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Religious People Should Reject the Use of Preferred Pronouns
A recent story in Axios in June claimed religious adults would be comfortable learning that a friend uses gender-neutral pronouns–such as they or them rather than he or she. Also, in June, Axios reported that Latino Catholics and evangelicals say only two genders exist.
In reality, religious people, generally, and Christians, mainly, should reject the general use of preferred pronouns. Christians must not use pronouns because it furthers the lie that preferred pronouns are acceptable, directly undermining God’s created order and suggesting that people can change genders; people cannot change genders. Christians must not use pronouns when addressing the transgender community. Doing so encourages them to lead lives not guided by reality. Using their desired pronouns, we encourage them to recreate themselves in their image rather than experiencing the truth that God created them in His image and likeness. As Christians, we should not encourage or lie to them or be rude or condescending when we speak with them. God and the Holy Spirit are still active. However, by telling the truth in love, we may still be able to lead them to Jesus Christ–which means they still have an opportunity to be redeemed and renewed, which means they can lead others in the transgender community to Jesus.
The Use of Pronouns
Preston Sprinkle, Ph.D., in his book Embodied, suggests that non-trans Christians should use pronouns that trans-identified people assume and how they define themselves.[1] Pronoun hospitality means that if a woman claims to be a trans man, we should use he/him or they/them. If a man claims to be a transwoman, we should use she/her or they/them. Sprinkle suggests that using a person’s pronouns is an act of hospitality and respect.[2] Sprinkle states that these pronouns refer to a person’s gender identity. He believes one is not lying if one uses “she” to describe a biological male.[3] Sprinkle also claims that not only is it respectful, but this hospitality is meant to establish a personal relationship.
Additionally, Sprinkle suggests that using the pronouns a person identifies with should be a matter of “common courtesy,” which Sprinkle considers a small “whisper of grace.”[4] For Sprinkle, “pronoun hospitality” is the best choice when communicating with a trans person.[5] This reference is to their gender identity rather than their biological sex.[6] Sprinkle is a Christian, but this violates truth-telling in love, grace, and compassion–despite what he claims.
Transgender people state their desired pronouns in person. Transgender people also do this on social media, personal biographies, and email exchanges. Andrew Walker suggests, however, that Christians should reject using pronouns because using them creates tension between living in the reality of God’s Word and the example of Jesus Christ. It also means discarding God’s Word in favor of the Marxist revolution’s truth–liberating the oppressed–and the desire to redefine marriage.[7]
Walker says that God’s Word can establish the truth about the reality of human flourishing. In this sense, pronouns are make-believe. Walker suggests that people want to be referred to not based not on their biological sex but on their brain–which means the gender they appropriate.[8] In that sense, pronouns refer to a false reality in which the transgender person wishes to live. Walker specifies that, as Christians, we should be willing to speak truthfully to our transgender neighbors when asked our opinion and understand that truth-telling is loving, even if it is not received that way.[9]
Here is where Walker gets to the truth on how Christians should regard pronouns. It is neither proper nor ethical for a Christian to lead a friend or family member in error, confusion, or sin.[10] Regarding pronoun use, we must listen to and obey our conscience, which God provided for us when he made us in his image.[11] Our conscience makes us aware of sin because God created us to know right from wrong.[12] Therefore, Christians should reject using pronouns because the reality the transgender person lives in is not accurate. Also, Scripture is our guide. In refusing to use pronouns, Walker suggests that the depth of the relationship determines one’s authority to speak correctly, and speaking authoritatively and rightly must be guided by the authority of Scripture.[13] As Christians, we should avoid using pronouns completely. If someone is a biological male or female, we must use their actual names rather than pronouns. As Christians, we should be honest in public, meaning we must speak and write truthfully and not bend the knee to political correctness or justify falsehood.[14]
As Christians, we must speak truthfully, which means we must say what we believe because coercion is unacceptable to followers of God. In all things, we are to love God, love our neighbor, and promote God’s truth regarding God’s created order, which is best for us and our neighbors.[15]
Language
Language coercively regulates people’s behavior. People who “misgender” others by not using the correct pronouns chosen by the transgender individual risk social exclusion or repudiation. Another consequence of misgendering a transgender person is being “canceled.” “Cancel culture” has become the most effective tool for conformity and employing politically correct language.[16]
This warning leads to a public attack on those who reject the new political orthodoxy concerning transgender people, leading to public shaming, boycotting, and having them banned on social media platforms. People have also lost their jobs for not using the correct pronouns and for misgendering people.[17]
The coercive use of pronouns does many things. It deliberately removes the element of human nature, which minimizes the sexually differentiated body and soul of men and women, which we receive from God. This removal of human nature allows transgender people to reject their creation in God’s image. It will enable them to reorient their identity to resemble who their mind believes them to be. This new personal identity is simply a production people create, and the individual appropriates and socially performs this new identity. It is here that gender ideology rejects Christian theology. Christian theology endorses the male-female creation of God but also recognizes the relational difference between the two. Gender ideology intentionally seeks to eliminate this male/female distinction. Gender ideology’s desire to remake itself only pushes those individuals further into confusion and, ultimately, alienates them from the Creator and their fellow humans.[18] Gender ideology is a form of postmodernism that rejects traditional concepts of classical philosophy–such as nature and being. Gender ideology also denies Enlightenment claims that base truth in a universal reality or a scientific account of reality. Gender ideology seeks to overcome nature and God’s designs by allowing people to establish new identities–which means a person can develop their own identity without the benefit or love from the Creator. In denying human nature and opposing the Creator, gender ideologues view the body as a blank slate to construct their chosen identity. This self-creation and pronouns are a form of narcissism. It rejects an identity based on the biological realities of male and female, which God created explicitly in the Garden of Eden. Eventually, it leads to cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, female mutilation, and estrogen that shrinks men’s reproductive parts.
In Deuteronomy 22:5, Moses tells the Israelites, “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination.” God forbade cross-dressing because God did not want them to confuse their sexual roles. God made a duality– uniquely male and female. Cross-dressing confuses the roles of men and women. We see this in our contemporary context, and despite what the gender activists say, it confuses people and tiny children, who cannot conceptualize the idea of appropriating the opposite sex and the consequences that stem from it. This command is a form of wisdom that makes societal sense. As Christians, this goes against the created order and forces us to see these people constructing themselves as a form of representation rather than how God created them.
The Argument Against Pronouns
Gender ideology rejects our status as creatures and co-creators with God since our nature includes differentiated bodies capable of transmitting life through man and woman in marital union. As Christians (and Jews, technically), we must remember that God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness….” God “created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Gen. 1:26-27).[19] Here, God told them to “be fruitful and multiply.”
In Genesis 2:18, God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” This proclamation was the first time God had called a portion of his creation “not good.” After causing a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, God created Eve. When God presented Eve to Adam, he proclaimed, “This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:23-24). At the beginning of the Gospel of John (John 1:1-4), the writer says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Everything was made with and through Jesus, meaning if we use pronouns, they must correspond to a person’s biological sex.
These creation stories make clear that God created a distinction between man and woman to complement one another rather than one trying to masquerade as the other. The significance of these passages indicates not only a marital bond between a man and a woman but “becoming one flesh” signifies a marital covenant that man, woman–and God–work together to create children, which was the original intent.
Our identity does not come from re-presenting ourselves as the opposite sex. Our identity comes from–being created in the imago Dei– in God’s “image” and “likeness.” Our creation means that God’s “image” is the foundation of dignity and equality for men, women, and children–rather than who we want to be. We maintain our dignity because God created men and women to reflect Him. Despite what the gender ideologues claim, our identity does not come from recreating ourselves in our mind’s image. It comes from being fashioned after God.
Our redemption in Jesus Christ means we gradually grow into the likeness of Jesus in this life. As we gain and recover knowledge of God, his Word, and his world, we begin thinking more and more like God. Our redemption in Jesus means we renew our understanding, become more like God in our thinking, and are renewed into his likeness–to a certain extent on this side of Heaven.[20] It also means that we grow and recover our Christian spiritual maturity, which allows us to be more like God. This regeneration and redemption in Jesus will enable us to grow into the likeness of Jesus concerning our character, which means that we conform to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29). Being created in God’s likeness and renewed by Jesus is our identity. Also, Christians must remember that we’re part of the olive tree that was Israel (Romans 11:11-24).
Conclusion
Gender ideology does not accurately reflect God’s created order or the morality of His created order. As Christians, when we use pronouns, we lie to transgender-identified people because it gives into the gender-denying sex traits of the person we are talking to. If we call a transman “he” or a transwoman a “she,” we are not being truthful and are misinterpreting who these people are. Despite transgender people choosing pronouns, it harms them and is the opposite of telling the truth and loving them the way God commanded us in Leviticus 19:18, which says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” Jesus reaffirms this command in Mark 12:30-31 when he says, “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”[21] This command is a contribution to our faith. We demonstrate our love for our neighbor because we love God. There is no way to have one without the other. We cannot give in to the misunderstanding of who transgender people are. We should not use pronouns, but we should use the person’s original name.
Addressing transgender people by their real name is not to be rude or disdainful of them. Without knowledge of God, many transgender people have lost their way. The only way we can help them is to speak truthfully and lovingly to them, hoping that we may lead them to the one who created them and the God who wants to bless them. We should not use pronouns because, when we do, we give into a false reality that does not help them or us. Instead, we should use their original names but clarify to them that, as Christians, our reality exists in God’s created order– including the goodness and morality that exists in His creation. Subsequently, we cannot use pronouns for people who want to change or misappropriate their identity. That would not be truthful, despite what some Christians may think about the pronoun hospitality perspective.
[1] Preston Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, The Church, and What the Bible Has to Say (David C. Cook Publishing, Colorado Springs, 2021).
[2] Embodied, 203.
[3] Embodied, 203.
[4] Embodied, 207-208.
[5] Ibid. Sprinkle also cites Mark Yarhouse, Psy.D., who wrote an article for Christianity Today called, “Understanding the Transgender Phenomenon,” in which he also endorses using the new name of a transgender person. For both Sprinkle and Yarhouse, this establishes a relationship.
[6] Embodied, 211.
[7] Andrew T. Walker, “God and the Transgender Debate: What Does the Bible Actually Say About Gender Identity?” (The Good Book company, 2022), 186.
[8] Ibid.
[9] God and the Transgender Debate, 187.
[10] Ibid.
[11] God and the Transgender Debate, 188.
[12] Ibid.
[13] God and the Transgender Debate, 189.
[14] God and the Transgender Debate, 189-190.
[15] God and the Transgender Debate, 194.
[16] John S. Grabowski, “Unraveling Gender: The Battle Over Sexual Difference,” (TAN Books, North Carolina, 2022), 47-51.
[17] “Unraveling Gender,” 51.
[18] “Unraveling Gender,” 53-59.
[19] English Standard Version. All verses used will be from this text.
[20] The Greek word eikon means an image.
[21] Jesus repeats this in Matthew 22:39 and Luke 10:27.
Published in General
People may be entitled to their delusions. They are not entitled to my participation in those delusions.
If people want a grammar lesson from me, they will get it if they try to push this nonsense on me.
The dumb thing is, if you are speaking with someone, you never use his third-person pronoun. You either use that person’s name or you use “you.” It’s only when you’re speaking of that person with someone else that you’d use pronouns like “he/she.”
So all the pronoun pronouncements are about trying to control your speech when that person isn’t even around.
And if they have you doing that, they’re really winning at mind control.
I agree with your main point, Derryck, though I would go further.
First, I recommend against using “gender” at all. There are two genders, but not of people. There are two genders of nouns in Spanish. There are two sexes of people.
Second, I don’t agree that, as Christians, we should never be rude or condescending. I see many examples of Jesus and His Apostles, particularly Peter and Paul, confronting people harshly. “Sons of hell,” “children of your father the devil,” and so on.
I think that it is a big mistake to believe that such assertiveness is always wrong. Frankly, it seems weak and emasculated to me, a sign of the feminization of the Church.
I also think that this is indicative of another problem in our approach to evangelism. Many people seem to want to spread the Gospel without giving offense. I think that this is impossible. The basic message of the Gospel is that you are a miserable, horrible sinner, deserving the wrath of God and eternal punishment in Hell. Me, too. That’s the starting point.
I find that this is highly offensive to unbelievers. It was offensive to me, before I was a believer.
I think Derryck meant “rude” as going off like an a**hole. I don’t think it is rude to say that something or some behavior is evil or wicked. I like the idea of discussing what is too far of a rebuke, because it accepts the premise that rebuking is appropriate.
Rudeness is wrong by definition. But it’s not true that we should never be what others think is rude.
My pronouns are all in New Testament Greek. Respect my truth, everyone.
Not quite.
Imagine, for instance, having a conversation (water cooler at work? cocktail/dinner party? etc.) that includes other people besides you and a Pat the Pronoun Person type. At some point, Pat the Pronoun Person type proclaims something like “The best deep-dish pizza place in Chicago, hands down, is Gino’s East!”, in response to which you might turn to the other people and ask:”You agree with him? Oops, I mean her.”
And then there is the matter of written communications, whereby a weird sentence like …
“First time I met Pat was not too long after Pat’s family moved into our neighborhood, when Pat knocked on our door and told me that we were all invited to the backyard party that Pat’s parents were throwing for Pat’s 12th birthday.”
… would be required in order not to offend Pat the Pronoun Person types.
Hard NO to such farcical nincompoopedness, ‘far as I’m concerned.
Why is the string of proper names any more nincompoopedish than a string of three “his” and one “he”?
Perhaps their religious friends would be comfortable with it, but their grammarian friends most certainly would not.
Close enough. ; )
Is “ex-friend” a pronoun?
Yup. That’s exactly whom I had in mind.
Don’t know the precise underlying English usage rule(s) that dictate it. I just know that if I presented the sentence in question to my high school English teacher, the formidable Miss Halliday, she would be so disappointed in my nincompoopedness that she would disown me as a former student.
Yup. The choices writers and editors are facing today are using a plural pronoun to refer to the singular “Pat” or repeating Pat’s name. I opt for repeating Pat’s name.
In the list of tolerance problems, I can’t tolerate the use of a plural pronoun to refer to a singular person. This latest change in usage is driving me crazy! Historians reading today’s newspapers will want to shoot us. :) :)
What’s even worse is that the time of an event is impossible to decipher in our 24-hour news cycle. I’ve long wanted to ban “today,” “yesterday,” and “tomorrow” from reporters’ language. Please give me a date and a time.
And they have no idea how to work with verb tenses.
In short, clarity is a thing of the past. Historians, lawyers, and readers will never be able to determine who did what when.
But because of cheap electrons versus expensive ink, we’ll have millions of copies of it! :) :) :)
Even if a person is not religious, he should respect grammar . . .
This is a shortfall in the English language. There should be gender-unknown/neutral pronoun, because often you don’t know the gender of the person. Languages evolve and this should have been fixed long ago. Instead we have constructions like “he or she” and later “he/she”. It might be that we just settle on they/them, which works when the number of persons is unknown. For example, “Someone knocked over my mailbox and I am going to make them pay.” That works.
You’ve just identified how this started. :)
People have been using they/them/their in casual speech to refer to everyone/everybody/someone/somebody. Of course, all of those are singular nouns. One would never say “Somebody are here.” The pronouns should agree in number with the original noun and verb.
And that’s the problem with the new usage of the third person plural for first person singular.
What has happened in the past ten years is that writers and speakers have gone full tilt in using the third person plural even when they know the sex of the person they are referring to. Thus, writers and speakers today will say, “John called yesterday, and they said.” That’s an extreme example that I don’t see very often. What I am seeing in newspaper stories is, “An unknown male assailant . . . they ran off before they could get caught.” Or worse, “John Smith was guilty but they said they were innocent.” Good luck in the last case. Did John say he was innocent? Or did someone else say that? :) :)
There is a logic to language, and we are fast losing it. :)
You’re very close to being sent eternally to grammar hell.
I noticed something like this a couple decades ago when, apparently “officially,” hyphenated words were replaced with German-style longwords. I figured it was to save a bit or two of computer storage.
There is. It’s “it”. Even a baby when it’s sex is unknown (and sometimes even when it is known) is referred to as “it” as well.
I’ve noticed some of this in English writing going back to the mid-1800s, as in “Someone took my cab and called out their apology.” They also about that time certainly used plural pronouns for corporate bodies. “The crew were happy to go ashore.” or “Parliament announced their decree.”
I think Canadians do this. I hear it in hockey games with announcers saying things like, “Detroit are playing well.” Hollywood and the internet are going go homogenize language.
I’m guilty and I know better.
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
— Theodore Dalrymple
In other news, christians should also wear underpants and shoes.
I’m not sure why being a christian makes this any different than anyone else.
Well reasoned and presented Derryck. If this was an issue ammenable to logical arguments yours would win the day. Sadly, it has become a pseudo religion that requires unconditional affirmation under threat of social damnation and eternal banishment for any sufficiently brave as to espouse heretical blasphemies – the primary being that biology requires the binary definition of sex that has been the foundational understanding throughout human history.
If someone told me they identified as Spiderman and had the cartoon super heroe’s web-spinning and slinging skills, I would be negligent to agree with them and encourage them to jump off a skyscraper to demonstrate. True Christian love wants the best for the other. A delusional splat on the sidewalk 25 stories below fails that test!
There is such a thing as objective truth. Trans-ism is subjective and coerced truth. It is forcing everyone to falsely claim that the emperor is clothed when all but the blind observe his nakedness.
Like you, I favor truth over harmful delusions.
And of proffered ones, too.
People may do that, but it’s truly never correct to refer to a human being, especially a baby :), as “it.” The correct way to refer to a baby or anyone else is “he or she” if the sex is unknown. (If the person is a Democrat, he or she probably has other pronouns he or she would like, but even under those circumstances, it would never be correct to use “it.”)