She started seeing a therapist, and began an in-depth study of LGBT theology. “It’s ironic that the seminary at the largest Baptist university in the world has an incredibly diverse library on faith, sex and gender,” she laughs. “It gave me many different perspectives, I realised that there were other perspectives, and that began the journey for me.”

Allyson Robinson had been married for over a decade when she says she “finally spoke my truth”. At the time she was known as Daniel Robinson, and she told her wife – Danielle – that she wanted to be a woman. Formerly an army officer and then studying to be a minister at Texas’ Baylor University, the largest Baptist university in the world, it wasn’t a decision she took lightly.

In fact, as she wrestled with her sexuality, Robinson was almost driven to take her own life. “I grappled with the truth that was emerging within me at that time in ways I never had before. It nearly led me to suicide,” she told Christian Today. She would cry all the way to Divinity school, a 45 minute commute, and again all the way home. One day, she considered deliberately driving into the river; afraid of what coming out as transgender would mean for her wife, children and church. “By grace alone in that moment I caught myself thinking those thoughts and realised that was not the right way forward,” she recalls. “I didn’t know what the right way was, but I knew there had to be some other way.”

She started seeing a therapist, and began an in-depth study of LGBT theology. “It’s ironic that the seminary at the largest Baptist university in the world has an incredibly diverse library on faith, sex and gender,” she laughs. “It gave me many different perspectives, I realised that there were other perspectives, and that began the journey for me.”

She told her family the truth, and Danielle vowed to stand by her, as did the majority of her relatives. The support of her loved ones “has not just empowered my ministry and my work for inclusion, but it has strengthened me, and helped me to see myself as a beloved child of God in ways that I never did before I came out.”

Robinson went on to become the first openly transgender minister to be ordained in the Baptist tradition, and served as transitional pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington DC. MSNBC called her “the most radical preacher in America”.

Read More