Maybe God doesn't care about sex
Considering our chromosomes makes it all a bit basic, writes George Pitcher
To expose the Church’s absurdity in its teaching on doctrinal matters of human gender, it’s diverting to reduce it simply to the examination of our chromosomal structure.
Traditionalists, whether Catholic or evangelical, generally believe that only people with a Y-chromosome can conscionably be priests and, therefore, bishops. Meanwhile, they believe concurrently that these humans with Y-chromosomes should only marry people (actually one person) without a Y-chromosome (women).
None of these people should have sex
Additionally, none of these people, regardless of their chromosomes, should have sex unless they fulfil the chromosomal requirements listed above.
By contrast, liberals hold that couples with only X-chromosomes (otherwise known as women), or with more than one Y-chromosome between them (two men), should celebrate holy matrimony in church if they so wish. Chromosomes, in short, are overridden by love and commitment.
The twain – that is, these two ecclesiological tribes – shall not meet. Don’t even start me on transgenderism. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is on record as stating that God is beyond gender, a position consistent with the Roman Catholic catechism, while simultaneously abstaining on votes about chromosomal rules at his General Synod. This is for reasons of “unity”, of which their isn’t any in the debate (see above); so good luck with that, your grace.
Big-endianism
I freely concede that the preceding introduction is a reductio ad absurdum, of the kind found in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, when the nations of Lilliput and Blefuscu come to blows over whether eggs should be broken at their big or little ends. The Church’s arguments over gender must bear much in common, in the sight of outsiders, with Swift’s Big-endianism” (Catholic) and “Little-endianism” (reformist).
At this point, it’s only fair to draw a distinction between boiled eggs and the theologies of gender. There is a more serious and essential truth about the Church here, because both sides of the debate are convinced that only they know what God wants from it. More grandly, they speak of “God’s will”, or at least the traditionalists do.
To offer the pithiest of summaries, traditionalists maintain that marriage is “a gift of God in creation” (those are the words of the wedding liturgy), which reflects the Catholic doctrine of conjugality, at the heart of divine creativity throughout nature.
Doctrine of incarnation
Incidentally, this is how male priesthood (XY-chromosome, remember) finds its place in the doctrine of the incarnation, whereby God the Father, through God the Holy Spirit, “needs” the Mother of Heaven, Mary, to bear His incarnate Son. Priesthood, in this model, isn’t just a men’s club, as its critics would have it.
Liberals, meanwhile, hold that a priesthood is in the business of blessing God’s love wherever it’s found, whether overflowing charitably into the world (the Greek agape), or in romantic love (eros), irrespective of whether it’s gay or straight. At base, it’s a matter of equality before God, whom this love defines.
So, it’s about rather more than the best way to access eggs. The question is whether any of it matters any more than Big-endianism does. Well, does it? This thought came to mind reading Theo Hobson’s interview with the Bishop of Oxford, Steven Croft, in the current edition of The Spectator.
Croft reveals that he has changed his mind over same-sex marriage, from traditionalist to liberal, or “inclusive” as he puts it. My response to this is neither chromosomal, reactionary, reformist or even Big-endian. It is simply: So what?
What if God doesn’t care?
This is not to be rude to the bishop. I have no reason to doubt that he is a perfectly decent person, with his Y-chromosome intact, and a competent figure of unity. It’s just that I feel an irresistible rising of a fresh and novel thought process. And it’s this: What if God just doesn’t care about gender at all? What if God only and exclusively cares, infinitely, about humans, irrespective of their chromosomes?
This is not such a radical thought. Paul the Apostle writes to the nascent Church in Galatia: “… there is neither... male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.” Is this not a via media for our Church’s warring tribes and a route towards meeting our secular critics where they are, looking on open-mouthed in bemusement?
“Gender is over”
One such critic, a Millennial, recently told me that “gender is over”, perhaps unconsciously channelling John Lennon. Another correspondent said, after I’d written an earnest piece on this subject, that bishops might look up from their learned texts one day soon to see that the world didn’t disagree, but just didn’t care.
So, unlike Bishop Croft, it’s not about deciding whether one side is right or wrong, but whether God, like the world, is bothered. It may just be that, as per the two great commandments, we’re only enjoined to love God (which is a way of saying that we love love) and our neighbours as ourselves.
And that final point is what ultimately matters. BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week over the past few days has been Chris Bryant MP’s James and John, which records the story of two men (heartbreakingly, as it happens, with the names of fraternal apostles in the gospel), who were hanged in the early 19th-century in Newgate Prison for homosexuality.
That’s the hell we’ve moved on from and the one over which angels weep. And one, arguably, our unchanging God cares about more than chromosomes.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest