The Dean of St. John's College, Cambridge is the Reverend Duncan Dormor. He has published a new paper, Transgenderism and the Christian Church in the book The Legal Status of Transsexual and Transgender Persons

His paper is discussed by Madeleine Davies at the Church Times.

While a “growing number of Liberal Protestant denominations” are changing their policies, the advocacy of transgender groups and the reassessment of medical evidence may also produce a shift in conservative circles.

--Rev'd Dormor

The Dean concludes that

Over the past 20 years, there has been a very significant increase in the number of liberal and mainstream Protestant denominations which welcome transsexual and transgender Christians as congregational members and affirm their ministry as leaders and teachers.

But...

There is always an important but...

The overwhelming majority of the world’s Christians belong to Churches that are officially unsympathetic to the claims of transgender people. Transgender people are regarded as sad and misguided individuals who suffer from a psychological or psychiatric condition that has been misdiagnosed and mistreated, or as notorious sinners.

--Dormor

Diarist Input:

That's because those unsympathetic churches fail to grok that their God could have created such as us and fear that His purpose for doing so might somehow exclude them. All men should be porking every woman they can get their hands on and all women should be churning out offsping in record numbers. The fact that this planet has evolved beyond those needs is something that these churches can't handle and so they take their displeasure out on us as the current representation of the evil which will ultimately manifest itself in Armaggedon.

It makes no difference that trans people are not generally out seeking to end gender as a human characteristic. The fear is already there amongst the faithful. First comes fear and then comes Biblical justification.

Although a “warm welcome” is possible in some congregations, marriage and ordination are generally “not viable options”. He includes the Southern Baptist Convention and the Vatican in this “conservative” group. Such teaching goes “against a growing medical consensus”, he argues. “In response to the careful and committed advocacy of groups representing transgender Christians, or a reassessment of the medical evidence, attitudes to transsexuality in particular could be reframed within some conservative Christian traditions.”

--Davies

At the other end of the spectrum, in a “radical” grouping, he includes the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, the first to ordain a transgender minister, Sky Anderson, in 1979.

The Church of England is included in Mr Dormor’s third group, defined as “moderate”. It does not have a clear theological position or a consistent policy, he writes, and the experience of priests who have transitioned has been “mixed”: six of the eight remain in priestly ministry. Their experience has been “largely determined by the response of their bishops”.

The Reverend Dormor said this past Wednesday that the biggest catalyst for change had been pastoral situations...Bishops who have met priests who have transitioned, for example, “recognise them as faithful ministers”. Encounters can mean that those who are sceptical “go ‘Hang on, I can see this is right for this person. It is a real thing!.'"

Transgenderism is a rare, complex, and genuinely perplexing problem, and particularly challenging to religious traditions that vest differences between the sexes with great theological significance.

We need to start with the fact that we are made in the image of God and are all fragile human beings, and we need to give each other and ourselves more time, and pay attention and listen to people’s experiences.

--Dormor