Ep. 60: Transgender and Christian? w/ Natalie Drew

Show Notes

Episode Summary

CW: We discuss trauma, addiction, suicidal ideation, depression, spiritual abuse, and other topics that may be triggering. Please listen at your own discretion.

A lot of times on our show, we discuss theological matters that mostly reside in your head, but this episode is altogether very different. This conversation is personal, it’s raw, it’s painful, it’s the deeply transformative work of an individual who fought to save her own life by becoming who she always knew she was. It’s not only an episode about gender dysphoria and transition, it’s a conversation about what it means to live peacefully with yourself and the violent world around us. In many ways, Natalie Drew is one of our heroes. Here’s why.

Despite what many within conservative Christian circles may claim, “Christian” and “transgender” are not mutually exclusive. Natalie is living proof of this, as she navigates life post-transition within conservative Christian circles. She, her wife Heather, and their two teenagers are recent transplants to the heart of Reformed country…west Michigan. Natalie has spent the past 13 years as an HR professional, and currently serves as an HR Manager for a Fortune 500 company in the Grand Rapids area. After 6 years as an infantry soldier in the Army, Natalie has committed her life to advancing an ethic of Christian nonviolence and fighting for the rights of trans people. She is dedicated to elbowing her way in Christian spaces to help make room for her LGBTQIA+ siblings who have historically been rejected and despised by the church.

I hope her personal story of religious trauma, addiction, recovery, and transition will inspire you to live into who God fully made you to be. Especially in a day and age when transgender individuals are thrown into the culture war to chum the water of hatred and bigotry by evangelical Christians and their Republican Party goons, leading to a rise in dehumanizing tactics and strategies aimed at eliminating transgender people from society. Recent laws passed in Bible-belt states like Texas, Alabama, and Florida are making it almost impossible for transgender people to get healthcare, participate in sports, be themselves at school, and even be in an affirming relationship with their parents. And it is Christian organizations helping to write bigotry into the laws of our land.

May we, like Natalie, find ways to resist such evil nonviolently, protecting our souls as we fight each day to make the world a better place for everyone.

Quotables

• “Let me wake up a girl…let me be me! Or God, if you are not going to do that, then please kill me.”

• “I grew up in that world where it was King James version only where women and children were to be seen and not heard…It was a very spiritually, emotionally, and physically abusive world I grew up in both in the Church and at home.”

• “I didn’t have the vocabulary for it, I just knew I wasn’t like the boys in class.”

• “I had no safe place…My parents, I could have never taken this to them.”

• “I did what a lot of young trans girls do. I retreated into myself and became very violent.”

• “Like any good cult, you go to their schools. You plan to go to their colleges, you marry the person you meet at college and move back and repeat the cycle with your kids.”

• “I found the perfect job. It’s a job that let’s me be violent without the condemnation of society. And I would be held up as a hero in society. So, I joined the Army.”

• “There is a higher percentage of former Special Forces soldiers that are transgender than there is in the general population. It’s called the flight to hyper-masculinity.”

• “I think I know why I am depressed and constantly struggling with suicidal thoughts. I think I am transgender.”

• “I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria.”

• “The noticeable physical changes don’t begin to be permanent for a couple of months.”

• “We transition as a family or we don’t transition at all. It wasn’t fair for me to force this on them (my family).”

• “It was January 6 of 2020…And I went to work and I remember thinking, 2020 is going to be the greatest year of all time. I apologize for breaking the world!”

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Credits

This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor. Music is by Faith in Foxholes.