I am a Latin American transgendered woman who started HRT at 15. I come from a progressive and secular middle class family from a mid-size city. As a child I was an edgy atheist, but as I grew my attitude towards religion grew very neutral, I called myself agnostic and all that.Since a few months now I have been getting closer to the Church and Christ because of my university studies on Medieval and Colonial history. I feel like I have fallen in love with the history of Saints, of the Mendicant Orders and of the piety and devotion of common folk.But I know it's all a larp. I know the Church rejects people like me. A little while ago I caught myself about to buy a rosary from a cheap jewelry store when a friend told me ''why is everyone so into Catholicism now?'', and she is right. What I feel is performative. A week ago I went to the doctor and when I got out I passed by a Church, a classic gothic-style church in my city that is often closed, not sure why, and I felt the need to go inside. After I walked past all the statues and altars I am not sure why but I sit down to pray. I prayed for myself and for my parents and for this disgusting shit government to fall, to be destroyed.These past few years Evangelicalism has risen in my country really fast. Many of my schoolmates were raised evangelical, there's a shit ton of ''churches'' in my city and my hometown, way more than when I was a kid and this process is also pushing me towards the Church. I am afraid of what might happen to me and the people I love if they were to become the majority. They are already overthrowing elections. ''Pastors'' are calling to vote for the far-right and getting government handouts in return. How am I supposed to stop larping in this context?
>>44968385I am a christian trans woman. Ask me anything. What kind of advice are you looking for?
>>44968507How do you reconcile your queerness with the Church?
>>44968385ironically your situation seems kind if like the pagans in early medeival europe, like the Norse gods and the Germanic tribe.But as for my personal situation... i guess I just feel anguish for the fact that you see yourself as being in an unsafe situation... if being Christian makes you feel safer, then I hope you can find a church to be part of.Personally I think I always want to stand up for others like me as long as i can, and that includes standing up for myself. But yeah I feel guilty for not feeling the pull to be christian sometimes.
>>44968535Regardless of what denomination you choose, your spirituality and spiritual work is personal to you. You don't have to fully listen to your pastor on everything. You can choose to be a member of the catholic church, and still be a trans woman. You can view biblical passages with respect to historical context. The entirety of the bible is not the perfect transcription of the word of god, and not not the perfect transcription of the word of Jesus Christ. Jesus also hung out with people society deemed degenerate, and gave them compassion and humanism. The scripture with the passage saying that men shall not lie with men, when you examine the archaic greek term, there were better words for homosexuality. It suggests they were actually referring to unethical relationships involving rape, slavery, pederasty. Jesus also spoke highly of eunuchs and said they would build the kingdom of god, then affirmed eunuchs at birth. You can pretty much interpret it as he thought highly of intersex people, but I also think he was referring to trannies. I see eunuchs as a historical precursor to trannies and I think I would have been a eunuch in ancient times. Also, no one follows levitical law today. No one is held accountable for it, every single one of us break the rules constantly because there are very trivial things in there. The apostles wrote the bible and they're imperfect. They were absolutely the most qualified to interpret Jesus' word at the time, but Jesus kept repeatedly acting frustrated that they don't understand his point. Think of it as the closest we can get to god's wisdom rather than seeing it in an absolutist sense. Also, everyone is an incredible sinner and hypocrite. Every single person. Your life is not uniquely sinful or inferior to heterosexual christians. Everyone is a degenerate trying their best. I am episcopalian, personally. There, I just solved all your problems. Now open your heart to Jesus.
>>44968385I feel the same way as a man. You simply have to come with terms that most people like us will not get into heaven and that our whole life might just be a trial. Im sure a lot of the people that are living right now will also end up in hell in even worse positions than us either way.No matter how close to God we get his people have already decided we could never truly be his. If someone like us could get a known position as a priest or a nun it would mean that God has finally spoken in the ears of his followers that we are accepted. Until then we can pray. The pastors and evangelicals part. Well they’re all going to hell anyways for being greedy sacks of shit leading people astray and using the money meant to be for God and the people on themselves.
>>44968507NTA, but you seem to know your shit.Basic backstory is that I grew up in an evangelical household. Very strict gender roles, very strict views on queerness. I'm also an aspie and I find the concept of belief (in anything, not just God) difficult to grapple with unless I have some hard data to work with. What this amounted to was a lot of sitting in church, listening to people vocally hate what I am, and backing up that hate with fairy tales, and hating them and Christianity as a concept in turn.So I guess it's a two part question:1. How does one let go of that hate?2. How does one have faith in something that cannot be materially proven?Not trying to be an edgy fag here, I promise.
>>44968635this turned me on....
