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.

Don't they show up from that sharetoken link? I've not looked at many of the 1.8k (the piece went up at midday yesterday) but I'm quite liking I think that, in order to promote interfaith understanding and ecumenical debate, this researcher should be encouraged to go and explore the idea of transgenderism in relation to the Prophet in his nearest mosque.

This!

I think usually the comments don't show up from a sharetoken link. Sometimes they do, but mostly not. I don't know why in either case.

Well, he had long hair and a dress, so the side vagina is just the icing on the trans cake for the revisionists.

For some reason, the thought of Jesus' side-gina is giving me the giggles. I'm so sorry, Christian people.

This comment got to the serious point
Complete misunderstanding of the issue by the Dean. The offence is not 'Jesus might have been trans' (under Stonewall's umbrella definition, most people are) but that 'female' means 'having a wound'/'being penetrated'. It's gross sexism and a denial of life to denigrate the female body and women's role in childbirth in this way.
It's also interesting that the speaker isn't being criticised as a transphobe for suggesting that a trans vagina is just a wound. Women have been banned from Twitter for less.

That last comment is a good one. Quite right too.

Perhaps congregation numbers are low and he's trying to be relevant to the captured students?

Heath, whose PhD was supervised by the Right Rev Lord Williams of Oystermouth, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, also told worshippers that in The Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, from the 14th century, the wound was isolated and “takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance”

Do I have that right that he's basing that on a painting in ONE prayerbook that will have been painted and decorated to the patron's order and in which that painting of the wound is depicted as 'vagina like' for reasons we haven't the faintest idea about? he's rather making the assumption that just because he sees vagina then that's what the people looking at this illustration would have seen as well. This article suggests it's a bit more complex than that - which a theologian should appreciate.

smarthistory.org/jean-le-noir-bourgot-miniature-of-christ-wound-passion-prayer-book-bonne-luxembourg/