Back within the late Nineteen Eighties when The Sun newspaper was famous for its outrageous headlines corresponding to the notorious ‘Freddie Starr ate my hamster,’ the scholars at Wycliffe Hall, the evangelical Anglican theological college in Oxford, held a contest to see who could produce the very best spoof Sun headline. The winning entry within the competition was the headline ‘Sex change bishop in mercy dash to palace’. The reason this headline won was since it referred to topics incessantly covered by The Sun (sex and the monarchy), it contained the promise of an exciting story (‘mercy dash to palace’), and the reference to a ‘sex change bishop’ contained the essential degree of outrageousness because the thought of a Church of England bishop having undergone a sex change was at the moment completely ludicrous.
The way things have modified in each British society and the Church of England is indicated by the proven fact that the headline ‘Sex change bishop in mercy dash to palace’ isn’t any longer in any respect implausible, other than the proven fact that it will read ‘Transgender (or ‘trans’) bishop in mercy dash to palace’, the term ‘transgender’ (and its abbreviation ‘trans’) having replaced the term ‘sex change’.
The Church of England now has a transgender archdeacon within the person of Rachel Mann, the Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, who’s a male-to-female transsexual, and provided that bishops are incessantly chosen from the ranks of the archdeacons, the proven fact that there’s a transgender archdeacon suggests that there may be a transgender bishop in the end.
Furthermore, the proven fact that there are actually individuals who discover as transgender in lots of spheres of British public life implies that the concept the Church of England could appoint a transgender bishop who could perform a mercy dash to Buckingham Palace not seems particularly odd.
In the case of society generally, the prevailing view is that it ought to be as much as each individual to come to a decision which sex they need to discover with and, moreover, the query of identity is seen as having been decided by the Gender Recognition Act which makes someone who obtains a gender recognition certificate a legal member of their chosen sex. In the case of the Church of England, the prevailing view has turn into that the Christian virtue of compassion implies that each individual ought to be accepted as they’re, and that this implies affirming their identity as a member of their chosen sex.
Nevertheless, from a standard Christian viewpoint there are still two basic the reason why it’s problematic to just accept someone as a member of their chosen sex in the event that they are biologically a member of the other sex.
The first reason is that the 2 books of Scripture and nature that are the idea for our understanding of the activity of God each tell us that biology determines the difference between men and girls.
In the case of Scripture, the Book of Genesis tells us:
‘ So God created man in his own image, within the image of God he created him; female and male he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the ocean and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’ (Genesis 1:26-28).
Here the state of being female and male is directly linked to the power to breed, ‘to be fruitful and multiply’. It is because God has given female and male human beings the essential biological characteristics to breed that from Genesis 4:1 onwards human beings have children. Furthermore, from Genesis 4:1 the reproductive pattern determined by these characteristics stays unchanged throughout Scripture. It is men who beget, however it is women who conceive, carry babies of their womb, after which give birth.
What Genesis tells us is confirmed by the empirical remark of the human creatures that God has made. As the American author Chrisopher Tollefsen observes:
“… our identity as animal organisms is the muse of our existence as selves. But fundamental to our existence as this animal is our sex. We are male or female organisms in virtue of getting a root capability for reproductive function, even when that capability is immature or damaged. In human beings, as is the case with many other organisms, that function is one to be performed jointly with one other human being; unlike the digestive function, no individual human being suffices for its performance.
“Accordingly, reproductive function in human beings is distributed across the 2 sexes, that are identified by their having the foundation capability for one or the opposite of the 2 general structural and behavioural patterns involved in human reproduction. In male humans, this capability is constituted by the structures essential for the production of male gametes and the performance of the male sex act, insemination. In females, the capability is constituted by the structures essential for the production of oocytes and the performance of the feminine sex act, the reception of semen in a way disposed to conception.”
There are various other physical and psychological differences between men and girls, but they’re all characteristics of human beings who’re fundamentally differentiated by the proven fact that their bodies are ordered towards the performance of various roles in sexual reproduction and within the nurture of kids once they’ve been born.
These differences that mean some human beings are male and others female have their origin in the intervening time of conception, and are ineradicable. Even though an individual may take hormones and undergo surgery to dam the event of, or to alter, a few of their sexual characteristics they nevertheless remain a one who is either male or female for the explanations just described.
The second reason why gender transition (attempting to be a female if biologically male and vice versa) is problematic is since it involves violating the biblical teaching that we must always live because the members of the sex that God has given to us. This teaching might be present in Deuteronomy 22:5 which prohibited cross-dressing on the grounds that to decorate after the way of the other sex was to infringe the traditional order of creation which divides humanity into female and male.
It may also be present in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 where Paul tells the Corinthians that men should follow the dress and hair codes which proclaim them to be male, and girls those which proclaim them to be female because, to cite the Anglican biblical scholar Tom Wright, “God’s creation needs humans to be fully, gloriously and truly human, which implies fully and truly female and male.”
This doesn’t mean that Christians should uncritically embrace the gender stereotypes of any given society. What it does mean is that they need to live in a way that proclaims to that society the reality of their creation by God as male or female.
As the Anglican ethicist Oliver O’Donovan has written in Begotten or Made?, the fundamental principle is that:
“The sex into which we have now been born … is given to us to be welcomed because the gift of God. The task of psychological maturity—for it’s an ethical task, and never merely an event which can or may not transpire—involves accepting this gift and learning to find it irresistible, regardless that we could have to acknowledge that it doesn’t come to us easily. Our task is to discern the chances for private relationship that are given to us with this biological sex, and to hunt to develop them in accordance with our individual vocations. Those for whom this task has been comparatively unproblematic (though I suppose that no human being alive has been without some sexual problems) are in no position to pronounce any judgement on those for whom accepting their sex has been so difficult that they’ve fled from it into denial. Nevertheless, we cannot and must not conceive of physical sexuality as a mere raw material with which we will construct a type of psychosexual self-expression which is set only by the free impulse of our spirits. Responsibility in sexual development implies a responsibility to nature—to the ordered good of the bodily form which we have now been given.”
The proven fact that human beings are called by God to live out the sex given to them by God implies that from a Christian perspective deciding to discover as a member of the other sex just isn’t just an try and achieve something that’s unimaginable to attain – becoming a member of the other sex – but it is usually something that’s morally fallacious. It is a sin.
As CS Lewis writes in his book The Great Divorce, there’s an inescapable binary selection facing all human beings. ‘There are only two kinds of individuals ultimately: those that say to God, ‘Thy might be done,’ and people to whom God says, ultimately, ‘Thy might be done.”
Lewis’ point is that God has given human beings freedom to shape their very own destinies. We can decide to say to God ‘thy might be done’ and be blissful with God without end on this planet to return, or we will decide to turn our back on God. If we do that God will respect our decision, however the inevitable consequence might be that on this planet to return we might be cut off from God and all good without end.
The fundamental problem with gender transition is that it involves a rejection, in each theory and practice, of the sexual identity which we have now been given by God and thus a failure to say to God ‘thy might be done.’ It means a sinful refusal to either accept or live in accordance with the male or female sexual identity that God has bestowed upon us.
It may be argued that those that desire to interact in gender transition should not morally culpable because they genuinely feel that they’re a member of the other sex. This could also be true however the argument ignores the proven fact that they’ve a distorted view of their situation which they then make the idea of sinful actions. This just isn’t in truth something which makes them unique. This is because, because of this of the Fall, human beings generally have lost the power to all the time see things as they honestly are (see Romans 1:21). Acts of sin (of whatever kind) occur when a distorted view of reality resulting from the Fall results in fallacious desires, which in turn give birth to fallacious actions. Gender transition is only one type of this pattern.
All this being the case, how should Christians reply to those that have undergone gender transition or who’re wanting to accomplish that?
The answer is straightforward in principle, nonetheless difficult to place into practice. Christians have to practise a love which fits beyond easy affirmation.
As people of affection, who value the God-given dignity of people that claim to be transgender as those whom God has created and for whom Christ died, we must always be proactive in ensuring that they should not subject to harassment or violence.
As people of affection, who recognize and value as a piece of God the sex into which trans-identifying people were born, we must always encourage them to not go down the trail of gender transition. If they’ve gone down this path, love means helping them to just accept and live out their original, God-given, sexual identity, while acknowledging the acute challenges doing it will raise, particularly for many who have undergone gender-assignment surgery or formed families of their assumed identity.
Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
