Book discussion on ‘God, Gospel and Gender’ helps ‘A Matter of Faith’ start off Pride Month with a timely and practical podcast

LOUISVILLE — Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe have once again discovered a book they wish had been around when they were younger. But since it was published just last year, they did the next best thing, inviting the Rev. Margie Baker, the author of “God, Gospel and Gender: A Queer Bible Study for Teens,” to join their weekly podcast, “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Listen to their 50-minute conversation here.

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Baker is a former teacher who currently is on staff of St. John’s Episcopal Church in West Hartford, Connecticut, where she serves children, youth and families. Her eight-chapter book contains Scripture passages, a few activities, and “lots of wondering questions,” she told Catoe and Doong.

“This book was written for teens and tweens, but I’ve heard from adults who’ve really benefited from it,” she said. It can be used in a class or retreat setting, and it’s a book “you can hand to that one kid” in church “who has questions.”

Doong led off the questions for Baker with this one: What are specific ways we should engage with teens to discuss the intersection of LGBTQ+ issues, faith, inclusivity and affirmation, and how should we engage with teens differently from other demographics?

Baker said she wrote the book because the youth at the church she serves “are yearning for a just faith and for a faith that requires active love of neighbor. That matters to them.”

While Baker found “really good resources” on topics like antiracism, “when I went looking at those resources from a queer lens, from how to either affirm your own identity or how to be a good ally, I couldn’t find it.”

“My context, and most of the kids that I meet who have questions about this, want to engage those questions through Scripture,” she said. “I think that’s a big difference from when I was growing up.”

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“I don’t remember hearing a lot of Bible stories to help me understand that God loves gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,” Baker said. “Queer kids and people who want to be allies don’t have the same baggage that adults do. I grew up knowing about ‘the clobber verses,’ the relatively few verses in Hebrew Scriptures and in Romans where we see explicit interdictions about homosexuality.”

“My kids didn’t seem to care about that as much. They were more interested in the wide arc of God’s love and God’s justice over time that as Christians we see embodied in Jesus of Nazareth,” Baker said. “For me, that’s been really important: How do I as somebody forming young people help them see this long arc of God’s love and justice and seeking reconciliation of all things and all people in Christ specifically through a lens that supports, empowers and affirms queer folk as well?”

Catoe asked: What Bible stories do you uplift?

Among Baker’s favorites is “reading Genesis 1 through a nonbinary lens.”

“‘Male and female, he created them’ — that sounds very binary,” Baker said. But binary-sounding creations, including “light” and “dark,” are interspersed with words like “morning” and “evening,” which Baker described as “points on a spectrum.”

“You have all this gorgeous room” in that first account of Creation, she said. “With Genesis, this is especially good for allies as well, because it’s a different way to play with Scripture with a beautiful and theological imagination: If we start with day and night and we move to land and sea and then we talk about beaches and seasonal riverbeds and wadis that you have all over Scripture, we start to see that even though the verses are saying ‘day’ and ‘night,’ ‘land’ and ‘sea,’ there’s more going on.”

By the time you get to some birds that swim and a few flying fish, “the kids are ready. They’re like, ‘What about penguins?’ … Maybe the story of Scripture in Genesis 1 isn’t trying to tell us exactly how something was made. Maybe the story of Scripture here is telling us about the breadth and power of God’s Creation, so that when we finally get to the last few verses of Genesis 1, we see that God created Adamah — God created humanity in God’s own image. Male and female, God created them.”

“Suddenly, male and female feel like points on a spectrum and poetry that might include and encapsulate a wider truth about what it is to be alive, and that God made it all, and that all of it is very good.”

“This idea of loving God first and loving your neighbor as yourself — that’s hard work,” Baker said. “My gender identification or sexual orientation isn’t going to make it any easier, but it’s also not part of the question.”

“How am I loving my neighbor if I say they can’t get married? How am I loving my neighbor if I’m saying you cannot visit your loved one in the hospital, which is one of the basic things that can happen if you’re not allowing marriage,” she said. “So I love that idea of focusing on right relationship and how we treat one another and how we can form ourselves to be good disciples and good people, because they’re part and parcel of what we’re missing out on if we’re just focusing on the self.”

We ought to be constantly reminding young people “that God loves us fully and unconditionally as we are,” not “in spite of their sexuality, not in spite of their gender identity, but inclusive of it, because that is who they are,” she said. “God made them and God doesn’t make mistakes.”

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Baker said the book came about as the result of a Bible study she offered via Zoom to people between the ages of 30 and 80. “They weren’t the same as teenagers, but they had such good questions,” Baker said. An older member apologized to the parent of a queer teen because the older member had been misgendering the teen “for a little while because they just didn’t know.” The time spent studying the Bible served “as holy space” where participants understood “that teens, allies — people learning about this for the first time — need a space that’s generous and that’s built on curiosity.”

One of the takeaways from organizations such as The Trevor Project, which works to prevent suicide among LGBTQ+ young people, is that the suicide rate is cut in half if a youth has an affirming adult in their life. “That should be the place of the church,” Baker said. “That is the work we can do. It is work based on Scripture and on our belief that God created the world, created it to be good, and created us to be in relationship with God and one another.”

“It’s not about winning arguments or getting a majority opinion, although that would be nice,” Baker said. “It’s simply about looking for people who are suffering and saying, ‘God loves you exactly as you are and you have a home in this church. We will take care of you and protect you and love you because you are beloved. You are worthy.’”

“I feel like that’s the work of the church right now,” Baker said. “The churches willing to do it are going to engage in holy and life-giving work that is supported by Scripture.”

New episodes of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.