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Starting Again

I was born in the sixties.  But I am not a child of the 60’s.  My family was lower-middle class, and by the standards of the time, traditional in most every way.  Dad was a minister.  If he or mom had lived into their 90’s they would not have imagined the social changes we have witnessed in the last 20 years.  It would be too easy to say the sexual revolution of the 60’s caused all this change, as some conservatives maintain.  But the roots of this change go back much further than the swinging 60’s.  

So I’m embarking with some misgivings on a survey of cultural history.  There are deep intellectual and cultural traditions that have shaped our everyday lives.  We’ve come to a point in the Western world where the statement “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” is comprehensible to many public leaders, at least in public.  That phrase would be completely incomprehensible to my parent’s generation, in public or private, not to mention every preceding generation.  It is still incomprehensible to many, if not most people today. But if you express your bewilderment in public, say at many workplaces in the Western world, increasingly the odds are you will be regarded as stupid, immoral or worse.  You may be reprimanded for your irrational “phobia.”  You might even have your career derailed.  If you broadcast your view on a public forum, say Twitter, expect the Twitterati to pounce with the ferocity of a caged unfed Tiger.  In certain parts of the world you may even be charged with a hate-crime for your expressed incredulity at the latest massive cultural shift.  (See the following posts, here & here.)

As a 60’s poet might say, “The times they are a changin.”

The tectonic cultural shift in the last 20 years is quite breathtaking.  Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, we have gone from year 2000 where the majority of Americans were opposed to gay marriage to today where normalization of Transgenderism is fast approaching.

A long and winding road brought us to this point.  I want to offer a thoughtful and hopefully generous exposition, from a Classic Christian point of view, of how we got here.  As I go, I’ll be documenting some disturbing current events. (Read my next post). I hope that even those who disagree with Classic Christianity will find here a fair and readable assessment of our state of affairs. (post continues page 2)

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The “Christian Nationalism” Charge and the Return of an Old Heresy

[Audio script] "We have to draw the connection here, between what we are seeing in these crisis pregnancy centers, what we are seeing in other..um..Christian Nationalist policy imposition on ability for Trans individuals to receive health-care and gender-affirming care.  We see what is happening in our schools with the so-called Parents Bill of Rights and all of the ways in which LBGTBQ issues, like book-banning, and other issues across healthcare, across all the issues that deeply impact North Carolinians.  This agenda is front and center, and the majority party in this moment, is the one that is, are the architects of those impacts.  So we have to tell the truth about the ways in which all of the issues we are dealing with in the General Assembly, across Education, Health-Care and beyond are all tied to this central agenda of Christian Nationalism."

Recently, I watched the above press conference held by several female ministers and clergy leaders at North Carolina’s legislative building in Raleigh. During the event, one pastor argued that crisis pregnancy centers1 A crisis pregnancy center (CPC) is a place for people facing an unexpected pregnancy to get counseling and support. Many CPCs offer free services such as: pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, baby supplies, parenting classes, counseling or referrals. However, most CPCs are Pro-Life organizations, which is apparently for these ministers, problematic., restrictions on so-called “gender-affirming care,” parental rights legislation, curriculum transparency, and book policies are all connected expressions of a broader “Christian Nationalist agenda” affecting North Carolinians.

That’s what they say.

I disagree.

But about one thing they are certainly correct: these issues are connected.

Why the “Trans Issue” Matters

Some of my progressive Christian friends ask why I consider the transgender issue so important. Here is one example of why. And it has nothing to do with “Christian Nationalism,” as these clerics insist.

Feebly following Jesus’ lead, I increasingly reserve my sharpest criticism for religious leaders—especially ministers who appear to have bypassed the very first article of the Christian creed: belief in God the Creator. And, no doubt, several other articles as well, including the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Given what I know about the theological formation many ministers now receive in certain seminaries and divinity schools, it is an educated guess that some of these clergy do not actually believe the creeds they publicly recite every Sunday.

Just a hunch.

Yet they still claim to speak liberating “gospel truth” to power.

The False Gospel of Liberation from the Body

Now let me be clear: there is true freedom in Christ—from God our Creator. That is the freedom human beings were made for.

But part of the modern false-liberationist worldview—astonishingly embraced by some theologians, preachers, and denominations—is the idea that human beings can and should be liberated from their bodies, especially from the perceived “constraints” of bodily reality itself.

That is a lie.

In fact, it is a very old lie.

The Early Church Fathers regarded this way of thinking as a theological five-alarm fire. They fought vigorously to cast it into the Gehenna of theological discourse and history.

It was called Gnosticism. (You can read more about Gnosticism at this link.)

Unfortunately, despite their efforts, it always seems to be hangin’ ’round the house.

The New Gnosticism

Today’s Gnostics tell us that the body does not really matter—not ultimately, anyway.

They say it does not matter how sexual behavior is expressed, so long as it is called “love.”

They say that if a person possesses XY chromosomes, male reproductive anatomy, and produces the small gametes characteristic of the male sex—but internally identifies as female—then that person “really” is female in the truest sense.

And society, they insist, must affirm this inner identity above biological reality itself.

Not only affirm it, but increasingly enforce it—through language codes, institutional mandates, and legal pressures compelling others to participate in the fiction.

Bodies, after all, do not really matter, according to this new spiritualist vision.

Or, at least, not very much.

[Yoda voice: “Mary Baker Eddy disciples, they are.”]

And accordingly, they will support the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors in pursuit of these self-expressive and supposedly liberating ends.

All of this, mind you, is done in the name of compassion, liberation, and “gospel truth.”

Creation, Resurrection, and Reality

But as someone who believes in God the Creator—the One who raised the dead body of Jesus into new creation life—I fail to see the Ordo Amoris in any of this.

Ordo amoris is a Latin phrase meaning “the order of loves.” In Christian theology—especially in Augustine of Hippo and later thinkers—it refers to the proper ordering of our loves, desires, and affections according to God’s created design and moral reality.

The basic idea is this:

Sin is not merely loving bad things, but loving good things in the wrong order.

So, for example:

* Loving pleasure more than truth,
* Self more than God,
* Desire more than reality,
* Or autonomy more than creation itself,

would all represent a disordered ordo amoris.

By contrast, a rightly ordered life loves God our Creator first and then loves all other things—people, body, sex, family, nation, freedom, possessions—in their proper place and proportion.

I hope my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially our leaders, will come to the same conclusion.

Christians cannot surrender the goodness of creation without eventually surrendering Christianity itself.

The biblical faith is not a religion of escape from the body. It is a religion of incarnation, resurrection, and new creation.

Non-Christians may continue drifting into this technologically assisted Gnosticism. But the Church must not.

We must remain firmly rooted in God’s created order and design, come what may.

Because societies built upon lies about human nature eventually collapse.

And denominations built upon those same lies eventually die as well.

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Love God First, Then Your Neighbor

Companion Post

Why Puberty Blockers Are Bad Medicine: Form, Telos, and the Abuse of Consent
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The Ground Is Shifting: The BMA Drops Its Opposition to the Cass Review

BMA Now Says Cass Review ‘Robust’

For years, critics of the Cass Review have pointed to opposition from the British Medical Association as proof that the review had already been “debunked” or rejected by serious medicine.

That talking point just took a major hit.

According to reporting in The Guardian, the BMA has now dropped its opposition to the Cass Review after conducting its own examination of the evidence.

That is no small development.

For several years, the review led by Hilary Cass has occupied the center of the international debate over pediatric gender medicine. Commissioned by England’s National Health Service, the Cass Review examined the scientific evidence behind puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and the broader “gender-affirming” treatment model being used on minors.

Its conclusions were deeply concerning.

The review found that:

  • the evidence base for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children was weak,
  • many studies cited in support of these interventions were of low quality,
  • long-term outcome data were insufficient,
  • and many children presenting with gender distress also suffered from significant psychological comorbidities requiring more comprehensive assessment.

In response, the UK sharply restricted the use of puberty blockers for minors outside formal clinical research settings.

That alone should have forced a serious and sober public conversation.

Instead, much of the response from activists and ideological allies was not scientific engagement, but moral denunciation.

Doctors, therapists, journalists, parents, and researchers who raised concerns about pediatric transition medicine were frequently branded “transphobic,” accused of hatred, or treated as though they were participating in some kind of moral panic. Public pressure campaigns attempted to frame the debate as already settled:

“The science is settled.”

But the science was not settled.

And increasingly, institutions are being forced to admit it.

The significance of the BMA’s shift is not merely political. It reflects something deeper: the growing inability to sustain the claim that meaningful scientific disagreement never existed.

The Cass Review did not deny that gender-distressed children are suffering. Quite the opposite. It acknowledged profound distress and vulnerability among these young people. But it also recognized that many of them were dealing with overlapping conditions and influences — autism spectrum disorders, depression, anxiety, trauma histories, social contagion dynamics, family dysfunction, and other mental health struggles.

For years, the debate was framed emotionally:

“Do you support transgender youth, or not?”

But that framing obscured the real question:

“What treatment model genuinely helps vulnerable children in the long term?”

That is the question serious medicine must answer.

Not ideological slogans.
Not online intimidation campaigns.
Not institutional fear.

Evidence.

A Deeper Truth

One of the deeper issues underneath this entire debate is philosophical — even theological. Modern gender ideology often treats the body itself as secondary to the inner self, reducing biological sex to something psychologically negotiable rather than something meaningful and given.  

The Cass Review did not address theology. But in practice, it forced medicine back toward reality:

Bodies matter.
Puberty matters.
Development matters.
Biology matters.

The tragedy is that this debate should have happened years earlier.

Instead, legitimate scientific concerns were too often suppressed by institutional fear, activist pressure, and ideological conformity. Many clinicians stayed silent. Some lost jobs or reputations for speaking carefully and cautiously. Parents who hesitated were sometimes treated as obstacles rather than protectors.

Meanwhile, vulnerable children were placed on pathways involving irreversible physical changes whose long-term consequences remain poorly understood.

The ground is shifting now.

Slowly.
Unevenly.
Quietly in some places.

But it is shifting.

And perhaps one of the lessons of this entire controversy is that medicine becomes dangerous when it confuses compassion with unquestioning affirmation — or when political ideology is allowed to outrun scientific evidence.

Children deserve better than slogans.
They deserve truth, compassion, humility, and genuine care.

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Grace & Truth