Episode 87: Mark Wingfield on being an LGBTQ Ally

George talks with Mark Wingfield about their experience of becoming a fully inclusive church to people without regard to sexual or gender identity. Mark wrote a narrative style book about it, which was recently published, titled "Why Churches Need to Talk about Sexuality." They also talk about how Mark became an ally and friend to many transgender people and what that has meant to him.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason: Among all the subjects we have a hard time talking about whether at home or at church is sex, but according to a new book, churches need to talk about sexuality. Mark Wingfield, the associate pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas has written this book and he urges just such a conversation. Stay tuned for Good God.

George Mason: Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm your host, George Mason and I'm so pleased to welcome to the program today my friend and colleague Mark Wingfield.

Mark Wingfield: Thank you.

George Mason: We serve together at Wilshire Baptist Church. Mark is our associate pastor and a leader of our staff and programs and communications and all those sorts of things. A career journalist before becoming a church staff minister and he is the recent author of this book, Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality: Lessons Learned from Hard Conversations about Sex, Gender, Identity, and the Bible. That's a mouthful, Mark.

Mark Wingfield: Yes.

George Mason: It is however, a really important subject. One that was not gained through theoretical knowledge.

Mark Wingfield: Absolutely. We both have the scars to prove it.

George Mason: We really do, don't we? So while we're laughing about that, because thank God, now we could laugh a bit. We had so many tears and anguish times in working through this matter with our congregation. The hardest thing I think you would say you've ever done, certainly the hardest thing I've ever done in ministry. And a lot of times hard things are good things. And in this case that was certainly true, but in 2016 our church culminated a lengthy study that led to a decision to be fully inclusive in our membership of all members, including those with same sex orientation and gender identity that would be outside of the norm. And so we made that decision. It had great consequences for some people who left and for others who came.

George Mason: But during that time and that study Mark, you sat there with your computer open and you wrote and wrote and wrote chronicling in detail how all of this took place and as is your want, you decided that this was really an important subject for others to understand. And because you a writer, you banged this out. I say banged it out. There's plenty of editing that goes after writing.

Mark Wingfield: Absolutely yeah.

George Mason: But one of the things you really cared most deeply about in producing a book like this is that you just believe that churches, as the title says, need to talk about sexuality.

Mark Wingfield: Yeah, so the original title that I gave it was, Have the Conversation Anyway.

George Mason: Anyway. Yes.

Mark Wingfield: And this is the title we ended up with, which is good, but the main point I want to make is that churches need to have the... It's a painful conversation. It is difficult, but it's so important because most churches in America are avoiding this conversation like the plague because there's so much fear around it. And I think we would both say that, yes, it's difficult, it's the hardest thing we've ever done, but there's no way we would go back and say we wouldn't do it again.

George Mason: Yes, right. That's absolutely right that the experiences we have had of seeing people's faith restored, their emotions healed. Their sense of social welcome in places associated with pain for them. There was no substitute for the beauty of that and there was only one way to get there and it's difficult.

Mark Wingfield: And I had no idea the amount of pain that was there. I really thought I understood that. I did not understand it. I don't think either of us understood the extent of the pain in the LGBTQ community. People who are people of faith who have felt rejected by their childhood church, by their family, by their friends and the very voice of God. And to then have a church that says God loves you as you are, is so much more radical than we ever imagined.

George Mason: Yes. And I hasten to say that while it was painful for us to go through this, I often think there is no way that we can even begin to imagine the level of pain. What we tasted only was a fraction of what many LGBTQ folk have felt at the hands of the church on an everyday basis for their entire lives.

Mark Wingfield: That's right.

George Mason: And so we went through momentary affliction, you might say, yes, in being allies in this cause. But if they have any measure of the joy we have, as a result of it, it's really a great and beautiful story at the end.

Mark Wingfield: It is. And one of the things that I write about in the book that was a surprise I think to us was we opened our doors after the vote and after the study process and we expected people just to come and join. And what we've found is that people came and lurked, they watched and it was not enough for us to say, "You're welcome." We had to prove that you were welcomed. And that took six, nine, 12 months or longer for people to say, we're here to see if you really are who you say you are.

George Mason: Yes. That's absolutely right. And it was a little uncomfortable I think for many of our folks. When you and I in the various forums we have, I in pulpit and you with pen in other ways and to continue to reinforce the decision the church made and the lack of limitations being placed on LGBTQ folk. I think people were so tired for after a couple of years of working through this, they would just prefer that we just sort of move on. And what we found was that these people who are coming to us really needed to hear that we were not embarrassed or didn't regret this decision, that they were really, really welcome. Because many churches say that everybody's welcome, but then there's kind of a subtext that they didn't know and they're looking for. So it was quite an experience.

Mark Wingfield: Well, and the other part of that is I think our anticipation was that we could make this decision, not publicize it, but word of mouth take its course. And instead we got thrown under the bus by some other folks who wanted to make an issue out of it, outside the church. And it was the greatest favor they ever could have done us, but we just didn't know it at the time. The publicity-

George Mason: It's true.

Mark Wingfield: ... What they intended for evil God intended for good.

George Mason: Well, and let's not make them evil, though I understand your point. A lot of the folks who left, the people who were deeply disappointed in what we did and who continue to feel let down by their long association with us and whatnot. I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt too and say they were doing what they believed is right and maybe I wish they did it differently sometimes and that kind of thing. But in the end, change is painful and it's difficult and people make decisions as a result of it. And here we are.

Mark Wingfield: And you're right about that. There are good people involved. Absolutely. The interesting point about that is that there were people outside the system who became players in the system in trying to force an issue for us. And that's detailed in the book too how others got so upset on the behalf of us when they weren't even part of the church.

George Mason: Right. So among the things that surprised me in this process, was just how few people changed their mind. I read a book by a moral philosopher recently, Jonathan Haidt, called The Righteous Mind, in which he talks about how ideas are just the rider on the elephant is the way he puts it. And sometimes we have a tendency to think if I just get the right information, I can change my mind and all of that. But the elephant is the one that's operating instinctively and is most in control of most people's decision making. And I think that was true in our experience where we actually thought we'd study and we'd pray and we'd talk and all of that and people would maybe change their mind. And really what we found is they'd already made their decisions. For the most part, we were actually perceiving that the congregation had changed over time and we were right. But it-

Mark Wingfield: It still did.

George Mason: ... It was surprised

Mark Wingfield: So as a journalist and as someone who thinks in a certain way, it's always my hope that if we just give people enough information, they'll come to the same decision that I would come to. Logically this is what happens. And yet the one thing I think we did discover is that a lot of folks who were wanting to be inclusive didn't know how to express that.

George Mason: I think that's right.

Mark Wingfield: So one of the things I note in the book is and this drives traditionalists crazy. When someone who's more inclusive says, "I can't explain why, but I just feel in my heart this is the right thing to do." And that's not enough. Right? But yet we were able, I think through the study to give some of those folks some language to put around what they thought but had never been able to articulate. So we helped them express what they thought to be right. But they gave some more concrete thought to it. And the same is probably true on the other side with some folks who were opposed and were able to read our work and the study groups reports and say, "Yeah, this is why I believe it's wrong.'

George Mason: Right, right. So it clarified I suppose, and more or less deepened people's positions perhaps more than it changed them. But what's been the response so far to your book?

Mark Wingfield: Well, the response has been tremendous and I'm very excited about it and thankful to Fortress Press for putting it out there. And we've gone into a second printing this week and the thing that I've heard most from people is they... Two things I've heard so far, they're surprised that it's a narrative. So what I do in the book is I just tell our story along with some advice and tips learned along the way. And there are appendices with resources, but it really is a narrative story from beginning to end about what happened.

Mark Wingfield: And then the second thing people say is, "I just can't believe the amount of pain that's in this book. The conflict that you went through." And I'll say, when I went back and wrote the book a year and a half to two years after the events and reading through all the minutes of the meetings, I had forgotten. I had repressed in my own head how painful some of that was because it's just too unpleasant. And this is in what we like to call a healthy church.

George Mason: I know.

Mark Wingfield: So I get why pastors are afraid.

George Mason: I mean, it was hard for me to read the book. I mean, of course I read drafts along way and oh, it was just, "Oh yes, I know. Oh that's right." And boy, I wished I didn't have to think about that again.

Mark Wingfield: Right. You set aside some of that. I have one of the members of the study group who's just reading the book this week and is live texting me while reading.

George Mason: Oh really?

Mark Wingfield: With comments-

George Mason: Interesting

Mark Wingfield: ... Like, "Oh, my, I'd forgotten about that." And I think we're all in that boat.

George Mason: Right. So we've also had quite an experience and I know you have, I have as well with churches and other pastors, ministers calling on us to say, help me with this. And we're hoping this is one of the ways we can help. Because it's hard obviously when almost every week we get a call from somebody saying, "Can you take me through this?" Well please read the book.

Mark Wingfield: Right, that's exactly the one of the primary reasons I wrote the book was together you and I, there's hardly a week goes by that we're not getting a call from a pastor or a lay leader or an email saying, "I hear this happened to you, tell me what you did." And it's much easier to say, "Okay, here's the story, read this and then let's talk."

George Mason: Exactly. Right. And we are seeing some remarkable similar stories take place, I hope with less pain, but often equally so. And we don't ever over promise, do we? I mean we tell people that this is the hard thing, but a good thing, expect certain things. But some of my most rewarding experiences have been when pastors have called me back or written me back and said, "You know what, thank you for your help. Our church has made it. We've gone through it, we're going to be okay." And it's really rewarding isn't it?

Mark Wingfield: I think one of the things we've had to acknowledge is that Wilshire is exceptionally blessed in many ways. We're the exception to the rule. Yes, we had losses. Yes, we had pain, but not nearly at the level many of our colleagues have had. And yet when I talk to them, even some folks who were 18 months to two years ahead of us in the process from much more conservative starting places than we were to a person, they will tell you, "I would not do it any differently today if I had to do it over again."

George Mason: Well, we might have done certain steps differently, but even that's hard to know. It just is what it is.

Mark Wingfield: I would not have not done this. I wouldn't not do the thing.

George Mason: That's exactly right. And I think one of the things that we try to acknowledge also is that here in Dallas, Texas, while it was unusual for a church our size in the Baptist tradition to do what we did, there are other Baptist churches. There are other churches of the Christian faith that had gone through this before us and were deeply encouraging to us along the way.

Mark Wingfield: We were not the first. That's important to say.

George Mason: That's right. It is.

Mark Wingfield: We were not the first, we may have been the most prominent today to go through this process, but we also have as you've said before, a public profile disproportionate to our size.

George Mason: Yes, that's probably right.

Mark Wingfield: People are watching what we're doing.

George Mason: It is, it is an interesting thing. Well, when we come back, I'd like to talk a little more about the LGB and especially the T because I think that's been a special work and ministry that you've had as well, so we're going to take a break and come right back.

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George Mason: We're back with Mark Wingfield, author of Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality, a Fortress Press available in all the places you get your books. Amazon certainly, and so I do recommend it. How much is it by the way?

Mark Wingfield: $17.

George Mason: $17 the best $17 you'll spend. Well, Mark. One of the surprising things that happened through this whole process was we were sitting in the study group meeting and the question came up, okay, we're talking about same sex orientation. There's also that gender identity question. And we ended up having sitting in our group, a pediatrician and a genetics counselor, and they just decided to take over the grease board and give us a lesson. And it was eye-opening, wasn't it?

Mark Wingfield: It was, I will never forget that day. I can envision it to this moment, that whiteboard and the writing that was up there. And I remember sitting there listening to this presentation on chromosomes and genetics and brain cells and anatomy and all of these different things that have to line up in the way that we normally expect them to line up. And I sat there and thought to myself I'm a relatively well educated person. I've been around a bit. Why did I not know this before? Why is this new information? This is mindblowing. And three days after that I just continue to think about, I couldn't get out of my head. And I had this nudge that I needed to write down what I learned because as a columnist for a national news service, I had this opportunity, it wasn't my week to write.

Mark Wingfield: It was not the time I should have been writing, but I just felt compelled and I sat down and wrote this column in 45 minutes called Seven Things I'm Learning About Transgender Persons and I ran it by a couple of people who helped me polish some of the terminology along the way. And by the next Friday morning it was published online and I knew something was different that morning when I woke up and it had been published for an hour and a half and my phone was blowing up. Facebook messages, emails, text messages. And what happened over that weekend was it went viral in a way I never understood. And that column's been read by more than a million people now. And it opened doors.

Mark Wingfield: One of the things I said in the column was, I don't know many transgender persons, but I want to learn. And all of these people began reaching out to me within hours saying, "I'll be your transgender friend." And I began sitting down. I had breakfast and lunch and dinner and coffee with wonderful people who sat down and just pour their hearts out to me and told me their stories, who they were, what they'd been through, and I listened. I just sat and listened and I've never been the same.

George Mason: I want to follow the trail in just a moment of where that took you, but I think it's probably an important thing at this moment to stop and just define terms a little bit. So when we say transgender, at the root of that is the reality that most people are born with a clear sense of being male or female. While there may be some continuum in some sense, in most people, three things line up. One is their presenting anatomy. Two is their chromosomes. And three is what we've come now to learn is that the appropriate male or female brain, which is a relatively new concept. The truth is that for slightly less than 1% of the population, only it is our best guess, right? Those three things do not all line up. And what's tragically so is because often they are hidden realities, whether in the brain or sometimes even anatomy with internal testes or internal ovaries.

George Mason: We don't know that without testing and that sort of thing. Or actually chromosomes that don't correspond to our anatomy. For that small group of the population, there is this sense of something is wrong with me in terms of my gender. Now that's not sexuality. And I think it's important to distinguish, right. Gender and sexuality are not the same thing. Sexuality's what you do and whom you love and how but gender is an identity, who you are. But this was some of the big information we learned through this process. And so recognizing this then is that we can't simply say, "Oh, somebody just isn't content." Well, they're not content for a reason. They don't feel like themselves in their body. Right?

Mark Wingfield: That's exactly right. Every transgender person I've ever talked to and that is hundreds, by the way at this point to a person they've told me I knew when I was four or five or six years old that who I was on the inside did not match who I appear to be on the outside. No one would make this up. No one would want to suffer the disconnect, what's now labeled as gender dysphoria is a very painful condition emotionally. It's not a mental illness. It is a recognized condition where these things you're talking about don't line up and it creates internal conflict and there is a way to address that through hormone therapy and through being able to be authentic in yourself. But it goes all the way back to early childhood.

George Mason: Well, there's a lot of controversy about this obviously because the more information we have and the more public transgender persons are willing to be, the more stories there are. And for people of traditional values, often Christian people who want to have clarity about sexuality in a traditional way, who want clarity about gender identity, you're either male or female. This is a deeply troubling movement that it's become more publicly known and so we start seeing stories don't we, about the family where the mother and father disagree and where one wants the child to be, what the child was at birth and all of that. And then there's an accusation that the mother actually wants a child to have surgery and hormones and all of that at six years old or some such thing, eight years old and that's not what happens.

Mark Wingfield: Absolutely.

George Mason: I think it's important for you to say, how does this work?

Mark Wingfield: It's really important to understand. No one in the accepted medical community is doing transgender or gender affirmation surgery on a six year old.

George Mason: That's right.

Mark Wingfield: At all. It does not happen. That would be horrible. What happens is doctors will work with a child through puberty. They've got to get through puberty first.

George Mason: Not before puberty.

Mark Wingfield: Not before puberty. And even-

George Mason: Even then.

Mark Wingfield: ... Even then, it's sometimes years and there's a big-

George Mason: general majority age, right? That's right.

Mark Wingfield: The big debate about this, even in the transgender community, but what parents will their kids to do and I think this is acceptable, is to present the gender that they believe themselves to be. And I know some people say, "Well, isn't it just a fad?" Maybe they'll, "I like green today." No, it's much more deeply felt than that. And the number of cases that I know of where a child is allowed to present in a different gender, who then comes back and says, "Ah, just kidding." That's not happening.

George Mason: No. And one of our colleagues has a transgender child who, while living as a boy, was sullen, isolated, depressed, and when finally they allowed him to live into a female identity, our friend says she skips everywhere. She is full of life all of a sudden. It's absolutely astonishing, the change of personality that happens when someone can live into an identity that they believe is really God given to them. And I think this brings us to the question Mark. Where is God in this, right? Because a lot of people think, I think without thinking deeply about it, that God specifically designs every person exactly and perfectly right when they come out. We don't think that way about a hair lip. We don't think that way about other sorts of factors. Why should this be any different?

Mark Wingfield: Well, I think one of our other colleagues has a child who's autistic. And walking that road with that child has opened his eyes in a new way through the whole issue of sexual orientation and gender identities to say, "My child didn't choose to be autistic." Whatever these things are. And so where is God in this? Where is God in any of the rest of the world? Some of us just take so much for granted that the way we are is the way the world is. And we now know that's not true if you pay attention. We were talking earlier about the theology of the biblical texts in the Hebrew scriptures about night and day and male and female. Not male or female and so forth. And the most helpful description that I've come up with is to say we believe that God created daylight and dark, night and day, but we also know dawn and dusk within the range of that. And yet Genesis doesn't say, and God created dawn and dusk, but we believe God did.

Mark Wingfield: So we also know that there are a lot of human factors at play here. There are chemicals in the water, in the air that have caused, there's medicines that were given to moms in the '50s and '60s that had an influence on this. There are genetic things at play that we don't really understand yet. If we believe that God is the creator of all, then we've got to believe God is the creator of all. We can't believe that God is the creator of just some.

George Mason: Yes, very good. So every body-

Mark Wingfield: Every body.

George Mason: ... Is one of the themes of our church and we like to separate those two words in a sense to emphasize that bodies are important to God too. But let me take the listeners a little bit on a journey with you that also includes you having done a Ted talk about this and become a real advocate, sort of the accidental transgender whisper of a minister. How unlikely Mark. Right? Okay. And yet this has become a real passion for you and a ministry that you haven't asked for but have responded to and it's been deeply rewarded.

Mark Wingfield: Yeah, it's very hard to talk about it without being very teary because the transgender friends and the family members of the trans friends that I have are... It's a real privilege to be able to represent and speak on their behalf. And this is not my issue. It's someone else's life. Right. And yet I get to have the privilege of speaking because I am heard, I'm able to be heard. It's the ultimate privilege in a way. I'm reminded of this experience that we had the summer before our vote. If you recall, we were in Greensboro, North Carolina.

George Mason: Oh my.

Mark Wingfield: At the CBF-

George Mason: What a moment...

Mark Wingfield: ... Meeting. And there was an offsite meeting for churches that were dealing with these issues. And this church had taken a turn 16 years before because they ordained a gay deacon. And you talked, I talked, others talked and there was a Q&A. And then toward the end this man walked in from the side who we had never seen before.

George Mason: Well, he was actually working the sound.

Mark Wingfield: Oh, he was the sound, right.

George Mason: He was from the church.

Mark Wingfield: And so he came in and the pastor who was presiding handed him the microphone and I sat there and thought, "Who is this man and why is he getting the microphone? What is happening here?" Right. And the man stood up and said, "I am the gay deacon who was ordained here 16 years ago. I have one thing to say to you all, thank you for what you're doing. You will save more lives than you will lose church members." And then he handed the microphone and left. And that made an indelible impression on me. And what motivates me in the work with the trans community is saving lives. The suicide rate among the transgender community is 43%.

George Mason: Wow. Let that sink in.

Mark Wingfield: It is 43%.

George Mason: Nearly half.

Mark Wingfield: Nearly half. So if we're pro-life and we believe God wants people to live, then we need to address this issue. Yes, it's a small, relatively percentage of the population. It's a lot of people still. And if the church cannot speak on their behalf, if we can't speak on their behalf to say God loves you as you are, and God has made you as you are, we're letting half of them die.

George Mason: Well, let me put it this way. As ministers and as a church, we are missing out on their presence.

Mark Wingfield: Absolutely.

George Mason: And their gifts and what they have to offer. I think this is something that people fail to see people of same sex orientation and gender dysphoria who come to us. They are created in the image and likeness of God every bit as much as we and as professing Christians who come to be part of the church, they have been given spiritual gifts for the sake of the body. The church is richer with them and poorer without them. It is not simply a gesture on the part of the community to say, "We'll let you be here." It is really transformative for the community that we now have access to the strengths and gifts and love and compassion and passion for others that they bring to us.

George Mason: And Mark, I think about the work that you've done, the book that you've written, it's not about us, but as Martin Luther King Jr. said during the civil rights era, until those who are not personally affected become as committed to the cause as those who are, things will not change the way they should. I'm paraphrasing him of course, and I think this is part of what the role of an ally is. Thank you for being a good ally. Thank you for being a good steward of your gifts and again, Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality. Mark Wingfield.

Mark Wingfield: Thanks.

George Mason: Thanks.

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