Photograph by Katie Rainbow via Unsplash

“There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” Matthew 19:12

My name is Rev. Sean Cornell (they/them), I’m nonbinary (or enby, for short): a person who is neither a man nor a woman in terms of psychology and gender identity, nor male nor female in a physiological and biological sense. We aren’t going into any further detail on that latter point than that, thank you very much. While I was closeted about my identity through my university and part of my seminary days, there were signs that I was queer from my childhood on up. For me, being an enby is like being the color purple: there is some girly pink in there, some boyish blue, but even so it is completely its own color. Likewise, I have some feminine traits, some masculine ones, but I am my own person unto myself. This is simply a fact of reality, and one that I am at peace with.

It is also a reality that, until recently, was recognized by all levels of our government here in the United States, both the state and the federal. Even more importantly, it is a reality that the Church, in and through its various congregations, communions, bodies, and individuals (both among American Baptists in Wisconsin and the greater Midwest and Baptists in the Republic of Georgia, to name but two examples), have been willing, in general, to embrace. Even those who disagree with me – including some fairly conservative pastors from various ethnic backgrounds – have been able to accept me as a sibling in Christ. I am, after all, an ordained American Baptist minister in Wisconsin. And most importantly, it is a reality that God has allowed to come into being and that he has nourished within the body of his Son Christ Jesus, the Church. Remember the words of the apostle Paul, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” (Romans 10:9) and “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:15-17). To all of my brothers, sisters, and siblings in Christ in the American Baptist Churches – especially my evangelical kin – I confess to you that Jesus Christ is my risen Lord, that the Holy Spirit lives in my heart by grace through faith, and that, speaking in terms of my person and identity, I stand before God our heavenly Father with a clear conscience given to me by the blood of Christ that marks me as a justified child of God. And not only do I bear witness of this, but our Christian kin and the Church – in various forms and manners – have affirmed that all this is so. Thus is fulfilled the commandment of Christ, “take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses” (Matthew 18:16).

Yet even having said all that, there are many in the Church and in our commonwealth who will deny what I have just said, will call me a liar (and worse), and will refuse me a place both in the Church and in civic society. A most recent example of this comes in the form of one of President Trump’s executive orders which denies the reality of my being an enby and withholds recognition of it in official federal documentation. The problem is that my current federal documentation (my passport) has an ‘X’ gender marker, as do my state level papers (my birth certificate and driver’s license). Assuming this order goes into active effect, this means that if I leave the country and travel abroad, on my return I may be detained by Customs and Border Security because my passport can’t be processed. They could try to issue me another one, but that would be based on my other documentation which also correctly identifies me as being an enby.

You see how – even if only as a practical issue – this could become a problem very quickly. And that isn’t even getting into the existential aspects of the issue.

But having faith in Christ and being a decent person have nothing to do with who a person is. Take the Roman centurion, for example. He sent word to the Lord Jesus, saying, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed,” (Luke 7:6-7) to which our Lord replied, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith,” (Luke 7:9). Or take the example of the Samaritan leper, who was the only person amongst a group of ten who gave thanks for his healing. To him our Lord said, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?… Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well” (Luke 17:17-19). Or, finally, take the case of the Ethiopian eunuch who, upon being given the Gospel, asked, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” and, being told that there was nothing preventing his becoming a disciple of Christ, “He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him” (Acts 8:36-38). A foreigner, a heretic, and someone ritually barred from the Temple had all, by the grace of God, been given the gift of saving faith.

Why, then, should persons like myself who have received the same gift of saving faith – who pray, read the Bible, come to worship and who are active members in religious and civil society – why should we be condemned by some of our kin in the Church and by fellow citizens in our nation? And I am not the only one. I will not (for their safety) name names, but I do know others who, like myself, are enbies who are active in their faith and in the life of the Church (and that is in addition to many other LGBTQIA+ and allied cisgender/heterosexual kin in the faith). Even the Ethiopian eunuch himself is an example of a gender-diverse individual being welcomed through baptism into the communion of the saints both at the very beginning of the Church, and even more importantly in the very pages of inspired Scripture itself.

“What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?” (Romans 8:31-34).

I cannot change what any other individual chooses to think or to believe; all I can do is bear witness to what I am, what I have seen, and what I have experienced. Once again, I confess to you that Jesus Christ is my risen Lord, that the Holy Spirit lives in my heart by grace through faith, and that, speaking in terms of my person and identity, I stand before God our heavenly Father with a clear conscience given to me by the blood of Christ that marks me as a justified child of God. This is a reality that individuals and groups, persons and parties may like or dislike, but it nevertheless remains a reality within this world that God has created, is sustaining, and will redeem. It is a reality that all persons of faith – Jews and Greeks, old and young, the honored dead and the messily living, men, women, enbies and many others – know and live in and out of, affirmed and justified by God no matter what anyone else may think or say. Now, as I close my testimony of faith to you – my brothers, sisters, and siblings in Christ – I say, together with one of my spiritual heroes, Martin Luther: My conscience is held captive to the Word of God. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. So help me God, amen.