Joy Ladin is the author of Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, which documents her spiritual and physical journey from male to female. She is an English professor at Yeshiva University in New York City. Contact via the office of public affairs at Yeshiva.

Alma Lopez is a Los Angeles-based artist whose works frequently feature female Catholic saints as Chicana women with a gender twist. Her “Our Lady,” a rendition of the Virgin of Guadalupe as seminude Chicana boxer, prompted worldwide controversy when it was displayed in New Mexico in 2001. Her most recent show is “Queer Santas: Holy […]

David E. Weekley is a United Methodist Church pastor who described his life as a transgender man in In From the Wilderness: Sherman: She-r-man. He blogs about his life in the church at Sherman’s Wilderness. He is the pastor of St. Nicholas United Methodist Church in Hull, Mass.

Peterson Toscano is an actor who performs several one-person shows on LGBT issues and religion, including “Transfigurations,” about transgender and the Bible, which he performs in churches around the country. He is based in Sunbury, Pa.

Levi Alter is a rabbi and president of Female-to-Male International, an advocacy organization for transgender people who move from female to male bodies. FTMI is based in San Francisco.

Vicki Gray is an Episcopal priest who contributes to the blog Trans Episcopal. She participated in a faith leaders discussion convened by Gender Spectrum in 2010. She is a deacon at Christ the Lord Episcopal Church in Pinole, Calif.

Mark Bowman is founder and coordinator of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Religious Archives Network at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif. He was an original member of the National Religious Leaders Roundtable of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and has […]

Justin Tanis is managing director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif. Tanis is the author of Trans-gendered: Theology, Ministry and Communities of Faith.

While nearly 1 in four people identify as Muslim across the globe, a Pew Research survey in 2019 found that only six-in-ten U.S. adults know that Ramadan is an Islamic holy month and that Mecca is Islam’s holiest city and a place of pilgrimage for Muslims.  Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Muslim […]