Charlotte Clymer ia a transgender woman, a veteran of the US Army and press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign.
As she was sipping coffee in front of a DC cafe last Sunday, she was approached by three tourists who asked her if they could pray for her.
I asked them why they wanted to pray for me, and the same person answered that they felt called by God to walk around the streets of D.C. and let God’s voice tell them who might be “broken” or otherwise need prayer. Broken.
As a Christian, I’m neither opposed to prayer nor to people praying specifically for me, at least not when it’s done in good faith. But I’m also a transgender woman, and I was dressed as femme as anyone today, with gorgeous makeup and clothing and earrings. I sure as hell caught the gist of why these folks happened upon me to offer prayer.
My introduction to Christianity was in evangelical churches. For years, I navigated conservative religious spaces where I encountered bigotry and attempts to shame LGBTQ people and women as often as I found warmhearted people eager to serve others. There was more than a little racism, too. I have heard the statement “I’ll pray for you” said with love, and I have heard it said full of judgment and scorn. I know the difference, and the folks who confronted me outside the cafe were making their judgment clear. Instead of a theological debate that usually goes nowhere for lack of good faith in discussion, I wanted them to feel what it’s like to have someone supposedly approach in love but inflict pain and discomfort. Perhaps that’s what it takes. A forced perspective in empathy. Why not try that approach?
I could have ignored them, but I’ve had it up to here with some evangelicals giving a bad name to their community by insisting on defining my humanity for me. They saw a transgender person and assumed I was broken because of my gender identity. They saw the constellation of my personhood through a backward telescope. It angered me that the whole of my being could be reduced to their flawed understanding of LGBTQ people, a view that could easily be revised if only they would take the time to get to know me instead of assuming they already did.
--Clymer
So I asked their spokeswoman if she understood how it might look to be searching for “broken” people to pray for and specifically pick out a random transgender person on the street. And they looked more than taken aback..
I stood up, smiling, but internally annoyed with this situation, and asked them what the Book of Matthew says about prayer. Their eyes went wide. The guy on the right started nervously stammering, clearly having trouble answering the question. The other two were just as flummoxed, so ambushed were they by the idea that the “broken” transgender person was asking a simple question about a common verse on prayer in Matthew.
--Clymer
The first book in the New Testament contains...
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them.
--Matthew 18:20
It’s a verse on accountability before God and about how God may work that accountability through human beings. As Leisa Baysinger notes, it references earlier Jewish tradition that at least three witnesses must agree to bring judgment on someone. In the moment, I was unaware of its exact roots, which were surprisingly apt, given the attempt of this small band to sit in judgment of me, but I still understood what was at stake in the line, and I loved the idea of using a verse on accountability that they had probably misunderstood numerous times.
I was the judged who understands the law better than those attempting to judge, and there, on that day, I sought to bring accountability.
--Clymer
-You know how Matthew says that where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, there He is with us?
--Yes, that’s right.
-So, let’s pray.
-Lord Jesus, thank you for the benefit of these friends.
Going on, I mentioned the natural beauty of the LGBTQ community and thanked God again for making us as we are, throwing in a genuine wish that their trip back home would be a safe one. Then, knowing my audience, I wrapped the prayer up in the usual evangelical banal phraseology — no weapons shall be formed against them, Put God on their hearts — to let them know that I was just as familiar with their community’s vernacular as they were, maybe more so. As I finished, having returned their “let us pray for you” to them tenfold, they murmured their thank-yous and scuttled the hell away.
Prayer should be a loving act, not a weapon of marginalization.
--Clymer