When a person “identifies as” something he isn’t, what he’s doing is telling reality he’s in charge instead. That’s not just foolish, it’s unspeakably arrogant. I’ve written before of transgender bullying. Then it was a man bullying women by claiming he was one. This bullying is different is different: It’s just as real, but more foolish by far. “Identifying as” the other sex means nothing less than telling reality itself, “Sit down. Shut up. I’ll do the deciding from now on.”

I refuse to say I “identify as.” Period. I won’t “identify as” anything. If I’ve said it in the past, I repent of it. If you ask me what I identify as, I’ll give you an answer shows what’s wrong with it, and the best way I know is by playing stupid on you. Like this:
“So Tom, tell, me. What do you identify as?”
“Usually I use my driver’s license for identification.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. What gender and sexuality do you identify as?”
“My name’s Tom Gilson. Didn’t you know that already?”
“Oh, come on, Tom. You know what I’m asking for. I’ll say it again: What gender and sexuality do you identify as?”
“Serious? You mean you can’t tell those things just by looking? I’m standing right in front of you. I have a light complexion, wide shoulders, an Adam’s apple, a beard, a low voice, and a distinct lack of curves. You can see that, right?”
“Yes, of course I can see that. I can also hear you saying you’re not going to answer my question.”
“Exactly. How perceptive of you!”
“It’s okay, though. I’ve got you figured anyway. You’ve told me your choice as clear as if you said it out loud: Cisgender male, straight.”
“Choice? Did you say ‘choice’? Where in the world did you get that from?”
It’s In the “Choosing”
Choice: That’s exactly where “identify as” goes wrong. Virtually every time people say “I identify as,” it’s short for, “I choose to identify as … .” And their choice is either to “be” something they aren’t, or else they’ve chosen to be what they already were, as if their choice explains how they got that way.
Hence my supposed “choice” to be “cisgender” and male. If you’re born male and identify as female, that’s by choice. If you’re born male and identify as male, that’s by choice, too. Everything’s by choice.
Sometimes — though rarely — it’s legitimate to choose. I could choose to identify myself either as an author, a writer, or both. The truth of it depends on whether my work consists more in books I write, or in columns such as this one. In this case I actually do have a choice about it. I really do write books and articles, there really is a fine distinction between “author” and “writer,” and my work lands me somewhere near that line. So it’s a coin toss. Or a choice.
So yes, we have choices. We can choose evangelical Christian belief, or conservative politics, or (shudder!) to be a Yankees fan. And if I’m saying “choice” is the problem with “identify as,” wouldn’t it be okay to “identify as evangelical”?
I think not. Not these days, especially. There are still problems with it, even where choice is real. I’d group those problems under identity politics, language, and reality.
Identity Politics
Identity politics is a toxic mode of civil discourse that squashes complex realities into tiny little categories and calls those categories ultimate. The effects are ruinous.
Take racial politics, for example. The problem with it isn’t that racial issues aren’t real. They are. But identity politics treats race as if that’s virtually all that’s real. Relationships, geography, education, family circumstances, physical and mental health, spiritual beliefs and maturity, and all the other complexities of life may get a head-nod, but no real attention. “Yes, yes, we know about that. Can we get back to the racial question now, please?”
“Identifying as” has a totalizing effect, as if race is all that really matters. The same goes for sexual preference and “gender identity,” both of which have been lifted to near-absolute importance.
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Written by Russell St. John |
Friday, June 9, 2023
Direct, passionate, forthright speech need not include spite, anger, or character assassination. Even Robert’s Rules of Order understands this, allowing good men to differ strongly, and to speak strongly about their differences, so long as they address the measure and not the man.

Introduction
The past few years have witnessed an increasing number of accusations of “intemperate” speech on the floor of General Assembly. Often it seems as though the accused stands guilty of little more than expressing an opinion with which the accuser disagrees. Worse yet, a man suffers the accusation of intemperance simply for expressing his opinion as though he actually believes it, using strong words to convey strong convictions. But surely the bar of “intemperate” speech stands higher than this. Should not elders, who love both the flock and the Shepherd, speak with conviction? I want to suggest that in the courts of the Church, devout men ought to state strong convictions strongly, and nothing in our polity precludes men from so doing.
Governing Documents
Would it surprise you to learn that neither the Westminster Standards nor the Book of Church Order nor the Rules of Assembly Operation nor Robert’s Rule of Order use the word “intemperate?” Our BCO does, however, speak of “temperate” speech. BCO 45-5, which discusses Dissents, Protests, and Objections, states: “If a dissent, protest, or objection be couched in temperate language, and be respectful to the court, it shall be recorded.” Noah Webster defines “temperate” as that which is “moderate; not excessive,” or “[c]ool; calm; not marked with passion; not violent,” or “free from ardent passion.”[1] We might then surmise that intemperate speech employs excessive, hot, tempestuous, violent, or ardently passionate language. In other words, intemperate speech lacks self-control, the speaker having surrendered his lips to a flood of emotion over which his character has lost dominion.
But that’s not what we’ve seen on the floor of General Assembly. If anything, we delight in order, speaking with measured reserve, such that courtesy holds sway. And courtesy toward one another ought to mark our gatherings. Robert’s Rules Article 1, Section 7 on “Debate” states: “Speakers must address their remarks to the presiding officer, be courteous in their language and deportment, and avoid all personalities, never alluding to the officers or other members by name, where possible to avoid it, nor to the motives of members.”[2] In other words, a man should address the moderator, refrain from naming other men, avoid imputing motives, and show proper respect to his brothers. I tend to think we do that well.
But does “courteous” speech preclude the use of strong words flowing from strong convictions? By no means. When Robert’s Rules addresses principles for “Decorum in Debate” in Article 7, Section 43, it asserts: “It is not allowable to arraign the motives of a member, but the nature or consequences of a measure may be condemned in strong terms. It is not the man, but the measure, that is the subject of debate.”[3] Again, no speaker should assail a brother or impute to him ill motives. But when a speaker addresses an overture, a policy, or an idea, a point of theology, ecclesiology, or missiology, a report, a document, or some other “measure” properly before the floor, then he possesses every right to speak about it—even to condemn it—in “strong terms.”
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[1] Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York, NY: S. Converse, 1828), no pagination. Republished in Facsimile by the Foundation for American Christian Education, 2004.
[2] Henry M. Robert, Robert’s Rules of Order Revised for Deliberative Assemblies (New York, NY: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1915), 39.
[3] Robert, Robert’s Rules, 180 [emphasis added].

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Schools that aim for prestige and “excellence” as the current American regime defines it are most likely to accommodate our culture’s presuppositions. Fewer “prestige” schools embrace a conservative Protestant social teaching that emphasizes marriage, recommends different roles for men and women, and shuns same-sex sex and same-sex marriage. Students interested in becoming doctors or lawyers might choose Baylor, SMU, or Wheaton. On the other hand, schools without signs of American decadence are less descript, their chief virtue being that they fail to promote vice.

The decline of Protestant higher education is manifest. At the time of their founding, most Protestant colleges and universities had a strong sense of mission, connected to preparing Christians for ministry, missions, and trades.
As James Tunstead Burtchaell documents in his meticulous Dying of the Light: The Disengagement of Colleges and Universities from their Christian Churches, school after school, in tradition after tradition, chose American respectability over fidelity to a distinctly Christian mission. This tome details how Congregationalists lost Dartmouth and Beloit; how the Presbyterians lost Lafayette and Davidson; how Baptists lost Wake Forest and Linfield; how Lutherans lost Gettysburg, St. Olaf, and Concordia; how Catholics lost Boston College and Saint Mary’s College of California; and how Evangelicals lost Azusa Pacific.
What emerges is a science of higher education apostasy. Schools worry about being perceived as “sectarian,” as it is defined at different times. University programs multiply, necessitating departmental hiring. Faculty become beholden to professional standards over school missions. The administration wants prestigious faculty and progressively sheds faithfulness and piety from job descriptions. Faculty statements of faith “devolve from active membership in the sponsoring church or denomination to nominal membership, to acceptance of the college’s own faith statement, to silent toleration of the ill-specified purposes of the institution.” Chapels, vestiges of old missions, become the only “sectarian” event on campus—and then they fade, becoming optional or inclusively non-sectarian. Once controversies swirl about chapel, their light is already dying out.
Soon Christian colleges begin speaking the language of intellectual freedom and diversity of opinion while they water down and then drop distinctively Christian mission statements. New monies from alumni and government replace old denominational money. Governance moves from the denomination to the alumni or to those who know the college president. Eventually, Protestant schools, as Burtchaell writes, end up “judging the church by the academy and the gospel by the culture.”
As American culture shifts, so do Christian colleges. While it was possible, earlier, to entertain the idea that American culture was not anti-Christian, that is no longer the case with the ideology of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which is presently conquering Christian universities. Universities are now “welcoming” but not faithful to the truth; they embrace “diversity” but not the Savior of the nations. Christian schools commonly defile themselves in conforming to transgender ideology, same-sex marriage, queer theory, and perpetual singleness.
Burtchaell’s Dying tells much the same story as George Marsden’s The Soul of the American University and as does James F. Keating’s “Who Killed the Catholic University?” Every school’s decline is different in the specifics, but every such story is also broadly the same. The mechanisms of prestige and government money absorb Christian universities into Americanism. Maintaining Christian distinctives requires a deep, abiding commitment to tradition and a jealous guarding of mission against imperial Americanism. Protestant higher education hardly specializes in these traits, and neither do Catholic schools.
A list of apostate universities is much longer than any list of holdouts. David Goodwin, President of the K-12 Association of Classical Christian Schools, which now boasts more than 500 schools, tells me that “the number one question he hears is ‘where should I send my graduate to college?’” Are there universities that Christian parents can still trust?
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