Andrew Tobias

"The idea of a passionately loving God was an idea that I heard other people express, but I didn't feel connected to until I came out as queer in seminary."

A note from KT Sancken: This is the first in what I hope to be many stories of faith told by ‘holy others’ on the margins of the Christian faith. Andrew and I met in college at chapel. We’ve followed each other through social media over the years. It was a joy to catch up via Zoom this week. In his own words, this is the story of Andrew Tobias, a transgender pastor in upstate New York.

Andrew Tobias

I think the way that I approach Christianity has gone through all of these different iterations, shapings and shiftings.

When I was growing up as a kid, Jesus was my buddy. He was my imaginary friend. He's the one that I would talk to on the way to the school bus. He was the one I would tell all my troubles to.

Then there was literalism. I remember in high school reading the whole Bible cover to cover and just being furious with God, especially in the Old Testament. Why the heck did the Canaanites deserve to die that way? They're descendants of Ham. They're all from Noah.

I knew I wanted to be a pastor, and part of my growing up was that for the first 30 years of my life I was identified as female.  The first time I saw a woman in the pulpit, I thought ‘that's awesome but that's not what I'm gonna look like.’ I didn't give that a whole lot of thought until after I came out as trans, the year after I was ordained. That was weird to process, because my father doesn't believe in women preachers. I was the exception, because I was his kid.

The idea of a passionately loving God was an idea that I heard other people express, but I didn't feel connected to until I came out as queer in seminary.

After graduation, I waited two years to get my first call to a congregation.  It was its own kind of struggle for sense of call, but not for sense of belonging, oddly enough. 

Small Churches

All the churches I've been part of have been small, like maybe 34 people at Easter kind of congregations. It's intergenerational by necessity. Like, three kids and then you've got folks in their 90s and a smattering of everything in between. People's experiences with faith in that context vary widely. Some of them have been there because they've always been there. They have this kind of faith that they still had when they were in elementary school, and they've not done any harm by it. In fact, they're very surprised that anybody would be harmed by the church.  And then you've got folks being skeptical and you've got folks who are there because their parents made them and you've got folks only for the social aspect because these are the people they grew up with.

It’s this ritual life together, a common language. Getting back into that community life was a big part of why I stayed in the church.

Queer Pastor

I'm very open about being a trans pastor.  There's this website called gaychurch.org where congregations can just self-report as affirming congregations. We had a couple find us on the website and drive over an hour for Easter Sunday – Wow - just to come and worship with us. And, it was great. (It was also kind of assumed by folks in the church that we knew each other already. Because, of course, everyone who's gender queer knows everyone else who is gender queer?) We're next door to a mega church that's very not affirming. So, we kind of are ‘the gay church’ even though people in the congregation said ‘we don't want to be the gay church.’ But, it’s so necessary to be a safe space.

Have you ever watched the Suzy Eddie Izzard stand up? She talks about the way that the churches with the most privilege sing Alleluias with not a whole lot of spirit, but then you get into the congregations where the folks have been the most downtrodden and they've got the most joy. I am a Christian today because of other queer and marginalized people in the church.

Abusive Theology

What I thought were the core teachings of the church can be so abusive. Like, even the way we approach confession and forgiveness, especially in the Lutheran Church with ‘rot gut sinner’ language. You know, starting every service with confession and forgiveness and thinking that we are so broken that only God will love us. 

That’s the way abusers talk. 
 
You know in Tangled, with the mother? How she talks to the daughter?
 
‘Nobody else in the world is gonna love you like I do. I've got to keep you safe.’
 
Did I need to grow up with language like that as a child? Yeah, probably not. I internalized a lot of it in a very harmful way.

Sin and Salvation

I think there's a place for recognizing that we're born into structures of oppression and systems that are made by empire. In that way, yes, we're in bondage to sin and we cannot save ourselves. We are in these massive systems that are inherently destructive. It makes a lot more sense to me, the preaching I’ve heard in the black church that names more systemic oppressions as sin rather than who you fall in love with.
 
Learning to see salvation from that perspective makes more sense to me. Not that I'm individually such a shit human that God needed to practice divine child abuse to save me. Because God couldn’t stand to look at me, God had to look at his own son, bloody and bruised. No, not that.

But, rather, look at how messed up the world is that we would take someone as loving, as compassionate, as officially perfect according to the law as Jesus, and our system would publicly humiliate and murder him because he undermined the structures of empire. The idea that we need salvation from social structures and empires tracks a lot more with me from the position of an outsider.

What is the good news?

God made the world good. That includes you. And your neighbor. 

No matter how much harm you carry.

If you forget that or other people forget that about you, God will keep loving you.

It does take a lot of reminding some days, but I've been very lucky to meet the people that I have along the way and have the encounters that I've had to further ground and reiterate God’s love in different ways. Sometimes we can hear it in one venue, but not in another, in one context, but not in another, or one translation, but not another. Sometimes certain words and language that we use can trigger the pain that they originated from. We must hear it from another angle to get back to the heart of the message.