As an interesting follow-up to last month’s blog, Chris Goswami has just had an op-ed piece published on 21st May 2024 on Premier Christianity that echoes some of the thoughts I wrote about. Take a moment out and read what he says about Sola Scriptura – but hurry back! Did he read my blog and say “I can do better”‽
Over the late Autumn/Winter I wrote a series of Blogs looking at the problem of supposing “I identify as being LGBTQ+: how does the Bible view me?” Over the series I talked in general terms about being LGBTQ+ without explicitly mentioning transgenderism, and that has bothered me. For the last couple of months, I have been feeling I really ought to put that right, but because it is currently quite incendiary in the popularist press and media, until now, I have been wary.
So, I’ve decided it’s time I put that right.
Definitions and politeness
Just to explain, I will use the term trans* because some folks prefer to identify as transgender and others as transsexual and by using the * wildcard, I cover both preferences. However, I’m finding the term transsexual is gradually dropping out of regular use.
That doesn’t quite resolve the definitions issue, in that some people prefer to use the term “non-binary”, but this term can also be used by others who are not trans*. So, not all non-binary are trans* and not all trans* identify as non-binary.
As a matter of courtesy, whenever you are in conversation with someone who identifies as trans* always use the term that the person you are talking to, prefers. This is important as it shows you respect the person. You don’t have to agree with the person, but as a Christian you are called to respect others. This is an issue some Christians get very wrong, and sadly, deliberately (citing free speech, and traditional religious convictions), judging by some recent court cases.
There are lots of people whose views we may completely disagree with, but we still make an effort to be polite and courteous when talking directly with them, yet some Christians like to insist that their views are the only ones that count. They think they are honouring God, by standing up for their particular interpretation of what the Bible says.
Personally, I would argue that we should be taking the words of Romans 12: 17-18 far more seriously: “17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” If you do not approve of someone’s affirmation of trans* people, or you disapprove of using a trans* persons pronouns, use them anyway, and leave it to God to decide the rights and wrongs. If your own thinking turns out to be wrong at the end, you have at least behaved correctly. If the trans* person is wrong, you have shown respect, and you can still use the relationship to have a deeper conversation in the future.
It is easy to accidentally misgendered someone if you have known them for years before they transition, but I believe most trans* people will be fine, unless the misgendering is clearly deliberate. I find it offensive when people go out of their way to deliberately offend and misgender others as if it were a point-scoring exercise. There are so many people out there who have been badly hurt by the behaviour of others (and not just as part of the LGBTQ+ community) and we need to be working with God to try to bring some sort of healing, or opportunity for healing, not rubbing salt into existing wounds, or creating additional victims. That doesn’t honour God, and that behaviour will make God weep.
What does the Bible say?
Firstly, what does the Bible say about those identifying as trans*? Perhaps surprisingly, nothing at all! However, there are a couple of passages that get pulled out of context and made to seem as if they are relevant in the situation. The most common is a single verse found in Deuteronomy 22: 5, which says: “5 A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.” Normally one would ask: What is the context? What do the verses around it talk about? What is the situation this verse/these verses is addressing? Is this a command that applies in every culture and civilisation across the world and throughout time? What about an actor in a play? What about the Dame in a Pantomime? What about a person in Iran trying to escape the Islamic regime? Or the prisoner of war escaping their prison? Or the potential victim trying to avoid an assassination squad? Fancy dress party? A parade? You’ll think of others.
We simply do not know the context – it isn’t given, so any suppositions are very unsafe. What we do know is that certain Canaanite deities had festivals and occasions where people DID dress up in the clothing of the opposite sex to honour the deities. Perhaps this is what God was trying to avoid, but there is simply not enough there to make a good and safe case. By way of context, verse 4 talks about what you do if you come across a donkey, or ox, that has fallen in the road, and verse 6 is a rule about what you do if you find a bird’s nest beside the road, so neither are any help in understanding verse 5. Read the chapter yourself – here. Although it is dangerously unsafe, some Christians still quote verse 5 against the trans* person, but they stay strangely quiet when later verses in this same chapter (vv 28-29) tells us a rapist must marry his victim and he can never divorce her! She doesn’t have any choice! There is a great deal more context for those verses because the section starts from verse 13, but many Christians say this no longer applies because Jesus came to do away with the old law, yet suddenly the earlier law that has no context is back in. That is just very woolly, and wrong theology!
Another verse I heard used was: “19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.” (1 Corinthians 6: 19-20.) Once again, this is an abuse of a Biblical text. You never hear preachers, or read op-eds/blogs quoting this verse to challenge people who eat too much chocolate, fast food, other unhealthy food or drink, or do too little exercise, or smoke, or participate in dangerous activities and sports, etc.
Forcing the Bible to match our outlook
It is this attitude of “I/we don’t like this…. What verse can we pick out from the Bible to show it’s wrong?” that I find objectionable. It is forcing the Bible to match our worldview. I’m sure folks will try and say I’m doing the same, but I’m trying to balance the whole tenor of God’s character and scripture, not a verse here, or one there.
Instead, we can look at other verses, such as the prophet Isaiah who says in ch 56: 3-5: – 3… let no eunuch complain, “I am only a dry tree”. 4 For this is what the LORD says: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant– 5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever”.
Trans* people are not quite the same as eunuchs (people who have had both testicles removed) in the time of the Bible, but many affirming theologians argue for the parallels, and see these promises as justifiably applying to them.
I come from an evangelical background and whilst I still have some of that underlying way of thinking, I have been growing more and more distant to what evangelicalism itself stands for these days. One of the problems with evangelical Christendom at present is its dogmatism – everything is seen in binary terms, it’s black or it’s white, it’s either right or wrong, biologically male or female, it’s Pro-Bible or anti-Bible, pro-life or pro-choice, pro-trans or anti-trans. Life is far more complicated than that simplistic worldview. When I was in my teens and early twenties, I saw life as being very black and white, but, as I grew older, I began to see shades of grey, so that for the last twenty years or so, I see very few black and white issues.
Gender is a humanly/socially constructed role
In a recent “Woman Alive” op-ed piece, the author wrote:
“There is no biblical basis to acknowledge a difference between sex and gender. In present conversation, sex is biological, and gender is a socially constructed role, of which there are now many options. As Genesis 5.2 says, ‘In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.’
When God created the earth his natural order was based on there being two distinct biological sexes – those being male and female – that were able to reproduce and ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ There is no mention in the Bible about gender being a separate thing that people choose.” (Woman Alive is part of the Premier Christian Media Trust)
Whilst the author is correct that gender is a humanly/socially constructed role, there are a couple of fundamental problems at the heart of that premise which mean the rest of that article has foundations build on sand. Perhaps making a sweeping generalisation, evangelical Christians tend to read the Bible literally, so that if a passage in the Bible quotes a number, that number is unequivocally correct, until a different book referring to the same story (I’m thinking of 1 & 2 Samual, 1 & 2 Kings or 1 & 2 Chronicles), uses a different number, at which point we play around with the text and commentaries to rationalise it.
The “Woman Alive” author’s view is predicated on a western, Christian influenced worldview, in which people look back through evangelical-tinted glasses to the Creation to say that God only created two genders, and that it is only in the last few years that we’ve developed these “woke” (Horrible word! Promise never to use it again!) ideas of multiple sexualities and genders. This is wrong. LGBTQ+ people have been around forever, as I have argued in previous blogs – it is simply we have the skills today to begin to correct that. The author is correct that the Bible doesn’t talk about gender and sexuality, it only refers to male and female, sons and daughters. Our understanding of gender and sexuality has only developed in the last 150 years, so, well after the time of any Bible writer! To corelate the Bible with our definitions of sexuality and gender is to compare apples and pears. These biblical texts about male and female are not proscriptive (that this must be the only possible way people are described), but descriptive (this is simply the way things were understood).
However, the way much of evangelicalism talks about the issue is that it cannot and must not happen any other way than what we say, but they fail to go any deeper and ask why being LGBTQ+ is the experience of a small but significant percentage of the world population, across human history. Evangelicalism requires that facts must agree with the Bible, otherwise facts are wrong. This idea of the binary nature of sexuality and gender is only found in cultures influenced by Christianity, but that doesn’t make it right. In other parts of the world, less influenced by Christianity, it is fascinating to see how they historically regard differences of gender. There tends to be little or no antagonism towards those we would describe as LGBTQ+, indeed in many cultures they are celebrated and honoured, especially as many deities are gender non-conforming. As an aside you could also argue that the Jewish/Christian God is gender non-conforming, as I’ll briefly explain shortly!
But what about regions prior to any Christian influence?
In Pre-Colonial Africa, along with the Indigenous Peoples of America and First Nations Peoples of Australia, there was a universal acceptance that gender was not binary, because they had many names for different genders. In broad terms they recognised male females, female males along with the typical male and female genders. These peoples are significant because they were outside of the influence of Western Christianity.
If you want a more academic piece on historical LGBTQ+ activity in Africa, please read Stephen O Murray and Will Roscoe’s book “Boy-wives and Female Husbands – Studies of African Homosexualities” – summary here.
Moving eastwards, what about India and China? These too have very strong evidence for recognising multiple genders. In India, the concept of more than two genders is deeply rooted in history, culture, and religion. For example, there is the Hijra community in India, which includes individuals who might, in our terms, be intersex, transgender, or eunuchs. This community has been recognized for centuries, and some say thousands of years. They are mentioned in ancient Hindu texts like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. For example, in the Mahabharata, the character Shikhandini, daughter of Drupada, the King of Panchala, Shikhandi becomes a biological male after agreeing to a sex exchange with a yaksha (a nature spirit that seems to have a role similar to the Trickster character in mythology). Furthermore, Hindu mythology includes various deities and figures that exhibit gender fluidity. For instance, Lord Shiva is sometimes depicted as Ardhanarishvara, a deity who is half male and half female, symbolizing the union of masculine and feminine energies.
During the Mughal period, hijras held significant roles in the royal courts as advisors, guardians of harems, and performers. They were considered to have special powers and were often sought for blessings and curses.
In China, historical evidence of more than two genders is also present, though it might not be as extensively documented as in India.
During the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties, there were accounts of people who did not conform to typical gender roles. Some historical records and literature mention individuals who dressed and lived as a gender different from their assigned sex at birth.
As Buddhism links both India and China, we could also check there, and I understand that there are significant Buddhist texts describing gender fluidity in these writings from long ago (Jataka Tales; Mahayana Texts and the Vajrayana Practices – and no, I haven’t read them myself!). You might need to do your own homework!
One more example we could pick is American Samoa, which in spite of being historically Roman Catholic, religiously conservative, and enforcing anti-gay laws, it espouses four recognised genders. In addition to male and female, they have fa’afafines and fa’afatamas.
What are fa’afafines and fa’afatamas?
The third and fourth genders of fa’afafine and fa’afatama have always existed within Samoan society. When translated literally, they mean “in the manner of women” (fa’a fafine) and “in the manner of man” (fa’a fatama); these genders are fluid and move between the traditional world of men and women. Fa’afafines and fa’afatamas have specific roles in Samoan society, in an interesting contrast to transgenderism in Western society, which is struggling to be accepted widely. (https://theculturetrip.com/pacific/samoa/articles/fa-afafines-the-third-gender The BBC also have an article here, and ABC have an excellent and detailed article here)
Getting back to that original article, the author writes that “There is no mention in the Bible about gender being a separate thing that people choose.” Two things there. As I mentioned earlier, as well as in previous blogs, the way we view sexuality and gender has only developed in the last 150 years. Biblical characters would not recognise the way we regard these issues.
The second issue is the concept that people choose. That makes it sound like we go into a shop and in the gender aisle we pick the one we want. No that is not it at all. When I was young, I didn’t give it a thought. My thoughts, my feelings, my emotions all fitted with my concept of what society understood being male to be – I didn’t have to think about it. However, some people just don’t have that experience of things neatly falling into place.
As I say, I didn’t choose my gender. I used the labels that society had to offer and without thinking, the one that best described me was “Male”. I can’t know what it is like to be trans*, so please excuse my poor attempts to understand what is going on. Trans* people don’t ask “which label do I want today” (implicit in that earlier article), but they say that “the label that others have decided should apply, doesn’t really work – that doesn’t describe what I feel, and really isn’t who I am”.
Maybe, it’s not too dissimilar to an experience I had a couple of years back (and you have probably experienced something similar), where a person thought I would be suited to a particular job, or role, and wanted me to take it on. But although I had the skills to do it, and possibly could have done it reasonably well, I would have hated every minute – I would have been a square peg in a round hole. Taking it would have created stresses I would not have coped with very well.
So, if a trans* person’s thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. don’t mesh with society’s norms, what are they supposed to do?
Made in the image of a gender non-conforming God?
Perhaps a third thing that is wrong with the author’s remark is that everyone – men, women, intersex , and all points in between – all are made in God’s image. This is where I come back to that idea that God is gender non-conforming. Evangelicalism, and in this country, the Tory (Conservative, for any international readers) Right-wing, argues that biological sex is the determining factor of whether a person is male or female. However, God is not biological, and has no need of a penis or vagina, so why would God have, or need, either. (Also see my blogs God – Male or Female or Imago Dei) God is a Spiritual being, not a physical one, and doesn’t need to reproduce. People are physical, and do need to reproduce, so it makes sense to develop a mechanism to make that function effectively. When the Bible talks about “When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them.” (Genesis 5: 1-2 and Matthew 19: 3-12) this is an observation, a description, not a proscriptive command or directive. Being created in God’s likeness is not a literal, or physical, likeness, but one of character, attributes and ability. When Jesus says “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” it doesn’t mean you could pick God out of a line-up by looking at a picture of Jesus. None of us reading this blog have seen the real physical Jesus, but we can picture what God is like from what we read about Jesus in the New Testament.
In conclusion, society is asking the wrong questions when it worries over whether to allow trans* folks to use specific toilets. It puts the cart before the horse. It should be asking: is this condition genuine? And, given the evidence that it is, how do we best help trans* people integrate fully into society? What can we do to affirm and help them? If we need to improve safety to reassure others, what does that look like?
The World Heath Organisation determined in May 2019 that Transgender health issues will no longer be classified as mental and behavioural disorders. Instead, it has “been reframed as “gender incongruence.” Gender nonconformity is now included in a chapter on sexual health, rather than being listed with “mental disorders” as was the case previously.” Gender incongruence is a description basically saying this condition is a naturally occurring difference to the norm, not unlike those with intersex conditions.
Currently the popularist ideas are starting with the prejudicial idea that we don’t believe this is for real, or that it is a mental health issue, and that we find trans* people offensive and threatening. People have been scared by the extraordinary small number of sexual predators identifying as trans* when, in reality, a predator doesn’t need to pretend to be trans* to find a victim.
As a Christian we must look for answers that do not stigmatise others, causing even more mental health issues and anguish. Instead, we should be in the vanguard pushing for protection, affirmation and justice for a group of people who have always had to struggle to have a positive self-image.
Addendum
For those interested in sport, and have been dismayed with the recent exclusions of trans athletes, you might be interested in this recent study. Time and word-count doesn’t permit me to say more! 😊
Changing Minds 