Bible and the Transgender Experience. Linda Herzer

The author, a nontransgender pastor, spent three years serving a church where ten percent of the congregation identified as trans men, trans women, cross-dressers, or genderqueer. This motivated her to learn about gender variant people and put her in situations where her previous understanding of the Bible was greatly expanded. «The Bible and the Transgender Experience» explores whether or not God creates only two genders; what Jesus had to say about gender variance; various understandings of “the cross-dressing passage”; gender variant groups and individuals in scripture; and the movement, within scripture itself, from the exclusion of gender variant people to their inclusion within the people of God. In this scholarly, yet easy-to-read book, Herzer gives clear, insightful accounts of what she has learned. A must-read for all pastors, chaplains, counselors, and congregants, and for family and friends of transgender people, as well as for gender-variant individuals seeking to find their stories in the biblical narrative, and desiring to know how scripture supports them. A refreshing and much-needed contribution to the public debates about the rights of transgender people.