The Catechetic Converter

I just sat at my desk after an eventful day. In the Episcopal Church in Hawai'i, our custom is to observe the annual Chrism Mass and Renewal of Ordination Vows on a Saturday about two weeks prior to the start of Holy Week (this is typically a Holy Tuesday observance throughout much of the Church, but given that we are spread among an island archipelago, moving to the aforementioned Saturday works to better accommodate “neighbor island” clergy). This also just happened to coincide with the April 5 “Hands Off” protests/demonstrations. The service is held at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew, which is practically across the street from the state capitol building—where the demonstrations were taking place.

A number of us clergy (and laity) decided that being present at the demonstrations only made sense, given the spirit of renewing our commitment to minister to God’s people and to participate in the proclamation of the good news of liberation, especially among people feeling the squeeze from those who claim the name of Christian as they support genocide, cuts to aid starving children both home and abroad, etc. etc. And so we walked over to the capitol building to “come and see” what was going on.

A view from the event

Now, I’m a rare (read: weird) Episcopal priest in that I pretty much always wear a black cassock (the fancy name for long black dress that you sometimes see priests wearing: I look like Neo or Snape or Kylo Ren, depending on your generation). So I stood out. People wanted a few selfies. Some thought it was a costume and were genuinely surprised that an honest-to-God priest was out there among them. I gave people blessings (including the Trump hat wearing dude in a car that tried to cuss me out and told me to “go back to the mainland”). Mostly I was there to be a presence, to minister and pray. I learned from my participation in the George Floyd demonstrations back in 2020 that folks are warmed to seeing representation from the Church—which speaks to the idea that (some) folks want the Church, but often feel like it is concerned with things quite disconnected from their lives.

We call this the ministry of presence, and is something we clergy also offer in times of hurt and anguish (like an illness or loss of a loved one). This refers to those times where we’re not going to offer answers, just responses, and trust that the Lord God is working through us simply being there.

While walking among the crowd, a little subset of three people saw me and said “here, now you have a sign” and handed me the trans pride flag that appears at the head of this post. I said “mahalo” and carried it with me as I walked. Something about a cassock-clad priest holding a trans pride flag garnered a few responses and I caught a number of people taking sneaky pictures of me.

Here’s the thing: that flag ministered to me.

I grew up deeply Southern Baptist, leaning toward Independent Baptist (these are the fundamentalists who think that Southern Baptists aren’t “conservative” enough). I was incubated in a very Queer-phobic environment. Our attention was mostly on gay men, but all the other letters of the alphabet were just there, slightly off camera. My views on same-sex attraction and Queer love changed while in my twenties. I was attending an Evangelical university in West Palm Beach at the time, while also working retail to help pay my bills. I had gay co-workers and I came to realize that homophobia is an exercise in abstraction. Once I met actual, open, flesh-and-blood gay people it caused me to reconsider many things. And I was doing this while part of a Biblical Studies program at my university. I began the process of trying to reconcile my religious convictions with what I was seeing “on the ground” as it were. And this all was happening alongside my conversion to the Episcopal Church.

But that’s probably a story for another time.

Suffice it to say, my journey from hating Queer people to seeing compatibility between traditional Christianity and Queer “identities” was a hard-fought battle. But along the way I continued to wrestle with reconciling Trans identities and some aspects of Christian belief, as I understand them. And, to be completely honest, I’m still doing this work (but given the current state of things, I won’t be sharing this at this point—I worry that my thinking will be misconstrued and potentially used for hateful purposes by those with ill-intent; there’s nuance there that I don’t think we’re in a place to appreciate at the moment). But one thing is absolutely certain: Trans people are human beings, created in the image of God. They are gifts, blessings to the world, and to deny them this is to deny a work of God.

I needed this reminder. It is easy to get caught up in the abstractness of ideas and beliefs, and removing them from the flesh-and-blood people that are affected or reflected by these ideas and beliefs. But people aren’t just ideas and beliefs. People live. People sweat in the heat and come home tired from work. People go to protests, or roll their eyes at protests as they drive by. People fall in love and break-up. People want to be free to pursue happiness.

When I was in seminary, a little axiom came to me one Sunday: the minister is always on the other side of the altar rail. From the perspective of the laity, the minister is the one at the altar, or giving communion. But from the perspective of the clergy, the ministers are those who sit in the pews and who come up to receive communion. This is the balance of the ministerial life. God speaks to me through the wider community as I am ordained to try and allow God to speak to you all through me.

In the midst of ministering, I was ministered to. It came in the form of a small polyester flag with marker writing on it. And so now, through these words, I hope to minister to you all in return. Trans lives are human lives. Trans people aren’t just an abstraction, aren’t just an idea. Whatever we might think about them, they are flesh-and-blood people wanting what everyone wants: a life where they are free to pursue happiness and discover who they are in the grand web of the earth and universe, who they are in light of the God who lovingly made them.

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The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed.

#Theology #Bible #Jesus #Episcopal #Church #TransRights #Politics #HandsOff