Understanding Transgender Identities, Lives, and Faith w/Austen Hartke

The public conversation on gender and identity in the social and political arenas is frequently a cacophony of pejoratives, talking past one another, steamrolling, and ignorance. There persists a basic misunderstanding (some innocent, some willful) of the truth about gender, and a dismissal of people’s lived realities that ought to inform how our policies and practices affect our fellow humans’ flourishing. For those who are religious or spiritual, theological principles and teachings provide the foundational rationale for why any human expression outside the male and female binary is incongruent with God’s design for humanity. These and other teachings and perspectives take a very real toll on the very real lives of transgender people. What we need is a deeper and more compassionate humanity that listens and seeks a better and more accurate understanding

Austen Hartke (http://austenhartke.com) holds a graduate degree in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible from Luther Seminary and is the Founder and Executive Director of Transmission Ministry Collective (https://www.transmissionministry.com/), an online community dedicated to the spiritual care, faith formation, and leadership potential of transgender and gender-expansive Christians. From 2015 to 2018 Austen created one hundred videos for the Transgender and Christian YouTube series (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwWfCs7vnwdC1wbIAmH3_kIm0fE7oN9tE), which sought to share parts of the Bible that relate to gender identity and the lives of transgender individuals. Austen is the author of Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians, a book on theology and personal narratives, updated, expanded, and rereleased in March 2023.