Spiritual Misfits Podcast · Meeting Ground

The Divine Gift of Trans Lives & Faith with Steff Fenton

September 13, 2025·1 hr 6 min·4 clips

Steph says the book was written so Christians would “welcome and celebrate their transgender loved ones.”

Will Small opens by framing the conversation as both an interview and a reunion. Steph Benton joins with the ease of someone reconnecting after time apart, and the episode settles quickly into a candid conversation about faith, church, and change. Steph says the faith crisis was not intentional: it just happened, and purity culture had already done real damage. The discussion stays with that rupture instead of smoothing it over, with Steph naming the need for honesty and the sense that what they had been taught was simply not true or good. From there, the episode widens into theology and church life. Steph says there is zero evidence for eternal conscious torment in the Bible, and that point becomes part of a broader call to move forward with honesty and kindness. Will then turns toward the book and the questions it is trying to hold. The conversation focuses on the tension between protecting women’s spaces and including trans people, without reducing the issue to a slogan. Steph also names the subtitle of the book: gender expansive faith, how trans lives are illuminating the divine, transforming feminism, and ending Christian patriarchy. That gives the episode its larger shape. Will keeps the tone open and reflective, asking how listeners can start thinking about these entanglements without falling into fear or scapegoating. The episode comes back again and again to the question of how church structures can be decolonized and how faith communities can move toward something more loving and more truthful. The final note is brief but memorable: keep expanding.

As heard by us

A candid faith conversation that keeps choosing expansion.

Steph Benton brings a clear, steady voice to a conversation about faith crisis, purity culture, and the choice to keep widening instead of pulling back.

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Why you'd press play

You want a faith conversation that takes trans lives seriously and keeps the questions open.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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