Ungendered Bathrooms and Being an RIC Congregation

Today my church, Trinity Lutheran in Pembroke Pines, celebrates our 2 year (or is it 3 year?) anniversary of being a Reconciling in Christ congregation.  Here's a mediation I wrote for our newsletter:

This Sunday, we will celebrate the anniversary of becoming a Reconciling in Christ church, which means we have decided to be more welcoming, and in particular, we are more open to non-heterosexual people. They can worship with us, they can take communion with us, and they can eat meals with us. For some of us, this behavior seems basic, just good manners. But the larger world is not so welcoming, and a reader doesn't have to go very far to come across horrific stories of violence against people who have a different sexuality or gender.

We might say that we're fine with being welcoming, but why do we have to stress our hospitality so openly? Why focus on it? Can't we just go back to talking about something else?

We stress our hospitality statements in part so that people who are different than the people traditionally welcomed in churches will know that our church is a safe space. We also do it so that we as a church remember our commitments.

Most of us have some degree of protection in the larger world. I'm a white woman who lives in a safe neighborhood. I have a job that gives me both money and health insurance. I have a spouse who is the opposite of my gender. I have some money put aside, and I have family members who would help me if I needed it. I am not an outsider in society, and sometimes, I can forget how it feels to be an outsider.

Of course, it doesn't take more than a nighttime stroll through a downtown area to remind me that I'm not as safe in our society as I would be if I had a male body. I'm a tall, large woman in midlife, so I'm safer than I would be if I was younger and thinner. I'm a woman who has had self-defense training, so I move through the world differently than some.

But the world is full of people who are much more vulnerable, people who can't just stay out of dangerous neighborhoods, people who can't hide that they're not safe in the world. Transgender women are much more likely to be murdered than I am, just because they are transgender.

When I was away at Southern Seminary, I had a valuable reminder of how it feels to be vulnerable. Southern Seminary has changed all of their bathrooms to be open to all--in other words, there's not a men's room and a women's room. Trinity has done that too, but we've transformed our bathrooms to be single use. Southern's restrooms still have stalls, urinals if they were once men's rooms, and in one building, shower stalls.

It took me a day to realize that we could lock the door to the bathroom and be the only one in the bathroom. For a day, I thought we'd all be in the bathroom, taking care of our business, male and female together. For a day, I went back to my room when I needed to go to the bathroom, because the bathroom didn't feel safe to me, even though I wasn't really expecting to be attacked in a bathroom with people just outside the door. It was not lost on me that what I felt would not be unfamiliar to a transgender person.

I thought about all the people who spend their days not feeling safe enough to go to the bathroom, and once again, I felt grateful for our church community that has tried to transform itself in such key ways.

More important, we realize that transformation isn't a one time event. It's easy to backslide. It's easy to forget how dangerous the world is, especially when we're at less risk than others. And sadly, in the larger world, the church as an institution has often been one of the dangerous places for those who are different.

This Sunday, let us recommit to our idea of what it means to be a welcoming church. Let us stand in solidarity with the outcast--just as Jesus taught us to do.