Transgender Inclusion in Congregations

This is an online course geared toward people from generally LGBTQ-welcoming congregations or faith groups who want to deepen their understanding of gender and transgender identities and are invested in creating truly trans-affirming faith communities.There are six sessions. Each one includes a 45- to 60-minute lecture by instructors Rev. Mykal Slack & Zr. Alex Kapitan, reflection questions, resources to take it deeper, and a short informal quiz.

• Sessions 1 and 2 are designed to ground you in this work, theologically, spiritually, and historically, and help you explore why we are called as people of faith to dismantle gender-based oppression—as well as exploring how each and every one of us are impacted by it and practices that can help us stay present.
• Sessions 3 and 4 explore gender diversity and the lived experiences of trans people—including the ways that race, class, and other factors influence those experiences—along with trans spirituality.
• Sessions 5 and 6 are all about culture and how to transform it. Expanding the circle of inclusion within a congregation or faith group requires understanding the unique culture of that group, along with how that culture works to include or exclude.

At the end of this course you will have a number of practices, frameworks, and tools that to help create an action plan for full trans inclusion in your congregation or faith group/space.

Being welcoming isn’t something we are, it’s something we do—welcome is a spiritual practice. In order to be fully affirming of the full spectrum of gender identities and experiences, we need to think differently about what the purpose of our spiritual communities is and what it means to truly practice welcome.

In this session you will:

• Get grounded in a “Beloved Community” approach to welcome
• Reflect on your personal experiences of welcome versus unwelcome and inclusion versus exclusion
• Envision what practicing Beloved Community in a congregational setting looks like

Resources:

1. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of Beloved Community, as summarized by the King Center.
2. After reading the Beloved Community section of the above resource page, read the beginning of the same page: King’s “Triple Evils,” “Six Principles of Nonviolence,” and “Six Steps of Nonviolent Social Change.”
3. “The Welcoming Congregation,” a 2013 sermon by Alex.
4. Slides from “Another Paradigm for Activism: Beloved Community,” a slideshare by Hilary Allen, Meck Groot, and Rev. Deborah Holder for Be the Love.

Gender roles and expectations show up in all kinds of subtle ways in society and in congregational life. In this session we will dig into what we’ve been taught about gender and explore the role of gender in our lives and in our congregations.

In this session you will:

• Review the origins and impacts of gender binary roles and how they connect to and uphold patriarchy
• Explore gender roles and patriarchy within organized religion (with an emphasis on Unitarian Universalism)—historically and also how they play out today in your congregation and at large
• Reflect on the faith grounding for how we are called, as people of faith, to dismantle gender-based oppression

Resources:

1. “What Is Patriarchy (And How Does It Hurt Us All)?” a 5-minute Everyday Feminism video.
2. “‘Delusions of Gender’: The Bad Science of Brain Sexism,” an interview with Cordelia Fine, Salon.
3. “Target will stop labeling toys for boys or for girls. Good.” by Rebecca Hains, The Washington Post.
4. “With Principle and Spirit: Women, Feminism, and Unitarian Universalism,” a sermon by Rev. Tim Temerson.
5. “The Feminization of the Unitarian Universalist Clergy: Impacts, Speculations, and Longings,” an article by Dawn Sangrey.

Building on Session 2, this session will present a different model for understanding gender expansively, and provide the basis for unlearning our assumptions and approaching gendered differences with curiosity and openness.

In this session you will:

• Learn to separate different dimensions of gender from one another—biology, expression, identity, performance
• Explore the incredible diversity and variation of experience within the different dimensions of gender
• Reflect on how your own experience of gender aligns or does not align with the gender binary

Now that we have a better understanding of the many different experiences of gender in the world, we’ll dig into the lived experiences of trans people in the world and in congregations, and also learn about the spiritual gifts of trans people—what gets missed out on when trans experience and spirituality get squelched.

In this session you will:

• Learn the risk factors involved in being transgender, and the ways that race, class, age, ability, and other elements of identity impact trans experience
• Learn about the experiences of trans people in Unitarian Universalism
• Explore the many varied spiritual gifts of trans people

Being inclusive of trans people isn’t just about bathrooms and language—it’s about the cultural values that live under the surface and dictate our expectations around “the way things are.” This session explores how mainstream culture shows up in our congregations and works to exclude trans people.

In this session you will:

• Gain an understanding of the iceberg model of culture
• Explore the characteristics of mainstream or dominant culture
• Discuss how trans culture differs from mainstream culture

As discussed in Session 5, full inclusion and affirmation of trans people requires real culture shift. This final session covers how to create culture shift in a congregation or other faith context so that people of all gender identities and experiences can be full members, get their spiritual needs met, and contribute their gifts.

In this session you will:

• Explore how to set the “goal posts” for your congregation’s understanding of welcome on radical welcome
• Learn why anything less than radical welcome does not work for the majority of trans people
• Gain tools and practices for congregational culture shift