{"id":26612,"date":"2018-12-07T00:01:51","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T05:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=26612"},"modified":"2018-12-07T07:07:14","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T12:07:14","slug":"church-in-wales-newest-vicar-is-transgender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/church-in-wales-newest-vicar-is-transgender\/","title":{"rendered":"Church in Wales’ newest vicar is transgender"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up in Cardiff where, in the city centre, you can find St. John The Baptist Anglican church. As a child I was much more interested in what was opposite the church: Cardiff Market wherein was all the excitement of competing vendors manning their stalls and shouting their wares to passers-by. There was a lot of fish as I recall; the whole place stank of fish. I bought goldfish in a plastic bag for threepence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, this Sunday\u2019s Gospel reading is about John the Baptist and it includes this verse:<\/p>\n

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, \u201cThe voice of one crying in the wilderness: \u00a0\u2018Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The path of St. John\u2019s new vicar has not been entirely straight. Rev. Sarah Jones, started life as a boy, married at the age 20, decided she was supposed to be a girl, had a sex change, renamed herself \u201cSarah” and became an Anglican vicar.<\/p>\n

I have no reason to doubt her sincerity. What seems odd is that up until now so many new Anglican vicars have been gay; now the transgender phase is beginning. Rather like Cardiff Market, the odour of something fishy is wafting through Western Anglicanism.<\/p>\n

From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"The new vicar of Cardiff\u2019s city centre parish St John The Baptist has ambitious plans to make it more open to the whole community.<\/p>\n

[\u2026.]<\/p>\n

She had an unusual route into ministry. Leaving school at 16 after her parents\u2019 marriage broke up she had to change her original plans:<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to go to university but that disappeared overnight. I got a job in a music shop and I realised that I really enjoyed interacting with people\u201d. Over the years she had a variety of jobs in sales and training in the music business and in industry.<\/p>\n

However this is not the most unusual part of her background. Sarah was brought up as a boy and is the first Anglican priest to have undergone a gender change before being ordained into the church.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked like a boy and there was no reason to doubt it when I was born. However I knew from the age of six or seven that I was more one of the girls than one of the boys.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was slightly different. I did fit in and I wasn\u2019t bullied but by secondary school I knew deep down inside that I should have been one of the girls.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever I thought that I just had this feminine side to me but that I could carry on with a normal life.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up in Cardiff where, in the city centre, you can find St. John The Baptist Anglican church. As a child I was much more interested in what was opposite the church: Cardiff Market wherein was all the excitement … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2559],"tags":[2561],"class_list":["post-26612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-in-wales","tag-st-john-the-baptist-anglican-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}