On October 22, 1996, the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta (Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.), voted to sustain the ordination of Rev. Erin K. Swenson. The vote was divided, and came after 16 months of intense study and debate. During this process Reverend Swenson was asked to respond to a number of questions, one of which is reproduced here with Reverend Swenson's answer…
The issue of transgendered Presbyterian ministers, in itself,
is a rather insignificant issue. Using the current figures
regarding the incidence of transgenderism applied them to the
number of currently active Presbyterian ministers, it reveals
that even five or six would be an exceptional number.
It’s within the theological issues raised by this unusual
condition that the true significance of transgenderism emerges as
an issue for the church.
How do you answer the charge
that you are living a life of public deceit contrary to Holy
Scripture and our Constitution? — that your behaviors are
deceitful and a denial of your creation? — that your
behavior will bring shame on the Church and offend many of
“the least of these?”
I have “saved” this question for last
because I think it deserves special attention. I am aware from
other conversations that this is perhaps the substance of the
Accusation that was filed against me by one of my Presbyterian
brothers. I believe that it must be answered not only for him and
the others joining him in the accusation, but for the church as a
whole and for myself in particular. Hence I have made it the
“wall” off of which I wish to make my theological
statement.
I have struggled with the virulent anger that
drips from these words and wondered the source from which such
anger flows. As I have struggled with the other questions in this
document I have also found myself wondering why I feel like I am
defending myself more from existential rage than from real
theological argument. As I have wrestled with this I came to
recognize the anger, for it is not only the anger of my accusers,
or of the Committee, or of the the Church, but it is my anger as
well. It’s as if this reality standing before you, a reality
that clothes my own soul, threatens the very foundation of what
we believe. I have spent the best years of my life wringing
enough energy from myself to carry on as husband, father, and
minister against a personal reality that seemed wholly
unacceptable to not only others, but to myself and God as well.
It seemed that I had either truly been excluded from the kingdom
of heaven, of God was playing some kind of cosmic trick on me.
This couldn’t be true. So I spent enormous
resources in trying to make it not so. I not only entered
psychotherapy, but also became a therapist myself. I have been in
therapy so long I can honestly not really remember what life is
like without a therapist to talk to regularly. I involved others
in my personal struggle. I married believing that this had
finally “answered” some need in me and I was freed from
my gender burden. Not so. I pursued what appeared to be a normal
male life pattern in the desperate hope that, because of this no
one would be able to see the terrible truth about me. I wanted to
be female against all reason and against all that seemed right
and good to me. And I lacked faith in my community, perhaps in my
God, to be able to nurture and see me through whatever dark
valley I seemed to be traveling.
So I carried on, burying myself in work,
responsibility and depression in order to hide from the terrible
truth within. I applied myself especially hard to the task of
living and working as a male, and succeeded. In my arrogance I
even convinced myself that I could hold the terrible truth within
me for a lifetime, dying with my secret still intact. But the
depression and denial began to take their toll, on my health and
the health of my marriage. I lost my marriage, not because of my
gender problem, but because of my willingness to deny the truth
and therefore destroy my self-respect and the respect of my
partner.
And so I am now before you, bewildered that I
am being charged with deceit now when my experience is that I
have, at great cost, ended my deceitful life and devoted myself
to living in the light of the truth.
And so the central question for all of us to
wonder over is, why does my proposal that the Presbytery accept
my transgenderism cause so much visceral objection? Simply put, I
believe this is so because the church’s struggle with me
parallels the church’s struggle with itself. In a sense, the
church has also been struggling with a gender change.
I must thank the committee member who posed the
question regarding the sacredness of sex organs in the Old
Testament, for this one question, above all others, has helped me
to understand our struggle. You see, the OT view of male sex
organs WAS that they were sacred in ways transcending all other
aspects of human biology. The ancient Hebrews felt,
understandably, that the source of life was contained exclusively
within this part of the male anatomy. The homunculus theory of
human reproduction viewed the male seminal fluid (inaccurately
thought to come from the testicles) as containing a small,
microscopic in fact, human being, a homunculus. This homunculus
was deposited, during the sex act, into the woman’s womb for
safekeeping while it grew, nourished by the mother, to the size
necessary for birth. Naturally, the source of all life would come
to be revered.
And this ancient “scientific” view
fit nicely into the strongly patriarchal culture that belonged to
the Hebrews. Men, therefore, became the center of Hebrew social
and religious life. Women were viewed as not only second class,
but actually of a different order altogether. This was common in
ancient patriarchal cultures where women were often viewed as
chattel, lives worthy of ownership and use by men. But movement
away from the pagan patriarchal world had already begun. Both the
Priestly and Yahwistic creation stories that come to us through
our Hebrew forebears and recorded in Genesis say something
radical for their time. Both stories, in different ways, place
men and women next to each other, either by treating them
together (“He created them male and female”) of making
a clear biological connection between the bodies of men and the
bodies of women (Adam’s rib).
God’s people continued to struggle with
this, and the cultural and religious attitudes prevalent in
Jesus’ time were once more confronted by God. Women, before
seen only as valued property that could be cast out at the will
of the owner, now were seen as human beings needful of respect.
Jesus, in his discourses with the Pharisees about divorce,
continued to drive this point home. And even more profound is
Jesus’ friendship and valuing of women in his ministry. And
in spite of Paul’s early teachings on family life, the early
church clearly began to count women among her leadership.
Today, two millennia hence, we still struggle
with patriarchy. In spite of ourselves, probably all of us
continue to hold the status of men above the status of women. I
experience this as mostly an unconscious thing, one that has been
illuminated by my transitioning from having the social role of
male to female. For about the first two months after I began
living full time in the female role I was having a problem
bumping into people. At first I thought it was simply a kind of
emotional dizziness that had come from allowing myself full
expression of myself for the first time in a long life. But as I
went along I began to notice that my collisions were almost
exclusively with men. It took much self-analysis before I
realized that men and women navigate differently in public space.
Men tend to walk directly toward their destination, and women
tend toward the more circuitous route. I realized suddenly one
day after another such collision, again with a man, that what
happens is that men take precedence over woman in public space.
Even the men who would hold open doors for me or allow me to
enter the elevator first would also walk right into me. I
realized that men have the right of way! And having navigated
most of my life as a man, I simply was navigating like a man in
public while men were expecting me to navigate like a woman.
Hence we collided!
My entire life has been filled with a struggle,
often with God, about the difference between what I looked
like—how I was treated by others, and what I felt like on
the inside.
Now I am not so arrogant as to believe that God
has somehow made me to be transgendered to “teach the church
a lesson,” but I do believe that God uses us somehow to work
God’s purpose out. I would sing the lines to that hymn,
popular in the seminary chapel, and completely miss that they
could somehow apply not just to my theological education, but
also to the transgendered nature I knew myself to contain.
I have struggled my entire life with my own
patriarchal feelings and attitudes. I felt it somehow shameful
that I felt like a woman and wanted desperately to be one. I knew
for certain that I would become a miserable outcast were I to
reveal by terrible truth. And the portrayal by the media of
others with my “affliction” did not help. These were
not people with whom I could identify. I felt no relationship
whatever with bizarre prostitutes and nude dancers.
But, you see, God has throughout history been
calling people away from this ancient myth, that men and women
are somehow of different substance and therefore profoundly
different from each other. God has continued to lead us away from
the prejudice and ignorance we all are victim to, toward the
light of truth. The church, an institution characterized by
it’s strongly patriarchy (in spite of it’s being the
Bride of Christ), has entered a time when the church truly faces
its own transgenderism. And my request that the church simply
recognize my transgendered reality comes at a time when we as the
church are disoriented by our own (as the church) transgenderism.
I don’t believe, incidentally, that the church is moving
toward a matriarchy. As I have stated elsewhere, I have never
really been a man and I know that I can never really be a woman.
I am transgendered and will always remain so. My hope is that the
church, too, will be able to recognize its transgendered nature
and discover more fully God’s love for us humans not because
we are male or female (or anything in between) but because we are
all God’s children.
So I deeply disagree with the charge that I am being deceitful and a source of shame for the people of God. On the contrary, I believe that the truth I live in is a truth the people of God are struggling to understand. The church, as it is currently, may not be able to recognize or appreciate this. Nevertheless, we are all desirous of finding God’s will, and it will be done.
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