The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has ordained a transgender Latina, marking a first for the 4 million-member mainline Protestant denomination.
Nicole Garcia, 60, was installed earlier this month as the mission development pastor of Westview Lutheran Church in Boulder, Colorado, which describes itself as “an affirming, welcoming community.”
“Nobody can question my faith, my devotion to Christ, my devotion to the church. That’s why I’m the pastor here,” Garcia told NBC News. “Being trans is secondary.”
Garcia, who is also a licensed professional counselor in the state of Colorado, was born into the Roman Catholic Church but left Christianity for more than 20 years because of confusion about sexuality and gender.
“I had never felt comfortable in my own skin,” Garcia said, explaining how wearing women’s clothing felt more natural while growing up in the devoutly Catholic home. “I had always been chastised for doing the wrong thing. Everything just felt wrong. I did everything my male cousins would do, but it was just awkward and it didn’t come naturally.”
Garcia claims God ignored prayers to heal the inner torment, for which reason Garcia left the Catholic Church in 1982 and descended into alcoholism. Garcia eventually married a woman and became a corrections officer but claims to have required “a pint of Jack Daniels and three or four beers just to be able to calm down and relax.” Garcia’s marriage disintegrated by 2002.
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At length, Garcia discovered an organization that affirmed transgender identity and which pointed Garcia to an ECLA church in Denver that embraced transgender life.
After sex reassignment surgery, Garcia attended seminary and rose in the ranks of the ECLA to assume the mantle of the denomination’s first transgender Latina pastor. More than 200 people attended Garcia’s ordination in November.
“We are sexual beings from the beginning of our lives,” the ECLA wrote in the 2009 document, A Social Statement on Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. Appealing to the Psalms, the church continued, “The realities of our sexual bodies are visible in physical features and powerful in less visible characteristics. This means much more than that we are born with male, female, or sometimes with ambiguous genitalia.”
“Our cells carry sex chromosomes, and our endocrine systems infuse our bodies with hormones,” the statement explained. “In ways that are still not fully understood, we develop strong gender identities at a very early age. While there is still much to be learned about the biological complexity of human beings, we have come to understand that this complexity suggests a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities.”
The ECLA emerged in 1988 from three other Lutheran groups and maintains full communion with other mainline Protestant denominations such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Moravian Church, and the United Methodist Church.
