The last time we did a series on gender was 2023. Before we started, I remember hearing people say, "We're doing THAT MANY weeks on gender!!!!?" Like somehow there wasn't much to talk about. Like it didn't touch every part of our lives. Then we did the series. And the response was: wow. We needed that. Actually, we need more.
Since 2023, the landscape has changed.
"Gender ideology" went from a phrase most of us had never heard to the title of a federal executive order. It's in hundreds of bills across the country. Politicians are using it to pull books from schools, cut off healthcare, erase trans people from public life, and turn someone's existence into a debate.
They chose the word "ideology" on purpose. Ideology says it's an idea, not a reality. Ideology says it's being forced on us, taking away our freedom to think. Ideologies can be changed, and should be combated.
But we are here to call their bluff.
Because the question isn't whether gender ideology exists. It's what gender ideology do you have? Does yours invite freedom, or fear? Does it help others become more free, more safe, more alive? Does it allow you to become, over and over again?
Gender ideology is holy. Inescapable. Yours.
Holy. Gender is one of the deepest places where we meet ourselves. Not just what we were told to be, but what we find when we go looking. It's in the way you carry your body into a room, the clothes that feel like yours and the ones that never did. It's the version of yourself you rehearsed alone in the mirror and the one you only discovered when someone else saw you clearly. There is a lifelong dance in it, of self and other, of trying on and casting off. The capacity to define yourself, to become and keep becoming, is sacred. That's what makes gender holy. Not because it's settled, but because it never is.
Inescapable. Someone put a word on you before you could speak. Girl. Boy. That word was pulled down over you before you could consent to it, and a whole world was built around it. We are made of words as much as we are made of cells. We can't escape these words. Your parents had one. Your church growing up had one. Every time someone told you to man up or act like a lady, you were living inside one. So were the people sorting you. You can't opt out. The question isn't whether this touches your life. It already does.
Yours. There is something about your gender that belongs to you alone, something no law can define and no executive order can take away. The freedom to become more fully yourself, and to make room for others to do the same, is yours. So is the responsibility.
This series is about reclaiming that conversation: what gender means in your family, your faith, your community. We're going to talk about masculinity, feminism, bodily autonomy, and the stories we tell our kids. And we're going to practice the kind of faith that says: you don't have to fully understand another person's experience in order to honor their dignity and protect their freedom.
June 7: Gender Tro
June 14: Gender Idolatries
June 21: Families Over Politics
June 28: Masculine-ities
At the heart of this series is an invitation to move from judgment to wonder, and from control to care.
Gender is not a problem belonging to other people.
It is one of the places where all of us are shaped, constrained, and set free.
We believe this work is holy. We believe gender is inescapable. And we believe it is yours, and ours.
