| MCC and the transgender community |
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MCC and the transgender community
MCC offers a place for all transgender people to celebrate and mark the important events in our lives. Changing your name, marking your gender journey, celebrating, and blessing your relationships are all important life events with a spiritual and social impact. MCC welcomes and accepts you no matter what your gender identity or how you present yourself – come and be yourself.
Transgender people in the Bible
Throughout history, there have been transgender people. ‘Non-traditional’ gender identities may be found in every cultural and spiritual tradition. Transgender people have often been recognised as spiritually wise, shamans, teachers and healers. Our transgender ancestors are there to be found, if only we look. In the Bible, eunuchs are perhaps the closest examples of modern transgender identities that we may find.
Eunuchs were sometimes male-bodied people who had been altered physically; may have included female-bodied persons who were masculine or lesbian, were often viewed as another gender in and of themselves; could travel between traditional men’s and women’s spaces; may have been intersex people; and were seen as spiritually wise.
Eunuchs offer an example of those who lived beyond the ‘male-bodied equals man’ and ‘female bodied equals woman’ gender stereotypes.
Jesus and Transgender People
Jesus seemed to understand eunuchs and talked about them in Matthew 19:12
“Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the reign of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
Jesus often chose those who were on the outside of society because of their difference and he accepted them. There are many stories where eunuchs and gender different people play a crucial role. Transgender people are at the heart of Jesus’ message of love and liberation for all people.
Further reading
Justin Tanis, Trans-gendered: Theology, Ministry and Communities of Faith, Pilgrim Press, 2003.
Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors, Beacon Press 1996.
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