As he began a two-part Perspectives on Gender series, Pastor Hunt Garmany said, “The brokenness of the fall has affected the essence of our femininity and masculinity more than we even know.” The next night, Covenant students saw these words visualized at Stand Up for Your Friend: An Event and Conversation About Consent and Sexual Misconduct. These two events were sobering for many students and are part of a larger effort by Covenant to raise greater awareness on issues of gender and sexuality.
The first part of Perspectives on Gender was hosted on March 22 by Covenant’s Sexuality Committee. Hunt Garmany, pastor of Grace Community Trenton (PCA), and his wife Ashleigh were interviewed by Sarah Erickson to share their perspectives on gender from a biblical worldview. The Garmanys discussed the brokenness in our ideas about gender, which comes from a misunderstanding of who we are: men and women made in the image of God.
Acknowledging God’s design for gender means that Christians will have different definitions for masculinity and femininity. “Masculinity is to engage with strength and love, offering life and growth to your domain (community),” Pastor Garmany said. Ashleigh gave her own definition of femininity for women. “Femininity is to engage with courage, beauty, and love, inviting others into life and rest, ” she said.
Through these definitions, the Garmanys emphasized the relational aspect of gender. They said it ultimately reflects the image and character of God in how we love and relate to others. Students found this insight helpful. “Masculinity and femininity were something that I felt disconnected from going into the talk, and when I came out, I felt like I could live out my femininity because it wasn’t attached to the world’s standards but a definition that could be supported by the Bible,” Marae Tintzman ’25 said.
However, looking beyond definitions, Perspectives on Gender was about restoring value and dignity to humanity. “We have immense value just in who we are,” Pastor Garmany said.
Sarah Erickson closed the interview with a similar statement. “We all do nothing to be an image-bearer. We cannot make it untrue,” she said.
Sydney Teagarden ’23 appreciated this fact of Perspectives on Gender and thought it was an important event overall. “Especially as we see more and more sexual abuse cases in the church come out, and many church leaders not handling them well… We have to know the truth about how God created us and how much dignity and holiness comes from being made in His image,” she said. Teagarden’s concern about sexual abuse was covered the night after in a Covenant chapel conversation called Stand Up for Your Friend.
Stand Up for Your Friend was hosted on March 23 by Becca Moore, Hannah Leander, and Sarah Erickson. The event served a three-fold purpose: to provide a definition of sexual consent, to show how consent has not been upheld within the Covenant community, and to allow space for lament and exhortation.
Becca Moore led a sobering discussion on consent and sexual misconduct. As a Title IX coordinator and the Director of Student Success, Moore said that sexual misconduct and abuse are “a conversation I’ve had every single day.” Moore, like the Garmanys, related the problem of sexual brokenness back to our failure to see people as made in the image of God. “We take an image bearer and turn them into an object of consumption,” Moore said. So, the main purpose of the event was to ask how the Church should consider the topic of sexual abuse. What does it mean to see people as image-bearers?
Hannah Leander, RD of Andreas, then led the audience through an exercise. Each student was given a sheet of paper in which they anonymously gave answers to a wide range of yes or no statements about matters of sexual misconduct at Covenant. There were statements like: “I have felt uncomfortable walking past certain tables in the Great Hall, I have overheard fellow students gossiping about another student’s sexual experiences or history, I have witnessed an interaction at Covenant where someone was physically threatened or harmed,” and “I have experienced sexual assault.”
The anonymous papers were then redistributed around the room, and each statement was read out loud. Students who had “yes” circled on the sheet in front of them stood up to represent the person who originally answered “yes.” Men stood for men, and women stood for women. In standing up for anonymous friends, students witnessed the amount of sexual grief and brokenness around them.
“I thought it was really powerful,” said Noah Lawty ‘24. “With the question about whether you’ve been sexually assaulted in the past, there were so many people who stood up for it. And I was like, “wow.” I feel like you always hear the statistics, but you think that it applies to other places not here. It was really sobering.”
There were some statements for which nearly every person in the room stood. “I was weeping,” Teagarden said. Tintzman agreed. “It was heartbreaking to see all the people who had been affected by sexual misconduct.”
After the exercise, the chapel was quiet.
However, students were not left without hope. They were exhorted through the words of Psalm 31: “In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me! Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily! Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me!” The depth of lament and grief were present, but students were reminded of a Gospel that redeems.
“It was deeply moving to see how much sexual brokenness there is even on Covenant’s campus and to hear what our brothers and sisters have suffered, but it was also encouraging to be reminded that we have a Savior who is also a healer and that He has called us to stand up for each other,” Lydia Dorman ’24 said.
Perspectives on Gender and Stand Up for Your Friend were events that reminded Covenant students to embrace a biblical understanding of gender and sexuality. Students were asked to show Christ to their friends. As Erickson said, “Cover them, love them, help them.”