The Capitulation of the Church Hastened Transgenderism

I still want you to read Monday's post.

Right now, a fashionable position for evangelicals and fundamentalists is to resist, albeit in a benign way, transgenderism. In the so-called culture war, conservatives have chosen a strategic campaign of kooky bathroom laws. They tried to take it into the election, and we heard the representation as predatory older men dressed up like ladies, visiting little, little girls in their bathrooms.  It really was a dishonest position.  If conservatives went honest, they would at least have tried to deal with the biology of it, as if we could determine someone's gender through biology.  Very few tried that tact. Instead, they attempted to put some kind of deniability to their opposition of trangenderism, while at the same time implying their opposition.  You had to read between the lines, maybe the lines at the bathroom stalls, to discover the apparent dislike of something.

Could conservatives oppose transgenderism on theological grounds?  The religious right, among which are the evangelicals and fundamentalists, has capitulated on gender distinction.  They are even surrendering on male and female roles, let alone what the two look like.  Evangelicals and fundamentalists stopped battling conformity in dress long ago.  As a result, they are left with lame suggestions in the nature of mind reading.  Yes, I'm saying, I told you so.  It doesn't make me feel better.

Evangelicals and fundamentals ceased saying there was distinct male and female dress.  It's too late now to pull that one out of the mothballs.  They were the ones arguing against distinction.  They were the ones mocking those who kept arguing for gender designed distinctions.  Evangelicals and fundamentalists are now getting what they bargained for.

The church stopped fighting the world on designed gender distinction in dress because the world didn't like it.  The church embraced conformity.  Their women became more and more like men.  You can't tell me that we are not now seeing the men in our churches becoming more and more like women.  Church men look and act more effeminate than ever.

Churches wanted to keep people.  They wanted to get bigger.  One major factor that really distinguished the church from the world was gender distinctions.  Churches forsook the distinction for church growth.  Mainly women wouldn't be happy if they couldn't wear pants.  Of course, it's not just pants now, but how tight they are.  These are defended by churches.  Churches inform that's all welcome.

Even traditionally gender distinct places like a West Coast Baptist down in Lancaster, California no longer hold to gender distinction.  I haven't read an announcement saying that's over, but you see it in pictures.  It seems to be a mere preference now for that crowd.  They have even bigger problems than that, but these types have given up on that too.

When the churches will not keep these biblical teachings, it's no wonder the world turns into the sewer.  Churches are to provide the example of righteousness.  Churches are to be the salt and the light.  Judgment must begin in the house of God.  A church can hardly declare a religious conviction in North Carolina, because churches haven't shown they even believe what they are against with their nutty bathroom laws.

Churches led the way in changing biblical teaching.  Every single church at one time practiced designer gender distinction.  Every church.  The point of Deuteronomy 22:5 was the difference between the garments.  Churches started taking the inane position, "They both wore robes."  In other words, they made like the passage was talking about conformity, when it was talking about distinction.  They did this so that they wouldn't lose people.  This paralleled with a weak gospel. Likely you had unconverted people they were trying to keep, and they were attempting to hold them with unbiblical teaching -- that's how you keep unbelievers in your church.

Someone isn't in his right mind if he reads Deuteronomy 22:5 and thinks conformity.  The passage says nothing about robes.  It says nothing about people dressing the same.  Women are not to put on the male item.  There was at least a male item.  Women were not to wear it.  Women were not to wear what distinguishes women from men.  In Corinth, a head covering distinguished women from men. Even if women were equal to men spiritually in the church they were to keep the distinction intended to distinguish women from men.  This was an issue of authority, which it is.

Women dress the same as men to usurp the male role.  Now it's just normal.  It doesn't even occur to most women any more, because that ship sailed long ago.  Scripture teaches that women usurp the male role by wearing the male item or garment.  It's easy to see that it matters.  Now that we're to this transgender nonsense, churches don't know what to do.  There isn't anything they can do.  They've already capitulated on this issue.

The only real solution is for churches to admit they were wrong, to revert back to the original biblical and historical position, to teach it to their people.  I'm calling for that.  I don't expect it though.  If churches taught what believers have believed and taught for all of Christian history until just the last several decades, they would hemorrhage their numbers.  They would shrink down to very tiny groups.  This would result in salary cuts and bi-vocational pastors.   The latter is what is most unacceptable.  Instead of attempting to end transgenderism, it's easier to pose with short-lived and laughable transgender bathroom scenarios.

The honest thing for evangelicals and fundamentalists would be to celebrate their transgenderism. They wanted it.  They've got enough people in their churches to meet budget and pay for buildings. They can keep their people because they gave up on this long ago.  If an evangelical church has someone who looks like Ellen come to their service, it won't disrupt anything.  Even if someone doesn't like it, he has to keep that to himself.  It's accepted -- get over it.

Let's just admit it.  Churches love transgenderism.  They lap it up. They adopted it long ago.  Now they will live with it.