On Television with a Transgendered Preacher Bringing Sheep Back to the Flock

Today, I had a great honor. I was interviewed for a television show. It won’t air for a while (probably January), but it was my first television interview ever. (Actually, I think I was on public access in college for something many years ago, but I can barely remember what it was for.)

I was on the show of Sister Paula, one of the very, very few transgendered evangelical preachers in the world. She airs a weekly television ministry on public access in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, along with appearances on local rock radio stations. Everything is available by podcast at the link above, including older broadcasts from her 20-year career on the air.

For a 70-year-old retiree, she still maintains a towering impression. Even with orthopedic shoes, she was a good half a head taller than I, towering over me when she shook my hand.

It was a bit strange that I was on her show, as we had never really talked before I arrived. As such, I was a bit surprised to be there as a guest, as she had no idea who I was or what I was doing. But she warmed up quickly, bringing out her performer’s wit.

You see, in addition to being a long-time preacher, Sister Paula was a mainstay in the shows at Darcelle XV, Porland’s most famous female impersonator establishment. Anyone who has seen one of these shows is familiar with their saucy humor, and to hear such jokes coming from the mouth of an evangelical caught me a bit off guard.

We met in the kitchen of her producer’s house, which is her preferred place to film. She says it’s welcoming and comforting, and her viewers always respond that their favorite episodes take place with coffee in hand and stove in the back.

Anyhow, here’s a picture of Sister Paula putting on her eyelashes, without which she never appears in public:

I’m not going to go too deeply into what we discussed on the show, as I can link to it here when it goes up in a few months. Basically, we touched on the many faiths I have visited so far on my trip, and how Sister Paula views different religions and inclusion.

She stated repeatedly how she sees many paths to God, and that evangelical Christianity was just the one that worked for her. It’s the quibbling over the details that gets people into trouble, she added, and that only causes winnerless battles that end up making people feel that they have been excluded from the divine.

If anything, Sister Paula has tons of experience with this sentiment. She started living as a woman in 1963, a Pentecostal Christian who had to carry around a note from a prominent physician so that the cops wouldn’t arrest her for being in women’s clothing. Obviously, the church didn’t react too well to that.

“I’ve been living as a woman for 45 years. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but that’s not one of them,” she said. “I believe that as a transgendered person I’m being the person that God created me to be.”

So, she left the Baptist and Pentecostal communities that she had grown up with when she moved to Portland, joining the Metropolitan Community Church, which explicitly reaches out to the gay community. Now, she is a member of the United Church of Christ. But she sees herself, and her ministry, as non-denominational, as she carries teachings with her from many Christian movements.

She’s a bit of celebrity in Portland, and she says she can’t walk down the street without someone, normally a member of the gay or transgendered communities, approaching her, often telling her that even is they’re not religious, they still take time to watch her show for the hope she instills.

Sister Paula talks about anything and everything on her show, from HIV and meditation to sorrow and scripture. Mostly, however, she simply focuses on God’s love, trying to bring to gay and transgendered people an aspect of Christianity that she feels they don’t always encounter.

She gets her fair share of hate mail from Christians, what she calls “Bible bigots,” who don’t feel that she should be living like she does.

“We’ll both stand before God to be judged someday. I won’t stand in your shoes and you won’t stand in mine,” she says. “The God that is going to judge me is the one who knows all the thoughts and intents of our hearts … There isn’t a temptation of a sorrow or anything kind of suffering that we go through that Jesus hasn’t experienced himself. God [as Jesus] became manifested in the flesh incarnate and walked among us and took the punishment on the cross that we deserved. Now he is seated on the right hand of God as our great high priest. He knows the thoughts and intents in our head, everything about us. That is the God that is going to judge me. Not some religious person that has their own interpretation of the Bible and that’s it. … There are a lot of religious leaders that I think if they were going to judge me, they might as well get the pitchfork, because I’m going down.”

She goes on, quoting scripture. Few people know the Bible like Sister Paula does, unable to respond to almost any question without a flurry of florid language. This is a woman who felt like she was called to minister as a child of 12.

I came to see Paula for exactly this reason. She comes from a tradition that chastised her for the identity she embraces, yet does not reject it back. I’ve seen many gay and transgendered people who feel excluded from the church because they see it as anti-gay, and then become anti-Christian in return. Or gay people who then try to reconcile homosexuality and different gender identities with religion, but muddle through it all. But Sister Paula is clear and well-spoken, able to speak intelligently and fluently in doctrinal dialogue.

If you disagree with her, it’s hard to see her as anything but a Christian with a different interpretation than your own.

“I really believe and know that God accepts me as I am, and when God gives you that knowledge of your salvation, no one can take it away from you,” she says.

I’m not going to say that her interpretation that God accepts gay and transgendered people as they are, without change, is right or wrong. Often, when I go places, I get notes upset that I agree with whomever I visit. I’m touring America to see what there is to offer, not just what I believe to be true. I’m with Sister Paula because she has more guts than almost anyone I’ve ever seen.

Can you imagine being in her place? Living as a woman who was born as a man and preaching the gospel in the most public manner possible. Facing inordinate amounts of scorn and ridicule, but carrying on because she feels called by a greater power.

It’s easy to be a preacher when most people agree with you. But to preach in a religion that mostly doesn’t is astounding.

Now, she’s working on her autobiography, trying to cement her legacy for future generations. “I’m just hoping that because of my efforts, future generations of trans people or people who have been persecuted because they’re different in any way, shape or form, that my story will make their lives a little easier.”

Here she began to sing a Pentecostal spiritual from her childhood, a nice end to our interview:

“We’re building a road, building a road,
Helping the weak and blind.
We’re going to smooth out that road
That leads to Heaven’s abode
And make it easy for those behind.”