a queer agenda here.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:I mean, can we get back to the queer agenda? Yes, we've got queer anarchy right now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we get that way sometimes.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I should do that or if it was hurtful. Maybe I should do that, but we'll go on to the next one. How about the most supportive, encouraging thing? Someone? What was it? What was a moment of just a true encouragement that you got from someone?
Speaker 4:I actually can start. So one of the things that was really beautiful for me early in my transition, I'd had different times where I'll give a contrast of not-so-affirming which was going forward to receive communion and two times as this happened, one I was going forward to receive communion and the person was and I was very conscious of my non-binaryness and was not very masculine presenting at the time, was very androgynous and the presider was saying my brother, the body of Christ, my sister, the body of Christ, everyone who came forward and I kind of panicked and I almost didn't go up to the table.
Speaker 1:You were afraid you were going to get that right. Yeah, I did.
Speaker 4:I was like and I decided to keep going, only because I knew that this professor, susan Kinner, had a lesbian daughter. And I was like, maybe they won't screw it up and they just I got forward and they were like, oh, and they didn't try to guess and they just said the body of Christ. And I was like, but also had experiences where that wasn't the case, in actually in a queer Christian thing, where I went up and I had my name and my pronouns and everything and this person like totally misgendered me, Contrast that I was with a friend and this was the first time and this person was praying for me. It was the first time anyone had ever used my pronouns in prayer. It surprised me how affirming it was to have that be seen in that space, because it was something that was so used to not being seen in sacred space.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, yeah, Absolutely. I'm trying to think about a super affirming experience. For me it would be something very similar. I have made a fair amount of new friends since coming out. I think one of the things that I'm experiencing I don't know about you, but through my transition I've become more social, if that makes sense like a certain layer of anxiety. I don't think that's true for Kimball.
Speaker 1:Those of you who don't know Kimball, that's an introvert. Their Facebook is just flooded with introvert comments throughout.
Speaker 3:But I've made a fair amount of new friends and I have heard both indirectly and directly from these new friends that they just want 100% see me as a girl. They're like your femininity is palpable and we feel nurtured by it and all those things, that kind of language, just really small language, or small gestures, where people bring me flowers and stuff like that is just really affirming and that's happening all the time.
Speaker 4:Can you I'm going to ask a question, I'm going totally rogue here Can you tell the folks about? I visited Andy's church recently just for funsies. You sang a song that your church wrote about God and pronouns and things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the song is called All Y'all. We have a group of musicians that are trying to write new music and the song All Y'all has a tagline on if it's the chorus or the bridge or whatever. But it's hard, the song is. I think the quote is something like God was not surprised at a pronoun change. God was not surprised when I found a new name. God was shining down. When I found a new name, god was smiling down at my pronoun change, something like that. It's been a thing that I wonder if actually I have no idea if I was the inspiration for that song. I don't think that I was actually, because it's a part of the life of our congregation. Actually, that musician had a romantic partner who went through a gender transition as well. It's. We're trying to incorporate that, that affirmation and that love, into our worship as well.
Speaker 1:Good stuff, all right, let's get into some. Let's get into some religion here, all right. I suspect there are many people listening on the podcast who are coming from traditions that are much more conservative, and this is just a that even things like same-sex marriage is still very unfamiliar and uncomfortable for them, so let alone moving into transgender identity. So what would you say to folks who say just look it up, the very first chapter of Genesis, god made them male and female. God made you a particular way. Why would you want to change the way God made you?
Speaker 4:That is one of my favorite Bible verses for the gender.
Speaker 3:It is the source of kind of a lot of our thought about gender and thought about how God has made us One of the things that we were talking about earlier actually preparing for all of this time today and there are some really wonderful trans authors and theologians and thinkers. Austin Harky is one of them and Miles Markham is another one.
Speaker 1:Well wait, we got another button for that Citation. Yeah, we academic, we could. We could go on citations. Oh, look at Kimball getting all excited.
Speaker 1:Like you get academic citation, okay Go ahead and something I didn't say about Kimball I mentioned this to my sociology of religion class, but I haven't said it on the podcast yet is that I think you probably hold the record for most after-class questions by a student. That in all the classes I ever taught which I'm saying is a perfectly positive thing that you are definitely a religious seeker. Back then, lots of questions to ask you.
Speaker 4:I'm going to get like a scout badge for that. I think like a patch.
Speaker 3:Yes, we all like a patch. Yes. So these thinkers, austin Harky and Miles Markham, have a really wonderful piece that you can read about on the Human Rights Campaign website and elsewhere actually. But they talk about the image in Scripture of these of elements of creation. Right, if you talk about the in the creation.
Speaker 3:God made day and night, god made the land and the sea, and these are poetic aspects of Hebrew writing. These are kind of technique in Hebrew poetry to describe perhaps the poles of a spectrum. So when we say God made the day and the night, we're not denying that God made, for example, the dawn or the dusk, these in-between times. When we say that God made the land and the sea, we're not denying that God made estuaries or swamps or whatever these kind of in-between places. And so when it says that God made us humanity, male and female, in this Hebrew poetic style, it also includes all of the positions on a spectrum in-between those positions as well. That's one understanding of Scripture to say that humanity is a broad spectrum of gender and other kinds of identities. We're not just two things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and now that I think that in that regard I always say that trans people are a gift to the church because we reflect a different facet of the image of God or the Mago day, because if you read that and say God made male and female in God's image and that is an interesting plural there then God transcends, intentional ponder, encompasses and transcends both masculine and feminine and everything in between. So I think being trans is a gift in that regard and I think we see that in other faith traditions too, where a lot of times trans people were seen as spiritual sages or things like that. Rabbi Elliot Kukla, I don't have the quote with me, but I will have it.
Speaker 1:We'll still give you a citation for it. Citation, citation.
Speaker 4:Yes, but basically talks about how, in the Hebrew tradition, the sages were regarding these spaces of twilight and dawn as the most sacred times to pray. And so this seeing gender and trans identities as this liminal space, as a vocation to live into that liminal space and sort of to embody that liminal holiness that they saw as a very holy, most holy time to pray. I like to tell people so. In seminary and I went to Emory, which is pretty progressive, as the seminary goes, such that they require that you don't use masculine language for God in your papers, for example. And so when I was trying to explain non-binary to my classmates who were very good Candler students, and they were like I don't understand, can you help me? Neither, nor what's going on. And so I'd say to them okay, it's got a man and good Candler students, they're like oh no, of course not.
Speaker 4:I used gender-inclusive language for God, and I would say, okay, it's got a woman. And they're like, uh, no. And I was like I am just more like God than you are. Oh, okay. And so it's like it registered. But I say that jokingly, but I do think it is. I see it as a gift and a gift to the church.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely, and I think that there's a sense that these days there are more humans that are sharing, that they have a trans experience of some kind, whether they're like kind of a binary trans person or they're a non-binary person, and we have to recognize that this is a reality, right? These aren't people making this experience up. They're simply feeling more free to be able to share and, frankly, safe to share themselves and what it is that they're experiencing. And, as a Westland, I'm a person that recognizes that the source of our theology is, of course, scripture, but also tradition, reason and human experience, and so we need to be able to incorporate the experience of real human beings into our theology, which is maybe what we're doing right in this moment. But I think part of that is saying that if human beings have trans experiences and apparently have been having them the whole time do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3:Throughout history, we have always been in different facets and different cultures and showing up in different ways, and maybe it's true that this is some aspect about humanity that God has created, and if God has made us, then we need to figure out how to understand socially where trans humans fit and, frankly, if other human beings don't think I fit. I don't think that's a God problem. I think that's a human being problem and it's a problem of marginalization, of people that aren't understood very well, and we can get into more, maybe, why we're not understood and all those kinds of things, but I get into this in a sense of this is a human being problem that we need to address, less a theological one.
Speaker 1:I think we'll wait past rapid fire, but we'll still do this. All right, all right.
Speaker 4:Super slow, rapid fire. I'm not a preacher is on a podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. So I'm not promising related to that. I'm not promising that this is my last question, but I do want to start inviting our students to come in and ask you some questions as well. But I thought you all gave just a. It was actually kind of a beautiful understanding of the openness toward the trans experience within Christian faith and making room for it in Scripture. That certainly doesn't seem to be the typical way it's been interpreted historically. And Christianity I'm sure that most people would see this Christianity is quite hostile towards non-binary approach. What makes you stay with the church? Why would you all not just find your own way somewhere in?
Speaker 4:somehow else you can't see this on the podcast, but Andy is dancing with excitement, so I'm going to let you go first.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I'm a church planner and that's part of what my role is in the church ecosystem is to start a new church, and so we helped to birth a new church, and I did that with an impulse that there are human beings outside of traditional churches and existing churches that need to know about the love of God, and so I want to connect with those humans. So that's a part of my impulse, and what drives me into that impulse, rather than kind of perpetuating some kind of oppressive system or something like that, is, frankly, a strong commitment and belief to the doctrine of the incarnation. That's where I kind of root this stuff for me. So when we believe that God was made flesh in Jesus Christ, that God became a human being in the person of Jesus and that Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine, that means the person of Jesus, the incarnated God, encompasses and enfolds all of humanity. And that means all of humanity. That means all y'all, exactly right, and that means all the queer folks and all the gay folks and all of the trans folks and all the people of all of the broad spectrums of colors and heights and sizes and languages.
Speaker 3:John in the book of Revelation says that he looks and lo, there was a crowd without number that was filled with every kind of person from every nation, race, tongue and tribe and I'm going to smatter in and also a whole bunch of queer folks in there too. And I believe that, because God is connected to all of humanity in the person of Jesus, that Christianity actually has a strong connection to, even to queer folks, to a sense of an embodied spirituality that some of us don't connect to and most of our daily theological reflections as Christians. But it is absolutely the root and core of what makes us distinctive as a faith tradition.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would say all of that resonates. I would say I think how I dance to this has really shifted over the years and I think earlier in my life it was the humblest stubbornness of you can't, you can't, steal my Jesus. I think that was some of it. I think I the message of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, what I see is the heart of Christianity, of loving, of doing justice. That still tracks with me and I think you put it really well, andy, of what's not a God, it's not a. It's not a God problem, it's a people problem. And so for me, I think I still deeply connect to the story. I still deeply connect to the teachings of Jesus and to the person of Jesus. I would say, just sort of my own mystical experiences are within this tradition and I love the Eucharist.
Speaker 4:I have been able to sort of separate out some of the ways that the church has caused harm. I think, as someone who is pastoring outside of the church, I think I would. I think that I often also say I want to hold space, for if someone has been hurt by the church and they need to leave, I think that's okay and I want to name and honor that if it's just too painful, it's just too painful and that's okay. And I believe that God is fully capable of hanging out in the yoga studio if that's where you find your sense of calm. So I just I want to say that what I have kind of held onto is for me, but I just want to, I guess, pastorally honor that if someone's not in that place, that's okay.
Speaker 4:That's the chaplain, and you because you serve as a chaplain, correct, I do sometimes serve as a chaplain. I do serve as a chaplain with some of the Candler students. I have been a hospital chaplain before and I do spiritual direction as well. But I yeah, I think I've I kind of serve as a chaplain out in the community, away from outside of the church in some ways, unofficially as well. So great.
Speaker 1:I was trying to make a motion to encourage someone to come and take a seat. Come on, someone, be bold, don't all rush it. Come on forward, jordan.
Speaker 4:Now this is where you do your song and dance while with the other people. That's right A little intermission here.
Speaker 1:Go ahead and put your headphones on and identify yourself and ask away. Do you have a question? Actually introduce yourself.
Speaker 6:Please, jordan, I use she her pronounce. I did have a question about how you guys still feel welcome in the community, because I know there's a lot of people that are not or are even advocating for people to get rid of stuff like that, even inactive violence towards people like that who are associated with the church. So I know. I just had a question on how do you continue to be like brave and persevere through?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I mean part of my privilege is never having to really worry about that, or rarely having to worry about my safety. Do you all live in fear when you're out in the community?
Speaker 3:Sometimes Do you want to start? Yeah, I'm going to knock on a thing and hopefully not mess up the recording. So I'm knocking on the whatever this is metal, yeah, okay. So I really don't typically feel very afraid or anxious, but I live in a bubble. Do you know what I mean? When I leave my bubble, then that's where certain anxiety might come up, and when I was in the middle, the early phases of my transition, I would go to Kroger and I thought I was going to die Like just leaving the house. I thought that was the scariest thing ever.
Speaker 1:Did you run into folks at Kroger who had not seen you during the process of transition or were terribly confused?
Speaker 3:Really no, because in downtown Atlanta it's different than the East Rome Social Club here in Rome, the Kroger, where you see everybody and their mama, the Kroger that I go to you might see some of the same people, but really not folks that I would see all the time. So basically I was going into a space of random strangers and I was still nervous that somebody would be like look, there's one of them, that kind of thing. But that never, ever happened and I still feel very privileged to be in a space where I don't feel physically unsafe. There are moments as a congregational leader where I'm like speaking in front of my church, where the thought crosses my mind that maybe I should be concerned more about security or the threat of some random kind of violence. But my faith commitment is to nonviolence and my concern is more that the space is open and welcoming rather than a hardened kind of tight security sort of space. So that just comes with the territory and I feel blessed to be able to be in that space right now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would say it's shifted over the years. I think early when I was more androgynous, presenting, I had some kind of close calls. As Andy mentioned, atlanta is a little bit of a bubble but once you get outside of the perimeter you are in Georgia and the further outside of the perimeter you get, that's true. So I had some times where I had some sort of dicey situations that I got into or feeling like is this person following me around the store? Or things where I thought someone might cause me harm and I kind of extricated myself from the situation. I will say, as I have transitioned, I now have what we would call passing privilege, especially in Atlanta. But even like walking through rural Georgia, like people just don't and they just assume I'm assistant or straight dude and so in that way I don't feel unsafe. I would echo Andy's kind of comments that when I am in leadership where this is a trans person, then that can be something that's potentially harmful.
Speaker 4:I think what I do have fears about is like legislative harm definitely is the thing and that's something that I've kind of. I don't know where we will go in Georgia, but I have taken as much steps as I can to ensure my own well-being. And I saw in the UCC a church sign and it said trust Jesus but lock your car. And I kind of tried to take that approach with gender, which is like I am sort of having a little bit of faith but also I'm taking steps to protect myself and my family as much as I can.
Speaker 4:And then the other thing I just want to name is that A, we both live in Atlanta, so that is one thing. But also as a trans masculine person, statistically I am not as at risk for violence as trans women, but in particular trans women of color experience violence at a far higher rate, and it's just. This is a very case study in intersectionality right of how racism layers on top of transphobia and sexism. So I can tell you, even in Atlanta, that I know of black trans women who have a lot more fear that they have to navigate on a daily basis that neither Andy nor I have to deal with. Just naming that is not our experience is not speaking for all trans people, absolutely.
Speaker 3:One more thing that I would add into this is that one of my greatest points of anxiety was going into a denominational meeting. We have an annual conference that has something like 3,000 people from all over North Georgia, and the first year that I recognized that I was trans and I was like I'm going to show up as myself I was frightened. But I realized that if I was going to continue to be a United Methodist clergy person, I needed to be able to enter into the annual conference meaning the actual gathering and seat of power and decisions and all that kind of stuff as myself, and if I was too afraid to do that, I should probably just quit ministry altogether, and so I just kept at it.
Speaker 1:I was actually wondering about that because you would say how your bishop and her cabinet was very supportive and how your congregation was very supportive. But I was wondering, at sort of my level of fellow pastors, how they thought.
Speaker 3:I have a cohort of colleagues that we're friends and everybody kind of knows the deal at this point or they're figuring it out, I guess and some of our beloved siblings are departing from among us, and that's also reality these days. Of the folks that might be less embracing, of trans folks are finding a place in a new denomination, and so we may not see them at meetings.
Speaker 1:The same way, We'll make sure we touch upon that before we finish up here. We'll talk about that a little bit. We have another question.
Speaker 7:Go ahead and introduce yourself to my name is Brylan I hope I see her pronouns after transitioning and starting to lead your congregation as a woman, I was wondering if you received any further pushback, because I know there are still a lot of congregations I guess would be the right word that don't believe that women in general should be able to leave. I didn't know if you received. Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. The United Methodist Church that I'm a part of has been ordaining women since the 1950s I think it's 1956. And that's a part of the reason. I think I certainly had a female bishop currently and had a female bishop at the time, and my congregation is very welcoming of all the humans and that's one of the ways that I think we were able to kind of make this work right in our denomination is that we ordain women and we ordain men and we ordain women, and they thought that they were ordaining a man and actually they ordained a woman when I got ordained.
Speaker 3:And there's no problem. Do you see what I mean? If they ordain women, then here I am. I heard that there was some conversation at a meeting that one of our clergy is becoming a woman and the response is good thing that we ordain women. I feel very privileged in terms of the denomination itself and my congregation, and at all levels of leadership there are men, women, non-binary people, male which is pretty cool and also people of all different races, ethnicities, languages, all that kind of stuff too.
Speaker 1:That was a great question.
Speaker 4:Thank you. Have you, while we're waiting on the next person to come up, have you experienced that like when you're outside of Methodist spaces, down at the Capitol and you're a woman wearing a clergy collar?
Speaker 3:Not yet Give it a minute. Yeah, right, exactly Did you wear a collar, andy? I do sometimes At certain spaces right, like we're showing a protest or things at the state Capitol. We just want to signal that we're clergy. We do that and I think most of the time people are like who is this tall, dazzlingly attractive Germanic woman? And that's sort of where it lands right. So I don't Anyway.
Speaker 5:Hi, I'm Hannah. I use she or her pronouns. This might be something that you wanted to touch on, dr McConkey, but I wanted to ask what do your interactions look like with Christians who are not transaffirming? If you have any, what are those conversations like? How do you experience that? Do you have any friends that think differently than you? Just all about that.
Speaker 1:Before you answer that, we need to acknowledge something. Hannah, you are now our first repeat student on Church Potluck. Yeah, hannah did a podcast with us on Preacher's Kids. Oh, did a great job with that too.
Speaker 4:We should get advice for our kids Exactly Do you want to start or do you want me to? Why don't you start? Sure, I can say it runs the spectrum and this sort of came up a little bit in our conversation earlier that I am sort of open. I try to keep my for like a better word my heart open to all people. It's sort of as a spiritual practice. But I am, I guess, tactful or strategic, I guess in my emotional energy, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4:Like I said, in advocacy circles we talk about the undecided middle. Those are usually the people that you can sway to vote the way you want them to vote or something. So I think, in terms of if I'm really trying to change someone's mind, those are people who I think, okay, I might have a shot at maybe shifting some perspective. That doesn't mean I don't talk to people who I know they're not going to agree with me. They're just not. But I'm not necessarily going to invest a lot of emotional energy. If they seek me out, great. But if I'm just kind of living my life in it and that's just how they see it, then great.
Speaker 4:I have, I think, when I came out, especially coming out here at Barry and in WinShape, some people flat out dropped me and put unfriended on the Facebook I know that's not something the kids are into these days, but kind of just sort of disconnected with me and think that was hurtful.
Speaker 4:And others who have stayed like somewhat connected on social media, like I said, I don't know, I always cross paths with them, but I kind of keep that door open. And I will also say there are also people that I have drawn boundaries with and I do want to affirm that is okay, that there are people who have been harmful in their language and I've kind of had to say wish you well, wish you peace and happiness, but you don't get to be a part of my life in this particular way anymore. And then there's also just I mean, there's always the street preachers at Pride or at the Transmarch, and for the most part that doesn't even bother me anymore, as long as they don't try to actually harm me, I'm like all right, you just yell in your megaphone, honey boo, and it just doesn't faze me at this point.
Speaker 1:Does it bother you that your faith is being represented in that way, though?
Speaker 4:That does bother me, yeah, and it's more. It's like it doesn't hurt me because I just don't really care what they think. But I worry about the young trans folk and I try to usually try to run. Interference is what I try to do, especially if I am there in a collar, because sometimes they'll get in your face. I mean, one guy got in my face and was like you're not a priest and I was like I am, so deal with it. But you know, there's usually like the we call them the pansy patrol. It's like these counter protesters that show up with these giant flowers to block their signs, or some affirming churches who come out with signs, and so we try to just sort of provide a buffer because I'm in the place where that doesn't hurt me anymore. But a young person coming in for their first pride, and this is what they see, you can get dicey for them.
Speaker 3:My experience of coming out and being in the world as myself is a process of both extreme anxiety initially and then, as I had positive experiences, I was like I can do this, I think I'm going to be all right.
Speaker 3:Hey, no, no hate crimes today, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:I think the longer that I experienced this basically kind of general positivity or at least not overt negativity I was like I think I can keep doing this, and so I tried to be very protective of myself and my own space and I just frankly try not to go to places or have interactions with folks that are going to be really hostile.
Speaker 3:And I think the longer that I'm out here, the tougher that I get and I think that's part of maturing and all that kind of stuff and the tougher that I get, the more that I can handle, like particularly out in the street with some of our siblings that decide to make choices that I may not agree with or even in just the mild stuff. You know what I mean, for example, like my co-parents extended family are from South Georgia and they are very sweet and very loving but don't quite understand what it is that I am experiencing and trying to both show up with grace and patience and also be clear this is who I am and you're not going to talk me out of it. I suppose it helps change them as much as it helps me realize that they actually are trying to understand and have a heart.
Speaker 1:Great Thank you yeah, another question.
Speaker 9:Okay, big moment for me. Introvert also. I will get read in splotchy. It's in medical condition, I'm not passing out, I'm good.
Speaker 1:It's only audio.
Speaker 9:The general, it happens when I talk to you in class. I'm just making a comment.
Speaker 1:Can I go ahead and record it video? Oh God, no, please, I won't do it.
Speaker 9:I had a question about what Go ahead and introduce yourself. Oh sorry, I'm Lucy Hicks and I had a question about what kind of masculinity and femininity mean to each of you, because when I think of the Christian faith and some of the papers that I've written and stuff for Dr McConkey's class is talking about rigid gender roles and the perception, I guess, of feminine and masculine traits from a biblical standpoint. What that's supposed to look like and how that, if anything like that, has, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 4:Yeah that's a great question. I can start I will say I think one of the things that was really challenging for me about transitioning initially was I was so very deeply feminist identified and I just was like I don't want to be that guy because so much of the depictions of masculinity I was seeing in culture were really problematic and harmful and just kind of gross. So what helped me was sort of seeing some really positive examples of masculinity, nurturing masculinity Mr Rogers, jimmy Carter so that was something that helped sort of helped me understand masculinity in a more, I think, healthy way. It's funny. I remember a lot of the quote unquote biblical masculinity and femininity and I think a lot of it is just something that has sort of deconstructed along with everything else and that I just I don't think it's accurate. I don't think what we kind of get told is biblical. Masculinity is actually very biblical.
Speaker 1:I think it was something that focused on the family made up I think when you look at how Jesus behaved, very often does not square with what I see as kind of contemporary understandings of masculinity. Very often, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3:If you're can I go ahead? Yes, okay, cool, I'm rambling.
Speaker 3:I am also in a place where I'm starting from this kind of basic understanding that, like men and women, people that claim a masculine or feminine identity can do whatever they want. You can do whatever you want because we're free people in a free world. You can do what you want.
Speaker 3:I did a lot of theater as a young person, like in high school and in college and I realized that as I became an adult and stepped into actually a pastoral role, that it was a role and that I was performing the thing that I felt nobody was really saying anything, but I was feeling that a role was required and so I played that role and I played it really good. I was a really good actor and I played the role and I feel like I was playing with masculinity to some degree. But it was very clear to me later on that I was still just playing a role and it wasn't me, and that was a deep part of my reflection is that I could be a good guy, I could be one of the good ones, and I think that I was one of the good ones protective and nurturing and gentle and also firm. But then I realized on some level that wasn't me and so I explored a little bit more and realized that some of these other aspects of myself that I had been hiding in order to play that role were the real me, and those are things that often get labeled as being feminine.
Speaker 3:Does that make sense? Yes, I love flowers, which is weird. It's not weird. I love flowers and I love bright colors, and I love growing things. I love listening to people, I love nurturing relationships, and the more that I have become myself in transition, the more that those things have emerged, which is a confirmation for me if this is who I really am.
Speaker 1:Do you think? Let me ask it this way. It's going to sound critical, I don't mean it critical why couldn't you do those things as a biological man? Sure.
Speaker 3:I tried, believe me, I really tried and I got to some point where it just didn't feel on a deep level and we can talk more about what that feeling might be. But it's the way I put it about that. I think about it sometimes. Have you ever done computer programming? There's like the operating system that you have, but if you start out with a thing from the box, you have to install a BIOS, which is the basic and now operating system.
Speaker 3:And I feel like I had an operating system that was quite successful at being a guy, but my BIOS was not male. Once I kind of realized that there was some deeper, fundamental level that was not a guy, I needed to change that positioning and once I did that, then that helped solve a lot of other anxieties in my world, like I could do the guy things and tell you that I was a guy and I was experiencing a fundamental anxiety in that. And once I stopped trying to play the part of guy, I feel light and free and myself, which is a confirmation for me. Thank you. Okay, hello, I'm Helen.
Speaker 1:Nice and close.
Speaker 8:Okay, so I guess this question is mostly for you, sandy, I think. Recently I've been going down the linguistics rabbit hole, and something that you said that piqued my interest was how you didn't have the language to understand who you were in the beginning of your journey, and that also made me think of how, for example in Spanish, the use of inclusive language faces a lot of pushback, because, especially in a language like Spanish, everything is gendered. So I wanted you to elaborate on the importance of the use of that kind of language.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I bet Kimmel can add in this to this too. But I think that for me, even knowing okay. So one of the ways that I understand being a human being and being a spiritual human being and certainly being a trans human being, is that we are having an experience. All of us have an experience of being a person and showing up and do life, and sometimes we encounter God. And trying to put words to that experience is very difficult because it's happening on some deep level. Sometimes it embodied level, sometimes it's a heart, spiritual level, but a mystical level.
Speaker 3:I've heard you say that several times, kimmel, and we want to. Maybe we don't want to, but if we want to try to tell somebody else about that experience, we have to figure out how to put words to it. And I have had mystical spiritual experiences and have really struggled to try to put words to it. And I hear from other humans that have these kinds of experiences that that's one of the strange things about them is just very difficult to describe them in words.
Speaker 3:And I think there's something true for me about being trans is that the language itself of experience, this kind of state that I'm in, this experience of being embodied and being a human being is not the same experience as other humans, but it also happens to be the same in some ways as some people that use the word trans, so I'm learning oh, if that's the word that you're using, let me explore that a little bit. And so it's naming an experience, if that makes sense. And so I think the more that people feel free and safe to name their experiences and to connect with other people that might possibly be having the same experiences, the more we're able to be more fully human.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think the thing about language is ultimately it's sort of just pointing at something and whether that's language or God or human experience, like somewhere along the way our words are going to fall short and I kind of love that they do. It's kind of nice that some things are just beyond language. The other thing in terms of the pushback and I will say I'm not at all fluent in Spanish, I took it and I took it and I passed it. But I know we do get pushed back around, like they then pronounce it English and it's a little bit grammatically correct, which I can tell you why it is grammatically correct and whatnot. You don't realize it and that person catches you off in traffic and you're like who does this person think they are? Because you don't know who they are.
Speaker 4:I've had English professors talk about why the singular there is okay, but I think at the end of the day I'm like what to me is more important? Is it the laws of grammar or the laws of love? And is it more important that someone is seen or that you've got an A on your English paper? So that's just something I think about with pushback around language in general.
Speaker 3:And I do think language is still evolving. I mean, so it's 2023 and I think even the last five years language has evolved and it's going to keep evolving as people keep sharing their experience and finding the links between shared experiences.
Speaker 1:Definitely, I think I've got one final question. First of all, thank you to my students for wonderful questions, good job. I just wanted to close with this because we really haven't talked about the institutional issue that, andy, your denomination of mine is facing United Methodist Church, with just a very large proportion, especially down here in the South, a very large proportion of our churches splitting off, schisming and many just becoming independent, but a very large portion developing their own denomination. And I'm wondering. It seems that they will often say that it's based on other, deeper things, about biblical interpretation, but it clearly is grounded on what's going on with our understanding of human sexuality. The Bible has about six or seven passages that really focus on sexuality and same-sex relationships being wrong, sinful abomination, different terminology for it. But it seems that a whole lot of emphasis and a whole lot of exertion is being put based on those six passages. And why do you think sexuality is so divisive and so polarizing in the American church today?
Speaker 4:I have some thoughts you want to speak to.
Speaker 3:Methodist, just as a Methodist.
Speaker 4:No, you better start, you better start, I'll give the broader church. I think it comes into the lot. I think it can be a lot of things. I think sometimes there are people who maybe even want to be affirming but they feel like this house of cards will fall apart if they don't interpret the Bible in this very literal way that they were told to. So I think sometimes it can be that fear.
Speaker 4:But I honestly think a lot of it in some denominations is really about power and about maintaining power. And I think the way that Christianity has I'm trying not to get too political here, but has kind of shifted in American Christianity, especially in Western Christianity, has kind of become very rigid and sort of about control, I think has a lot to do with power and the teachings of Jesus which so disrupt the status quo, and to see Christianity be used to sort of prop up the rich and the well to do and those in power, I think is really kind of good. And this problem and all of the problems and I'll just stop before I get too political- I will also try to be diplomatic if possible.
Speaker 3:I think that certainly, sexuality is a presenting issue versus the root issue. It's the thing that we are currently choosing to fight about as the named issue versus whatever else is also underlying the real conflict.
Speaker 1:It's the tip of the iceberg, but there's an entire iceberg underneath that we have For a family system.
Speaker 3:There's the kid that acts out and it's clearly that kid's fault why we're all not happy as a family. But it's maybe there's other issues in the structure rather than simply just that one kid. That's the presenting issue. So there's that kind of dynamic. This is the thing that we're choosing to fight about.
Speaker 3:I do think that Methodism historically has reflected particularly I mean, certainly Methodism is a worldwide denomination. Methodism is a worldwide denomination, but we are certainly like a marrow centric right. We are heavily weighted both in terms of money and in terms of population, to some extent until recently in the United States, and so we reflect the politics of America pretty closely. And I think that it was in 1844 that the Methodist Episcopal Church split into Methodist Episcopal Church north or the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church south, so about 16 years before the US Civil War. So there was deep division within the Methodist Church in that timeframe and then, because of that deep division over the politics of the day, there became a division within the denomination.
Speaker 3:I think we're just in that same place now that there's if it wasn't this particular issue, we're going to fight about something else. And it's reflective, in America at least of this kind of broader polarization of politics and public life and the failure to be able to have conversations and diplomatic and humane ways in public spaces, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think that we as a church are reflecting the world in a way that happens to us. Sometimes it's something that Methodists have done and probably will do again, but we are in the middle of it right now.
Speaker 1:Great, very well said. That's playing rapid fire. Anything else that we haven't said, that needs to be said.
Speaker 3:I don't know. What else do I have to say? I feel like I've said all the word. You have other things deep wisdom.
Speaker 4:Go forth and love people, that's right.
Speaker 3:Humanize all the humans. That's our motto at Neighborhood. Try to make sure that everybody gets to be human yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to thank you both so much. I know we've got you doing a whole bunch of stuff today, and adding the podcast onto everything is just. I'm very grateful for your vulnerability, very grateful for your courage to come out and share these stories. I want to thank our audience for sitting around the table with us today. Also, I hope that we have provided you with some food for thought and something to chew on Now. Usually we have little leftovers afterward and we just kind of debrief and continue talking. We might do that a little bit, but probably it would be shorter this time because we've got some food here for our students and for our guests. And so, kimball, andy, thank you so much. We appreciate your support for listening. As a part of that support, please consider subscribing, rating and reviewing.
Speaker 1:This is where I sound the most like a podcaster. I feel most alive as a podcaster. You're going to say that Until we gather around the table next time, this has been Church Pot, look. Thank you all so much. And one last time, thank you to my students too. All right, we're done. We're still recording, but we're done. Did y'all get to ask everything that you wanted to ask? Just ask. You have a question. Come on up. Oh, you're scared Still recording. Do I need to pause it? Go ahead and ask If the question can get picked up just how did your families respond?
Speaker 3:My family has been super supportive and affirming my immediate family are my biggest advocates and cheerleaders. As a side note, the person that I was married to. We're not married anymore, but we're still like besties and still see each other all the time and actually are still coworkers, like we're co-pastors of the church that we work together at. It's like we ended our romantic relationship but still are the deepest friends that are possible. My extended family is also very supportive, as best as they know how they're working on it. My mama's working on it. I've been doing this like transitioning for four years and like last month, my mom was like, can I say that I have a daughter? I was like, actually, you can, she's processing that, which is entertaining to me a little bit. I was like, yeah, been out here for a while, mama, but she's getting there. Yeah, family's pretty supportive.
Speaker 4:Mine have come a long way. I think growing up I would not necessarily say that they were there yet. My dad, I think, probably would have been, but he's just very. I just wasn't very outspoken about things. I think my mom definitely was in the sexuality of the sin. But I think by the time I came out to her the first time at the time gay now I would say queer, but at the time that was the language I used she was generally on, okay with things. She was definitely like figuring it out, but was generally okay with things. And then by the time I came out the second time they had come a lot further and actually even when. As far as I say I'm sorry that you've been felt nervous about this because I just didn't understand when you were younger, things are great.
Speaker 4:I think my sister's a bit older than me. She's a doctor. She's a doctor. She just sees things very scientifically. My brother's always been very supportive. I think he probably is a little more with it, like his church marches and the pride parade kind of thing, and that's what happened with it. I don't really again. All of my grandparents are sensed deceased, so I don't have relationships with them anymore, obviously, and I don't really have much relationship with my extended family. My parents mess up sometimes, especially my dad. The brain plasticity that the pronouns don't always quite catch my partner's family, mostly supportive. A certain sibling is not. Those are where some of the boundaries come in, but otherwise actually I think their extended family all came to our wedding and whatever. They don't always understand it, but I'm sure in whatever ways they can.
Speaker 1:Thank you all so much. Yeah, that was cute. Thank you Good Thank you.