Cambridge sermon: Jesus may have been trans

[flyingbuttress43]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/26/jesus-could-have-transgender-claims-cambridge-dean/

Jushua Heath, a junior research fellow, guest preacher at evensong at Trinity College chapel displayed Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion, which depicted a side wound he likened to a vagina, and said Christ had a trans body.

Dr Michael Banner, dean of Trinity College said such a view was "legitimate" in a response to one anonymous worshipper who said the audience and choir were "visibly uncomfortable" and upset at the sermon. Dr Banner said the sermon "suggested that we might think about these images of Christ's male/female body as providing us with ways of thinking about issues around transgender questions today".

He added: "For myself, I think that speculation was legitimate, whether or not you or I or anyone else disagrees with the interpretation, says something else about that artistic tradition, or resists its application to contemporary questions around transsexualism."

I'm not even religious, but I seriously wonder if there is anywhere the trans movement won't go in support of their ideology.

Yes @IcakethereforeIam . Rev Bernard Randall at Trent College. Here's a just released interview with him on Gender a Wider Lens. It's just gone to court and expecting outcome in January:

He isn't telling his congregation anything about Christ or about trans issues... he is revealing how very little he knows about art and about the bodies of women. (The latter is not so unusual: I do remember a sermon including a bit about women hiding wrinkles with mascara.)

The vagina as a stab wound... that is a thoroughly external view of a woman's body!

Oh, yes, @PrinceYakimov, well put.

A brief history of Christianity, by PhotoDad.

"We cannot do/say/believe X because of theology!"
[... time passes ...]
"We must do/say/believe X because of theology!"

Repeat.

That one from eyes is good too tho!

Since there's a fair amount of party tricks that involve turning water into wine, it's considerably less believable.

We're talking about an historical figure, not some imaginary 'space pixie'. However you may feel about Jesus' claims to being the Messiah (or his ability to solve catering problems), using his death to push a trans agenda is pretty rubbish.

Conceptualising penetration as the thing that makes you "feminine" is yuck too.

Above all, it's pastorally crap to deliver an art history lecture in place of a sermon. This doesn't appear to have told any of the congregation anything about the Gospel. It seems to be an exercise in showing off the preacher's post-modern cleverness.

But if Jesus was a trans woman, then that was surely the right kind of woman, who can woman better than one of those boring old cunty types?

Just avoid any church connected with academia?

@PrinceYakimov Yeah. But I do think that subtext is there in the medieval and Renaissance art. (Sceptical initially but was won over when I read papers on the topic.)

As for the sermon... of course, Trinity Cambridge is a big famous college and attracts some tourists/families for evensong etc (although not as many as King's next door). But Oxbridge college evensong sermons can often be mini-lectures by one of the chapel community.

Even in my day, long before gender issues became so prominent, a lot of sermons I heard in university chapels were bonkers.

This is hilarious.
Finally something I can get on board with. Won over. No longer GC. 😂 There are a few people I can't wait to tell I reckon Jesus was a t***.

Thanks for the discussion that PhotoDad and others are having, v interesting.

Conceptualising penetration as the thing that makes you "feminine" is yuck too.

Fantastically misogynist.

Yes, if that theory is true, nuns must 'really' be trans men.

[Contemplates Dr Heath advancing this theory to certain nuns, then tiptoes away quietly]

Oh I think it's legit to read that into the art itself, and possibly as a historical view of Christ's personhood too - I just don't agree we have to buy into that view ourselves, which is what the preacher seems to have done.

And I went to a similar college so I know what college chapel sermons are like - if it is done well it can be very good and illuminating of the Gospel too! This seems however to have missed the mark.

The most delightfully bonkers university sermon I have heard was at a wedding, where the (Anglican) priest delivered a stone-cold sermon on the virtues of a celibate priesthood 🤔

Is nothing sacred?

@PrinceYakimov !!!

I think we agree on the main points here. Being completely honest, the thing which first struck me was that so many people could actually hear the sermon, last time I visited King's Cambridge, I was about five miles from an un-amplified, mumbling, preacher. But this one had visual aids...

I also suspect that although this is pushing peoples' buttons because of the particular sermon, many people (including Christians) don't appreciate just how strange Christianity is, as a belief system. (Of course, for some, that's it's attraction. "I believe what is impossible" proclaimed Tertullian... who ended up leaving the Church for a heretical sect himself.)

I mean it is pretty offensive to women. Vaginas are not holes, wounds or gashes.

@Ginmonkeyagain It is, but that symbolism is definitely found in pre-modern art, which (I think) is what the preacher was pointing out. It's part of a far longer story of "woman as disfigured man" (all the way to Adam's rib). (That's not unique to the monotheistic religions, by the way, although there are interesting texts about sex and gender in Buddhism. But that's a very different thread!)

Exactly.

Manages to be offensive to women and Christians and Muslims.

(I did wonder how this sermon would go down with the elderly Northern working-class congregation of my FiL's church).

Yep, that’s what I’m going “eh?” about
most pre 20th century pictureed Christ as white Caucasian fgs 🙄, whereas he was a Middle Eastern of Jewish descent - maybe the trendy clergy should have started with the racist issue of portraits of Christ first ?
perhaps you should speak or drop him an email saying how interesting his sermon was, and next time he pre he’s is he going to discuss the racist element ? And mention you are surprised at the priority given there is a bigger majority of people than trans population ;that can be affected by this sort of cultural discrimination 🤷🏼‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Op, how’s about providing contact detials of said preacher…seems ther3 are some good pints here to write to him on future sermon themes 🤣🤣

I'm.not in the slightest bit religious but am.thinking WTF🙈

Anyone singing "Mary's Boy Child" will be called out for the BIGOTS that they are!

@PhotoDad oh indeed, think of the etymology of vagina for a start.

Doesn't make it any less offensive though!