In this episode we welcome professor Sophie Grace Chappell, who shares her profound journey of faith, gender identity, and self-acceptance. Identified male at birth, Sophie Grace reflects on her early sense of being female, her experience of the evangelical church, and the reconciliation of her faith with her transgender identity. With compassion and insight, she discusses societal and religious opposition, offers advice for parents of transgender children, and the open letter she wrote to J K Rowling. Sophie’s story is one of struggle, epiphany, and ultimately a deeper understanding of self and the Divine.
Following the interview Nomad hosts Tim Nash and Anna Robinson reflect on Sophie Grace’s story, and ponder how it might inform their won evolving faith.
Interview starts at 15m 34s
BOOKS
Trans Figured: On Being a Transgender Person in a Cisgender World
OTHER RESOURCES
QUOTES
“If the church you’re in won’t accept you, then don’t waste your energy bashing your head against a brick wall trying to change it. Go somewhere else. Find a fellowship that will accept you.”
“Our children are not our property. They don’t belong to us. They’re human beings with a right to define themselves and find their own destiny.”
“I’d say in my life two things that have been there all along are something like a sense of God’s presence and something like a sense of being a girl.”
“Your sex is what your biology says you are, and your gender is the sex that you perceive yourself as being and the sex that you want to be perceived as being.”
“Christianity – if it’s anything – ought to be a faith that is capable of overcoming culture and transforming culture. So, it won’t do just to say, ‘This is our culture and we’re Christians,’ because we should be counter-cultural; we should be constantly questioning the kind of condemnation that our culture endorses.”
Thanks so much for this episode. I have enjoyed it immensely. Sophie Grace’s comment about the importance of Christianity being counter-cultural is so eloquent and reminds me I should question everything that suppresses and oppresses.
I enjoyed your post interview discussion too. I agree that people do change our views, however, we don’t need to wait to meet someone before we start to think about the difficulties that certain groups experience. Real people don’t always want to be our ‘case study’.
Thanks for the reminder of the importance of the mystical experience too. Young children don’t need to be told how to engage with nature, but even 5 year olds are nervous if they have never experienced the natural world for themselves…