Statement of Religious Right Leaders about Biology-Based Gender Roles as Key to Divine Revelation: "An Approach to God That Biblical Tradition Calls Idolatry"

Because they are fighting for the divine supremacy of heterosexual males, and the belief that heterosexual males are uniquely made in God's image — in the image of a heterosexual God.

This is an approach to God that biblical tradition calls idolatry. 10)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

 

I'm grateful to you readers who shared with us here a link to the "new" statement about gender matters from various religious right leaders. The U.S. Catholic bishops, several of whom are signatories to the statement, have placed the statement on their website, as several of you noted here yesterday. I read the response of Francis DeBernardo at Bondings 2.0 to this statement yesterday, and then offered my own response on Twitter as I shared Francis DeBernardo's reflections.

Here's my Twitter thread about the lamentable, theologically unfounded, statement of the religious right leaders:

For some Christians at this point in history, it has become a core aspect of Christian faith to assert binary (and opposite) gender roles, based in biology. 1) https://t.co/F81xgmMrfJ

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

This approach to the Christian tradition — making the assertion of binary gender roles based in biology central to the Christian message — owes everything to John Paul II's theology of the body. 2)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

This theology treats the assertion of binary (and opposite) gender roles as articulum stantis et cadentis ecclesiae: a doctrinal affirmation on which the church stands or falls. 3)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

Taking this approach radically distorts the biblical message. To take this approach is to invent, for the bible, a fixation on gender roles (and maintaining biology-based gender roles at all cost) that is simply not there. 4)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

It flies in the face of the Jesus' persistent transgression of the hard-and-fast gender lines in his own society, as in his choice to invite women to sit and eat at table with him. 5)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

It flies in the face of the formulation of the gospel message in Galatians which asserts that in Christ there is neither male nor female, that male and female are one in Christ. 6)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

This approach flies in the face of historical evidence that there have always been, in all cultures, people whose understanding of their own gender does not conform to hard-and-fast biologically based definitions of male and female. 7)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

It also flies in the face of scientific evidence that gender simply does not work in the crude, reductivistic biology-based way in which this group of Christians want to imagine it does. 8)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

Why are some Christians fighting so hard to maintain biology-based dualistic understandings of gender? Because they are fighting for the "right" of the male to control the female. 9)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

Because they are fighting for the divine supremacy of heterosexual males, and the belief that heterosexual males are uniquely made in God's image — in the image of a heterosexual God.

This is an approach to God that biblical tradition calls idolatry. 10)

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 18, 2017

P.S. Not every signatory to this retrogressive statement is Christian. The large majority of signatories are Christian, however.