Having Faith in Yourself: Talking with the Rev. Dr. Megan Rohrer

[music] Welcome to Most Popular, the podcast that can celebrate the rainbow flag and tell you about the person who made it. That guy's name was Gilbert Baker, by the way. He died in 2017, but he was given the task of creating the rainbow flag. So, we salute you, sir. I'm Dr. Adrienne Trier-Bienic, your host and in case you were hearing this for the first time, I am a real-life college professor of sociology, and I created this podcast to combine my two loves, pop culture, and the impact it has on our lives. Today I am talking with one of my favorite people that I have had the pleasure of talking to and learning from as I've started this podcast and as I've kind of tried to figure out how to combine these two worlds that I find to be so fascinating. Before the pandemic, I'm talking like two, three months before the pandemic started. There was a new season of Queer Eye that came out on Netflix, and I started watching it during the pandemic in the beginning. There was this episode, it was season five, and it was season five episode one, and it's when the team went in to help a pastor, Pastor Noah, who was a gay pastor who had come out in his 30s, and he was trying to find the confidence. As I was watching one of the people who was brought into cheerleading him, was the Reverend Dr. Megan Rohr. One of the things they said during the episode that stuck with me, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't know the transcript, but one of the things they said that stuck with me was, "You are a child of God, and who are you to not follow this path that's been laid out for you?" Basically, they kept reiterating everyone's a child of God. This person is someone that I would like to talk to, and I sent a totally random direct message through Instagram, completely known nothing about them, never met them in my life. Just a complete prayer of, "Hey, maybe we could talk about this sometime. I have this podcast. I started for my students." They immediately responded and said, "Yeah, happy to. Let me know what time." In 2020, we spoke for the first time, and then we have since revisited the conversation in 2023. This is the newer version of our discussion. But I'm very excited to bring this conversation to you. Megan, for those of you who aren't familiar, for starters, my pronouns are she, her, which we've talked about in class. Megan's pronouns are they, he. The Reverend Dr. Megan Rohr is the first openly transgender bishop, and is one of the first transgender Lutheran reverends in the church. They are an award-winning filmmaker. They are known for their work with the homeless and their work with the San Francisco Police Department. For a long time, they served as the chaplain for the San Francisco Police Department, and have been working with homeless people and unhoused folks for probably about 20 years. They'll talk about it a little bit more. I actually started this episode with having Megan introduce themselves because there are accomplishments or things that I just cannot even start to list for you, and I like it. People talk about themselves kind of as a nice way to celebrate them. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. My name is Megan. My grandma calls me the Reverend Dr. Megan Rohr, but you know, don't say that. My pronouns are he and they. I have worn a lot of hats in my life, which means that some people know me as a pastor. Some people know me as the person who. I eat with the homeless and takes people to social security office. Some people know me as the loud person with the bull horn at the beginning of. I'm John protests marches. Some people have known me as a city employee. And some people have known me as a chaplain of the San Francisco Police Department, like in the full uniform. My two black trans kids know me as their papa. I think I just know myself as a work in progress who tries each day to do the best I can. And then over things whether or not I said the wrong thing when I go home from a party. Me too. Yeah. Yeah, I love having conversations with people and then you know the anxiety sets in about 10 minutes later of like, oh man, really, that's what came out. Okay, sure. There's a few people who think I'm a social influencer and know me from being on Netflix queer. I but that's a home other story. I mean, that's how I found you was on queer. I've told you this before, but when you looked at. So you were in the episode. I forget the man Noah was the man's name. Who was an out reverend like yourself and you were trying to talk to them about dating and being out. And you said, you know, you are a child of God. And that has stuck with me indefinitely. I mean, it will always stick with me the way that you handled that situation because that seems to be your thing is like we're all children of God. This is what we're here for. Yeah. And if you want the nerdy background story for that too, it's a very kind of trans background story is back in the 15 D 100 days in the like let's say it's like 15 17. The printing press is just being invented Martin Luther's real mad at the church and creates sort of this this uprising of the people because they had a pandemic. And then they lost their minds and got angry Martin Luther. They try to like kill him. They're like, you're the worst. Get out of town. And so his friends kidnap him and take him to this hill called work castle. And he pretends to be a night named George. And he during his little like time out decides he's going to translate the Bible. And in my imagination, I always thought it was like just him translating the Bible alone because he was such a smart dude. But he had like 12 Bible scholars and some of them would do the Greek portion that's about Jesus and the Hebrew portion that's about all of the children of Abraham. And then they would give him the translations and then he would take their literal translations and make them into poetry. His version of the Bible in German is one of the first times real people got to hold a Bible in their hands because the printing press. And because no one had like translated it was always in Latin or in Greek and you had to know these ancient languages and people couldn't have their own relationship with God. They had to just trust whatever a priest would tell them who is speaking the words of God in a different language. And and so what he did is is he changed the translations in really beautiful ways. And so the most people don't know this because they just think from the beginning of time, he only people were like, let's get it right. So everyone knows what God has for to. But really Luther believed deep in his heart that God was on the side of everyone. And so the right translation was not most the most literal translation. The right translation was the one that included the most people in who God was saying God loved. And so Martin Luther invents this term children of God. It used to only say sons of God. Can you think of a couple people. Yeah, your face tells that whole story right. And that's the only way to say sons of God. And that's part of why a bunch of people really you know what maybe God only likes it when dudes preacher when men. And that was never what it meant, right. But Martin Luther had to be the one who had the Hutzpah to like write it down. And because his Bible becomes the first one that's accessible. And so the whole generation of people grew up thinking that God was for them and with them through like one stroke of the pen. Right. And so there's a lot of things that people try to carry down. A lot of times it's the baggage of faith that we hold on to and we're like, we've got to do this thing. You know, we don't understand it. And I think we should pick some of the like radically loving inclusive stuff that are is the stuff that we're carrying with us. Not the need to just repeat and mimic everything, but the spirit of what people were putting into that. And so like most of my being and way of being in the world is very similar to that moment that Luther had in the midst of his like, I'm George and I'm a knight. Right. Right. But can you imagine in the face of death, like people were literally trying to hunt him down and kill him because he was inspiring too many people. And he's like, you know what we should do. Tell more people God loves them. That's kind of that's kind of how you exist. Yeah. That's basically how you exist in the world. I mean, can you talk about the work you do with with the homeless and the stuff you've done in the community. Yeah. So when I I grew up in South Dakota, I moved to Berkeley to go to baby pastor school. And the place where the seminary was, which is where pastors go to school, that place was amongst like $3 million homes and all kinds of and I grew up with like depression survivors who like say every UPC code on the back of a cereal box in case they can get a dollar rebate someday. And so I was like, reused every like just keep all the cool whip jars instead of buying top of where kind of people. And so this idea of like how and so much wealth made me really homesick. And so at age 21, I applied to work with the homeless. And so I came the executive director of a small little nonprofit in San Francisco. It's mission was not to feed the most people it fed people at like four like at 2 p.m. as there's other food. programs they can go to like at noon and for supper. But to be like people who would eat with the homeless to learn their stories to be like a kind grandma who roots for you even if it goes bad every Tuesday and Thursday, right? And so and hanging out with like Franciscan sisters who just were like, no, the purpose is being here because that's where God dwells in the poor and the homeless and the hungry. And I think through that process because a lot of the the homeless people that I was eating with and sharing stories with were people who were LGBTQ. They had been thrown out of their homes all over the world and had heard that San Francisco would be a safe place for them. And then the AIDS crisis happened and the ways that they were able to be in relationship with other people got harder. And the AIDS crisis affected people living in poverty much much deeper and harder and long lasting than in other spheres where people might have access to medications and housing and food and regular ways of being. And there is this whole generation of LGBTQ homeless folk who just sort of were stuck like they were the rubbish of community who needed people to care for them and they couldn't go back to their birth families. And the capitalistic very expensive housing of San Francisco wasn't going to be the best space to be a chosen family. And so I sort of like took that role. And like at age 21, like people in their 40s through 70s would call me maa. Because I just would care about them, I have this deep sense, like I would walk home from work. And I would just feel like, oh, I gave them a blanket and I gave them a blanket and I gave them and I you know how you started to get that like urge of like I should tuck them in and I never would because that would be creepy and terrifying to a homeless person. Didn't you tell me once that that happened to you when you were sleeping on the street? Yes. To help out and someone brought you their blanket and you thought, oh my god, there's something bad's gonna happen. Yeah, yeah. Dominic was putting blankets on me while I was I was sleeping out because the neighbors were like calling the police and saying that bad stuff was happening on the sidewalks and I was like, well, I should check it out, right? Maybe they're right. And so I slept out there and he he put blankets on me and it was creeping me out and I didn't want to look out because I was like, I'm female bodied. This could be bad. Like I knew all the ways it could be bad. And so I like just hid and then it touched me again and then I looked up and he just starts laughing at me because he was like, you always give me blanket. So I thought I should give you. It is creepy to be tucked in like that in the way. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I can see that, especially if you don't want people in your bubble, I totally get it. Yeah, yeah. But then sort of like creatively try to figure out like, I can't solve everything about homelessness from my tiny little nonprofit. But like, I so I would sleep out for a week on the streets and kind of try to discern like, what's the thing I can do for this year? Yeah. Right. What's the thing I noticed that maybe could make a difference? And so for there was a year I became a notary public because the Republicans figured out you could get rid of 40% of people who are receiving benefits by requiring them to have an ID. Can't get your ID unless you have your birthday, it can't get your birthday, it unless you have your ID. And so I became the person who could sign knowing all of their names as a notary public. I was able to do that only because I knew their names started a community garden project because a lot of the people were starting to get housing, but they didn't have like backyard or any of the things people normally think about. Like they even had to like share bathrooms and sort of the we now know about all of the wellness and care that you can find through gardening and and meditative thought, but it wasn't something that was very readily thought about for people who have like severe paranoid schizophrenia because people are just thinking doctors, doctors is where we should force them to go. But the plants you can you can hear all the voices you want and talk to a plant and they don't care, right? Like you can the plants don't call your names. The other gardeners of different economic background, you can be smelly, you can be dirty and hang out in a garden. In fact, you're probably a better gardener if you're smelly and dirty, right? And so did those probably did some projects where we got folk free prescription eyeglasses under the idea that if someone gets an easy yes, that they might want to be in relationship for working on some of the harder stuff in their lives. And I currently serve on the city of San Francisco's local homeless coordinating board, which is just like a federal term for the community group that gets to create the decision making about what sort of point system will a city use when they figure out how to distribute housing and shelter. So in a place like San Francisco where there's maybe 6000 homeless a night and you've got maybe a thousand shelter beds, what mathematical formula you use to decide who gets those beds. Is it based on age or race or class or what percentages end. So we just finished a big review of those systems because not surprising to anyone, those the ways that things were being distributed were disproportionately harming black and Latinx individuals in our community. And so just in the beginning stages of presenting all of those reports on how to seek to untangle from a little bit as much of the bias as possible now and to keep sort of reviewing and assessing to figure out what the next thing we need to untangle is. So that some of those processes are more in line with our values as San Francisco's. Yeah. And yeah. So I've done a lot of, a lot of like sitting in dirty places and listening to stories. And a lot of like trying to work inside the system for change. A lot of like big protests for change. This past Wednesday was ash Wednesday and there were like 30 to 60 mile an hour winds. So we didn't get to do a lot of the like regular trit-y stuff that we were planning to do. And so I got to just hang out with the homeless in front of a glied memorial church, which is where I'm at now. And just like learn people's stories and talk to them and talk about why we remember our mortality and talk about grief. And you learn some, you learn everything from folk who have broken hips and can't move because their wheelchairs have been stolen to talking to people who's who are now on the second dog that has overdosed and died because it accidentally ate fentanyl from the side. Oh god. So it's just being present with people and not afraid of their trauma and loving people where they are. Believing, believing stories through the perspectives that people tell them and not needing anything from folk and being a person who cares and listens as much as you can. We're currently trying to figure out how to give palliative end of life care to folk who are. Yeah, you've done that, right? You've done end of life. I don't know what you call it services or Yeah, like lots of chaplaincy trauma care service. So yeah, so we've talked a few times and I've never actually asked you this question. I don't know if it's even like a good question, but I'm curious what when you think of gender, what you think of what comes to mind. I mean, I don't I feel like some of those words when as a transgender person, it feels like your body is like a magical mystery, right? It's like being inside of the butterfly cocoon and being like, oh, we're going to do this next. Okay, here we go. Right? And so I kind of think it's really funny that people like to label and classify things. When it when clearly it's like a pendulum that can swirl in any direction that you want to. And I like my my best guess is that there are people who want how the flaps and the folds configure in our body to be our sex. And maybe some people want chromosomes, but they really don't because they don't want to talk about how many different chromosome variations they are. They're just looking for ways to like bundle into groups. And I think gender gender is sort of this weird dance of like, how do I want people to classify me? How do I want to classify myself? How do I imagine people will treat me if I wear these kinds of cloth in these kinds of spaces? And like gender feels like such a from an autistic perspective, gender feels like a made up thing that neurotypical people make up in order to have a rule book. So my my definition of like what autism is is that is that it's feeling like the whole world has a rule book and they won't let you read it. And then if they do let you read it and you follow it, they're mad at you for that. That's that would be my definition of autism. And I think gender is like one of those things where it's like, there's this rule book we would like you to follow, but if you play with it and you go, oh, the rule is I have to have like a beard and then I can like whatever you have decided I can do now. Okay, like I'll have a beard. Oh, you're still mad I have a beard. Okay, I don't understand your rule book. Why did you give it to me? So that's what gender feels like to me. And that's not an answer at all. No, it's great because the other thing I wanted to ask is the research you've done on gender in the Bible and how historically, like you've said this before a few times, but how historically, like what we think gender is presented in the Bible is nowhere near. What's actually happening. No, because, like, especially if in your mind right now you're thinking of the Bible and you're thinking about, remember, I told you 1517 is when the printing press was invented. So if you're thinking of a bound book, you're thinking of it wrong. So like most of our oldest, probably maybe they're the most accurate because they're old. I don't know. All of those pieces of paper, let's say it's paper, it's parchment, you guys, and papyrus. They all have giant ass holes in them. All of them. And so it's like, okay, we found 400 and they all have holes in different spots. But we know that different local communities had different versions. And so like dudes, literal dudes, in a room would be like, well, we only let them, let them re like that one. And that one agrees with what we've been telling people. There's this, there's this letter from like back in the 600s. I think it's someone's written by Jerome or some other guy who starts with Jay, who is a church father. And he said, you can't share the more accurate translation of this portion of the Bible because it will ruin people's faith because we've been telling them this other thing for so long. They can't handle knowing that like it says this thing and it's, and it's even if it is what we believe and we think it's true, like just don't keep it your secret knowledge that just like faithful dudes know, right? I think it's something like that. So when people look back at these oldest oldest texts, there's like all these places where, for example, Noah, people know the Noah store, right? Big boat, animals and twosie twosies and flood of the world. Noah, fun fact, his name means selfish because he didn't want anyone else saved. He didn't even try. But Noah sometimes called he when he does things that might be gendered female, like building the tent, his pronouns become she in the oldest documents. Now, what did he all the like dudes in the room say? Well, they must have just made a mistake when they wrote that down. Let's just not do that. Or it's still in the text, but a rabbi because most people just the rabbi reads it and the rabbi just switches it so it's not confusing, right? When Jonah goes into the whale, Jonah gets swallowed by panelchio is Jonah. Okay, so Jonah goes into the whale because Jonah doesn't want to do what God wants God to do goes inside the whale after Jonah comes out of the whale. The whale is a different sex. Why don't know. I'm going to blame Jonah. There are all these times Rebecca in the Hebrew Bible, when she's doing activities that were thought to be male single bachelor dude activities like being a shepherd gets the pronouns he in the Bible, right? There are. Joseph has this princess dress that he wears. Joseph in the amazing technic color coat. It's like a rainbow princess fairy dress, right? In the earliest imagining of how how God works, there were these ideas that gender was fluid. They used to believe, and this is very unfeminist, so don't believe this, but just be excited that transness existed in the past. Okay. You used to believe that if you were a woman who could have babies, you were a different thing than a woman could not have babies. It's not true your worth is not even defined in any of that. Right. Of course. So when in the Bible, it says, after 100 years Elizabeth was able to now have a baby, they thought she had a sex change you guys like 12 different times. There were times where people went from being the kind of person who could have a baby to the kind of person those switches were like that's the only possible explanation that nothing else could have. Yeah, yeah, turn your feminist brain off for a second. I already asked you to do that. What I trans brain and be like, isn't that kick ass? There were a lot of like. Gender changes all the time in the body. Okay, that is so rude and stupid that they thought that about giving. I'll just turn them both on at the same time. Yeah, turn them both on and have one be like, that's terrible theology and awesome that trans people exist, right? Yeah. That happened all the time. There was a term in the Hebrew called tum tum, which was someone who was thought to be both all the time in an inseparable way. Where you were both male and female, it was not a defined thing, right? The idea that if if the creation of the world happens because this mud guy, Adam, Adam just needs mud. It's not like a boy's name. If whatever Adam is has both male and female in it until God puts him to sleep like surgery and then performs a surgery. What does it mean that the original human created by God has a gender confirmation surgery? So there's there's lots of. Yeah, and Jesus in the Jesus community they talk about now that there is Jesus there's no more male more nor female June or Greek slave nor free. All of these classifications of you this or you're this are gone, but still a lot of people who like Jesus are still talking about whether or not you're a boy or girl. And it's bananas. I don't get it. I just think there was there were ways in which people believed that if God is bigger than us and God is smarter than us and God can know things more than us. There was a lot less fear that we could do something that would make God mad because if God's bigger and smarter and made us. Maybe those in between wacky places are the like God's favorite. So I like to think about things. Yeah. So we are relatively the same age. We're very young. Yeah, we are. But we both came up at a time where HIV AIDS was on the rise was starting and then was becoming something that people talked about a lot. And I think I could be wrong, but from for me, one of the definitive moments of my life was Matthew Shepard's murder. And I think I've read that that was something that shaped you to right. Yeah, Matthew Shepard died and for those of you who don't know that story, Matthew Shepard was an individual who is HIV positive who maybe was on a date with a guy he met at a bar and maybe he wasn't. But at some point, the person in the bar beats the crap out of him and ties him to a fence and leaves him to die in white. Yeah, yeah. Laramie Wyoming. Wyoming. Yeah, yeah. I get my western states. It's okay. But the fence that he was tied to look like a cross. And so the picture of the fence where he had died. And the 1990s version of viral, right. And was on the cover of every paper and magazine and talked about forever and. And so this sort of created a like panic moment for the United States where people were kind of casually talking about whether or not they thought gay people. They had the vocabulary we have now, but gay people whether or not they deserve to die or not based on who they are. And the majority of the population in the United States said die. And some of that vitriol came from churchy people churchy people used to have TV shows the churchy people of almost every single denomination. The fancy higher up in charge people said AIDS was great because AIDS because gay people deserve to die and advocated that they're not be. And so the research into how to end their pandemic that still exists today that they're not be funding for medicine and that people be thrown out of churches not allowed to have communion. All of those things in the midst of a pandemic. So imagine this current pandemic where you're trying to figure out whether or not you should wash your groceries and all of the things that came from that early fear. In the midst of it, people are saying, yeah, we're not going to research this or. We're not going to study it. We don't care. You deserve it. You should just not like why are you breathing anyway. And so it created a lot of resiliency in the queer community, which is really lovely. And amongst people of faith, there is a very clear generational difference between those who cared for people dying of AIDS. And those who did not go through that experience in the church community. And I think part of the growing pains right now in churches is people who don't understand why it feels like this really tight net group that they can't get into. And a lot of that has to do with where people were and how they cared for people during that AIDS crisis. And watching people get to a place where they would rather be kicked out of a church. Yeah, then dissipated in a church that speaks like that. I think both both the queer people who are acting up. And the the churchy people who were like kick us out of your church in the Lutheran church. And so it's true to start or dating and allowing gay people to be pastors even though. though it violated the contemporary rules, but followed those old timing rules from Martin Luther. And they were like, fine, throw us out of the church. If you feel that strongly, you kick us out because we're gonna follow God and faith and what is clearly ethical in this moment, rather than pandemic of, I don't know, yucky, yucky. - Hate. - Hate, yeah. - It's interesting because when I think about everything you just said is 100%. When I think about that time, I also think about the resiliency that queer people had to adopt by no means, reason other than no choice, like you. And things like making the AIDS quill in placing in places where you had to see it, like taking it to DC, taking it. I mean, my little town had 1200 people in it and somebody there thought it was important enough to bring that thing in and show this tiny town of people, like here, this is the problem here, right here, these are real people with real things happening. I don't wanna say silver lining 'cause that's not true, but if there is something to say, okay, look, this is where this resiliency came from, this like we've gotta take care of ourselves. - Yeah, and I think there have been moments of history that are like that throughout different kind of time periods in the world where it's like no one's gonna take care of us unless we do it ourselves back in the, in the like 40s, there were people who were trans and no one would give them any information and it was, you could be arrested for wearing the buttons on the wrong side, girls wear buttons on the side and boys wear buttons on the side. - I know. - In that law was in existence all the way until like 1976 here in San Francisco. And they said it was because they wanted to be able to arrest people who dress in costumes who might rob a bank before they rob the bank. And it's like, it was only a reason to arrest trans people saying they were wearing a costume or people who were doing drag. And there were people who would create their own newsletters and handbooks and they would say, you know, if you go to Seattle, there's this one doctor and if you tell him you have tattoos, he'll think, oh, you must really be trans. And like, this is the secret code you have to say to get care. Or this is the number of milligrams I get in my testosterone treatment and it is working for me. So tell your doctor who knows nothing about this that this might be the dose. Or like, here's how you can cut the top of a yogurt container so that you can use a urinal if you're driving through a place and then you don't want someone to find something in your pocket because they might beat you up. And no one's going to think the yogurt lid is trans-related, right? And so people were sharing all of these stories to like save their own lives, to be able to get care. All these moments where trans folk, many of them, faithful trans people do amazingly awesome things kind of because there's persecution. There's a person named Thecla, sometimes it's but with a C and sometimes with a K. And even a book called The Acts of Paul and Thecla. Yeah, Paul from the Bible. And Thecla, Thecla's mom wanted her to get married but she like heard Paul out the window talking about celibacy and following Jesus and she's like, I'd rather be celibate and follow Jesus than marry this dude my mom picked and her mom seemed like a jerk, right? So she converts to Christianity and her mom's like, well, if you're not going to get married, I'm going to have you killed. And so her mom gets the town to like try to burn her at the stake but she doesn't burn because she's Thecla, right? And so she then like her faith saves her and she like leaves the town and starts to follow Paul. Cuts her hair into the male hairstyle, starts wearing male clothes, starts following around. A lot of the like people who write about it will say that like, oh, she just, you know, didn't want to get married. So but it wasn't about boy stuff, but it was about boy stuff you guys. And there are all these people called the Desert Fathers who like an early, early Christian Dumb before the Roman dictator created most of the rules that govern our current Christian church in around the 300s and 400s times. So before the 300s and 400s and like the 200s, you've got all these people who are just following Jesus by like living alone and praying in the deserts. And they're called the Desert Fathers but many of them were people who were assigned female at birth and they took on male names and they, there are a lot of them. And I'm not saying names for them because we don't know what their chosen names were and because a lot of them were outed when people looked at their private parts when they were going to bury them. And so people told stories, told public stories about their private parts after their death. And I want you to know that there are trans people who lived in those moments, but I don't want to participate in telling the gossip stories about their private parts. And so there are all of these amazing, faithful trans people who have been around longer than Christianity. And if you believe it, the way I told the Adam story, maybe the first people created, but there's always been trans people and there's always been trans people of faith in the same way that like there are plumbers of faith and plumbers who kind of are jerks. There are trans people of faith and I'm sure there are some trans people who are jerks. But like there's a full spectrum of people but if you're someone who's looking for heroes and sure those don't believe people who are in a like Frankenstein mob telling you, this is brand new when I'm mad. Mm. When there are like fish that change sex and if there aren't any roosters, the hands will change. Like there have been a nature, but an ant's life. And so like there are all these animals that have always done this. Humans have always had experiences like this. There's nothing new under the sun, y'all. I mean, listen, I've said it before and I'll say it again, Jurassic Park Nile, this when they had the dinosaurs change sex from, right, 'cause they made all women dinosaurs thinking, oh, we got this under control. And then again, Jurassic Park is a life lesson for all of us. Life finds a way for sure. Yeah, exactly. And that's true in faith communities. They're in the Nicene Creed, the very first act of the Nicene Council member. I said constant that, you know, like Constantine, Constantine, who's the Roman Emperor? Remember the Romans? They killed Jesus 300 years later. They were like, we should be Christians. Constantine creates this council and they create the Nicene Creed. Most people know it as that really boring long creed. But they actually made several decisions that they're very first gathering. And the very first of their decisions was, we no longer can allow trans people to be pastors or bishops. There were so many trans people as pastors and bishops, they were like, we should not do this anymore because they might be the ones who like win. And Constine's motivating factor is he had just one of civil war and he wanted to make rules, the very first rules about who could be a pastor and who could not be a pastor, who's in and who's out. We're not lit, Miss Tess about faith. They were about which side of the war, the civil war you had been on. And if you were in favor of Constantine or the other dude who lost, right? And it was about how can the bishops who follow Constantine be the bishops who are respected, not those way more famous trans bishops at the time, right? And so there have been gender nonconforming, gender, radical, gendered verse, folk who pick a spot in the binary, people who reject the binary, people who just go off and live alone in the woods and just pray. And so they don't even have need for words like that because trees don't go crap, right? And so all of that has existed for a very long period of time. But that doesn't mean people now are nicer about it. Or even if you come with facts, it doesn't change other people's very violent feelings. And I think that's the hardest part of being a faithful person. These days is like most people don't care about how unjust rules were created. They just know that they're comfortable and changing rules feels hard. And they don't really care necessarily that trans people existed forever because it still feels scary and sad if your own kids are using words you don't know how to use and telling you you're bad because you don't use them. Or if it feels like the world is changing or might become more dangerous. And so I think that our contemporary church doesn't necessarily know what to do. When things feel new, similarly to like the 60s and 70s, as the world shifts, I think the church just sort of gets hunkers down a little bit and waits for society to be a little better at things where all children of God, but it takes longer than it ought to. - I always like to ask you this question. What gives you hope? - I find hope in little moments of like, uncreatable beauty, right? Like stained glass windows dancing as one of those. Whatever that feeling is, people talk about it at the top of a mountain when you can breathe again after hiking there. Water and ocean is that for me. I just got back from a trip to Antarctica 'cause that's how far I have to go to sometimes find hope and it really reels everywhere and little baby penguins swinging in the water. And I have had to make finding hope collecting enough. of it in my pockets. Like I had to get cargo pants to hold the hope so that I could have regular pants for my pockets full of hard stuff. And so that has meant regularly traveling to places where there are beautiful or new or interesting things to see. It means sometimes like I have, I couldn't necessarily tell you what the flaps and folds of my bodies will be next month, but I can tell you which foods can bring me joy for like five minutes. And that for me is enough some days like knowing a Starbucks order or a pizza order or a caribou coffee depending upon where you're located is the most ethical choice. Go good for you, but there are days where I just need to order the thing. That's make me have a couple moments of joy. Babies laughing is always on the list of that. You could be like, well, at least we got science or at least we got a vacation coming up to Mexico. At least we've got Saint Joseph, right? At least we've got whatever person you like. And so like, I don't care if you have faith in God, but have faith in at least something. Have faith in in nerdy stuff, have faith in pets in your life, have faith in something that's going to get you to tomorrow. And then if you do manage to have that full ladder of resiliency and wellness, then I would love you to speak out as much as you can so people know two people that can be a reason that they stay alive today. And then we'll have five people. And then we'll have 20 people, right? And I gained a lot of strength from reading the stories of other people who have done hard things. There was a period of time where I was the first transmission ever elected to be a bishop since Constantine made those rules. And part of what helped me get through the very long short time that I did that is reading the stories of other historic people who were the first to be and what it was like in each month of their life and to be like just knowing that there are people who have done hard things who have managed historic roles. Get yourself some some role models, not because you need to be perfect or a superhero, but because it's good to know you're not the only one who is faking it some days. And you're not the only one who's heartbroken and you're not the only one who's done a thing, right? But the message of the day is just like all the broken that you are doesn't make you worthless. All the broken that you are is what makes you human and is what makes you beautiful and someone else's. You're someone else's stained glass window dancing even if you haven't found each other, right? Thank you so much for listening. You can find more episodes of most popular on iTunes and SoundCloud. More information including additional resources for educators can be found on my website, which is Adrienne, Trier, hyphen, Beneck.com. And the website is listed in Episode Notes in case you want to know how to spell all of that. I'm on Instagram at at dr.adri.itb. That's at dr.adri.itb. As always, thank you so much for my students, to my students, for the encouragement to keep making these episodes, and I will see you next time.