Artist: Josh Randall, from a collection entitled "MIddle Child" featuring people between the binaries.
Queerfully & Wonderfully Made*
By Vikki Randall, D.Min.
*I wish I could take credit for this fabulous title,
but I’m borrowing it from others
June is Pride month. Some years this has been a time of joyful celebration. But other years are like this one: a time when celebration is tempered by resistance. This is particularly true for the trans and nonbinary community, who find themselves once again under attack, misrepresented and marginalized. Both state and federal trans-exclusionary bills have increased in recent years. Conservative Christian groups have aided this effort, spreading misinformation. As a result, nearly half of respondents to the US TransSurvey have considered moving to another state due to anti-trans laws. According to a study by the Trevor Project, these laws have caused up to a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth. Of particular concern is President Trump’s 2025 executive order: “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” The impact of this decision has been broad and heartbreaking.
It might be helpful to take a step back and look at some of the sociological reasons for this setback. Our brains are designed to categorize things quickly--it’s an adaptive skill. We are built to notice and organize data. Those labels can either be helpful and healing or constricting and harmful. This is why our culturally determined gender expression might look like a binary—male and female. Yet throughout history there have been people who fall between the binaries. Many indigenous cultures celebrate “two spirit” people who fall outside the gender binary.
Still, for many Christians, Scripture is a barrier to full inclusion. The passage most often used to exclude gender diversity is Gen. 1, because it seems like it is reinforcing a gender binary as part of God’s intent for creation. The passage describes creation in terms of a series of contrasts: light/dark, day/night, water/sky, culminating in vs. 26-27:
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, to be like us. Let them be stewards of the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, the wild animals, and everything that crawls on the ground.” Humankind was created as God’s reflection: in the divine image God created them; female and male, God made them.
So we see here that the creation account contains many pairs that seem at first like binaries— dark/light; day/night, sky/sea, dry land/sea. Yet each of these binaries is, in fact, not a binary but rather a polarity. They describe two endpoints on a continuum. We have dark and light—but we also have twilight, dawn, all sorts of times when light is dim.
We have day and night—but all sorts of times between noon and midnight—evening, morning, etc. We have dry land and sea but also have swamps and bogs and wetlands. It's a figure of speech called a "merism," similar to the phrase "I searched high and low." In the same way, science has shown us, male and female are not binary, but rather two endpoints in a continuum of gender identity and gender expression.
We intuitively get this continuum with light and with time–no one needs to explain to us that afternoon and morning are included in light/dark, day/night. So why is it that we read male and female as binary?
A helpful explanation is offered by Episcopal priest Tara Soughers in her book Beyond a Binary God: "Binary pairs are useful for simplifying large amounts of information we are required to process. It's developmentally appropriate for young children to think in binary terms… (but) most of us have learned that binaries are limiting and in many cases are inadequate to describe the world around us...
"However, there are some binaries that seem to be difficult for us to let go of. Often, these are categories around identity: who is who, and how different groups are valued… these binaries are much harder for us to ignore, as they serve to mark the boundaries between those who are like us and those who are not. Marketing, politics, and the legal system all tend to reinforce these markers of identity, privileging some at the expense of others. While many people fall between the extremes, we often act as if there is an obvious dividing line."
We can observe similar “us/them” arbitrary divisions in our culture today: Republican/Democrat, white/black, immigrant/native born, rich/poor, or liberal/conservative. This tendency to think in binaries—especially with groups of people—is hard-wired in us. It feels unified because it reinforces group identity—even as it leads to greater division and hatred. Perhaps one reason (besides scapegoating) that the trans community is under attack right now has to do with this identity piece. For Christian nationalists who are trying to preserve white male priority, the presence of nonbinary folks may be a challenge to their identity and purpose.
But one of the true gifts of trans and nonbinary inclusion is the way it pushes us to think beyond us/them. Returning to Gen. 1:26-27: Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, to be like us”... Humankind was created as God’s reflection: in the divine image God created them; female and male, God made them.
Soughers notes that "the writers of the first creation story were expressing their belief that both men and women image God, a radical idea in a time when women were often seen as inferior, derivative, or even property. Their insistence upon naming the two genders seems to have been an attempt to expand those who were seen as being made in God's image, not narrow it." She goes on to say: "We learn from this that human beings are complicated. We often try to make things simple—either/or– but humans rarely fit neatly into binary categories. In creating human nature, God seems to have delighted in complexity rather than simplicity."
One of the gifts that trans and nonbinary folks give to the church is an expansive awareness of one another and even of God. The fact that both men and women are in the image of God, suggests that God’s own self is not exclusively male, but rather is something that is both or more than male and female. While gendered language can be grammatical rather than ontological, it’s intriguing to note that the Hebrew word for God found in Genesis 1, Elohim, is a plural noun.
Our experience in the world and creation is that our gender identity does seems to be innate—which means, God did make us the way we are—including people who don't fit the gender binary. The Genesis creation story ends in v. 31: God saw all that was made and it was very good.
Genesis 1 is a celebration of diversity. We see this intuitively as we walk through a forest, alongside the ocean or through a beautiful garden. We delight in the diversity of flowers, of wildlife, of beauty. This is no less true with the diversity of human beings. It is a holy and wonderful thing to celebrate all that beautiful uniqueness. The inclusion of trans and nonbinary folks in our faith communities helps us celebrate and expand our understanding of ourselves and of God’s own self.
God of endless wonder,
The world you created is incredible. The vastness of the universe, the diversity of life itself. We are amazed. And of all the complex and wonderful things you have created, perhaps people are the most incredible.
Forgive us for the urge to tame all this overwhelming complexity into bite-size pieces. Forgive us for thinking we can create artificial barriers between "us" and "them." Help us instead to simply marvel at the wildness and beauty of all you have created. Amen.
