Junia Joplin, a Baptist pastor in Ontario, asked for acceptance in a sermon: “I want to be the person that God created me to be.” The congregation narrowly voted to terminate her contract.
Baptist Pastor Is Fired After Coming Out as Transgender
By Christine Hauser
Updated July 24, 2020, 8:45 a.m. ET
Junia Joplin joined as the pastor of Lorne Park Baptist Church in Ontario in 2014.John Cullen
Last month, the Rev. Junia Joplin told her Baptist congregation in a sermon about the importance of telling the truth without fear of the consequences. And then she revealed a secret truth of her own: She is a transgender woman.
It cost her the job.
On Monday, 111 members of the Lorne Park Baptist Church in Mississauga, Ontario, voted 58 to 53 to fire Ms. Joplin, who has been their pastor for six years, she said on Twitter.
“I came out as transgender in June, and I got fired in July,” Ms. Joplin said in an interview on Thursday. “But there are a lot of good people in that congregation who made their allyship known, and in some cases stuck their neck out, and it is frustrating this is the way it came out.”
The church said that the vote came after a month of “prayerful discernment and discussions” between the reverend and the congregation.
“The church has journeyed for the past month through a process of attempting to discern God’s will,” it said in a statement, emailed on Thursday. “It was determined, for theological reasons, that it is not in God’s will that June remain as our pastor.”
For Ms. Joplin, 41, the journey to sharing the defining truth of her life on June 14 started in North Carolina. She grew up in a small town, Hudson, and regularly worshiped with her family at a Baptist church there.
Around age 11, she said, she had an inkling at a summer camp that she wanted to be a pastor. She gave her first sermon before she turned 13.
Ms. Joplin later studied at a Baptist seminary in Richmond, Va. She married and had two children. In 2014, she was offered the job at Lorne Park.
Ms. Joplin said she presented as a man to the congregation in the six years that she was with the church, wearing her long hair in a tight bun.
“I started to explore feminine gender presentation publicly about two years ago on a rare occasion or two,” she said.
Baptist Pastor Is Fired After Coming Out as Transgender
By Christine Hauser
Updated July 24, 2020, 8:45 a.m. ET
Junia Joplin joined as the pastor of Lorne Park Baptist Church in Ontario in 2014.John Cullen
Last month, the Rev. Junia Joplin told her Baptist congregation in a sermon about the importance of telling the truth without fear of the consequences. And then she revealed a secret truth of her own: She is a transgender woman.
It cost her the job.
On Monday, 111 members of the Lorne Park Baptist Church in Mississauga, Ontario, voted 58 to 53 to fire Ms. Joplin, who has been their pastor for six years, she said on Twitter.
“I came out as transgender in June, and I got fired in July,” Ms. Joplin said in an interview on Thursday. “But there are a lot of good people in that congregation who made their allyship known, and in some cases stuck their neck out, and it is frustrating this is the way it came out.”
The church said that the vote came after a month of “prayerful discernment and discussions” between the reverend and the congregation.
“The church has journeyed for the past month through a process of attempting to discern God’s will,” it said in a statement, emailed on Thursday. “It was determined, for theological reasons, that it is not in God’s will that June remain as our pastor.”
For Ms. Joplin, 41, the journey to sharing the defining truth of her life on June 14 started in North Carolina. She grew up in a small town, Hudson, and regularly worshiped with her family at a Baptist church there.
Around age 11, she said, she had an inkling at a summer camp that she wanted to be a pastor. She gave her first sermon before she turned 13.
Ms. Joplin later studied at a Baptist seminary in Richmond, Va. She married and had two children. In 2014, she was offered the job at Lorne Park.
Ms. Joplin said she presented as a man to the congregation in the six years that she was with the church, wearing her long hair in a tight bun.
“I started to explore feminine gender presentation publicly about two years ago on a rare occasion or two,” she said.
