The Rev. Elazar Atticus Schoch Zavaletta (they/he) is the founding pastor of Good Trouble Church. Born to a big familia en la frontera of South Texas, Elazar is of Mexica/Coahuiltecan, Swiss, and Basque heritage. In 2021, they became the first known transmasculine and nonbinary person of color ordained in the ELCA.

Elazar’s call is to center the forgotten and rejected and raise up leaders from the margins. Rooted in the sacred legacies of their trans/queer and Indigenous ancestors, their ministry seeks to interrupt whiteness, decolonize the church, and imagine liberated futures for the people of God. From their mixed ancestry and white-assumed positionality, they work to co-create liberatory structures with those on the underside of power. Nature-based rites of passage, Danza Mexica, and ceremonia are central to their embodiment of call.

They were born to Suzy and Joe, a nurse and a doctor — whose deep faith, commitment to healing, and concern for the persecuted shaped them. Before ordination, they were wrapped in a handmade prayer shawl by now-crowned priestess of Yemoja, Rev. Dr. Renée Hill, and Rev. Dr. Mary Foulke—bearing the images of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, César Chávez, and the Hebrew Aleph. They were ordained on the corner where GTC first gathered, consecrated to their name, Elazar—Basque of Hebrew origin—meaning, “My God has helped.”

Having known the pain of being excluded from the church because of their gender identity and the spiritual violence of being called an abomination, they were led to envision a community where people who are despised by this world can come together and partake in sacramental community to bless each other before God. Bringing over a decade of parish experience, they work to support those who have been made most vulnerable to find belonging, work for justice, and achieve their dreams for themselves and their community. Their work at Good Trouble Church has been marked by the co-creation of vibrant liturgy and Spirit-work from African and Indigenous lineages and a unique style of Gospel-centered resilience-based organizing.

Elazar has been inordinately blessed by the teachers who have graced their life: Ammachi, Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Patricia Dailey, Gayatri Spivak, Jenny Davidson, Jean-Luc Nancy, father of Black Liberation theology James Cone, guides Roo Wharton and Pedro McMillan, Rev. Dr. Altagracia Pérez-Bullard, Rev. Dr. Renée Hill, Mexica priest and Danza elder Señor Juan Paredon, and N’dee elder Grandma Judy Tallwing McCarthey.

Elazar previously served as Pastoral Associate at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Harlem. They graduated a Distinguished Scholar from the University of Texas at Austin in English Honors and Philosophy. Their thesis used Wilde, Deleuze, and Butler to imagine the queerness of becoming as an ontology of subversion for liberation. They hold an MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where they were a Marjorie Hope Nicholson Fellow. Their thesis drew on Levinas to explore redemption in the tragic gap between ontology and phenomenology, especially regarding trans embodiment. They earned their MDiv from Union Theological Seminary as a Hispanic scholar.

They love hiking and exploring the world with their spouse Emily, the light of their life, time with family and chosen family,  alebrijes, the Alps, Bread and Puppet, and discovering swimming holes.