I am not a Christian. Sure, I was raised Lutheran…in the time when that meant the Catholics considered me a heretic…but I gave up on Christianity in the late 1960s when a mission preacher told me that people who had never been told about Jesus were going to Hell. Today I consider myself a Taoist. I was once a student of Alan Watts.
But I know of transpeople who have struggled with the perceived wedge between being Christian and being transgender. It's a fake division.
Of course, the Bible doesn't say anything about transgender people directly. The concept didn't exist in Biblical days.
But that doesn't stop the haters from attacking us for whom they perceive us to be.
When Pat Robertson declared recently that transpeople altering their bodies is not a sin and so he would not condemn it, we knew there would be backsplash.
The transgender segment is in the middle.
The pushback came from Ben Johnson of LifeSiteNews (I will not offer a link).
Traditional Christians have condemned such actions as a form of self-mutilation since the days of the ancient church.
There were, of course, no sources for that statement, other than a reference to the Apostolic Canons of 692.
Speaking specifically of castration, the Apostolic Canons, a fourth century Syrian document, states, “If a layman mutilate himself, let him be excommunicated for three years, as practising against his own life.”
Johnson neglects mentioning that the Apostolic Canons were in large part rejected by Pope Constantine.
Then Johnson turns to a professor from Christendom College's Notre Dame Graduate School…not to be confused with Notre Dame's Graduate School of Theology.
To destroy organs purposefully that are healthy and functioning, and to try to create imitation organs which will never have the genuineness and functioning of authentic organs lacks charity. Such surgery which purposefully destroys the bodily integrity of the person must be condemned.
--Fr. William Saunders, professor of Catechetics and Theology at Christendom College’s Notre Dame Graduate School
Still no biblical sources.
We pick up Daniel Gonzales of Box Turtle Bulletin.
So what exactly does the Bible have to say about the matter?
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
--Jesus, according to Matthew 19:12
Please note that the definition of "eunuch" should be broad.
Ragnhild Schanke argues that the term refers to any person who is not traditionally heterosexual.
We could turn to Acts 8:26-39.
26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian[a] eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship,
28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet.
29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:
“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,
and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth."
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?”
35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.
36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?”
37 Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” The eunuch answered, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.
39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.
This eunuch was the first non-Jewish convert to Christianity.
Or we could turn to Jeremiah 38.
38 Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jehukal[a] son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malkijah heard what Jeremiah was telling all the people when he said,
2 “This is what the Lord says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians[b] will live. They will escape with their lives; they will live.’
3 And this is what the Lord says: ‘This city will certainly be given into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, who will capture it.’”
4 Then the officials said to the king, “This man should be put to death. He is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, as well as all the people, by the things he is saying to them. This man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin.”
5 “He is in your hands,” King Zedekiah answered. “The king can do nothing to oppose you.”
6 So they took Jeremiah and put him into the cistern of Malkijah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah by ropes into the cistern; it had no water in it, only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.
7 But Ebed-Melek, a Cushite, a eunuch in the royal palace, heard that they had put Jeremiah into the cistern. While the king was sitting in the Benjamin Gate,
8 Ebed-Melek went out of the palace and said to him,
9 “My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have thrown him into a cistern, where he will starve to death when there is no longer any bread in the city.”
10 Then the king commanded Ebed-Melek the Cushite, “Take thirty men from here with you and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies.”
11 So Ebed-Melek took the men with him and went to a room under the treasury in the palace. He took some old rags and worn-out clothes from there and let them down with ropes to Jeremiah in the cistern.
12 Ebed-Melek the Cushite said to Jeremiah, “Put these old rags and worn-out clothes under your arms to pad the ropes.” Jeremiah did so,
13 and they pulled him up with the ropes and lifted him out of the cistern. And Jeremiah remained in the courtyard of the guard.
The gist of these stories is that gender-variant people are good people doing good deeds, But haters know who they hate…the Bible be damned.
In fact in Biblical days eunuchs held the most powerful positions in government. In the Book of Esther eunuchs ran the royal court of King Xerxes and a eunuch by the name of Hegai personally selected Esther to ascend to the throne from the royal harem.
And I haven’t even cited all the references to eunuchs in the Bible, just my personal favorites. Transgender and gender non-conforming people play major rolls all throughout the Bible and consistently held positions of power and importance. Rather than looking to the Bible for his article, Johnson grasps at straws to condemn them.
--Gonzales