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“There are two ways to interpret what Paul says in Galatians 3:28 about our being one in Christ: either it means that we're all whitewashed and homogenized and our differences are erased... or it means that we're called to find a way to make our different identities fit together, like the bright shards in assorted colors that make up the stained glass windows of a cathedral. Are we called to sameness, or are we called to oneness?”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians

“The thing is, we can't be in right relationship to each other if we can't see each other. We can't be fully present in any relationship if we're walling off part of ourselves or hiding beneath a mask.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians

“It might seem daunting to a congregation to have to learn about pronouns, or to designate a bathroom gender-neutral, or to have difficult conversations about what it means to affirm LGBTQ+ identities. But transgender people are not a burden for Christianity, or for the church. They come bearing gifts!”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians

“If there’s a mistake at all, it’s that we’ve created this understanding of gender that is so deeply limiting of God’s creation.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“What God was giving the eunuchs, through Isaiah's proclamation, was not just a place in society, and not just hope for a future. By giving the eunuchs the same kinds of gifts given to Abraham and Sarah--a name, legacy, family, acceptance, and blessing--God was consciously associating the two stories in the minds of the people. God was giving the eunuchs a story to connect to--a story that set a president, grounded in divine grace. That was the story I needed to hear. I needed to know that my problems were like the eunuch's problems, which were like Abraham and Sarah's problems, and that all of these complications were overcome by God's great love.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians

“When we look at stories of renaming in the Bible, we often find that a character is handed a new name they never asked for. While I'm sure Abraham treasured the new name and promise God gave him, and while Peter probably felt honored in the moment Jesus proclaimed him the bedrock of the church, not everybody comes by their new name so easily. Some people have to fight for it.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians

“But charting our identities along a line in two dimensions has its limitations; namely, it doesn't accurately reflect the human diversity we observe. We don't see each other, or ourselves, in only two dimensions, and bisexual and nonbinary advocates are suggesting that it's long past time to update our ideology. Perhaps, instead of insisting that each person can be charted along a line, we should be looking up and seeing the multitude of sexualities and gender identities that exist in 3D, sprinkled through space like the stars.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians

“To ignore the contributions from people with bodies different from our own is equivalent to saying some bodies are not as holy as others—that some members don’t belong in the body of Christ—despite scriptural witness to the contrary.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“My trans-ness is only related to the image of God in me inasmuch as it allows me to naturally, politically, and morally be in right relationship with myself, with my community, and with creation as a whole. It has nothing to do with it and everything to do with it.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“It’s really hard to be your best self when you’re in a cage.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“Some people have culturally specific gender categories, such as the Two Spirit people in many Native American tribes, the fa’afafine of Samoa, the hijra of India, the sekrata of Madagascar, and the muxes of Mexico. These cultures recognize more than two genders, and often people in these additional gender categories were historically held in high esteem or considered spiritually powerful in some way.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“We have closed our ears to the cry of the parents who have lost their children because of toxic theology; we have turned away from the tears of the youth who ask if Jesus can love them just as they are. Too many of those questioning their gender identity have been made to feel that they must choose between God and an authentic and healthy life. Not all of the people forced into that decision make it out alive.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“When our churches support or even organically formulate the idea that transgender people are morally, intellectually, or theologically inferior, we feed right into the hatred that leads to death for an already marginalized group.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“Saving just the main group or just the individual wouldn’t do any good, because the flock is more than just the sum of its parts. When Jesus goes after that lost sheep, what he’s telling the flock—what he’s telling us—is that we’re not complete without each other.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“At the messy, lovable, chaotic potluck that is life in the church, transgender Christians have a lot to bring to the table. We can help the church see Scripture through different lenses; we can help other Christians understand their own gender identities; we can help to break down barriers created by sexism and misogyny; we can remind people of the diversity of God’s creation, and of God’s unlimited nature; we can stand in the gaps and bridge middle spaces where others may be uncomfortable or uninformed; we can help make connections between the sacred and the secular, making the church more relevant for the world, and we can provoke people into asking questions about themselves and about God that they may never have thought to ask before.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“Black theologians also have an incredible amount to teach the church about embodied theology—especially in the United States, where Black bodies have been considered inferior and disposable. In a country built on the backs of Black slaves, and in our modern world where Black people are gunned down by police and mysteriously found dead in prison cells, calling Black bodies holy is another necessary and revolutionary act.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“Eiesland goes on to say that Christians must not only develop theology that includes disabled bodies, but that they must let that theology be created by disabled people themselves. “Such a theology must not be construed as a ‘special-interestâ€� perspective, but rather an integral part of reflection on Christian life. We must come to see disability neither as a symptom of sin nor an opportunity for virtuous suffering or charitable action. The Christian community as a whole must open itself to the gifts of persons with disabilities, who, like other minority groups, call the church to repentance and transformation.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“There’s a difference between suffering willingly, like Jesus did, and suffering at the hands of other people without any choice in the matter. Christ accepted our sins. He took them on himself and he suffered because he chose to suffer, whereas so many people now who are dying and being murdered aren’t choosing that. It is thrust upon them.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“Too often the church is a stumbling block that catches the feet of trans people on the road to God, rather than the sanctuary that houses the fountain of living water.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“God created us with the ability to also be creators, and some of those creators created surgical procedures and medical procedures and concepts and ideologies and systems and communities that do wonderful things! If we aren’t taking part in that creative process, then we’re going against our very created nature. —Lawrence”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“I believe God made all of me—gender identity included—and intended for me to be a transgender person who sees the world through a different lens. I don’t think God made a mistake. I think God made me transgender on purpose.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“I learned from Job that sometimes things happen in the world that don’t make much sense to us human beings. I learned from Abraham what it’s like to have your name changed. I learned from the apostle Philip that sometimes you have to say yes to God even when you have no idea what God is doing. And of course I learned from Jesus, who after his resurrection chose to show his body to the disciples—a body that was scarred and transformed, and yet still his own.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“For many transgender people, some of the most painful rejection they’ve experienced has been in church.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“Nobody talked about it.â€� When M was in high school, they joined some friends who attended a youth group at a large nondenominational church in town. Rather than pews, M found comfy chairs and couches. Rather than hymns, there were praise songs. It felt as if faith was springing up fresh and new, and M took to it like a duck to water. Near the end of high school they began to discern a call to ministry, but the church M was now attending didn’t approve of women in ministry; so, as someone assigned female at birth, M hit a brick wall. “I was told, ‘Women can’t be ordained.â€� So it took me two years, even when I was read as a cisgender straight woman, to overcome that basic gender”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“discrimination, and rejection, then the obvious solution is to create an environment in which the injured, the worn-out,”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“sporting my favorite blue baseball”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“There are times when I think Christians need to see ourselves more in the ninety-nine sheep who stayed put, and ask ourselves if we may have been part of the reason that the lost sheep got lost in the first place.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians

“...If Jesus came to bring abundant life to all who follow him, that means that transgender Christians should be able to stop spending every single bit of their energy defending themselves against those 'clobber passages,' in order to concentrate instead on becoming better disciples. We should be able to move from survival practices to thriving faith. Jesus didn't come to make things marginally more bearable. He came to give us abundant and eternal life.”
― Austen Hartke, Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians