“I feel like God doesn't like me”: Faith and Ambiguous Loss Among Transgender Youth

• Published date: 01 April 2021
• Author: Sloan Okrey Anderson,Jenifer K. McGuire
• Date: 01 April 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12536

S O A J K. MGUniversity of Minnesota Twin Cities

“I feel like God doesn’t like me”: Faith and

Ambiguous Loss Among Transgender Youth

Objective: The present study expands the use of

ambiguous loss theory into the realm of reli-

gion and religious rejection for sexual- and

gender-minority people, an area that has pre-

viously been addressed primarily as an issue of

minority stress.

Background: Research has demonstrated that

religion-based, nonafrming messaging from

family and faith communities is correlated with

decreased health and well-being of sexual-

and gender-minority persons, who are, like

most Americans, likely to have been raised

in religious (predominately Christian) homes.

Existing research has begun to explain why

nonafrming faith afliation seems to negatively

impact sexual gender minority people, but it

does not explain the mechanisms of long-term

distress.

Methods: This study is a qualitative thematic

analysis of religion and family data from

semistructured interviews with 63 transgender

youth from the United States, Canada, and

Ireland who reported being raised in religious

Christian homes.

Results: Analysis revealed that the narratives

of participants who had been members of a

psychological family of faith included all of the

core elements of ambiguous loss, suggesting that

individuals can experience ambiguous loss in

relationship to a faith community and to God.

Department of Family Social Science, University of

Minnesota–Twin Cities, 1985 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, MN

55108 (and05516@umn.edu).

Key Words: ambiguous loss theory, Christianity, religion,

sexual- and gender-minority, transgender.

Discussion: This study presents a new applica-

tion of Boss’s ambiguous loss theory and offers

a framework for understanding why sexual- and

gender-minority people from Christian back-

grounds might experience long-term distress in

relation to faith and spirituality whether they

stay in their faith communities of origin or move

on to something else.

Implications: The experiences of transgender

people examined through the framework of

ambiguous loss and the concept of the psy-

chological family of faith could be applied to

research with people from any demographic

in relation to loss of faith or faith community.

This information may contribute to the study of

family ruptures that occur as a result of family

experiences of ideological or moral incompati-

bility (e.g., deconversion, political realignment,

leaving a cult).

According to the largest and most compre-

hensive study of transgender persons ever

conducted in the United States, the majority of

U.S. transgender people (66%) have at some

point in their lives been members of a religious

community (James et al., 2015). Although reli-

gious afliation has long been associated with

better mental health and lower risk of suicide in

the general population (Rasic et al., 2011; Schie-

man et al., 2013), this association is far more

complicated for sexual minority and transgen-

der people. Religious communities, especially

many Christian religious communities, have

a history of nonafrming stances on sexual

and gender minority (SGM) identities and civil

rights. Despite the fact that nearly one third of

390Family Relations 70 (April 2021): 390–401

DOI:10.1111/fare.12536