This is an important book that fills an urgent need. It’s an informative and illuminating quest, supplemented by an extensive appended list of further reading and resources. But his leitmotif remains the search for a welcoming religious community. Along the way, he writes about such practical matters as definitions of gender identities and what parts of our gender identities are socially constructed and what may be “biologically set in stone.” He poses many questions about his subject, of course, and finds answers in the Bible, sometimes surprising ones, as his equation of contemporary transgender people with eunuchs, “the gender-nonconforming people of the ancient world.” He also discusses the corporeal nature of Jesus and extrapolates from that a discussion of embodied theology. He writes movingly about his own search for such an environment but also offers the perspectives of a wide variety of other transgender people, whose stories he generously shares. In this connection, he points out the importance of finding a supportive faith community. And no wonder, for, as he will point out, many churches in America are less than welcoming to the 1.4 million transgender adults in their midst, a staggering 41 percent of whom will have attempted suicide. Writing as a white, bisexual, transgender man who happens to be a committed Christian, Hartke nevertheless confesses that to this day he feels “just a little bit nervous” when he walks into any unfamiliar church building. Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians is written by Austen Hartke and published by Westminster John Knox Press.
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