In this secular age of ours, we like to presume that the religious spirit which has historically motivated civilisations and empires the world over has been snubbed out and replaced by the doctrine of science and rationalism. That our age is indeed a secular one and that the debates which concern our time have transcended primitive superstition are not conclusions that can justifiably be reached when one gives due attention to the true nature of the political and social quandaries vexing our society.
In March, Joe Biden declared Easter Sunday to be “Transgender Day of Visibility” in a move which outraged many and was received as an assault on the holiest day of the year. In one sense, this was of course deeply shocking. Yet it is not as shocking as one might initially presume and is actually somewhat consistent with the fact that transgenderism, as a political and ideological movement, is profoundly religious in its orientation, particularly in its contrast with Christianity. Amidst the noise about the death of God and the decline of faith, the political climate of the West has become charged with religious ideas and impulses masquerading under the supposed secularism of the social movements gripping our culture which, properly explored and unearthed, will aid us in better addressing this descent into heresy.
Transgenderism is a false view of anthropology, based upon a series of premises contrary to reason and reliant upon distinctly religious ideas that happen to be false and should not be accepted as true, good, or beautiful. Its power as an ideological force—observable in its dramatic capture of the political debate in recent years—can, to some degree, be attributed to the religious nature of its presuppositions, which also demonstrates the importance of decisively rejecting its religious conclusions and proscriptions. But first, let us recap just a few of the quite astonishing consequences of this movement and the effects it has had on our society—all of which a mere decade ago would have been considered unthinkably absurd.
Some doctors in the NHS are now referring to ‘human milk’ rather than breast milk and are arguing that milk produced by men who have taken hormones to induce lactation is just as beneficial to newborn children as that belonging to mothers. Medical bodies are deliberately removing terms like mother from maternity guidance or turning away men from giving blood unless they confirm that they are not pregnant. Whilst the primary impulse of the movement may have once been restricted to normalising adults identifying as the opposite sex, increasingly activists are turning their focus to so-called “transgender children.” In the U.S. specifically, there have been shocking examples of child mutilation—as in the case of detransitioner Chloe Cole who had a double mastectomy at the age of 15—and in Scotland certain politicians have recently argued that we ought to consider allowing eight-year-olds to legally change gender. The fervour with which this doctrine is being preached shows no signs of abating, particularly among the highly vocal activist base.
How, then, has it come to this? How has this profound shift in our frame-of-reference for understanding the human person occurred so dramatically and how has it had such a commanding influence upon our public institutions? It seems to me that we must pay attention to the fundamental religious presuppositions undergirding the ideology, specifically as it relates to its views on anthropology and the relationship between the soul and the body.
Anthropology has been a central aspect of religious thought for millennia and has been of essential importance for Christian theological reflection. The nature of mankind is specifically explored in the opening chapters of Genesis, where men and women are declared to be created in “the image and likeness of God”—a description ordinarily only applied to the king in surrounding Ancient Near Eastern cultures. The relationship between men and women is explored in these chapters and informs the doctrine of the Church which has celebrated and underscored the distinctiveness and complementarity of the sexes.
Over the last century or so, various social movements have sought to water down the distinctiveness of the sexes and propagate the view that men and women are essentially the same. This motivation undergirds the feminist movement. It was also the reasoning deployed to justify the legalisation and acceptance of same-sex marriage. It is likewise thought to lend support to transgenderism. After all, the more the distinctiveness of men and women is disputed, the easier it is to argue that a man can indeed become a woman and vice versa. The different duties, responsibilities, and expectations which were once thought proper to men and women respectively have been done away with to the point that it becomes easier to accept an opposing anthropological argument that seeks to diminish the complementarity of the sexes and makes it possible for transformation to occur.
This different anthropological understanding can be seen in the way that ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are now the two categories more readily applied to the human person. But even here we find deep confusion. Official NHS guidance asserts that ‘gender dysphoria’ describes a sense of unease one might feel owing to a “mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.” Yet, it is also maintained that gender dysphoria is categorically not a mental illness, despite conceding that questions of identity and self-perception are wrapped up in this complicated disorder. “Gender identity” is a notoriously ill-defined term which seems to presume some notion of what it means to be a man versus what it means to be a woman. How can one know that one is indeed a woman and not a man if one has no framework for understanding the definitional and objective differences between the two? Theology has always sought to probe the depths of the human experience and answer the eternal questions of what it means to be human and how humanity relates to the divine. In a similar way, transgenderism is pointedly concerned with issues of human identity, but where the Church argues that men and women are distinct and definable categories, transgenderism proposes a totally undefinable approach which allows for the possibility that a man can indeed become a woman. One must decide whether this is true, for on it the whole doctrine hangs.
Perhaps even more religious is the way transgenderism invokes the notion of the soul and the soul’s relationship to the body. This thorny theological issue has resulted in the spilling of much ink over the centuries but has proven to be an essential point of doctrine in the Christian tradition. The idea of an opposition between the soul and the body was espoused by the early gnostics and refuted by the Church as a false understanding of humanity. The integration of the soul and the body is central to the Christian life, demonstrated most profoundly in the reality of the Incarnation and the hope for physical resurrection at the Second Coming. The physical world and the physical body are not to be despised in the Christian worldview, but thoroughly approved of and bound up in the hope for salvation alongside the soul and spirit. Physical acts of worship, like participation in the Eucharistic meal or kneeling during prayer, exemplify this theological truth that both soul and body are objects of the salvific work of God. Human beings, then, are fundamentally an integration of body and soul.
While less inclined to forthrightly use the language of “soul” or “spirit,” one cannot help but hear strong undertones of these ideas in the notion that one can be “a woman trapped in a man’s body.” The idea of the dichotomy between one’s “gender identity” and one’s “biological sex” likewise plays into this view that one’s inward being, or soul, can really be that of a woman, while one’s body, or outward appearance, can be that of a man. For the transgender activist, the proper course of action in the opposition between the soul and the body is to conform the body to the proper identity of the soul. It is to break free from the constraints of the body—through drugs, mutilation, or other such alteration—in order to more fully align with the soul. This is a profoundly religious understanding of the human person but it happens to be incorrect, for the body and the soul are, as previously stated, integrated, and it is not possible to have an ontologically male body but also an ontologically female soul. Transgenderism would take the side of the gnostics in elevating the soul over the body, which is what allows for the sadly too often occurring abuse perpetrated against the body under the guise of healthcare.
One must not, therefore, be deceived by the ‘science’ of it all. While religious concepts such as the soul are smuggled into words like ‘healthcare’ and ‘identity,’ and while the physicians may have exchanged their vestments for lab coats, it is the theological conclusions about anthropology and the soul’s relationship to the body which undergird the arguments being advanced in today’s debate. Indeed, the religiosity goes further. We are now faced with an onslaught of liturgy which we must assent to, such as the various slogans like “trans rights are human rights” and the draconian enforcement of pronoun usage. The ideology has its own holy calendar, with Transgender Awareness Week observed in November and Transgender Day of Visibility on 31 March. Transgenderism even has its own conception of the crucifixion and resurrection evident in terms like “dead naming.” This is the sin of using someone’s old name, ominously illustrating how the act of transition is conceived of in these life and death categories. Like the Christian tenet that the old man dies in baptism, is joined to Christ in His death on the cross, and is then resurrected into new life being transformed into a new man, transgenderism functions within a framework of dying and rising to new life—the sole defect being, of course, that the promise of new life in this case is based on an incorrect understanding of humanity and will not satisfy the soul’s eternal longing.
Naturally, I am not maintaining that all of this is concretely on the minds of the transgender activists or those who quietly submit to its doctrine. I suspect that precious few among these proponents are learned theologians. But nor am I saying that one must be a theologian to articulate theological ideas. We so readily assume that we have done away with old-fashioned religion and entered an era of rationality. Yet this assumption blinds us to the pointedly religious ideas being advanced by the social and political movements of today, many of which propose notions that the Church has already heard and refuted before. There is indeed nothing new under the sun! Even if the transgender debate is not waged as a crusade, we would do well to recognise its religious zeal, for if it is indeed true that a man can become a woman, or that the supposed war between the soul and the body can be won by the soul, then we ought to accept it: the pronouns, the medical intervention, the crucifixion of the old man for the resurrection of the new woman, the lot! Yet if it is not true, if a man cannot become a woman, if the gnostics are still wrong, and if, being led by the wisdom of repugnance, we find the mutilation of the body to be disordered, then all of it must be rejected, the whole ideology.
I cannot begin to imagine the pain of someone so consumed by mental and spiritual confusion that they feel such turmoil in their personhood. I have every sympathy for their pain and sincerely hope for their welfare and their salvation, a hope, incidentally, which the Church proclaims is made real and accessible in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet it is precisely this compassion which warrants the rejection of the whole ideology of transgenderism. It is false religion administering false compassion, premised on ideas which are being used to justify heinous acts against vulnerable people. The only compassionate approach is to speak the truth, lovingly and with charity, for the truth will actually set you free. Transgenderism is wrong, the heresy of our time—and those who have been misled and abused by its doctrine deserve the truth.
