It’s hard to believe, but it was just a very short time ago that nobody believed in gender identity. At least, nobody believed in what the term has come to encompass today. As with so many social phenomena, it came slowly and then all at once. Suddenly it became an accepted “fact” that sex and gender can no longer be used interchangeably but instead refer to completely different realities so that a woman can have the body of a man and a man the body of a woman. Suddenly it became an accepted “fact” that the way to approach gender dysphoria is not to provide therapy to the mind but to provide surgery for the body. Suddenly it became an act of violence to fail to use another person’s preferred pronouns and an act of hate speech to use another person’s “deadname.”

It is difficult to keep up with such a swift and irrational transformation. It can be difficult to sort through the new terminology and to think through the new distinctions. Thankfully, Christians are being well-resourced with books that can help. Now on store shelves is Does God Care About Gender Identity? by Samuel Ferguson, a short book that forms part of a new series from The Gospel Coalition called “TGC Hard Questions.”
“This booklet is written for those interested in or concerned by today’s evolving views on sex and gender,” Ferguson says in his introduction. “It’s grown out of occasions I’ve had as a pastor to walk with individuals who experience gender dysphoria and their families. Whether you’re a Christian, a parent, or just someone curious about gender, identity, and our shared longings for transformation, I’ve written this book for you. I hope you’ll find here compassion, clarity, and some guidance around this complex and sensitive topic.”
He focuses on two themes: deeper understanding and compassionate engagement. Under the banner of deeper understanding, he wants to inform his readers about today’s transgender movement—its practices and key beliefs—and he wants to compare these to the Bible. He looks at three big questions: (1) Is the body integral or incidental to gender identity? (2) What is the transformative path out of dysphoria and toward wholeness? (3) Does God assign our biological sex and gender…? If so, how can we tell, and how does this affect the way we live out our maleness and femaleness?
Under the banner of compassionate engagement, he asks what biblical compassion and leadership might look like when caring for someone who has declared themselves transgender. How can the church help parents whose children say they are trans? How can the church relate to people who have changed their gender identity? And how can Christians see gender identity not as a threat but as an opportunity for discipleship?
Because this is just a brief book, Ferguson needs to move quickly, but that doesn’t stop him from offering helpful explanations. For example, he outlines the three core beliefs of the transgender movement and explains each one: my identity is self-determined; my feelings, not my body, determine my gender; and we find wholeness through external, not internal, change. All three of these beliefs are novel and all three are opposed to Scripture. Together they lead to this: change the body to heal the mind.
But what does Scripture say? Our human identity is a gift from our Creator; human beings are embodied, so gender is never less than our biology; and God’s pathway for change is transformation, not transition. According to God, then, what we have to offer those with gender dysphoria is not medical transition but spiritual transformation that begins with the mind, culminates in the future resurrection, and is carried out in the meantime by the Spirit in the context of the local church.

The transgender movement’s agent of transition is the scalpel; Christianity’s agent of transformation is the Spirit. The transgender movement sees change as primarily cosmetic, on the surface; Christians understand change to be inner and deep—it begins in the soul, moves through our character, and culminates in a perfected, imperishable, embodied existence (1 Cor. 15:42–49). A transition takes place in a clinic or on an operating table, but transformation is lived out in the context of the church, with God’s people, the family of faith.

Those who are confused by all the talk of gender identity will appreciate this book as a helpful explainer and guide. Those who are attempting to help or lead others through struggles will appreciate it as a trusted, albeit basic, resource. It’s the kind of book churches may wish to keep on hand and distribute liberally. I expect many Christians will benefit from reading it and thus I highly recommend it.
(Does God Care About Gender Identity? is one of three volumes that are launching the new series TGC Hard Questions. I also recommend Is Christianity Good for the World? by Sharon James and Why Do We Feel Lonely at Church? by Jeremy Linneman.)
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A journey into the Rocky Mountains of Western Canada brought me to Vermilion Pass, a single point that divides two national parks and two provinces. It also divides two watersheds, for it stands upon the continental divide. To one side of this spot all waters flow west and eventually find their way to the vast Pacific; to the other side, all waters flow east and eventually empty into the cold Atlantic. To both sides are countless springs, countless snowmelts, countless glaciers, each one the headwaters of a creek, stream, or river that eventually joins with others and makes its way steadily toward one of these two great oceans.

In the decades that I’ve been a Christian, I’ve been told of many doctrines, many convictions, and many movements that represent the theological equivalent of a continental divide. Flowing to the one side of this issue are the faithful and to the other side the unfaithful. To the one side is the standing church and to the other side the falling church. To the one side is the godly remnant holding firm and to the other the great host of compromisers who are crumbling away. The implication is that if we don’t get a certain issue exactly right, we have set ourselves on the side of evil and will eventually be swept into the ocean of iniquity. Not only that, but we need to quickly separate ourselves from those who are moving in the opposite direction.

I face such divides with an increasing sense of skepticism. Though many claim that this issue or that issue is so important that it must be the basis of division, that it marks the point of disfellowship, I have my doubts. That’s not to say that nothing is true and nothing is false. It’s not to say that we ought to live in a kind of theological relativism or be content with a mushy middle. But it is to say that many people have a vested interest in making such claims. It is the claimants as much as the claims that warrant skepticism.

Bullies abound. Hyperbole sells. Exaggeration earns attention. Alarmism is a well-proven tactic. While nobody is interested in buying a book or attending a conference that deals with the third-most-pressing issue of our times, many will invest time and money in one that deals with the issue that will define the era. No conference Q&A has ever asked about issues that are perfectly settled and agreed on by all Christians, but many focus on issues that mark disagreement and division. A discernment blog is likely to rise through the ranks much faster than an encouragement blog. Many a podcaster or YouTuber has forged a career by claiming this issue, then that one, then the other, is the one that must divide the few from the many, the true from the false. Though some of them may be right some of the time, most of them are wrong most of the time.

Bullies abound. Hyperbole sells. Exaggeration earns attention. Alarmism is a well-proven tactic.Share

Every now and again a new issue does arise that demands careful examination and deep thought. Some issues are so pressing that it is right for Christians to gather to discuss them and come to an agreement on what is true and what is false. But most of the true “continental divide” issues have long since been settled. Thus we do well to ground ourselves in the long history of the Christian church and her creeds and confessions. Most of what needs to divide us has already been determined long ago and agreed upon by centuries of believers. Most of the rest demands patience, time, and persuasion more than haste, censure, and separation.

Meanwhile, the great issue of this day and every day is whether God’s people will be holy and united, whether we will speak true with love and love according to truth. It is whether we will be led by the Spirit working through the Word or whether we will be led by people of poor character working through new media. There are many people who will create new divisions or widen existing divisions in the name of Christ but for the good of themselves, the enriching of their pockets, or the widening of their influence. Too many of the church’s agendas are set by people who are following the devil’s agenda—his agenda of chaos, division, and separation.

Satan’s great genius has always been to place his agents within the church. While we keep a wary eye on the world and the culture, they are often ravaging the believers behind our backs. Paul’s warning to the Ephesians elders should sober us all and amplify our vigilance: “From among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:30). I plead with you for the sake of your spiritual well-being, for the sake of the unity of Christ’s church, and for the sake of giving the best of our attention to the Commission Christ has given us, to expect that the worst of our enemies will come from within. It’s very possible they will be wearing the guise of angels of light … or the guise of experts on discernment (2 Corinthians 11:14).

The French language has an endearing little phrase that could almost have been drawn from the Bible’s wisdom literature. “Plus ça change,” they say, “plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though I live in the 21st century, I read in the 19th, which is to say, the great majority of the material I read recreationally is sermons written in the 1800s. Because a preacher will usually apply a text to the specific needs and concerns of his congregation, sermons provide an interesting way of understanding the pressing issues of the day.

As I have read, I have become fascinated by how many of today’s concerns were also the concerns of our forebears. Many of today’s issues have already been discussed, debated, and even resolved and we have much to learn from those who have gone before us. French has it right: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here are a few examples.

Congregational singing. Pastors were concerned about dwindling congregational participation in singing. Many churches had begun to put singing in the hands of professionals—typically small but highly-trained choirs. Today we may be concerned that worship bands drown out the congregation and sing in ways that amateurs find difficult to emulate. But then pastors were concerned that choirs had supplanted the “one another” ministry of singing that the Bible describes in Colossians 3. They lamented that in many churches it was frowned upon for the congregation to sing along lest it taint the professionalism of the church’s ministry in music.

Political villainization and exaggeration. One American preacher expressed his dismay that every presidential election was deemed the most important and the most consequential of all time. He lamented that every candidate made it sound as if the future of the Republic was at stake—that if the people chose his opponent, America would inevitably crumble and fall. This is certainly still the case today not only in the United States but in other nations as well. It’s fascinating to know that so little has changed—that even then, every issue was deemed unprecedented and every election proclaimed the most important in history.

Explicit nudity. Christians in that era were dismayed at declining morals, especially as it pertained to art. Though movies did not yet exist, it was becoming acceptable for people of good standing to have nude art in their homes. As today pastors may encourage their congregations to keep a wary eye on their media consumption, in that day pastors encouraged their congregations to keep a wary eye on the art they permitted themselves to own or to view. They especially fretted about young men corrupting themselves by looking at what was essentially that era’s pornography.

Biblical authority. In that day, an increasing number of skeptics were pouring contempt on the Bible and especially its claims of miracles and supernatural occurrences. As Darwin solidified and propagated his theories, others were embracing forms of theistic evolution in favor of the Bible’s account of creation. Even some who considered themselves Christian were explaining away these matters for the sake of societal respectability. Pastors had to insist on the authority and reliability of Scripture from its first word to its last.

Polyamory and polygamy. In the past few years, we have seen many headlines about the rise of polyamory—the practice of engaging in multiple simultaneous sexual relationships. In the late 1800s, polygamy was a pressing concern, especially in America as it witnessed the growth of Mormonism and its fixation with plural marriage. Pastors had to teach their congregants what the Bible says about the purpose and sanctity of marriage and insist that marriage was to be a lifelong covenantal relationship between one man and one woman. They had to teach about the terrible consequences to wives and children in polygamous contexts. They did so in ways that were appropriately discreet for that era, but they did so nonetheless.

An epidemic of addiction. In the 1800s there was an epidemic of addiction that swept the nations. Where today we may be concerned with opiates, in that day Christians were concerned with alcohol in general and rum in particular. Rum was a cheap and widely available form of alcohol that was consumed and over-consumed by the masses, leading to poverty, premature death, the abandonment of children, and so on. Many pastors became staunch prohibitionists and encouraged their congregants not only to abstain but to formalize their decision through a pledge. While the specific substances have changed, those who pastored congregations more than a century ago were grieved to see addiction within and around their churches.

The character of politicians. Christians had to consider whether they should vote exclusively for politicians who were demonstrably believers and of upright character or whether they ought to elect politicians on more pragmatic grounds. Christians disputed whether the Bible permitted them to vote someone into office who stood for good policies even as he rejected Christ. And even today Christians disagree among themselves about the necessity of faith and good character in their politicians.

Tariffs. A significant political matter toward the close of the 1800s was tariffs and their role in global politics and economics. While the policies were outside the jurisdiction of pastors, they still mentioned them in their points of application, often because their congregants were being financially impacted by them. The fortunes of the people they shepherded often rose and fell with the decisions of politicians.

One reason I find such enjoyment in the sermons of this era is that many of the preachers were optimistic. In America, the Civil War was now decades behind them and in Europe, the wars that had roiled the continent earlier in the century had largely ceased. People allowed themselves to believe humanity had entered into an era of great progress. Many pastors, perhaps especially in the United States, adopted a postmillennial eschatology, convinced that the United States represented the source and dawning of the millennium. They saw America’s Christian influence sweeping across the world, changing hearts and transforming nations until Christ returned. This optimism suffused their preaching, giving it a joyful and hopeful tone—a tone that could not survive the two world wars that, unbeknownst to them, lay in the not-too-distant future.

I will leave the closing words to a pastor from Brooklyn who, despite often preaching about many of the concerns I have listed above, remained unflaggingly optimistic as he considered the future of his nation and the world.

At the south, Mexico will follow Texas into the Union, and Christianity and civilization will stand in the halls of the Montezumas, and if not in our day, then in the day of our children, Yucatan and Central America will wheel into line of dominion. On the north, Canada will be ours, not by conquest, for English and American swords may never clash blades, but we will simply woo the fair neighbor of the north, and she will be ours, and England will say to Canada, “You are old enough now for the marriage day. Giant of the West, go take your bride.” Then from Baffin’s Bay to the Caribbean there shall be one republic, under one banner and with one destiny—a free, undisputed, Christianized American continent. God grant it. Amen!1

More specifically, American Presbyterian preachers from the latter half of the century. ↩