In light of President Joe Biden’s recognition of “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Easter Sunday, a handful of liberal churches and other religious groups followed suit in observance.
Some of these churches reportedly mixed transgenderism and Easter celebrations in their services.
“To celebrate Easter in Canada, the Calgary Unitarians, a liberal religious organization, is incorporating a drag show as part of its Sunday service that will show “support [for] our Trans Siblings” and serve as a ‘sacred act of protest,’” Fox News reported.
The United Church of Christ’s minister for Gender and Sexuality Justice Ministries, Rachel Ward, declared that “LGBTQ+ people need a resurrection moment where death does not have the word and love transcends hate.”
“The resurrection story holds for LGBTQ+ people of faith the ultimate promise and truth: God is constantly coming out for your love and your personhood. And God knows intimately the ways it aches when those around us deny us of our rights to be human and in relationship to each other,” Ward wrote in an article published on the church’s website.
“Resurrection this Easter Sunday can look like uplifting not just the disparities trans and non-binary siblings are facing, but offering space for their gifts from God to be celebrated.,” Ward added.
A church in California also combined its celebration of Easter with this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility by recognizing “trans and nonbinary people” in a new photo-text exhibit that will be available for viewing for three Sundays in a row.
“How appropriate that Easter and the Transgender Day of Visibility coincide this year! The trans and nonbinary people shown with their families in the photo-text exhibit that opens today at UUCPA exemplify the joyful rebirth one can experience by being authentically oneself with others,” church leaders shared in a post to the church’s website.
“All of us, no matter what our gender identity, are called again and again to fuller life. To respond to the call, we may feel we are dying to the old self and being reborn. In this intergenerational Easter Sunday service, let us celebrate one another’s courageous, faithful leaps into new life, and the love that makes them possible,” they added.