There was a post in a group recently from someone who had “heard about” the Ethiopian eunuch and transgender people. While I’ve been highlighting books, I didn’t (yet) have a “list,” so here’s mine (for a more comprehensive list of related resources, see the bibliography of OtherWise Christian)!
Click through on the links for what I’ve written about each one.
In OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Liberation, I used so much content from Joy Ladin’s The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective that I asked her to read two of my chapters just to make sure I didn’t get anything wrong in representing her work!
In chapter 9 of OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation, I grappled with this word “abomination.” This is a favorite anti-gay clobber word and it has been weaponized time and again. In chapter 9, I wrote:
“Law and order” kinds of Christians may pick and choose (in other words, cherry-pick or proof-text) particular verses to be used as a weapon to condemn or judge. Deuteronomy (and Leviticus) are great sources for such one-liners, including the anti-gay favorite “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination [to’evah]” (Leviticus 18:22 KJV). In my experience, this English word, “abomination,” has become almost synonymous with Christians spitting hatred at same-gender-loving people.
Peterson Toscano’s one-man theatrical production has been extremely impactful in terms of raising awareness of gender variant characters in the Christian Bible. Peterson performed Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible for live audiences beginning in 2007. He retired the production in 2016 and then released a DVD version in 2017–which I highly recommend as a study resource, both for individuals and for groups. The movie can be streamed on Amazon and there is also a study guide.
Continue reading “Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible (DVD), 2007, 2017 (CORRECTED)”
Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts by Sean D. Burke was a surprise winner for me. I stumbled on this book as I was doing an internet search for something else. I went on to cite Dr. Burke’s work in four chapters (4, 11, 15, and 20) of OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation. Continue reading “Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts, 2013”
When Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God came out in 2015, I saw it celebrated by intersex friends and colleagues. This book, by Megan K. DeFranza also threw open the doors and windows for me as I was writing OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation. Continue reading “Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God, 2013”
Virginia Mollenkott’s Omnigender: A Trans-religious Approach was the first book on transgender spirituality/theology by a mainstream press. Pilgrim Press (associated with the United Church of Christ) published Omnigender in May 2001.
The Other Side‘s May/June 2001 cluster of articles on transgender concerns was published almost simultaneously. Vanessa Sheridan’s Crossing Over was published a few months later in October 2001 by Pilgrim Press.
Previous relevant books included two self-published books by Vanessa Sheridan (The Cross and the Crossdresser and Cross Purposes) and the Fall 1996 issue of Open Hands. However, none of the earlier publications was widely available to the general public.
Continue reading “Omnigender: A Trans-religious Approach, 2001 and 2007”
In 2008, Rabbi Elliot Kukla and Rabbi Reuben Zellman launched TransTexts. Originally hosted by Jewish Mosaic, it later moved to the Keshet website after Jewish Mosaic and Keshet merged.
Our goal for this project is to create a portal to Jewish traditions. It is not our intention to provide a complete or “authoritative” interpretation of these multi-faceted texts. Rather, we want to offer a variety of ways of looking at these remarkable texts — which have been, and still are, largely inaccessible to the general public. Some of the content of this site may be familiar to you; some of it might be very surprising. We invite you to read on and engage with all of it, in the great Jewish tradition of study and discussion.
In OtherWise Christian: A Guidebook for Transgender Liberation, I mention Jewish traditions around gender, highlighting 6 different genders. The topic of gender in Jewish tradition deserves a book of its own and is beyond my personal expertise.
However, Rabbi Elliot Kukla is widely credited for bringing these traditions to light and related resources can be found on the TransTorah website:
OtherWise Christian 