R4 Today (28 Feb): Tom Holland interview equating trans debate to the Reformation

Yeah but Antibles the Reformation seems sensible at first sight until you think it through and remember that the supposedly better way was still promoting sky fairies, just with more internally consistent rules for the fantasy.

Yes! I was just musing really that, as the name implies, the original motivation was not to set up a whole new church but Martin Luther protesting about the practices of the church, the way it exploited and frightened people, held the reins of power and the supposed ear of God , all the ostentation etc, so I always had a vague sense of there being a social justice and general moral element to that as opposed to it being purely doctrinal. In a world where religion held sway so totally, how hard it must have been to speak up and argue for any reform, let alone atheism (not that he wanted to!).

Anyway, my issue would be with someone on the radio comparing women's sex-based rights with the greedy roman catholic church and trans ideology being the cleansing movement of the reformation! Although freezer's post implies it wasn't quite like that - I didn't hear the original piece.

(this is mostly copied from a Facebook comment I made this morning so apologies if you're in the same group and this looks familiar!)

He wasn't likening the trans issue specifically to the reformation. The trans issue was being used as an example of the social changes we've seen since the 60s around sex in particular, and saying that a period of such social change may be as significant as the reformation but that we're too close to it in history to give it a snappy title yet.

I think the trans stuff was chosen as the example because of Rachel Mann's Lent talk and it seemed to be another way to talk about trans and religion at the same time. I agree with a pp that the today prog seem to be having trouble filling their airtime at the moment.

What TH is really good on is how Christianity has shaped the way the modern west thinks, even if people are much less likely to be Christian now.

For instance, that in the trans issue there is a clash between the fact that sex is physical and immutable (and some Christians will believe this connected to the book of genesis rather than purely scientifically), and that Christianity has always had within it the principle that vulnerable people should be protected. (Of course in this conversation it was a given that the vulnerable people are the trans community rather than women - but I don't think that was completely TH's fault.)

I think the choice of Rachel Mann for the lent talks is deranged and the talk about the 'journey of a trans woman into her identity' being parallel with Jesus' journey to the cross borderline blasphemous. (I'm not suggesting that anyone other than Christians would care about the blasphemy issue.)

I’m fairy certain that the just shall live by faith alone wasn’t a call for self ID.

It was more of a renouncement of the Catholic Church claiming that special people could be guaranteed to get into heaven if they paid enough money and followed the special rules.

Surely the point is that the Reformation involved one set of people forcibly enforcing their own personal politics on others against freedom of belief, thoughts, choices and autonomy, backed up by a terrifying regime involving trials, burnings and executions. Which side was doing the burning changed intermittently, but that's the evil. Not whether or not one side was right enough to justify the murder, slaughter and abandonment of all morals and tolerance for others.

Sky fairies is an unnecessarily rude dismissal of other people's beliefs. The answer, for hundreds of years, has been successfully live and let live alongside each other, it's just been interrupted periodically by groups trying this kind of madness. Syphillitic madness played quite a large role, so did sociopathy.

Yeah but Antibles the Reformation seems sensible at first sight until you think it through and remember that the supposedly better way was still promoting sky fairies, just with more internally consistent rules for the fantasy.

Ooh now, I'm seeing an analogy with self-id and current GRA. No GC in sight, it is off in a lab inventing telescopes.

I thought I’d misheard when I heard that. What a dodo.

Male and female are Christian constructs?

You heard it it here, everyone! The concept of human sexual dimorphism was invented by Christians, and that's why none of the parts of the world where Christianity has not historically dominated had any concept of man versus woman until Christians turned up. Ancient China was a gender roles free paradise, because no Christians, and the ancient Egyptians had no idea how to differentiate between men and women or even that men and women might be a thing.

Is this what happens when your mind is so open that your brain falls out?

My memory of learning about the Reformation was that Martin Luther was fed up to the back teeth with the Roman Catholic church peddling crap like paying for 'indulgences' in which the church pretended the purchase would mean your dead relative would spend less time in purgatory before getting to Heaven.

In this sense, surely the original Protestant Reformation was more like feminism - trying to call out an exploitative, controlling regime.

In England in Mary I's reign horrific burnings took place as she desperately tried to force everyone back to Catholicism. This seems much more like the TRA witchhunts of people who won't comply with an ideology that seeks to take their rights away again.

Another shouter at the radio here. He may not e explicitly come down on the side of TRAs, but by placing the TRAs on the side that included universities, institutions etc etc and describing that side as “progressive “, his view of those who won’t do the Christian thing and think about the poor, oppressed minority was very clear.

That there was absolutely no challenge from the male interviewer to either “progressive” or “oppressed”, and the piece was essentially an extended advert for the Trans take on Lent thing they’re running will tip me into my first ever formal complaint.

I didn't hear this, but the Reformation analogy is interesting. So the absolutist monarch who uses Protestantism to free himself from papal authority and then goes on a beheading rampage whilst informers, state surveiillance, sectarianism and terror becomes menu du jour? And a state religion is imposed whilst books and heretics burn? I am not sure if Holland has considered what this historical analogy says about the new progressive totalitarians...

It goes with the claim that GC MNetters are Regan funded nuns.

Or something. But definitely work is going on that Christian = nasty. And I've seen a pop or two at Islam. Those are the two faiths standing most squarely in the way of this agenda getting its own way all the time in everything. And part of work to make a hierarchy of protected characteristics and down grade all of them beneath gender identity.

Whatever they are, they're definitely not real

No - they're real alright.

Male and female are Christian constructs?

I thought they were social constructs?

Or made up by imperialists?

Whatever they are, they're definitely not real.

This is because they are scared that someone will win a court case based on a female being allowed to say no to a male on grounds of religion

As they say, you can't argue with that sort of stuff - no point even trying - can't be done. Best you can do is ignore it.

There are multiple attempts at the moment to discredit religious faiths and relegate them socially to being something a bit dirty and silly. Because it's very, very inconvenient to these males getting exactly what they want all the time and controlling women.

Yes, very much this. It's like whack-a-mole across multiple platforms.

men and women being different isn't just a Christian belief. It's a fact.

Yes. But framing belief in biology as just old fashioned right wing extremist Christian left overs is terribly helpful if you're trying, desperately, to pretend the emperor really does have clothes on and only mean, nasty, ugly, old, stupid people believe he doesn't. Said with a piercing stare and a demand ' you're not one of those, are you? You want to be one of those nice, kind, modern, progressive, tolerant, other lovely adjective people, don't you?'

Sweetie catcher's van. Just in reverse. With the usual dose of breathtaking prejudice and lack of tolerance or intersectionality or basic social skills.

This is because they are scared that someone will win a court case based on a female being allowed to say no to a male on grounds of religion. There are multiple attempts at the moment to discredit religious faiths and relegate them socially to being something a bit dirty and silly. Because it's very, very inconvenient to these males getting exactly what they want all the time and controlling women.

Can’t we just give up the bullshit? That will be enough for me.

Oh yes, I recall that now - something about giving up being beastly about each other for lent - a temporary cease-fire. It'll never catch on.

Yes, the lent talks. Even trans is shoehorned into that.

But he was speaking about a talk (I believe) to be given by the Rev. Mann. That was the context of that link. In general I thought that he was talking about the social changes of the Reformation and the social changes that started (in the west) in the sixties.

Yes, but men and women being different isn't just a Christian belief. It's a fact.

I'd have thought it equally daft if he'd pronounced that Sikhs believe one and one makes two.

He said something along the lines of the idea that men and women are created separately is fundamental to Christianity. Er no. It's fundamental biology that men and women are different.

The two are clearly not mutually exclusive. The introduction to the conversation explained that he was talking in response to something that the Rev. Mann was up to ( transwoman (whatever one of those is) from the moral maze). That was the reason for mentioning Christianity / Christendom. Ye olde worlde hyperbole twas ever thus.

I think while the reformation was a tussle of ideology, it was also an age of enlightenment, of scientific discovery, of the use of the printing press and all that that led to, and of challenging the authority of the roman catholic church.

In England, it might have been a convenient hook for Henry viii to hang his marriage woes on, but for other protestants, it was much more about their fundamental belief to practice religion in accordance with the bible (that was printed in their own language).

Trans issues are not enlightening. They are for the most part regressive.
The Trans reformation is to discover feelings, not facts.
And it isn't challenging the power status quo because the agenda is led by rich white men and supported by useful idiots.

Recently the Church of England has had to institute two more parallel systems for those that do and don't believe that women should be priests and bishops.On that one, I don't agree with the "status quo" system and I think it's daft we have to have it but it means some people (the minority) can have a world in which their (IMO prejudiced) world view is supported and the rest of us (the majority) can have a world in which sexism has no place.

This is interesting I think because the traditional system of governance in the christian church is meant to maintain unity. Looking at that gives a sense of the trade-offs between social progress and social conservatism.

While ideas and practices could be disputed in the church, you have historically needed almost consensus to get important ideas or practices modified. So it's very conservative by nature and slow to change, on the other hand when you get that consensus things roll on pretty well, people are on board, and (one hopes) kinks have been worked out and implications made clear.

Over time change became easier as the papacy gained power, because on leader was able to force through some changes (or prevent them), but this also led to various schisms including the Reformation. The Church of England with female priests have been a case where they have kind of tried to have it both ways, and the chances are high that it will also lead to schism eventually, as the question of gay marriage is likely to lead to schism in the wider Anglican communion.

The point being, in a society that wants to be pluralistic, it's a very difficult edge to balance on, and maintain social mobility and coherence enough to function. Easy to tip into authoritarianism around innovation and change as we see with gender issues, or social breakdown when people are simply unwilling to go where they are being told to go.

I actually think the comparison with the Reformation was interesting. Needed more recognition that it was an argument about magical beliefs though.