I'm clergy or a church member
Transgender-related identity and behavior have a documented history stretching back to biblical times — if that history is new to you, the I'm New page has a brief overview. That context matters: both the historical background and the more recent rise in reported transgender identity and gender-affirming care make this a live pastoral care issue for many congregations, whether or not it's been raised in yours yet.
If you haven't yet worked directly with a family with a transgender member, it may help to read I'm a Family Member first, to understand what these families are actually navigating.
A topic with several layers
People often hold multiple identities at once — gender, race or ethnicity, faith — that can't be neatly separated from one another, a concept researchers call intersectionality.[¹] For transgender people of faith, this means their gender identity and their religious identity aren't competing for space; both shape how they experience the world simultaneously.
That layering shows up in the different questions this topic raises for different people:
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For the theologian, questions about the creation of two sexes (Genesis 5:2) raise the question of where transgender people fit theologically.[²] A talk by Baptist pastor Mark Wingfield offers one pastoral perspective; a more conservative view is available in God & the Transgender Debate (chapters 4–7).
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For the biomedical scientist, the question is whether transgender identity has a biological basis. Our Etiology, Treatment, & Outcomes page covers current literature in more depth — it's written for a clinical audience, but clergy and lay readers may still find it useful, particularly Mark Yarhouse's Understanding Gender Dysphoria (2015) or chapters 6–7 of Kenneth Zucker's Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children & Adolescents (1995).
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For the family, none of this may be top of mind at all — at least not right away. When a family member first discloses a transgender identity, it can feel like the house is on fire. The theological and scientific questions above matter, but they're rarely what a family is thinking about in the first days or weeks.
Where Christians actually stand on this
Views within the church itself are genuinely divided over whether gender identity is linked to biological sex.[³] Pew Research found that white Evangelicals were more likely to feel society has moved too far in accepting transgender people, while other Christian denominations were more split on the question. Meanwhile, the scientific understanding of gender identity and biological sex is still developing — there isn't yet a settled answer there either.
That combination — genuine theological disagreement plus incomplete scientific consensus — can leave individual Christians uncertain, including about whether they can support a family with a transgender member while holding firmly to their own convictions. Scripture offers a starting point here: there's no hierarchy of sin, and all have fallen short of God's glory (Matthew 7:1–3; Romans 3:23) — a foundation for compassion that doesn't require resolving every theological question first.
Remember: the family's voice is often the quietest one
Family members of transgender individuals have generally spoken up less than other voices in this conversation.[⁴] But when a family member transitions, the whole family goes through a kind of transition too — whether they're ready for it or not. One mother's account of reconsidering her child's gender illustrates that adjustment process well.
Transgender Christians exist, too
It may surprise some congregants to learn that many transgender people are also practicing Christians. A transgender veteran's account of her own scriptural knowledge, and this profile of a transgender teenager for whom faith and identity were equally central, are both worth reading. As noted on our Resources for Families page, while only a small share of transgender people identify with any religious denomination, roughly half of those who identify as Christian describe themselves as "evangelical" or "born again." Small numbers, outsized attention within the church.
Where to go next
The citations on this page come from the research literature and are available upon request.
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Crenshaw, 1991
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Green, 2015; Miller, 2015; National Geographic, 2017; Nutt, 2017; Williams, 2015; Wood, 2015; Yarhouse, 2015
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Adams, 2017; De Jong, 2017; Green, 2015; Miller, 2015
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Connolly, 2006; Whitley, 2013