Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 04:2 (Fall 2022)
Article: Gender Identity And Faith: Clinical Postures, Tools, And Case Studies For Client-Centered Care
Author: Josh Blount

Eikon 4.2 (Fall 2022) p. 139

Gender Identity And Faith: Clinical Postures, Tools, And Case Studies For Client-Centered Care

REVIEWED BY

Josh Blount

Josh Blount is pastor at Living Faith Church, Franklin, West Virginia and is also a Ph.D. Candidate at Westminster Theological Seminary

Mark A. Yarhouse and Julia A. Sadusky. Gender Identity and Faith: Clinical Postures, Tools, and Case Studies for Client-Centered Care. Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022.

Introduction

The intersection of gender identity struggles, pastoral care, and counseling methodology is a Gordian knot of complex and competing instincts and convictions. The pastor or counselor wants to show compassion to the person sitting across from them in their office, or to the parents seeking help for their withdrawn teen. Good counseling involves good listening — and yet, with the popularization and cultural acceptance of gender ideologies, the struggles, definitions, and self-diagnoses that the pastor hears in response will increasingly represent a confusing mix

Eikon 4.2 (Fall 2022) p. 140

of assumptions and presuppositions:

• “Am I transgender?”
• “My son says he is non-binary — what does that mean?”
• Or the pastor may not hear questions, but rather declarations: “These are my pronouns. If you misgender me, you are denying my existence.”

How do pastors and counselors respond in that moment? Is this an apologetics encounter, an opportunity to teach on biblical sexual ethics, a moment to “ignore the culture wars” and display unconditional love? Or are all three of those alternatives (as I have framed them) inadequate? How does the pastor or counselor cut the Gordian — might we say, the Freudian — knot of gender identity in post-LGBT revolution, post-Christian culture?

Mark Yarhouse and Julie Sadusky address just this question with their second co-authored work, Gender Identity and Faith. As their biographies indicate, each brings a wealth of psychological research and clinical experience to the question. And yet, from my perspective, their conclusions in this book are neither helpful nor wise, and represent a potentially harmful influence on theological faithfulness and wise pastoral care.

Summary

This topic is not new for either Yarhouse or Sadusky: on this specific topic, Yarhouse has published Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture, and Yarhouse and Sadusky have co-authored Emerging Gender Identities: Understanding the Diverse Experiences of Today’s Youth. The present book builds o...