'Now is the Acceptable Time': The Work Before Us at General Convention

As we come to the 78th General Convention, TransEpiscopal looks forward to building on the major strides our Church has made over the last decade on behalf of trans people. We also come with a sense of urgency about the gaps that remain between what our Church has done and what remains to be done.

We celebrate tremendous legislative gains between the 2006 and 2012 General Conventions, particularly the addition of “gender identity and expression” to our canons for access to lay ministry and to the discernment process for ordained ministry. Those votes, as many of our blog posts from those Conventions have witnessed, were exhilarating to experience. We also celebrate the stories we hear and tell about congregations that lift up trans people across the church. We are lectors, greeters, Eucharistic ministers. We are in young adult and campus ministries. We serve on vestries and search committees. We serve on diocesan committees, as Deputies to General Convention, on nominating committees, on task forces. Several of us are ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood. Others are in various stages of the ordination process in several different dioceses. Some are in seminary.

Yet at the same time we also know that this progress is not uniformly felt across the Church. Different people in the same Church can have widely different experiences. This should not be the case.

Vivian Taylor’s letter to the editor of The Episcopal Café underscores this truth in stories that are difficult to read and were undoubtedly more difficult to live through. Many of us have had such experiences over the years as well. They point to the gaps that exist between the legislative actions we have taken and the realities on the ground, which can be varied and far removed from one another. The challenge is to grow across that gap as a Church, indeed, as a family. This requires honest conversation—conversation that may well be painful along the way. 

Already, for several decades the Church has been having related conversations about different facets of our shared humanity—about women, about race, about sexuality, about economic inequality, about neo-colonialism, about the intersections of these facets of people’s experiences and lived identities. In all of this we have been doing a collective theology of the human person. Unpacking what it means to incorporate trans people is part of this ongoing conversation, and indeed it calls us, as Vivian put it, to “commit to move beyond honoring one or two trans heroes or thinking about your own gender to praying on and addressing the structural needs of trans people.” We consider the following realities crucial to engaging this conversation: 

• some trans people are binary-identified, that is, male or female, but

• some of us are not binary identified; we may identify as gender nonconforming or genderqueer,     to use two of several related terms

• some of us have changed or wish to physically change our bodies

• some of us do not wish to physically change our bodies

• we have varying relationships to and abilities to access medical transition, that is, to physically change our bodies

• we, like cisgender people, have varying sexual orientations: we can be trans and heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer

• trans women, as well as gender nonconforming people, are much more often the targets of anti-trans violence than trans men (see the 2011 study Injustice at Every Turn for important stories and statistics regarding this)

• trans women are especially vulnerable when facing multiple points of discrimination from racism, sexism, classism, and/or immigration status, as well as transphobia. Thus far this year there have been eight transgender women or gender non conforming people of color who have been killed in the U.S. (see this story from the Anti-Violence Project)

• those of us who are trans women are routinely subjected to trans misogyny—a doubled form of misogyny- in which we encounter both the sexism associated with women assigned female at birth and another layer of stigma associated with having transitioned (see Julia Serrano’s Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity for more about this)

• an aspect of this trans misogyny: trans women are, as Vivian’s piece points out, frequently forced into double-binds. These often relate to appearance and demeanor: don’t fulfill feminine stereotypes, on the one hand, and don’t be too assertive, on the other. The former gets criticized as undermining efforts to dismantle patriarchal standards of femininity; the latter gets criticized as hold-over “male privilege.” These critiques disrespect and demean trans women.

• these double binds can be levied at trans women particularly in women’s spaces and by feminists who were formed or strongly influenced by theories of second wave (1970s and 80s) radical feminism. This type of feminism has more recently been referred to as “trans exclusionary radical feminism.”

• This pattern can be as true in church spaces as in secular spaces.

We would also like to underscore that this is an especially difficult season for trans people both in and outside our Church. The unprecedented visibility of trans people in the media over the past year, particularly over the last few months since Caitlyn Jenner came out, has created arenas of serious backlash. The recent Elinor Burkett piece in the New York Times (which activated several of the last bullet points above), followed by horribly transmisogynistic tweets from Anne Lamott, a trusted source of wisdom, have added to a sense of vulnerability, of unsafety, particularly for trans women. Vivian’s comment about trans people not feeling “allowed to settle here, to make a home and put down roots,” speaks to a sense of precariousness that has intensified for many of us in recent weeks and months.

This week at General Convention TransEpiscopal will be supporting several resolutions, two of which speak specifically to this desire to make a home and put down roots in our beloved Church. One resolution (whose number is pending) will ask for the proposed revision of the Book of Occasional Services to include a name change liturgy. The other (also with a pending number) will call for a study of the canons to address the pastoral need to amend legal name changes in church registries and to reissue church certificates—baptismal, confirmation, or ordination certificates, for instance – when it is requested. In the case of the first resolution, what is at stake is the Church’s affirmation of trans people’s chosen names, recognizing our names in the midst of our congregations as icons of our spiritual journeys. The second resolution seeks to prompt a study whose purpose is ultimately to safeguard trans people’s privacy, to assure that, should one not wish to disclose one’s previous name, the Church will respect that wish, doing all it can to facilitate our freedom to make our way in the Church.

As we think, pray, and talk about these matters coming into General Convention, we look forward to open, clarifying, supportive conversations. Engaging in such conversations both at GC and in your own dioceses and congregations is one concrete thing you can do to support the trans people in TEC. Another is to support this legislation, to work to make it and the changes we have already made in our Church concrete, structurally real in your own contexts. We are inspired by today’s passage from 2 Corinthians 6: “now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” (6:2) And as it concludes, “our heart is wide open to you… open wide your hearts also” (6:11,13).

For the TransEpiscopal Steering Committee:

Donna Cartwright
Gwen Fry
Gari Green
Andrew/Amanda Leigh-Bullard
Mycroft Masada
Kori Pacyniak
Cameron Partridge
Iain Stanford

Emerging Voices: TransEpiscopal at the 2009 General Convention

This post forms the second in a series about the history of TransEpiscopal’s legislative efforts at the General Convention of The Episcopal Church, as we head to the 78^th General Convention at the end of June.

After our first effort at GC legislative advocacy in 2006 (described here) we realized that we needed to bring a team. We also experienced the power of working in coalition. In 2007 we had become members of the Consultation, “a collaboration of progressive organizations within the Episcopal Church that partner to work for social justice.” Even as we attended GC with our own focus, we also collaborated with the nine other member groups of the Consultation. The key to TransEpiscopal’s work lay not in lifting up any one particular voice or having any one specific spokesperson, but rather in operating collectively and intersectionally. We chose to work this way out of respect for the varied experiences and identities within our own communities and in recognition that we are not alone in being impacted by oppressive social structures. Thus far we have emphasized collegiality, respect, shared resources, variously offered gifts and talents, and collective determination. TransEpiscopal has never had a president, has never had elected positions. Perhaps someday a different structure will make more sense for us. Perhaps not.

Coming into the 76^th General Convention in Anaheim, we were expecting four transgender-themed resolutions amid a much greater number related to liturgical blessings for same sex couples and overturning the (ambiguous) moratorium on openly gay bishops. Some of our targeted resolutions sought to put the Episcopal Church on record in support of secular transgender nondiscrimination legislation, while others sought to amend our own canons in support of trans equality within TEC. Never before had a group of trans Episcopalians organized ourselves to testify at the committee hearings to where these resolutions had been directed. Never before had there been an openly trans Deputy to General Convention, which we gained in Dante Tavolaro of Rhode Island. With growing excitement, we made our way through Convention. To get a flavor for our energy, see this early blog post about the intense opening days of Convention or this one in which I raced up and down the escalators between the House of Bishops and Deputies meetings; this testimony from Dante Tavolaro from the floor of the House of Deputies; this progress report from Michelle Hansen; this recorded testimony from Gari Green or from Vicki Gray.

After all was said and done, the 2009 General Convention passed four trans-themed resolutions:

1)    D090 encouraged inclusive self-identification on all church forms, calling for flexible options to identify gender, names, and preferred pronouns. 

2)    C048 put TEC on record in support of a fully trans inclusive version of the Federal Employment Nondiscrimination Act 

3)    D012 put TEC on record in support of fully trans inclusive nondiscrimination and hate crimes laws at the local, state and federal levels

4)    D032 declared that lay employees in TEC are not to be discriminated against on the basis of several demographic designations, including gender identity and expression. 

There was one resolution that did not pass in 2009, or at least not in both Houses of the Convention. Resolution C061 sought to do what C030 had targeted in 2006: to add “gender identity and expression” to Canon III.1.2, prohibiting discrimination on this basis in access to the ordination process. While the 2006 attempt never made it out of Committee, this time it did. It was debated on the floor of the House of Deputies and was sent to theHouse of Bishops once it passed. Among the bishops, however, there was an attempt to eliminate all of the specific nondiscrimination language in the canon, substituting the word “all”. You can read about this turn of events here. The archival legislation history can be found here. 

While we were disappointed at this outcome, we were determined to help bring this legislation back in 2012, in part because of how buoyed we were by all the progress made at this Convention—trans specific legislation as well as the overturning of B033 and the call for liturgical material to bless same sex couples.

We had come into the 2009 GC wondering “how our presence [would] be received,” particularly in “communications about the Convention,” and how “transgender people and concerns” might or might not be incorporated “into well-entrenched narratives about the debates of the Episcopal Church.”

We left Convention with then President of the House of Deputies Bonnie Anderson as well as Bishop J. Jon Bruno of Los Angeles speaking about trans people in the concluding press conference:

“Rt. Rev. Jon Bruno: Well, transgender people are part of the congregations in this diocese, and they’re part of the world community. And it’s a good thing that we’re dealing with this openly. We need to talk about the fact that humanity is different wherever you go, and that we are all called to be loved as children of God, and dealt with, with equity and love.

“Dr. Bonnie Anderson: Let me just add that in the House of Deputies we had testimony from transgender persons. It was very moving. It was very well received in the House of Deputies. I believe that it helped us to see and learn about that particular way of being. We welcomed that and did pass resolutions to include all people, including transgender persons.”

We had traveled a good deal from the illegible, barely traceable remnants of our legislative efforts in 2006. Working collaboratively and gathering new friends along the way, we had made unexpected, remarkable progress in 2009. None of this meant that there weren’t and aren’t still major gaps—gaps in which trans people continue to experience significant difficulty in the church and in the world. Stay tuned for more on both the further progress made in 2012 and gaps that remain to be engaged and transformed….

CP

Lost and Found: TransEpiscopal at the 2006 General Convention

TransEpiscopal looks forward to being at the 78^th triennial General Convention of The Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City June 25-July 3. There, as in the past several years, we aim to collaborate with several groups and individuals to continue being agents of transformation in and through the Episcopal Church, that trans folks – and indeed all people--  might be empowered in and by this Church to be the people God is calling us to become. Already we have come a very long way, even as significant work remains to be done.

As we turn toward Salt Lake City, we wanted to take a moment—a few posts—to recall the history of TransEpiscopal’s legislative advocacy at GC.

TransEpiscopal’s first such effort was about a year after our founding, in 2006 at the 75^th Convention in Columbus, Ohio. This was an especially intense, emotional Convention. The House of Bishops elected The Episcopal Church’s first ever woman Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. The Convention rejected a resolution that intended to place a moratorium on openly gay bishops, three years after Bishop Gene Robinson had been consecrated in New Hampshire (A161 which can be found here). And then, not long after that rejection, the Convention passed a slightly different version of that resolution (B033) which essentially sought to do the same thing with vaguer language (which was later essentially overturned at the GC of 2009). The GC of 2006 was incredibly difficult, especially for LGBT people.

Amid all this, there wasn’t much awareness of or advocacy for trans people in The Episcopal Church or, really, much specific language to help name our experiences and identities. Take, for instance, the difficulty of even locating a digital record of the one resolution touching on trans people in the life of the church that did, in fact, come before the 2006 General Convention: resolution C030. This resolution, which originated in the Diocese of California, sought to do what the 77^th General Convention eventually did in 2012: to add “gender identity and expression” to the nondiscrimination language in Canon III.1.2, on access to the discernment process toward ordained ministry. You can find its legislative record here.  Here is an image of it as well.

Once recognized by the General Convention, and given a number (C030), the resolution got referred to the Committee on Canons. When that committee held a hearing on this and its other resolutions, TransEpiscopal’s founding member Donna Cartwright testified in its support. Donna had driven on her own to General Convention and was a lone voice speaking out in support of this resolution. As the legislative history reports, the committee ultimately “presented its Report #14 on Resolution C030 (Amend Canons: Title III, Canon 1, Section 2) recommending discharge, and re-referral of the resolution to the Committee on Ministry.” This decision was communicated to the House of Bishops. But this sentence really tells the story: “Resolution Died With Adjournment.” Or better, as the abstract of C030 puts it, “The 75th General Convention rejects a resolution to amend Canon III.1.2 regarding access to the discernment process.”

The funny thing about this is that for years several of us have been trying to locate a digital record—or, really, any official record—of this experience that Donna Cartwright had shared with us as it was happening. It felt important, a kind of signpost saying we were there. But none of the key terms – words like “transgender” or “gender identity” or even just “gender” – were generating anything in the digital archives. What ultimately did lead to its location, finally, was an advanced search targeting the year 2006 and typing the word “rejected” under “Action taken.” Among the sixty-six other rejected resolutions, C030 was easy to pick out. In other posts, narrating other encounters at later GCs, we have commented on the importance of naming, of specificity. Without that naming, even as language can still so often fall short, it can be easy to lose traces of our histories, to forget aspects of our journey.

But, in the person of Donna, we were indeed there, and we knew we needed to return in greater numbers. And so, in 2009, we did….

Transepiscopal at General Convention 2015

Just before the Feast of the Ascension, May 14^th this year, there were three days called “Rogation Days” that are special days of fasting.  The word Rogation is Latin and means “Asking”, so these are days of Asking.  They are a remnant of a time when our lives were far more agricultural.  Prayers were said for the success of the new crops, most of which had just been planted.

Jesus also talks about planting, but his planting is a metaphor for instilling new faith in a “fertile” people.  TransEpiscopal is an organization of Episcopalians who seek to help the planting of the Christian Faith among the Trans population along with acceptance, education and greater inclusion of Trans individuals within the life of the Episcopal Church.  Many who are Trans have been systematically rejected from their traditional faith homes.  We strive to create a more accepting and friendly space for them in the Episcopal Church.

To do this we have over the past 10 years worked to “plant” the seed of faith and to promote an accepting, understanding and welcoming faith community within the Episcopal Church.  To this end we had delegations at the 2009 and 2012 General Conventions.  Legislation was proposed and for the most part passed.  Thus saying, the job is not yet completed and we intend to have yet another presence at the 2015 General Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah (this June and July.) For the most part, the TransEpiscopal delegation members are some of the “fruits” of past “planting.” They will educate, promote legislation and make personal bonds with the leaders of the Episcopal Church.  They will pray and worship with the Convention.

We cannot accomplish this great task of ministry to the Church without help.  We hope that you will be able and want to help with this “planting” by making a contribution to the effort.  Any contribution, large or small, will accomplish a great deal.  It will help with the expenses of the General Convention and it will make you a part of our Ministry.  Please pray for us and, if you can, contribute.  There is a Donate button to the left of this page to make a contribution using PayPal.  A PayPal account is not necessary. Please note that the contribution is for “TransEpiscopal.”  If you prefer to send a check, you can mail a check made out to our fiscal sponsor, Integrity USA-- just be sure to put TransEpiscopal in the memo line, then mail to:

770 Massachusetts Ave #390170
Cambridge, MA 02139   USA

We thank you for your interest, your support and for your prayers.  Blessings!

Donna Cartwright
The Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge
The Rev. Gari Green

Statement on Integrity's Reduction of Force

TransEpiscopal is saddened by the news that Vivian Taylor and Samuel Peterson, the two full time employees of IntegrityUSA, have been let go due to a reduction of workforce. Taylor served as Integrity’s Executive Director from 2013-2015, and Peterson came on as Director of Development several months after Taylor began.

TransEpiscopal honors their pioneering ministries and contributions to furthering The Episcopal Church’s witness to God’s love for LGBTQ persons. Integrity announced Vivian Taylor on August 6, 2013 as “the first openly transgender woman to lead a major mainline protestant denominational organization in the US.” Taylor is a creative, charismatic leader who brought strong gifts in communications, entrepreneurialism and organization building. She recruited a powerful group of writers for Integrity’s blog and contributed her own moving posts. She also continued the spirit of collaboration that developed between Integrity and TransEpiscopal in the years after our founding in 2005.

In addition to his work as Development Director, Sam Peterson contributed to the Walking with Integrity blog, including two recent incisive pieces. One was about the Reverend Pauli Murray, a person of complex gender history who was the first African American woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. The other piece, on the Task Force’s Creating Change conference, emerged from the honor of Peterson’s membership in the Task Force’s “2015 Trans Leadership Exchange.”

As Taylor noted after one of her early visits to Integrity chapters across the United States, “the real power and energy of Integrity is in the people…Speaking with people about their own lives and experiences is an absolute treasure trove.”In that same spirit, we lift up and celebrate the power and energy of the unique humanity that Taylor and Peterson have brought to Integrity and far beyond. We recognize the significance of having had two openly trans people as the only full time employees in The Episcopal Church’s main LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. We are incredibly proud of them.

We are also disheartened at the financial strain that so often besets churches and other organizations that work for peace and justice. Unaware that Integrity’s own finances had reached such a critical juncture, we were surprised to learn of the decision to let these talented leaders go. We grieve that the financial hardship that Peterson and Taylor now personally face is one shared by trans people in staggering numbers across the United States.

Bringing to light the continued, multi-pronged broader pattern of vulnerability in trans communities is a key part of the witness that TransEpiscopal plans to bring to the 78th General Convention thisJune.

In light of our shared ministries as we head to into General Convention, we call upon the Integrity Board to recognize and respond to the deep pastoral impact this decision is having upon trans people in and beyond The Episcopal Church. We seek and invite a relationship of greater transparency and clearer communication. We look forward to reclaiming the trust that grounds our shared ministries to make explicit God’s love for LGBTQ persons.

TransEpiscopal General Convention Appeal

Dear friends and members of TransEpiscopal:

In the 10 years since TransEpiscopal was founded, we’ve compiled an impressive record of achievement, and that record is all the more remarkable because we have accomplished much with little in the way of resources.

At General Convention in 2009, we won passage of resolutions supporting secular civil rights legislation for trans and gender non-conforming people, nondiscrimination in lay hiring, and adoption of a commitment to make forms throughout the church more trans-friendly.

Building on this momentum with the strong support of our coalition partners (particularly IntegrityUSA which produced the film Voices of Witness Out of the Box), the GC of 2012 acted to add gender identity/expression to its canons prohibiting discrimination in access to the ordination process and in the rights of the laity. These were tremendous victories that truly put The Episcopal Church on the map as a denomination that recognizes the place and leadership of trans people in all aspects of its life.

Yet as we continue living into these transformative decisions, it could not be clearer that our work is far from finished. As General Convention 2015 approaches, TransEpiscopal plans a strong witness to:

1. Recommit the church to transforming the unjust structures that continue to kill trans people. As of this writing – mid February, 2015 – we have already lost six trans women of color in the U.S. so far this year alone. One of them, Taja DeJesus, was part of the Grace Cathedral community in the Diocese of California. Living into our church’s collective decisions means deepening our commitment to transform the unjust, intersectional structures of transphobia, racism, homophobia, misogyny and classism—structures that are literally lethal.
   
2. Support trans youth and their families. As Leelah Alcorn’s suicide so strongly revealed this year, for trans identified young people, coming out can be a particular struggle. For trans youth and for their families, a supportive, non-judgmental church community can be literally life saving.
   
3. Support non-binary identified trans people. Many trans people – particularly trans youth and young adults – do not understand ourselves to be straightforwardly male or female. Many decide not to medically transition. Many use pronouns other than he/she. Welcoming and lifting up the leadership of trans people means honoring this complexity and ambiguity, and offering emotional, spiritual, and practical support for navigating a binary world. 

This work will require developing and producing educational materials for use at convention, as well as defraying the cost of attending convention for TransEpiscopal volunteers. As in past years, we will be proud to work with our allies, The Consultation, Integrity-USA, and The Chicago Consultation. None of our victories could have happened without the collegiality and community of these coalitions.

And none of it could have happened without your support.

A gift of $50, $100, $250 or $500 will make a crucial difference in our capacity to change hearts and minds this summer. Please go to the TransEpiscopal web page at http://blog.transepiscopal.com/, look for the “donate” button on the left side, and give what you can. Alternately, you can mail a check made out to our fiscal sponsor, Integrity USA-- just be sure to put TransEpiscopal in the memo line, then mail to:

770 Massachusetts Ave #390170
Cambridge, MA 02139   USA

Faithfully,

Donna Cartwright
The Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge
The Rev. Gari Green

Voila! (one parish's rapidly achieved, relatively low key, and profound sign of welcome)

“Do we have a gender neutral bathroom?”

the new gender neutral restroom at
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Salem, OR

“No, though there is the ADA-accessible bathroom by the sacristy.”

“Well, can we make that a gender neutral bathroom?  Can we order a sign this week?  If that’s what people need to feel safe, then that’s what we need to have.  And we need to advertise it.”

And voila.  St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salem, OR, was going to have a gender neutral bathroom in order to make sure trans folks knew they were welcome in the space.

How did we get here?  Let’s back up. 

I am one of two interim priests serving this good-sized parish in the capitol of Oregon, known throughout the state for the excellence of its music programs.  Worship is traditional, and conversation is lively.  The Very Rev. Lin Knight serves as interim rector.  He asked me to serve as associate beginning January of this year.  I asked him if St. Paul’s was ready for a 34-year-old tattooed lesbian priest, and he laughed.  I heard later he sold me to the staff as a “perky blonde.” 

Lin had served St. Paul’s nearly a decade ago as interim as well.  During this time, the Oregon Supreme Court ratified its Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), prohibiting same-sex marriages in the state of Oregon.  Since St. Paul’s is in the capitol city, and since the Episcopalians had been getting a lot of press about the election of Bishop Gene Robinson, the paper called Lin to get a statement about this decision.  He told them that he believed the church should be in the business of strengthening all committed relationships. 

Well, I wasn’t here, but I heard this caused quite the kerfuffle.  Letters were flying. The senior warden asked that Lin make a public apology and state that he was speaking for himself only, and not the church.  The parking lot was on fire with chatter. Lin held the center with his signature grace, and eventually the parish calmed down, with many coming to him to thank him quietly for his words.

By the time I arrived, the church had settled into the place where I think many – if not most – Episcopal churches stand today.  Generally, most parishioners support full inclusion of cisgender gay and lesbian worshippers and clergy, and support efforts for full civil rights for GLBTQ folks.  They are stronger in understanding cis gay and lesbian issues than trans issues.  They are proud of being able to worship with people who may not be fully accepting of gay and lesbian people as well.

I was warmly welcomed and started the fun part of being an interim, which is getting to shake things up a little.   On occasion, I have been accused of preaching a “political” sermon.  (As has Lin.)  We’ve both been curious about this word, which is used primarily in the church as shorthand for, “What you are talking about makes me uncomfortable.  Please stop talking about it.”  It’s a silencing tactic rather than a meaningful adjective.  We thought we could explore that term in a non-defensive, open way over the summer.  We moved to a summer schedule and left an hour open before services for people to come in and have informal conversation about “political” topics.  We covered Israel and Palestine, Ferguson, immigration, climate change.  And for three weeks, we talked about sex. 

the whiteboard
(note: the term 'transvestite' is crossed out
because it is now considered derogatory) 

In one of those sessions, I did the world’s fastest Queer/Trans 101.  We defined terms, and moved quickly into talking about “queer” and “trans” as umbrella terms for a variety of identities.  (Many of them grew up hearing “queer” as a slur, and were very hesitant asking about it.  I said to not use it if it still carried negative connotations for them, but also explained how we need a word for, really, “everyone who gets beat up” as a result of sexual or gender identity.)  I made sure they knew that the vast majority of violence against queer folks happens to trans women of color. 

The white board with all the notes from this quick overview was left up all week, in the main meeting room of the church.  All the regular groups who meet there saw it, and it provoked a good deal of discussion on its own.  At staff meeting, on Wednesday, the parish administrator said that she had heard lots of people talking about it.  A few staff members chimed in and said they were curious, too.  I volunteered to answer any questions they might have, and off we went.  Eventually the conversation turned to welcoming queer folks at St. Paul’s, and we arrived at the conversation at the beginning of this post.  I had mentioned that one of the most contested issues for trans people is bathrooms, and our liturgical co-ordinator asked the opening question of this post. 

And there we were.  That part of staff meeting – from “So people have been noticing the white board…” to ordering a sign for the bathroom – took approximately ten minutes.   No mess, no months of agonized debate. 

Here’s what I think led to this easy ten-minute no-struggle conversation:

1. Calm clergy leadership, relaxed and committed to their values

2. Thoughtful, inquisitive adult faith formation unafraid of difficult topics

3. Most importantly, the laity’s absolute commitment to good manners and intentional welcome, even in a new situation where not everyone understands what the issues are

I think we forget about manners in the conversation about justice a lot.  Give me  staunch Christians with good home training any day when we’re faced with questions about how to be places of radical welcome.  By “manners” I mean that quality of a well-trained hostess, whose first priority is ensuring that her guests are comfortable and having a good time.  She may not appreciate someone’s taste, or personality, but as long as they are in her house, they will be made comfortable to the best of her ability.  It means the basic willingness to put another person’s needs before your own.  The St. Paul’s staff was still learning basic language and many of them have never knowingly met a trans person.  And yet – their number one concern was that people feel welcome in the space.  No questions on that front.  This is what someone needs to feel safe here?  We will provide it. 

This is the best of who we can be.  And on one sunny, sleepy, summer afternoon in Oregon, it meant a shift toward wholeness, and grace, for one community.  It meant marking one more little plot of land in this vast world as safe, as home. 

The Reverend Shelly Fayette, formerly the Interim Associate Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salem, Oregon, is the new Rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Seattle, WA.  Congratulations, Shelly!