Youth lead our culture and churches in positive directions far more frequently than we recognize. Whether it’s Malala Yousafzai or Greta Thunberg or the youth activists who started Black Lives Matter, the world is better because of young people.
However, adults often put many obstacles in the way of such leadership, and in fact in spite of the ubiquituous presence of young people in our institutions and culture, we still often maintain an impression that spaces are populated primarily by adults, and certainly that adults hold much or more of the organizing power.
This is why I’ve loved the publication of two new books by leading voices in our denomination (ELCA) this past month. Each invites us to dramatically reconfigure some basic assumptions.1
The Gifts They Bring, by Amy Lindeman Allen, is about church ministry but from a New Testament perspective, and left me realizing youth aren’t just sometimes mentioned in Scripture but honestly can be found EVERYWHERE.
Raising Kids Beyond the Binary is a Christian handbook for parenting non-binary and transgender children and stands now as THE book I will recommend to parents seeking resources to navigate the complexity of raising trans youth in a political climate that is actively seeking to harm their kids.
Some brief notes on each.
The Gifts They Bring is a highly readable biblical scholar’s exploration of passages in the New Testament that foreground the presence of children. Not surprisingly, some chapters focus on those passages familiar to most readers when Jesus places children at the center of his work with the disciples (“let the little children come to me”).
More surprisingly, Allen establishes that it is likely that at least some key characters in the New Testament that we assume to be adults may actually have been children: including the disciples James and John, and Mary in the story of Jesus’ visit to the home of Mary and Martha!
Not only this, but once we realize that it was a young boy who provided the bread and fish at the feeding of the five thousand, we are invited to consider this implies there were children running around EVERYWHERE, overhearing the adult conversations, present and involved in the action.
Even much of the work we’ve presumed was the work of adults (like the disciples fishing) Allen establishes as being likely locations for youth and children to have been present and even working.
Once we begin to imagine the disciples and community around Jesus as being made up of many children, and when we are reminded that the story of Jesus itself begins with Jesus as a child, we are invited to entirely rethink the role (and place) of children in the church. “Reading with attention to children might draw adult readers of each story both to live into our own ‘childlike faith’ and to come alongside the children in our communities in the process.”
Through these stories, Allen emphasizes the ways children ministered in the first century and how they can do so today as preachers, evangelists, learners, stewards, and cocreatorrs of both family relations and the ever-approach realm of God.
One such child who has led the way both within our denomination and for transgender inclusion is Rebekah Bruesehoff, daughter of Jamie Bruesehoff.
I first came to know of Rebekah when she spoke at our denomination’s national youth gathering back in 2018. I encourage you to watch it!
Since then, she and her mother have been on the front lines of advocacy for transgender youth in our nation. Rebekah was featured on Marvel’s Hero Project. She’s traveled around the country visiting groups and advocating for young people like herself.
All the while, Jamie her mother has, apparently, been taking notes and preparing to write Raising Kids Beyond the Binary. This book is truly incredible. It’s programmatic, in the sense that it simply walks the reader, chapter by chapter, through the very practical details of parenting a transgender child.
The book is, in essence, faithful testimony. It has some definite memoir-esque moments, sharing as she does the stories from their lives as they have learned how to be caring advocates for their child. But what I absolutely adore about the book is the way it carefully answers so many of the questions most parents (and pastors, and educators, etc.) will likely have as they navigate relating to transgender youth.
The book concludes with an afterword by Rebekah. She acknowledges that it is slightly awkward having your mom write a book about you, but ultimately she says this:
To me, this book symbolizes tangible progress in the fight for transgender inclusion and equality as well as a concrete attempt, initiated by faith communities, to make change. My joy overflows when I think about what this book can spark. I get to the things I do, live the life I lead, and be the person I am because my parents had the tools—the support, the theology, and the community—to affirm and protect me. I want every kid to have that. I hope that you’ll be a part of making it happen.
In small ways in our own congregation we’ve been moving in directions mentioned in these two books. Youth more frequently preach, distribute communion, organize events, etc. than ever before. And our summer Queer Camp provides (I hope) the kind of space the Bruesehof’s champion.
That is the plan, possibly with the author visiting!
Being a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, I’ve never had to face the transgender child situation, but it would enlighten me to read one or both of those books, to understand how parents handle that and broaden my thinking of something that I know little about.