Under-covered story in tense times: Counseling with transgender Christian believers

Experts at UCLA estimate that 0.6% of American adults currently identify as transgender.

Like other writers covering religion, politics and culture, The Religion Guy has accumulated a bulging file on recent transgender conflicts, which go far beyond grade-school curriculums or women’s shelters, locker rooms and athletics. The major question facing practitioners, legislators and moral theologians is how the age-old “do no harm” principle applies to the greatly increasing numbers of teens under 18, especially girls, seeking transition via puberty blockers, hormone treatments and surgery.

A planned Memo analyzing those developments has been supplanted by a new book, “Gender Identity and Faith: Clinical Postures, Tools and Case Studies for Client-Centered Care” (InterVarsity Press) by Mark A. Yarhouse and Julia A. Sadusky, who are evangelicals and licensed clinical psychologists. Their work turns journalistic attention from the socio-political debates to the situations of transgender individuals, especially those raised in traditional forms of religious faith.

A blurb from Laura Edwards-Leeper, who chairs the child and adolescent committee of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, considers this book “essential” for mental health providers. But The Guy thinks it’s equally pertinent for individual clients, parents, pastors and churches (and journalists!) seeking understanding.

Even The Christian Century thinks that though the book “will at times disappoint” fellow religious progressives, it may “prove an important harm-reduction tool and entry point for conservatives who are struggling to join the conversation.”

The bottom line: Considering the timeliness and difficulty of the topic, The Guy sees it as a Book of the Year prospect in religion, and a compelling topic for journalism.

A quarter of a century ago, America was already a bitterly divided nation — especially on matters of religion, culture, morality and politics.

Thus, liberal theologian Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School (author of the ‘60s bestseller, “The Secular City”) was shocked when he invited to lecture at Regent University. It’s hard, he noted in The Atlantic (“Warring Visions of the Religious Right”), to titillate his sherry-sipping colleagues in the Harvard faculty lounge, but accepting an invitation to invade the Rev. Pat Robertson’s campus did the trick.

Cox was pleased to find quite a bit of diversity at Regent, in terms of theological and political debates. He was welcomed, and discovered lots of people testing the borders of evangelicalism — other than on moral issues with strong doctrinal content. He found Episcopalians, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers.

Politically, too, the students and faculty members I met represented a somewhat wider spectrum than I had anticipated. There are some boundaries, of course. I doubt that a pro-choice bumper sticker would go unremarked in the parking lot, or that a gay-pride demonstration would draw many marchers. But the Regent student newspaper carried an opinion piece by the well-known politically liberal evangelical (and "friend of Bill") Tony Campolo. … One student told me with obvious satisfaction that he had worked hard to defeat Oliver North in the Virginia senatorial contest last fall. If there is a "line" at Regent, which would presumably be a mirror image of the political correctness that is allegedly enforced at elite liberal universities, it is not easy to locate.

The bottom line: Cox found limits to the diversity at Regent, but they were limits that left him thinking about Harvard culture. In terms of debates on critically important topics, which school was more diverse?

I thought of that classic Cox essay a computer click or two into a must-read new essay at The Atlantic that ran with this double-decker headline:

The Geography of Partisan Prejudice
A guide to the most—and least—politically open-minded counties in America

So where does one find diversity that matters, people who are trying to be tolerant of their neighbors who represent different cultures and belief systems? You wouldn’t know that by reading that headline.

So let’s jump-start this a bit with the headline atop the Rod “Benedict Option” Dreher take on this piece, which has been updated several times (including his detailed reaction to a criticism from one of the authors). That headline: “Least Tolerant: Educated White Liberals.”

Where is Dreher coming from? Here is a key passage in the interactive Atlantic piece: