When the Holy Spirit Wrecks You Gently: Learning from Intersex Voices in Faith
- Justin Hurtado
- Jun 12
- 3 min read
by Rev. Dr. Justin Hurtado
I wasn’t prepared.
I thought I was clicking “play” on a documentary. What I got instead was a mirror, a confession, and a call to action.
Stories of Intersex and Faith found me through someone who now feels like chosen family: Mx. Anunnaki Ray Marquez. They’re an intersex activist, educator, chaplain, and someone who has survived and transformed more violence than many of us are even willing to name. When they reached out and invited me to watch the film—along with co-creator Megan DeFranza, PhD—I said yes out of respect.
I didn’t expect to be wrecked.
Let me say this plainly: I am a 50-year-old, queer, disabled priest. I’ve survived enough religious trauma to write several volumes. And still, this story cracked me open because it exposed a blind spot in my own liberation theology.
I had never truly sat with the stories of intersex people.
I’d never interrogated what it meant that so much of our theology—our ideas about bodies, binaries, holiness, and healing—rests on foundations that actively erase the very people who embody divine diversity.
Here’s what I learned—and what I’m still learning:
Being intersex is not about gender identity.
It’s about natural biological variation. Just like people are born with different eye colors, people are also born with different combinations of sex traits. This isn’t new. What’s new is the way we silence it.
The Church is complicit.
In our silence. In our theology. In our surgical consent forms. We’ve let medicine become a mechanism of control rather than care. We’ve forgotten that Jesus healed bodies as they were, not by forcing them into conformity.
Intersex people are not theological hypotheticals.
They are real. They are sitting in our pews, often invisible, often afraid. Some of them were surgically altered before they could speak. Others live with deep spiritual wounds inflicted by well-meaning pastors who never bothered to ask the right questions.
The part that really broke me?
Anunnaki’s quiet, unshakable witness.
Not their trauma—though there’s plenty of it. Not their pain—though it’s real and earned. What broke me was their hope. Their audacity to keep showing up, to keep teaching, to keep inviting the Church to grow the hell up and get real about bodies, truth, and justice.
So, where does this leave me?
It leaves me here, writing this, with no theological bow to tie on top. Just a commitment:
To keep learning.
To speak up in rooms where silence used to live.
To help get this documentary in front of every seminary, parish, and small group I can.
Because Stories of Intersex and Faith isn’t just about “raising awareness.” It’s gospel work. It’s incarnational. It calls us back to the God who made bodies in all their holy variation—and called them good.
If you’re reading this and feeling curious, uncomfortable, or resistant, good. That’s a sign the Spirit is doing something. Don’t run from it. Sit with it. Watch the film. Listen to intersex people. Ask yourself what “healing” actually looks like—and who got to define it in the first place.
This is Part 1. I’m still in this.
And I hope you’ll come with me.
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📽️ Watch the film: www.storiesofintersexandfaith.com
🎤 TEDx Talk by Anunnaki: “Born Intersex: We Are Human!” https://youtu.be/WpPTf-00ab0?si=D1r-ImpylWhpluca
📚 Companion curriculum available for small groups and adult faith formation
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