Should members of the clergy be permitted to change their sexual
identity?
The issue is now coming up for the SECOND time among United
Methodists in Maryland. A United Methodist minister in Baltimore
has informed the denomination’s Baltimore-Washington Conference
that she has morphed from the Rev. Ann Gordon into the Rev. Drew
Phoenix.
A closed session of the clergy will discuss the issue during the
regional body’s annual conference, now under way in Washington,
D.C. The minister’s name change is already reflected on her
church’s website. The
former Rev. Ann Gordon now reportedly professes a male identity as
Rev. Drew Phoenix.
According to the congregation’s website, St. John’s United
Methodist Church embraces a “diversity” that “reflects the many
facets of God’s creation in our age, gender identity, sexual
orientation, race, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, socioeconomic
status, work and educational experience, physical and mental
abilities, and spiritual needs.”
Rev. Phoenix’s case is not unique. In 2002, the
Baltimore-Washington Conference had a similar controversy, when
Rev. Richard Zamostny had a sex change operation and became Rebecca
Steen. That minister’s request to return to the active pastorate
was ultimately sidetracked and Zamostny/Steen left the ordained
ministry of the United Methodist Church.
Like most denominations, the United Methodist Church has no
explicitly stated, official policies regarding gender identity
issues or sex change operations. And like nearly all churches, the
denomination does officially disapprove of homosexual behavior and
expects traditional Christian sexual ethics of its clergy. Rev.
Phoenix’s congregation supports the “Reconciling” movement within
United Methodism, which campaigns to overturn the church’s official
teachings on marriage and sexual ethics.
Unlike with Rev. Zamostny, it is not clear whether Rev. Phoenix
has had any gender reassignment surgery. A recent visit to her
Baltimore congregation found the petite pastor wearing khaki slacks
and a blue blazer. During the social hour after the service,
congregants referred to their pastor in the masculine sense. Models
of butterflies were prominently featured in the church, perhaps
metaphorically illustrating the pastor’s metamorphosis. The name
“Phoenix” also conjures up images of birthing a new identity.
Five years ago, then Bishop Felton May of the
Baltimore-Washington region of United Methodism responded with
uncertainty to Rev. Zamostny’s request to return to the pastorate
after a leave of absence, during which sexual reassignment surgery
had changed him into Rebecca Steen. In 1999, while pastoring a
Rockville church, he had informed Bishop May that he was leaving
his wife of 24 years, with whom he had three children, to pursue a
new gender identity as Rebecca Steen. According to Zamostny/Steen,
in a later Washington Post interview, he and the bishop
agreed to keep his plans secret.
After having his sex change operation in Thailand,
Zamostny/Steen requested a return to church service. Bishop May
hesitated, at one point offering to send the transsexual pastor to
Angola as a missionary. Steen declined. “Angola is not a good place
for a transgendered woman to be,” Steen recounted to the
Washington Post.
The Baltimore-Washington’s board of ordained ministry, dominated
by theological liberals, quietly voted to accept Steen’s return to
service, though now as a professed woman. But a prominent layman in
Maryland Methodism publicized the situation, which eventually got
into the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. newspapers in 2002. At the
last minute, Bishop May put Steen’s request on hold, pending
investigation of complaints filed against Steen, including one by
Steen’s former church secretary. Steen gave up on returning to
United Methodism as a pastor.
Bishop May has since retired. Rev. Phoenix, during a sermon last
Sunday, recounted that she had recently met with current Bishop
John Schol and that he, like the Roman Centurion in the Gospels,
was under authority and would comply with church law. Since there
is no official United Methodist Church policy on gender change,
what the bishop’s comments mean is unclear.
Authoritative Christian resources on the theological
implications of gender reassignment are rare. One publication is
Transsexuality, published in 2000 by the Evangelical
Alliance of Great Britain. It calls transsexuality a “form of
addiction” that often begins with cross-dressing and ultimately
culminates in an “all-consuming desire to change gender as a result
of compulsive behavior.”
According to the British evangelicals, “”A Christian response
that emphasizes both psychological and physical wholeness, rather
than concentrating exclusively on artificial and cosmetic physical
changes in the hope that they will of themselves produce the
desired psychosomatic unity, more truly reflects a biblical view of
holistic health.” It criticizes sex change operations and the
lifelong regime of hormone treatments as merely “managing the
symptoms” of gender confusion.
Calling the modern Western preoccupation with self-identity a
form of Gnosticism, the British report notes that transsexuality is
concerned with a state of mind rather than concrete facts. In
contrast, the Christian and Jewish doctrine of creation, with its
insistence that “male and female He created them,” shows that
sexual identity is not selected but given.
The British evangelicals advised against appointing transsexuals
to church leadership positions. Noting that post-operative
transsexuals often report high levels of depression, with some
wanting a return to their original gender, the report urged a “wise
pastoral response [that] will seek gently to restore the skewed
perceptions of a transsexual person to a Biblical view of maleness
and femaleness.”
Unfortunately, what is spiritually and therapeutically best for
transsexuals is not necessarily the chief concern for many liberal
Protestants. Preoccupied with self-identity politics, they are
eager to embrace transsexuality as still one more beautiful shade
of the endlessly expanding diversity rainbow.
