God Was There: Open Hearings on D036 & D037

by the Revd Dr. Cameron Partridge

What a whirlwind the last couple of days at General Convention have been. Friday the news of the Supreme Court’s decision blew through Convention like wildfire. People are absolutely jubilant. And then yesterday Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina was elected the next Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church on a landslide, first ballot vote. He follows Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as a pioneer: she has been the first woman elected to this position, while he is the first African American. He is an firey, articulate preacher and evangelist, the kind of inspiring leader you want to get up and follow to the ends of the earth. Yesterday the House of Deputies also discussed C019 “Establish Response to Systemic Racial Injustice”. As Deputy Jennifer Baskerville Burrows wrote, “To hear a white member of the [Social Justice and U.S. Policy] committee say words to the effect of, “we have the chance to make race the centerpiece of the next triennium” signals a shift.  If funded, resolution C019 will put real muscle (to the tune of $1.2 million) behind the work of racial reconciliation for both justice and mission strategy.”

Amid this intense, spirited movement, two of the resolutions that TransEpiscopal has been particularly tracking have also made their way through the open hearing process.

Andrew Amanda testifying
in support of D037

D037 came first. This is the resolution that calls for a study of the canons to clarify that and/or how people who have legally changed their name(s) can have their names amended in church records and registries and church certificates reissued. It came to the committee on Governance and Structure last night amid several other complex resolutions on the possibilities of restructuring aspects of our Church’s governance. To begin, the chaplain of the committee lead us in prayer and a hymn, one of my favorites: “God is love and where true love is, God [Godself] is there.” When our resolution came up, something like six or seven of us testified in support of it. No one testified against. We told stories of how we or people we know have been impacted in our full access to the life of the Church by not being able to change records in a consistent way, or to have certificates reissued. After we were finished, a number of deputies and bishops came up to us, thanking us for our testimony. As the Structure committee sifts through all the complexities of the restructuring resolutions, our stories were, as one committee member later related to me, very straight forward and incarnational. We hope it moves out of committee and to one of the houses quickly.

Then twelve hours later, at 7:30 this morning, we gathered again to testify in support of D036. This resolution, on “Adding a Name Change Liturgy to the Book of Occasional Services”, came to the Committee on Prayerbook and Liturgy. Once again we began and ended with prayer and song, and once more we had a great group of people prepared to testify. I am hoping that some of these folks will write about their experiences as well. I lead off my own testimony by recounting an experience I had in 2001 when I first claimed my name. I described how I passed a difficult night, sharing the name Cameron with loved ones. When I went to church the following morning and was asked to do the first reading, I had been stunned to find myself standing before the congregation reading the story of Jacob wrestling with the divine stranger who then gave him the name Israel. Flash forward several years, my tesimony continued, to my years in parish ministry in which I had a trans parishioner who 

Cameron Partridge testifying in support of D036.
Photo credit: the Living Church / Covenant magazine

wanted to take on his chosen name in the context of the congregation. And so I put together a rite as a component of the Sunday liturgy, drawing in part upon the name change rite in Changes: Prayers and Services Honoring Rites of Passage that is the subject of D036. To be able to take up one’s name in the midst of one’s congregation, to be named and seen in that way, can be a profound recognition of the deep spiritual significance of embodying one’s name, I concluded. I was also struck that in addition to the other trans folks who testified—and, again, there were several powerful speakers – there were non trans ones as well, lifting up the flexibility of this resource to be used by many people. These were folks in a religious order who talked about the possibilities of claiming a new name in connection with religious life. This rite is additionally applicable to situations like adoption or divorce/remarriage. I especially appreciate that this resource came out of indigenous Episcopal congregations, communities that have long recognized the spiritual significance of names and particularly of taking on a new name later in life.

We now wait for D036 and D037 to go to their houses of origin. The name change liturgy resolution should first travel to the House of Bishops, while the name change canon study resolution should head to the House of Deputies. Meanwhile a number of resolutions related to liturgical marriage equality are coming forward to the Houses of Bishops and Deputies as well. Stay tuned on all of these fronts.

Amid all of this, the hymn from the beginning of the D037 hearing continues to echo in my ears: God is love and where true love is, God Godself is there.

A Crack in Our Current Practice: A Trans Angle on Marriage Equality in The Episcopal Church

As TransEpiscopal celebrates today's Supreme Court decision honoring marriage equality, and as we join in supporting efforts toward full liturgical marriage equality in The Episcopal Church here at General Convention, we offer this essay from Iain Stanford who brings a trans angle to this conversation.

by Iain Stanford

Over the last several weeks, the blogosphere and Facebook have been alive with different opinions, questions and concerns about the various resolutions regarding  marriage equality in The Episcopal Church. As I read the various arguments, I keep wondering if people realize that we already have same sex couples in The Episcopal Church who were married using the service for Holy Matrimony in the Book of Common Prayer. Let me explain.

At the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2012, the church spoke loudly in support of transgender people as full members of our Church by adding gender identity and gender expression to the non-discrimination canons. As a trans person, though, the canons for marriage and the use of the BCP can become a bit, well, surreal.

Take for example the fictional couple of Jim and Francine. On their day, they walk through the red doors and up the aisle, the celebration begins with the words from the BCP, “Dearly Beloved: We have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony.” (BCP 423) And a little later, the priest pronounces, “they are husband and wife.”  (BCP 428) Now several years go by, and Francine slowly acknowledges all those feelings when it comes to gender. All her life, people have asked, “are you a girl or boy?” She talks to friends, therapists, and yes, even her priest. Eventually, she knows that God is calling her to move forward, to become Francis. She does! After transition, they are now Jim and Francis. They live into what it means to be a same sex couple in society. And yes, they are still married in the eyes of the Church.

I can hear some people say, “But they came to the altar like any other heterosexual couple.”

Which begs the question: what is the connection between the outward and visible sign or signs of gender and marriage?

Ok, let’s take a more personal example, me! I am not married. When I was living in the world as a lesbian and partnered, I could not be married in the Church. At that time, I could only marry a man, but after my transition, everything shifted. Now I can marry a woman, but alas I can no longer marry a man. What exactly has changed?

The shift here is not a theological one. It is not about Augustine’s theology of the goods of marriage or even Elizabeth Stuarts’ theology of gay and lesbian relationships as “just friends.”  The shift is my physical body. My negotiation of gender has shifted from the outward and visible sign of a woman to that of a man, more specifically a trans man. My own sense of gender exceeds binary definition. I own my full gender history. My story, while common in trans communities, is not as well known outside of those circles. I am proud of the ways I participated in breaking down barriers for women in the 1980s, even if only in small ways. I was one of the few women who studied engineering in those years, and the first to be elected president of my university’s engineering honorary. Today, I live and move mostly as just another short white guy. To know me is to understand that I am the sum of all my years.

To my mind, the experience of transgender people in the Church reveals a crack in our current practice. The church is invested first and foremost in the simulacra of heterosexuality. It upholds heteronormativity:

• One is born male, grows up to be a man, adheres to masculine gender norms, sexually desires women, and exercises this desire in a monogamous, life long committed marriage, which takes as its aim the procreation of children.

• Or one is born a female, grows up to be a woman, adheres to feminine gender norms, sexually desires men, and exercises this desire in a monogamous, life long committed marriage, which takes as its aim the procreation of children.

Currently access to Holy Matrimony in the BCP requires the outward and visible sign of heterosexuality. Our practice – and our theology for that matter—assumes a stable gender identity that corresponds with assigned birth sex. Neither our practices nor our theology account for the experiences of transgender people, particularly those who understand themselves as having a non-binary gender.


Our current understanding of the human body in terms of sex, gender and sexuality has been shaped by various scientific, medical, and religious discourses over the last century or so. Terms like heterosexuality and its complement, homosexuality, emerge from the work of late 19th century sexologists like Havelock Ellis.  These terms give us a new way of describing how humans desire; they do not invent those desires. Similarly, over the last several decades, we have new terms to describe how people live out their genders.  

It is time we live into the full acceptance of all gender identities and gender expressions. Marriage is not about body parts. I am here to testify to this as a fact. It is first and foremost a vocation (as "Christian Marriage As Vocation," essay two from the Task Force on Marriage report, argues). It is a call from God for two people to join their lives in service to God, be that for the raising of children or for the uplift of all God’s creation.

Let us not forget: there are married trans Episcopalians who already hold out a glimpse of full liturgical marriage equality to our Church, even as there are other trans Episcopalians newly unable to access it. Now is the time to make full liturgical marriage equality real for everyone.