By Shireen Korkzan
Episcopal News Service
Episcopal churches are working to help their parishioners understand evolving language around gender and sexuality identities to become better LGBTQ+ allies as anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric rises across the United States.
The Rev. Andrew Rutledge, rector of All Saints Parish in Sunderland, Md., told ENS that as an openly gay man, congregants are comfortable asking him questions about gender and sexuality, including adult and older-adult parishioners whose grandchildren identify as LGBTQ+.
“With the division that’s happening in our country surrounding issues of sexual identity and sexuality, I think any opportunity to engage in dialogue and learn is important,” Rutledge said. “While I think it’s becoming more and more common for people to know someone who identifies as transgender, there’s still a lot of misinformation. And I think learning more about that community or those individuals in these types of classes is so important.”
In the late spring, several Episcopal churches in southern Maryland hosted a three-week virtual course on gender, sexuality and theology to begin to clarify misinformation. The course was an ecumenical collaboration with Peace Lutheran Church and Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, both located in Waldorf, 30 miles south of Washington, D.C.
Course creator the Rev. Jerry Maynard, a Houston-based priest in the independent Catholic tradition and community organizer known as “the people’s priest,” led it. Nearly 70 people enrolled in the course, including nine All Saints’ parishioners.
The first session provided a general overview of the difference between gender and sexuality from social and theological lenses, as well as the role of appropriate discourse in faith formation.
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