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Original poster

‘To be trans is to enter a sacred journey of becoming whole’

106 replies

tabbycatstripy · 04/04/2022 14:15

This isn’t a quotation from India Willoughby. It’s from a letter signed by senior religious leaders, including Rowan Williams, ex Archbishop of Canterbury, to Boris Johnson, urging him to ban trans conversion therapy.

I’m not a member of the CoE, but I don’t think I’m unreasonable in thinking they are going outside their religious remit. If I attended their church I would be seriously questioning whether these people shared my religious faith, and whether they had lost their ability to lead me in faith.

Be trans, don’t be trans. I don’t mind. But I don’t think it has anything to do with Christianity and see nothing in any Christian thought that would regard being trans as ‘sacred’ (obviously being kind etc is a Christian way to live your life - that’s different to calling being trans ‘sacred’).

All a bit odd.

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Original poster
tabbycatstripy · 04/04/2022 14:57

I saw a photo on Twitter with the altar covered in the trans flag. If I were CoE I wouldn’t go back. No issue with trans people at all but why don’t we all get to put our personal flags on the altar where they’re meant to worship God?

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Artichokeleaves · 04/04/2022 14:54

And does Rowan Williams personally support gagging a therapist from helping a child with Autism or trauma or CSA? In his rush to burbled sentimental niceness?

Artichokeleaves · 04/04/2022 14:53

Erm....

there's the religious belief that a human soul is a thing that exists separately from the body, inserted by divine miracle and has separate life after the body has ended.

Is this what we're talking about here? Because I absolutely respect people's right to a religious faith but also people's right to hold other faiths or to be atheist: no one is required to genuflect at anyone else's altar, nor to participate or enable one faith over others.

Plus let's talk about 'sometimes God makes a mistake and puts the wrong soul in the wrong body'?

Because many of those believing in and studying the philosophies here would say that souls have no sex, and that in the course of growing through their spiritual journey a soul will enter many bodies for the spiritual knowledge and experience of that lifetime, those bodies being of both sexes. So in this philosophy, a soul enters voluntarily into a body that experiences gender dysphoria having intentionally set out to gain that experience - in the same rather potentially offensive way that the theory goes that a soul may enter a disabled body, or a body destined for a particular catastrophic event.

Again, you don't have to believe this, it's a faith based position. But if we're going to talk woo, can we at least talk standard and well known, researched and logical woo?

Pluvia · 04/04/2022 14:53

Why would anyone expect an institution that has oppressed women for millennia to refrain from grabbing at yet another way of showing its misogyny?

MrsOvertonsWindow · 04/04/2022 14:51

Sacred journey >>>> Sacred caste >>>> gender woowoo >>>>> men's rights.

Original poster
tabbycatstripy · 04/04/2022 14:49

I don’t think this has any connection to Biblical teachings at all. It’s what people might call ‘made up’.

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Somanysocks · 04/04/2022 14:47

Well he has always been rather an odd man, and it doesn't follow Christian Biblical teachings at all.

PermanentTemporary · 04/04/2022 14:46

I'm certainly not going to take on Rowan Williams as a theologian! But am interested to see how he constructs this.

MoltenLasagne · 04/04/2022 14:45

Sorry I'm not on twitter so can't find it but I am rather bemused that RW seems to be keen to rewrite centuries of Christian theology...

Original poster
tabbycatstripy · 04/04/2022 14:44

I think it’s gendered souls married to a bit of old-fashioned homophobia. If a person comes to the church all confused by their homosexual feelings, they can be told they are ‘really’ the opposite sex because ‘souls’, and once properly settled down with a nice person of the new ‘opposite’ sex, everyone’s happy, nobody is sinful, and the happy couple can make a big donation.

But first you have to believe people can be trapped in the wrong body.

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PermanentTemporary · 04/04/2022 14:41

I am intrigued by the theology here and will read the statement. I was brought up Church of England and when I was a believer would have said that Jesus Christ makes us whole, not our own actions. I was Protestant enough to think that anything I did myself was probably sinful.

Though - ah! Faith not works? Believe you are a particular sex and it will be?

Cuck00soup · 04/04/2022 14:40

Sorry, just seen it was Rowan Williams, not Justin Welby.

Cuck00soup · 04/04/2022 14:39

How do Russian soldiers know who to Rape Justin?

CriticalCondition · 04/04/2022 14:39

@Redshoeblueshoe

The church loves to put people in their place - especially women
This.

One patriarchal faith/religion weighs into the argument in support of another. Plus it gets to polish its wokey badge at the same time.

rogdmum · 04/04/2022 14:39

The utterly blatant homophobia here when you consider the number of young lesbians and gay boys who then announce a trans identity.

Homophobia right there in plain sight.

I really feel quite ill about it.

Horrifying.

Yipja · 04/04/2022 14:38

Further patriarchal institutions massing against the "monstrous regiment"

IvyTwines · 04/04/2022 14:38

Well, Iran is very into it. And the religious community-dwelling mother of a well-known American celebrity trans child.

Original poster
tabbycatstripy · 04/04/2022 14:37

Recruitment, Torunette. Ageing Christian population, young people believing in a new social ideology. Why not harness it to the older ideology, and target all the most gullible people in society? If it keeps the church coffers full, I suspect some of them would call anything sacred.

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Original poster
tabbycatstripy · 04/04/2022 14:35

I think we were. It might help explain why some religious foundations are pushing this ideology: it’s a recruitment tool.

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Torunette · 04/04/2022 14:34

What the hell is going on here? I just ... well, what is this all about? Really? Because I feel like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle now.

This all really feels like some sort of bizarre proxy war. It's attempting to re-engineer all manner of basic understandings by piggy-backing on the existence of 4000 transgender individuals with GRCs: many of whom did not ask for any of this shit.

Or is the establishment just hell bent on committing some sort of collective suicide? Because the more this goes on, the more they seem to be so adrift from reality, that it begs the question of why we are putting up with them all in the first place.

mateysmum · 04/04/2022 14:34

So we were right then when we referred to trans as a new "sacred caste"!

Original poster
tabbycatstripy · 04/04/2022 14:31

It’s on Paul Brand’s Twitter (ITV).

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MoltenLasagne · 04/04/2022 14:29

Is there a link?

Redshoeblueshoe · 04/04/2022 14:27

The church loves to put people in their place - especially women

JellySaurus · 04/04/2022 14:27

Just more Beeeee Kiiiiind.