Transgenderism, Theology, and a Transfer of Power

With the new administration that’s nine days away committed to revising rules regarding transgenderism, journalists reporting the debate should be informed biblically, biologically, and historically. J. Alan Branch’s Affirming God’s Image (Lexham Press, 2019) does well on all three dimensions in a tight 144 pages.

Branch shows that participants in the ancient Roman cult of Cybele seemed to embrace transgenderism. The modern movement descends from the work of a German doctor in 1897 and an American endocrinologist in 1948. Soon came decades of attempts to find a biological rather than psychological explanation for sex-change desires, but no one has discovered a transgender gene.

Much of the recent attention has been on athletes with male musculature participating in women’s events and grabbing gold medals and golden scholarships. That’s the iceberg’s tip: Branch clearly shows that “being made male and female is an intricate part of being made in the image of God.” He rightly concludes that “Transgenderism is a very hard life, and transgender people need the love of Jesus Christ. We do not help transgender people by compromising Scripture.”

Democrats lost votes by embracing transgenderism. The new Trump administration does not have a mandate regarding most controversies, but it does on this one. Books that appeared in the last year of Trump 1 have now had four years to sink in: Abigail Shrier’s strongly-worded Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (Regnery, 2020) sold well, and that same year Owen Strachan and Gavin Peacock’s What Does the Bible Teach About Transgenderism? (Christian Focus) provided a conservative British take on the subject.

Breaking from the gate two years earlier, and still possessing the best title, was Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (Encounter). Amazon is now flush with books on the subject, including Transgender Marxism (Pluto, 2021) and the Trans and Proud Coloring Book (Independent, 2022). This year’s debate will be fascinating: LGBQ is a new normal within American popular culture, yet the T is in dispute.

Nevertheless, the fundamental things will continue to apply, as time goes by. Last month I wrote about great historical novelist Robert Harris. This month I’ll praise another Brit, theologian N. T. Wright. If Christmas materialist excess dispirited you, Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress Press, 2003) can bring you back to the central issue with both brilliant writing and thorough research. I feel bound to warn you: The book has 817 pages. (But it may change your life.)

For those wishing to start smaller, or those who grew up in a Jewish home as I did, Wright’s Hebrews for Everyone: 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide (Westminster John Knox, 2023) is a beginning point. This past year, with the Jewish holiday of Hanukah beginning on Christmas day, musings about the relationship of Judaism and Christianity were inevitable. Wright summarizes well the message of Hebrews: “Moses was a true servant of God, but Jesus is God’s son. We don’t diminish Moses by making Jesus superior to him; you give him his rightful place, which is a place of honour even though it’s not the supreme honour.”

The conclusion of Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age (Zondervan, 2024) describes his own movement from shocked despair—while he’s traveling, his wife of 25 years files for divorce—to “one of the most intense and spiritually charged weeks” of his life. It began “with a desperate plea from a broken man” as Dreher fell on his face before an altar at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. He returned day after day to that place where, traditions say, Christ died on a cross erected on a rock: “You can actually touch the rock through a hole under the altar.”

I’ve been there, touching that rock. I hung around day after day at the enormous retaining wall that remains from the Temple destroyed almost two thousand years ago. I felt the magic of Jerusalem, and Dreher says we should feel magic everywhere in our enchanted world. We can do that in a biblical or anarchic way. Michael Horton’s Shaman and Sage (Eerdman’s, 2024) in dense but decisive prose shows how the contemporary tendency to say “I’m spiritual but not religious” goes back to ancient times.

The Nazi brutality detailed in Abraham Sutzkever’s From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony (McGill, 2021) is a hard-to-swallow spoonful for anyone who argues for the natural spiritual goodness of humanity. History is often discomforting, so I should mention that the best new prayer-eliciting book I’ve seen in the past year is My Only Comfort: The Heidelberg Catechism for Devotional Reading (P&R, 2024).