Fr. Alex Goussetis: Welcome back to Part Two in my conversation with Dr. Mamalakis. I encourage you to listen to Part One before proceeding.

What you’re describing requires mutuality, because you will have some people that are open to having that kind of dialogue; there may be others that may be more militant in terms of the position or view that they may have. And so it does require, I think, both, whether it’s the pastor or the community, and the people that we are trying to minister and love and serve—it does require a sense of mutuality that I think also becomes more challenging because of how politicized and how emotionally charged these issues can be.

Dr. Philip Mamalakis: That’s right! That’s right because there are activists who are pushing something. And I’m sure you know as a pastor that—you know like I do that not everyone received Christ’s message; that we have a God who didn’t have his identity affirmed by the Jewish leaders. Christ came into the world, and some people drew to him; other people rejected him. And in your ministry, all you can do is preach the Gospel, and some people will say, “I’m not interested,” and so that’s right: part of the pain that we bear for the world is if people have looked online and gotten answers. They might come to you really deeply believing stuff. But we know that we can love someone, no matter what they believe, but this path of Christ that we’re offering is an invitation. And, you’re right, they need to be—they need to desire to walk on that path.

But what I have found is that when they have found a community, and they might be expecting to be judged and condemned—oh, they’re not?—that there’s something life-giving about this path, and all we can do is offer that.

Fr. Alex: What’s coming to mind are the parents who I think are sometimes in difficult situations regarding what’s being taught at schools, what degree they want their children exposed to these issues, what response they might consider. So there’s different ways of approaching it, whether it’s the pastor and the community, and also families and parents. I know we were going to respond a little bit later to the parental role, but I think it applies here, too, just in terms of what advice, counsel you might offer to parents who are trying to— I don’t want to say protect their children, but have them be in a position of explaining to their children how… what the Church’s view is or how they want the family to understand and accept these rules.

Dr. Mamalakis: That’s right, and that’s why I love parenting, because that’s kind of our goal. We can’t always protect our kids; we need to be thinking about preparing them, because they are going to go out into the world. Especially when they’re young, there’s a certain amount of protection we need to do, but I’ve got teenagers now, and they’re coming home with really good questions about the things that they see, the things they are taught.

So there’s two parts, I think, that are important when we think about preparing our kids to go out into the world, which is also about protecting them. And that is—the first thing is to really give them an experience and an understanding of this path that the Church offers. The idea is when our children—if you’re raised in the light, if you’re raised with an understanding of this path, and they’re on the path and they can taste the healing and the life of Christ, they’re now exposed to our understanding of what’s real and what’s true. And then the second step is to teach them, when they go out in the world, how we radiate that; how we don’t judge and condemn, but we live in that truth.

So it’s important to teach our children that actually, when we think about this path of Christ, it’s kind of a process of transformation, that we are born, biologically, from a man and from a woman. And the Fathers of the Church talk about that: that’s our descended from Adam. But we want to teach our kids that actually Christ is the New Adam, and that our path as Orthodox Christians is to be born again in Christ. And so we, when we raise our children in the Church and have them experience—what does this mean, to have new life in Christ and the promise of life in Christ?—if they can get a taste of that, and we teach them that in this new life in Christ there’s neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female—that through our baptism we are united to Christ, which brings this newness of life, of growing in the likeness of Christ. That Christ doesn’t eliminate the sexes, male and female, but in many ways life in Christ transcends gender; that the Gospel and the teachings of the Fathers and the Mothers of the Church and the witness of the saints reflects, actually, the fullness of Christ, more than some gender roles. That the saints, they don’t reveal to us the differences between men and women; they reveal to us the unity of life in Christ as men and women.

So we want to teach our children about that path, that the Christian life is not “I’m going to teach you how to be a man or a woman”—no: “I’m going to teach you how to follow Christ, who will make you into the man and woman as you focus on Christ.” So that’s part of our—I would say, the Church’s disagreement with something called “conversion therapy,” which seeks to change people’s desires from one thing to another thing. Well, we want to teach our children, through experience and through learning, actually, that life in Christ is a conversion, but not into something—towards Someone. That Christ forms us in his image, not in the image of a man or a woman. So while our biology is sexed, male or female, the spiritual life actually is not really rigid and gendered.

We look at the saints, and we look at the saints on the icon and how do the men dress and how do the women? Well, they kind of dress the same! And you think about the spiritual life! What do we learn from St. Porphyrios, and what do we learn from St. Catherine or St. Nina? We learn the same path in Christ. That our—oftentimes we talk about the spiritual life of our soul as the Bride, and Christ is the Bridegroom. So when we teach our children about that path, we free them up from many narrow or cultural norms about how boys should behave and how women behave.

And it’s really powerful, because we know the story of St. Philip, who taught and baptized the eunuch, the Ethiopian eunuch. He did not say, “Well, you have to choose between a man and a woman, and you need to conform to certain gender roles”—no. He baptized him into life in Christ. And Christ himself talks about eunuchs for the kingdom of God in Matthew 19:12, and really, what that means is that those people who reject the normal gender roles of society and seek Christ. And we actually have that tradition in our Church, that we don’t want to raise our kids and say, “Boys do this and girls do this.” We want to raise our children to say, “Follow Christ, and the Holy Spirit makes you into the type of male or female that he desires.” So this is—part of the way we teach our children is really to raise them in that light and resist—like you and I might have had to give up some of these cultural norms that we inherited from our parents and teach, raise our children in that freedom that comes from life in Christ.

So no matter how the saints were—think about the Panagia. She’s a woman, and she started her ministry by saying, “May it be done according to [thy] will.” Do you think that’s very feminine, very deferential? But you know that hymn we sing to the Panagia during Lent? She’s called the Champion General! Who was the saint that protected Constantinople? It wasn’t St. Demetrios or St. Theodore—it was the Mother of God. It was a woman who defended the city. And I want my daughters to know—oh no, females are strong, females are courageous. And I want my boys to know that in addition to being strong and courageous, Christ was very sensitive, John the Baptist was very gentle. St. Porphyrios, St. Paisios, they’re very tender. So what the Church offers us is this life in Christ which frees us from narrow and rigid gender roles.

We want to teach that to our children, because our children need to find their own path as boys and girls, men and women, and we want to direct them into that freedom that comes by becoming preoccupied with Christ. I think it’s a beautiful path, and so then when our kids go out into the world and they see people who are like “strong men: men don’t cry,” our sons can say, “Mm, that’s actually not true, because men feel sad, and a normal thing to do when you’re sad is to cry.” And I want our daughters to go out into the world and not be bullied but have a strong voice like the Panagia.

And we do this by staying close to them, raising them in the life of the Church, and teaching them these things. And then as they go out, we want our homes to be a place where they can come home and say, “Wait a minute, what about this? What about this?” And that’s kind of a nice, free way to form our kids and inform them as they go out into the world.

Fr. Alex: Dr. Mamalakis, I can imagine there are a few people that are listening to this, and maybe interpreting this in the following way. You’re almost suggesting there’s not really a problem with people’s gender, different expressions of sexuality, that all that’s important is that we get to inquire, to get to learn who they are and to love them and so forth. And I don’t think most people would have a question with that. What comes to mind, and what I can hear some listeners talking about or raise the issue, is that there is a certain standard or a certain expectation that a person walking in Christ would expect.

The example that comes to mind is in John 8, where the woman is caught in adultery and the people are ready to stone her, and Jesus says, “The one who has no sin can cast the first stone.” Little by little, everybody leaves. Jesus is left with the woman, and she asks, “Will you not judge me either?” And Jesus says this brilliant statement about: “Neither do I judge you, but go and sin no more.” So, yes, he accepted her for who she was, but he also had a certain expectation about where we go from here. So I’m wondering if you can address that part to people who may be saying, who may be thinking, “You’re just saying anything goes!” I know that’s not what you’re saying, but I want to give you an opportunity to kind of respond to that.

Dr. Mamalakis: That’s a great question, because sometimes it can seem—when we talk about Christ’s love, remember, the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders were against Christ specifically because he hung out with the sinners and the tax collectors. And that was the narrative that Christ was going against, and the religious leaders at the time really maintained: “You can’t do that.” And sometimes maybe we get this idea that we’re going to be—we should fear this. And Christ didn’t walk in fear because Christ knew—I can’t really say what Christ knew, but I can say what we learn from the Church is that love is the strongest force in the universe. So what we see in Christ approaching people—the Samaritan woman, Zacchaeus in the tree—they have a repentant experience.

So I think that the woman caught in adultery is such a perfect example of how to respond to people who are struggling with gender dysphoria, because I agree with how you summarized it. The Church doesn’t concern itself so much with how you lost your way or how you got where you are; the Church is really pointing us to the kingdom of God, pointing us to the future. And we don’t—many people are confused, and we are pointed toward this path. But remember, the Jewish people who were ready to stone the woman in adultery, they were right! They were right. She—the woman was wrong; she had sinned; it was considered a sin, punishable by death. Really, the congregation was right: this was bad, and it needed to be punished. And what Christ did—he didn’t disagree with them. He didn’t say, “Oh, it’s okay that she did that.” No, he simply said, “Whoever is without sin should cast the first stone.”

What happens with someone with gender dysphoria, we might feel compelled to say, “That is wrong! You need to know that that’s wrong,” but really what Christ tells us is: “Wait a minute. Is not everyone in our Orthodox Church confused about something, struggling about something, sinning with something?” Christ’s answer is to draw near, and his words, “Go and sin no more,” are exactly the pastoral path that we invite someone on, that we want to teach this person about this ascetic life in Christ, that the path of Christ is about transforming your impulses and desires, not acting on them. So it’s really not an “anything goes,” but what it is, it’s a gently drawing close, so that, as we draw close to Christ, we have this ongoing conversion experience.

I think, in my work with people who discover Orthodoxy, when they first come to the Church, they might be dressed in all sorts of different ways, with piercings and tattoos, or inappropriate according to the way we dress, but what I watch over time and what I see over time is, over time this person has this transformation—that we didn’t impose a code of conduct, but in the light of the Holy Spirit, there’s a real type of conversion that happens. But not just a conversion of our feelings, but a real change in the way we’re thinking.

In Romans 12:1-2, we understand Christ—St. Paul writes, “Do not conform yourself to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that we may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing.” That we understand this path in Christ as a renewal of our minds. That’s the nature of repentance, is that to change the way we’re thinking about it, but the way that change happens is when they encounter Christ, encounter this love, of which there are no requirements, that God condescends to love, and as they are received in love, they can’t do whatever they want, but that change, that spiritual direction, really belongs within this pastoral relationship with the pastor.

And think about your life and my life, how as we deepen our faith we get a little more strict on ourselves, and all the rules of the Church and the guidelines and commandments of God are really meant to help us deepen our relationship with Christ, that those are like the guardrails on the road, but the goal of the Christian life for Orthodox is not to follow the rules but to get down that road. So the beautiful Orthodox pastoral response is we don’t suffocate someone and say, “Here’s what you’ve got to do.” The first step is reaching out. So when they come into the community, we create a space for them. That’s what I like about this show, is that people who are having this particular struggle, can we not create a space in our church where we can talk to other people who’ve been down that path? Because, really, we don’t need to fear this, but people who are struggling, I think it would really help to meet others who have had the similar types of path so that they can experience and see the real healing that comes, the life in Christ that comes, and what it looks like for them.

But it is a challenge for our congregations, because our congregations are going to be tempted to say, “Wait. You can’t do that.” Well, that’s really for the pastor, the spiritual father, and sometimes even therapy is really helpful. So I think our response has always been that type of radical love, because we as a Church can’t feel threatened by that. And then how a person responds—they might leave the Church; they might draw close—but there’s a process that happens with that transformation.

Fr. Alex: I just want to add to what you’re saying that the Orthodox understanding of repentance is a positive one. It’s future-oriented. It’s not shaming; it’s not negative. So in the terms that you’re just describing, it’s looking at this as opportunity; it’s looking at this as “How can we grow from here?” And that’s one of the things, of many, that I love about Orthodoxy, is that repentance is seen in positive terms and not ashaming and negative. So that invitation is opportunity to create and be renewed, as you read from Romans 12.

Dr. Mamalakis: It’s positive, Father, but it’s also challenging, because what the Church invites us is to let go of what we think is true about—in this case, gender, how I feel. In the case of marriage, you know, people repenting in their marriage have to let go of these beliefs about marriage. Like: “I thought it was going to be like that.” And really that repentance is a renewing of our mind, to discover that the path that Christ has is different than the one I used to be thinking—and that’s a really hard process: to change what I used to think is true. But that is confession and repentance: is changing what I used to believe is true. And all of us are on that path, but in this case in particular, there’s a real need of changing.

It’s like—we call it dying to the old man, that what I used to be thinking is true, I’m now discovering that there’s something even more beautiful. And we all go through this, as men, as women, as husbands, and in this case, about this kind of deep thinking, about what does it mean to be a man and what is my real identity. And that real identity, repentance means: I’ve got to change who I think I am. I am christ. I carry the light; I have the light of Christ in me. I am a child of God.

And that’s a real conversion! That’s a real change of mind, and, like you said, it’s future-oriented, and it frees us up from the drama and the struggle and all the— We see what happens in our culture. Without that change of mind, the renewing of our mind, we end up isolated, we end up with conflict, we end up with broken relationships. Renewed in Christ, he offers us that intimacy of being known and loved in community. And, really, aren’t our parishes the place where all of us have different views about things? Think about the politics and masks and, really, what we’re all called to do is to convert our minds to Christ, which doesn’t obliterate our thoughts, but transforms us to say we are children of God—before we’re Americans, before we’re Republicans or Democrats, before we’re even men and women, we are christ; we are children of God. And that frees us out of the tensions internally, and out of the conflicts of our culture, to find real intimacy with God and then real intimacy with each other, which is really what we’re created for.

Fr. Alex: Let’s return to the family format for a moment. In terms of specifics, how can parents respond when their child expresses to them that they feel a mismatch between the sex of their body and how they feel internally?

Dr. Mamalakis: That’s a great question. In the best-case scenario, the child has been raised within the life of Christ; in the best-case scenario, the parents have a relationship with a priest or a spiritual father, because when we raise our children in that spirit—where we go to confession and we’ve tasted this path—then, actually, that might mean something: the child has a connection to this reality of Church. And when they have that, it’s a little easier to walk that path, because they’ve tasted that path. But when a child comes to a parent, it’s really important that the child be received and that the child then be invited to share: “Where did you get these ideas? Tell me about what you’re feeling. Tell me what you’re experiencing”—from the parents and then from the priest or spiritual father. Because oftentimes by the time someone comes to the parents or the priest, they’ve been looking online, and there’s plenty of messages online: what will solve their problem.

And the goal of the parent is: we want to invite the child, as much as possible, to bring that struggle into the Church—spiritual father, maybe even with a therapist—to really offer that context for that discernment. Because what’s really interesting in Romans 12:1, right before that verse I read about not conforming, to conforming our minds not to this age, in Romans 1, St. Paul writes, “I urge you therefore, brothers, through the mercy of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship,” that this is our idea. We want to teach this child that whatever struggle you have, you are welcome in the Church.

And offer yourself: we put our struggles at the foot of the cross. So anything we can do to create that type of space, with a spiritual father, inviting the parents in, to create that space, and for the pastor not to tell the child necessarily right away what to do, but to catechize the child, but in the context of that relationship, because actually the research shows adolescence is a time of sorting through. Most adolescents who have gender dysphoria—most, 90%—actually get that clarified, so what we want to offer is: we can’t say if it’s a biological issue, a psychological issue, or a spiritual issue; what we can do is we can follow this path and recognize that when we open up to Christ in that path, we can then discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing. That we don’t have an answer; we have a path. And we trust that God reveals to us what needs to happen.

So anything that family can do and anything the parish can do—because, sadly, Father, in many of our parishes, teenagers may not feel welcome. They may not actually have a space where they can sit in a circle and say, “Here’s what I’m really confused about” or “I have a friend who’s like this. How do we make sense of that?” And too often as a community we don’t fund good youth programs where— and we equip them with resources to answer the questions they have. Oftentimes teen ministry is we’re teaching them stuff about the questions we think they should have: what we believe as Orthodox. Well, we should do that, but the starting point should be who these teenagers they are, what questions they have. And then we teach them what we believe about everything in this program that we’ve talked about today, but in the context of who they are. So the catechism falls within the context of the community and our relationships.

Fr. Alex: I won’t even begin or attempt to summarize all that we’ve addressed in this podcast, but I do want to make clear to our listeners that Dr. Mamalakis and I simply have broached this subject which needs to be addressed, because we should never fear talking about any subject within the life of the Church. I think all we’ve tried to do is to create a space within the Church to be able to have these conversations. We’ve offered no resolution, no definitive statements that we need to walk away from. And also that we will need to revisit this topic again and again.

I think there’s going to be reaction on many circles in whatever we’ve discussed today, and that’s okay: that’s part of the dialogue and conversation. But I do want to make very clear about what our intention was, what our hope was, and these are the kinds of things that we need to talk about as a family and as a Church. So I do want to express my sincerest gratitude to Dr. Philip Mamalakis on addressing this topic, helping us to give food for thought, so that we can revisit this again and continue to grow as Orthodox Christians. Thanks again so much for your time and your presence on the podcast today.

Dr. Mamalakis: Thank you so much, Fr. Alex, for this ministry and this particular episode.