For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly, but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
(Ephesians 5:8-14, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)
In a recent message, I mentioned Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine. While I find much of his critique of modern society compelling, I disagree with his hostility to what he calls “the transgender moment.” He doesn’t just oppose the campaign for transgender rights; in fact, he doesn’t consider it a civil rights issue at all.
Instead, he regards the existence of transgender people as “the latest stage of modernity’s long rebellion against nature,” tying it to broad philosophical trends he sees stretching back nearly three centuries, powered by “the twin engines of cultural revolution and advanced technology.” The Machine promises people they can become more than human but, he warns, it really seeks to exploit humanity to perpetuate its own growth. Sort of like how everyone in the Matrix films gets turned into batteries, except not literally.
I reject that view of transgender people, and I hope you do, too.
I do see the Machine (or Empire, or late-stage neoliberal capitalism, or whatever you want to call it) as akin to the “principalities and powers” warned about a little later in Ephesians (6:12). As such, I believe that it does aggressively exploit humanity for its own ends. But I don’t think that has much, if anything, to do with the existence of trans folk.
I take many of my cues on this subject from an essay Daniel Walden wrote for the Catholic magazine Commonweal in 2021, “Gender, Sex, and Other Nonsense.” Walden directly confronts the shortcomings of much of the contemporary conversation surrounding gender and sexual identity, and urges people to do better on a theological basis: In the same way that we might wish to speak accurately about God, we should also wish to speak accurately about those made in God’s image.
For Walden, that begins with listening to other people and what they share with us about their own lives. “In disclosing ourselves we also disclose the work of God,” he writes:
“To tell other people what our lives mean is to draw them deeper into ourselves, and to listen to what someone tells us their life means is to be drawn deeper into the mystery of both their humanity and humanity’s maker. To impose upon another the meaning of their life is, by contrast, a kind of pretense at divinity. It is to tell another person something that only God can tell them, to claim the ultimate interpretive authority over experiences that do not belong to us.”
Do you imagine you can speak to someone’s condition better than God can?
When someone tells us “I am a man” or “I am a woman,” and we think we know more than they do about that, we are rejecting the opportunity to enter into a relationship with their most authentic selves. As Quakers, we strive to live in integrity. Why would we assume someone else does not? We don’t have to accept everything someone tells us as true. We should, however, embrace the possibility that people want to tell the truth about themselves, as they have come to understand it.
“When a person identifies as transgender,” Walden explains, “they are saying that the relationships our society has allowed them to form are not adequate, that there must be more authentically human ways for them to live… They feel that there must be other, truer ways of speaking about their life.”
Instead of accusing trans people of abandoning their “original” nature, we might do better to see their rejection of socially imposed gender identities, which were based solely on the presence of primary and secondary physical characteristics, as a recognition—and an embrace—of their authentic selves. Whether or not they see Spirit accompanying them on that journey, as we work to understand their inner transformation, we might find the metaphor of walking out of darkness and into the light helpful.
Some of you may think I’ve got a lot of nerve, using Ephesians 5 to support trans identity.
I just take the liturgical readings as they come. Yes, the lines immediately before the passage I’m quoting condemn “sexual immorality.” They do not, however, say anything that should lead us to put gender identity among the “unfruitful works of darkness.” And when trans people come out to the world, by definition they have given up secrecy. So, yes, I see the call to “walk as children of light” as, among many other things, an invitation to those who feel the gender norms of this culture do not speak to their condition, an invitation to look for an Inward Light that might help them awaken and realize themselves more fully than the gods of this world can.
I found this article thought provoking and I appreciate the opportunity to read it, mull it over and respond here. As a psychotherapist, I work with a wide range of people. Over the years, that has included several transgender youth and adults. I have been impressed with their struggles to simply “be” in a culture that does a lot to stop them from being “who they are” or even to explore what that might be. I believe that Fox’s admonition to “seek that of God in all people” is central to our understanding of the faith. To me that means we do not tell the “other” what God expects of them, rather we listen to them for what God is telling us. Over the years, I’ve picked up little bits of knowledge that have been helpful in this regard. One is just a hard fact; when the brain waves of a trans person are inspected, they exhibit the patterns of the gender they identify with, even if their physical bodies do not. To me this says it all. These are people of one gender in the body of the other gender. That conflict can be a source of frustration or for one of my clients anyway, a source of grace. She said “It means I have an understanding of both genders that others do not.”
So we can see transgender folks as a blessing with a lot to offer about humanity, or we can see them as a problem. For me the Quaker way is the first option.
Our culture is clearly way too much about conforming to categories and not enough about embracing differences and seeing them as a way for us to gain greater understand our world, our lives and the breadth of life that God has given us. In other words, trans people are not to simply be tolerated or accepted, but to be welcomed as a source of insight and grace.
Thank you for this wonderful allyship, Ron. As a member of the trans rights working group for Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends, I wholeheartedly agree and hope that my Quaker friends will continue to give full acceptance to and defend the rights of trans people. The slow stripping away of their rights is very painful to watch, but Quakers know how to resist injustice. ❤️
I found this article deeply resonant. As a trans person myself, my spirituality was a guiding principle in my journey to come out and show up in the world as my true self.
Trans people are not a new phenomenon by the way – all thats new is the medical treatment we now have access to. The Talmud and other ancient sources discuss diversity of gender identity noting at least 7 variations; in Indian cultures, Hijras have existed for centuries: Native American cultures have long recognized two-spirited individuals, and so on. We have existed for millennia. We are nothing new in nature.
Personally, I think we just represent a variety of invisible intersex conditions affecting how our brains develop (as the other commenter noted), but the science is still nascent. Im not sure it matters either. From a spiritual lens, I can simply say that this is how I was created. Living true to who I am has enabled me to connect more deeply with spirit and with humanity, to embrace my other callings in life, and to be a more complete expression of the divine spark within. I tried for decades to hide who I was from the world – it didn’t work, and only led to a muting of the still small voice within.
I cannot understand the cruelty with which others sometimes treat transgender people, much less their attempts to cloak that cruelty in some kind of religious faith – but I try to see the light in them too and recognize that perhaps they too are hurting or fearful. I hope that in the years to come we can all find more compassion for one another.