Category: Curriculum/Study Guide

MCC TRANSformative Church Ministry Program, 2013

Published on by Mx Chris Paige2 Comments

While I will be listing this resource with other transgender and religious curriculum, it is actually much more than that. This guide from the MCC Transgender Ministries team (led by Angel Collie) provides a recommended process for developing a comprehensive ministry with “transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex people including educational, worship, and programmatic resources.” The suggested timeline is two to three years and includes goals around activism, education, and worship. In the context of Metropolitan Community Churches, a congregation or organization can be “certified” as having completed program goals. The main landing page for the program is found on the MCC website.

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HRC Gender Identity and Our Faith Communities curriculum, 2008

Published on by Mx Chris Paige3 Comments

The history of Gender Identity and Our Faith Communities is complicated, but it’s a useful effort that centers many transgender voices (including Jewish and Muslim contributions even though it’s mostly Christian), literally, with the inclusion of audio files by the contributors to accompany the written materials.

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Transgender and Religious Curriculum Guide

Published on by Mx Chris Paige9 Comments

I’m looking over past blog entries and realizing that I didn’t yet have a landing page for curriculum options. I’ve already posted about several options, but there are more that I’ll be adding as this isn’t yet a complete list! Most (but not all) of these are oriented toward Christian audiences. I would love to learn about additional resources to support conversation in other traditions!

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Transformative Inclusion, 2017 and 2019

Published on by Mx Chris Paige1 Comment

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLGS) at Pacific School of Religion has been working on transgender concerns since the early Transgender Religious Leaders Summits (circa 2006). The Latinx Roundtable, Jewish Roundtable, African-American Roundtable, Asian and Pacific Islander Roundtable, and Transgender Roundtable have provided leadership for a variety of events and resources. Justin Tanis and Jakob Hero have provided some of the most prominent transgender leadership, including around these resources.

They have produced two booklets titled Transformative Inclusion—one with Christian perspectives (2017) and one with Jewish perspectives (2019). Each guide is 24 pages long, uses mostly the same pictures, and follows the same outline.  They each provide an accessible introduction to issues to be aware of in developing transgender inclusion at the congregational level, though I was surprised to see the word “transgenderism” used prominently.

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Transfigured: A 40-day Journey through Scripture for Gender-queer and Transgender people

Published on by Mx Chris Paige2 Comments

Suzanne DeWitt Hall has self-published several books talking about sex, sexuality, gender, and Christianity. As a cisgender, queer author, she admits that she is a observer to the transgender experience. Her concise introduction to gender and the Bible in Transfigured: A 40-day Journey through Scripture for Gender-queer and Transgender People (2018) is useful. However, I would recommend it “for” cisgender allies more than “for” gender-queer and transgender people.

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The Race Game (2020)

Published on by Mx Chris Paige6 Comments

Grown-Ass White Folk need to be able to talk about whiteness. Full stop.

I (a white person) proposed “The Race Game” [source: Thandeka’s Learning to Be White: Money, Race, and God in America, 1999] to a (majority but not exclusively white) planning committee for an event in 2003. My proposal was dismissed as naive and too radical.

However, I (a white person) remain convinced that “The Race Game,” as uncomfortable as it may be, is an essential step in beginning to deal with white supremacy. To me, it seems like a baby step on the path to becoming “Grown Ass White Folk.”

We (especially, but not exclusively white people) must make the invisible visible, so we (white folk) can better grapple with what we find within our (white) selves when we do.

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Transgender Religious History

Published on by Mx Chris Paige2 Comments

Even our most prominent transgender religious history is often obscured by our culture’s (and the LGBT movement’s) overwhelming emphasis on the politics of sexual orientation. Yet transgender religious folk have been making history for quite some time.

There are so many ways the world organizes to erase us–to pretend that we don’t exist, to forget about us. Remembering our histories is one small, but important way that we can claim our identities and our agency as sacred. We can honor our own elders and ancestors. We can celebrate all of the times that we have come through, somehow, when away was made out of no way.

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OtherWise Self-Defense, live chat and online course (weekly)

Published on by Mx Chris Paige5 Comments

One of my goals with OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation was to provide resources for self-defense against Christian trans-antagonism. However, the title, “OtherWise Christian” and my emphasis on the (Christian) Bible can get in the way–especially for those who have been most abused by Christian supremacy and trans-antagonism.

Nonetheless, I believe that this content is an important resource and I want to share it widely, especially with those who have been most impacted by Christian supremacy and trans-antagonism. So this fall, I will begin gathering folk online and moving through OtherWise Christian one chapter at a time–talking about concepts from the book and how they relate to Christian supremacy and transgender experience.

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