Gender Transition and Implied Narratives

There is some weird as well as wonderful material in Common Worship, the collection of the Church of England’s provision of contemporary language services. But I am not aware of anything within it that clearly teaches something which I do not believe. This may be about to change, making for interesting times. I refer to the Pastoral Guidance for use in conjunction with the Affirmation of Baptismal Faith in the context of gender transition which is new guidance for parishes planning services to help transgender people mark their transition (see press release). So what is the story?

While not all gender nonconformity is rooted in gender dysphoria, gender transition is often painful and persons going through the process are in extra need of support. For those who have contact to their local church, it would be a huge thing to have their transition, their acquired gender and their new name recognised and affirmed by the church in a way that says “you are safe, you are welcome, we love you for who you are, and as God’s community we stand by you in your isolation and vulnerability” (using the words of one such person).

Questions for the church are (1) Can we “unconditionally affirm” trans persons in the sense of loving them as they are without communicating that they are only welcome and included if their gender identity conforms to their biological sex but without explicitly affirming the transition itself? 

(2) If it is not possible to affirm trans persons without affirming transition processes, does the church have the authority for claiming God’s approval of gender transition itself? 

(3) If the church can be confident in speaking on God’s behalf into such situations, can we offer the divine stamp of approval on every gender transition or would the church need to exercise discretion and distinguish between right and wrong transitions?

I see at least three alternative stories that one could tell: (1) Gender is related to biological sex and gender nonconformity is the result of confusion, rebellion or illness. Trans persons are to be loved and affirmed as persons but their nonconformity is not to be encouraged and is potentially a problem. This first narrative is painful for trans people but this does not prove that it is wrong. Some Christians believe that this is the story told in Scripture.

Deuteronomy 22:5 deals with the issue of cross-dressing, women presenting themselves as men and vice versa. The use of the phrase “abomination to the Lord your God” signals that this cannot be readily dismissed as irrelevant to the church.

The situation with eunuchs is different. Deuteronomy 23:1 prohibits men with crushed or severed genitals to enter the assembly of the Lord but does not use the word translated “abomination” and Isaiah 53:3-5 envisages the acceptance of eunuchs. The law is presumably meant to discourage the practice, while the promise affirms that this does not mean that eunuchs themselves are rejected by God. Jesus, in Matthew 19:12, differentiates between different types of castrated males: those who are eunuchs due to birth, those who become eunuchs because of social and political obligations, and those who voluntarily become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom.

The de-sexing of a eunuch is, however, arguably not the same as transitioning to a different gender and gender nonconformity is not the same as transvestism. The plausibility and truthfulness of this first narrative must but also deserves to be examined.

Another narrative: (2) Gender is a fluid concept at the interface of an individual’s identity and role expectations within society, loosely related to biological sex. The church has no mandate to validate gender stereotypes in general or specific identifications of individuals and welcomes all regardless of their gender or other identities and without making anything of those identities.

This ‘agnostic’ narrative has the advantage of making no controversial claims about gender which are difficult to justify. It is tolerant but it may be considered insufficient given that for many gender is a decisive aspect of their identity and especially so for trans people. Some Christians are in fact more confident about identifying male and female roles in Scripture but even if passages such as Ephesians 5:22-32 are read as role defining rather than encouraging Christians to live out existing roles in a certain way, they would not define the roles of men and women in general but specifically of husbands and wives. In my view, there is little about gender, separate from biological sex, within the Bible and one would need to turn to tradition or science for establishing gender roles.

The Guidance arguably binds the conscience of clergy to a third narrative, something like this: (3) Our souls (or minds?) are gendered in the same way that our bodies are sexed. Where there is incongruity between the gender of the soul and the sex of the body, it is the gender of the soul that should be affirmed and validated by the Church.

The rationale for this is presumably the conviction that it is impossible to welcome and affirm trans people without validating their self-identification. There do not seem to be any criteria for establishing someone’s gender objectively which would allow us to speak, e.g., of a female brain in a chromosomal male body. Consequently the Guidance must assume that every individual’s self-identification is true and healthy, given that a divine stamp of approval could hardly be given to something untrue or unhealthy.

This raises a number of questions in relation to anthropology and eschatology:

What is gender? Does the Guidance assume that there are typical ways of being a man or a woman which are independent of our biological sex, gender stereotypes which we endorse by validating someone’s claim to have discovered their true gender?

If so, are our souls gendered in the same way that our bodies are sexed?

If so, is congruity between the gender of the soul and the sex of the body desirable?

If so, should we encourage sex reassignment surgery and proclaim that a person’s resurrection body will correspond to the gender of their soul?

Are the options binary? The Guidance only speak of male-to-female and female-to-male transitions. It is not clear whether intergender, agender, demigender, genderfluid, pangender or culturally defined "third gender" identities are also to be affirmed.

I am concerned about being tied to a particular story (a) without any justification for preferring this narrative over others and (b) without any exploration of the impact that accepting this story has on other areas of our belief. This is without even talking about the use of the Reaffirmation of Baptismal Vows in this context which for both theological and pastoral reasons I consider inappropriate in any case.

On a minor point, I note that Canon Law proscribes that a child brought to baptism must have at least one godparent of the same sex as the child and one of the opposite sex. I would assume that this must still be read as referring to biological sex but this could lead to intrusive questioning or to a situation in which a child has three godfathers or three godmothers. It would be useful to clarify what is and is not desirable and legal in this case.

Postscript: Matthew Lee Anderson offers a critique in Baptizing the Spirit of the Age in which he observes:

At the heart of the guidance is a prioritization of the “pastoral,” which effectively cordons the ceremony off from meaningful theological reflection. This leaves the guidance grossly underdetermined, reducing priests to cheerleaders for those on their way to a new sex.

Martin Davie, The House of Bishops and Transgender: Fifteen Wasted Years, castigates the House of Bishops for failing to answer key questions which had been raised in  Some Issues in Human Sexuality, the discussion document the House published in 2003, and for failing to offer an adequate theological justification for the position the House adopted then or now.