Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say By Preston M. Sprinkle

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Compassionate, biblical, and thought-provoking, Embodied is an accessible guide for Christians who want help navigating issues related to the transgender conversation. Preston Sprinkle draws on Scripture as well as real-life stories of individuals struggling with gender dysphoria to help readers understand the complexities and emotions of this highly relevant topic. With careful research and an engaging style, Embodied explores: What it means to be transgender, nonbinary, and gender-queer, and how these identities relate to being male or femaleWhy most stereotypes about what it means to be a man and woman come from the culture and not the BibleWhat the Bible says about humans created in God’s image as male and female, and how this relates to transgender experiencesMoral questions surrounding medical interventions such as sex reassignment surgeryWhich pronouns to use and how to navigate the bathroom debateWhy more and more teens are questioning their gender Written for Christian leaders, pastors, and parents, Embodied fills the great need for Christians to speak into the confusing and emotionally charged questions surrounding the transgender conversation.

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What is true of all Preston Sprinkle’s work is also true of this book. The tone of his writing is a welcome departure from many other books on this topic coming from those who share his theological convictions. Sprinkle strives to keep the humanity of transgender people in mind as he writes, and frames the book in a relational context. He also takes the role of both teacher and pastor throughout. This is welcome and appreciated.My disagreement is with the content of the book and the relational implications. First I’m going to talk about the theology, then about the impression he gives of the trans community, and finally about why he is setting his readers up to treat transgender people in heartbreakingly unkind ways.Sprinkle is clear about how he’s framing the discussion: “If someone experiences incongruence between their biological sex and their gender, which one determines who they are—and why?” He acknowledges that, “The Bible doesn’t directly ask and answer this question.” (p. 63) But he says God created our “sexed bodies” in Gen 1:27 and these bodies determined whether someone was male or female. In contrast, he often implies that psychological gender has more to do with gender stereotypes and emotions than anything else (ch. 3,5, & 8). Therefore, since God made our “sexed bodies,” our reproductive organs are the only morally acceptable way to determine our gender identity. This is an ontological argument. A moral imperative for transgender people flows from the way their reproductive organs were originally created by God.Theologically, this is problematic. It’s entirely possible in this life for us to have difficulties with our bodies, difficulties to which we must adapt or choose to adapt, but which are not moral in nature. It would seem God created our faces and skin in a certain way, but there is no moral implication to changing our appearance with makeup. We do a lot of creative things with how we use our bodies and tools to enhance our performance or comfort. We create prosthetics for missing limbs. If someone experiences gender dysphoria, why can’t this also be seen as a situation to which we can adapt? Why should there be an ontological moral imperative for this type of intervention, but not for others?Sprinkle returns to Gen 1:27 again and again throughout his book as evidence that “the phrase ‘male and female’ is Genesis 1:27 refers to biological sex, not gender roles or identities.” (p. 96) Yet when he spent an entire chapter talking about Gen 1:27, his conclusion was more tentative: “Whatever the image of God points to, one thing is clear: our bodies are essential to bearing God’s image.” (p. 64) Still, neither of these points demonstrates a moral imperative against being transgender. Our bodies (in part) reflect God’s image. That doesn’t mean there can be no change in how sex or gender are experienced. Otherwise, celibacy would be a violation of God’s will because Gen 1:28 says “be fruitful and multiply.”The text of Genesis 1:27 says that God created man in “his own image,” meaning that both “male and female” reflect the nature of God in some way we clearly don’t fully understand. We do know God contains all of both what it means to be male and what it means to be female. Since God is both male and female, God is not either male or female. God is not either/or, therefore we don’t need to be either/or in order to reflect God. What is meant by us reflecting God in our sexed bodies is not that they are binary, because God is not binary. Being transgender isn’t a departure from God’s image, because God contains both male and female. We don’t fail to reflect God’s image when we don’t stay in our gender lane. God doesn’t have a gender lane. This is a rather common point made by those who affirm transgender identity, and one Sprinkle would have come across, but which he leaves out of his chapter on Genesis 1:27.One thing he does address is the non-binary nature of the creation narrative. In Genesis 1 God created animals of the water and land, but this doesn’t mean there are no amphibians. God made day and night, this wasn’t meant to exclude dusk and dawn. So why is it that male and female is such a strict and unchanging category? Sprinkle did talk about this, but he very carefully framed the argument to set the bar too high. He said that the claim he has to refute is that these non-binary categories mean that the Bible was actively teaching that gender is nonbinary. He gives his reasons why the biblical author probably didn’t mean that. Fair enough. I’m sure they didn’t. But the claim isn’t that the Bible is actively teaching nonbinary gender, but that Sprinkle’s claim that the Bible is teaching and morally binding gender binary that excludes transgender identity and persists for all time is an unreasonable assumption to place on a text. Had Moses been trying to make such a point, would he really have used the same language he used throughout the chapter in which binaries were not binding?Sprinkle’s other theological points essentially make the assumption that since people are identified as “male and female” or as “men and women” both in this life and (probably) the life to come, the Bible is continuing to teach that God created us with sexed bodies that reflect the image of God. For example, he takes the fact that Jesus was a man as evidence that he was teaching us to live out our sexed bodies. “Jesus’ sexed embodiment challenges the notion that biology is irrelevant to identity.” (p. 73) Of course, no one is saying that biology is irrelevant, this is a strawman argument.What those of us who affirm transgender identity actually believe is that biology is entirely relevant, and that Sprinkle does not have a holistic understanding of biology. There is an abundance of evidence (that Sprinkle did not present) that we have an internal sense of gender identity which we receive from our brains (AKA our central nervous system). This is biological because our brains are very much in our bodies and our central nervous system literally connects to every part of our body. When Sprinkle talks about the brain and gender, he only presents evidence about fMRIs and other medical attempts to directly measure the gender identity of the brain. He says these attempts often rely on gender stereotypes, which may be true. I’m not familiar enough with this research to know. But he fails to accurately represent the broadly accepted scientific understanding, which is that gender identity and gender stereotypes are distinct.Just because we can’t measure neurological gender identity yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. For most of human history we couldn’t measure genetic sexual markers, that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist until we were able to verify them. Some people we consider intersex today looked exactly like transgender people until we found a biological marker. As Megan Defranza (author and documentarian) often says, the only difference between some intersex people and a transgender person is that the intersex person can point to something measurable, and the transgender person can’t. In fact, we have abundant evidence that people do have a neurological gender identity. You can read about this in Kathy Baldock’s book, “Crossing the Bridgeless Canyon,” chapter 8. But if you study this topic even a little bit, you will come across Dr. Money’s (misguided) work and other follow-up studies that show the reality of biological gender identity. We can’t identify it directly, but we can see its effects. Sprinkle excludes all this from his book, and so his conclusions are flawed.Instead, Sprinkle says that “when it comes to questions about the soul, the mind, and other immaterial aspects of human nature, we’re dealing more with philosophy and theology than we are with science. You can’t determine via CAT scan whether someone has a female soul trapped in a male body.” This statement lacks awareness that there are a variety of psychological tools based on self-report and behavior that are used regularly to draw conclusions in behavioral sciences. More disturbingly, this is a way of dismissing the gender identity that transgender people tell us they are experiencing. You can’t do a CAT scan, fair enough, but you can listen to them and believe what they say, especially in the context of an abundance of scientific evidence that neurological gender identity is real. Personally, I’m uncomfortable with the assumption that we can’t take into account what transgender people say about their own neurological gender simply because we can’t verify it with a medical test. Particularly, my Christian faith informs me that this would be a prideful posture for me to take towards transgender people.With all this as context, I return to Sprinkle’s ontological framing of the question. If one part of a person’s biology (their neurology) is communicating a gender identity that is not expected based on genital or reproductive sex, is it really appropriate to assume a moral imperative to live into one’s genital or reproductive sex even at great psychological cost? Does the Bible really teach that? I think it would be news to the people who actually wrote the Bible.Sprinkle says “I don’t think the bible is too out of touch and outdated to speak into our topic with authority.” (p. 109) But this is another strawman argument. The Bible didn’t speak to communism and social media, nor was anyone in the bible an abolitionist. That’s not because the Bible is “out of touch and outdated.” It’s because, as Sprinkle says, “We have to understand what the Bible says on its own terms, in its own context, as it addresses its own situations.” (p. 107) The fact that the “situations” of the Bible didn’t include an awareness of transgender people doesn’t mean it’s “out of touch,” it just means that it’s eternally relevant through the principles and values it teaches, not because it speaks directly to every modern question.On page 209-210 Sprinkle talks about a friend of his “who struggles with persistent gender dysphoria.” Though their reproductive physiology is female, they become deeply depressed to the point of self-harm when people persistently refer to them with she/her pronouns. Sprinkle says that they want to transition medically and live as a man, but they don’t believe it would be right or that Jesus would want them to do so. Preston uses gender-neutral pronouns for them in order to help them not fall into deep depression and self-harm. As I read this, I found myself desperately wanting them to spend time with my transgender Christian friends who also love Jesus and also strive to be faithful, rather than with Sprinkle. I know so many thriving and spiritual transgender Christians who have well-articulated the Christian faith and made peace and found wholeness body and soul. Austen Hartke is a lovely example of this, and he writes of many such people in his book “Transforming.”Sprinkle’s friend doesn’t need to struggle with persistent gender dysphoria and self-harm all because of philosophical ideas about ontology that have been mapped onto the Bible in a way the original authors surely never intended. It’s all so sad to me. As Christians, we should be spending our energy loving people, bringing healing to the world, and teaching people about the matchless love of Jesus, not struggling to survive with daily depression and frequent self-harm all so we can avoid gender transitions. That’s just not the gospel. This brief story makes it all-too-clear that Sprinkle’s theological approach has little to offer in terms of healing for transgender people.There is another important area I want to address now that I’ve talked about my theological problems with “Embodied.” If someone doesn’t have much experience with transgender people, one would get an inaccurate picture of the community after reading this book.One example is the incredible amount of space he spends discussing Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, ROGD. Despite its name, ROGD is not a psychological condition at all. You won’t find it in the DSM. As you read about it, it seems that these are people who briefly thought they were transgender because of social groups online. There are limited stories of such people beginning the transition process. This makes a good argument for following careful protocol for adolescents who want to transition (protocols that are recommended by professional organizations and perhaps not 100% followed in some countries). It’s suspect to say ROGD is an accurate description of the transgender community. He spends a lot of time talking about this, and very little time talking about the most common transgender experiences. Also, for all the time he spends, he never says something that would be very comforting to his mostly American readers: genital surgery is not allowed in the US until a person is a legal adult.He also describes something he calls “autogynephilic trans*,” claiming he knows two people who identify this way (he originally suggested the idea to one of them). But autogynephilia is not a gender identity. It’s listed as such in the DSM V, the diagnostic manual for mental health professionals, as a paraphilia. Paraphilias involve intense and disturbing sexual arousal for inanimate objects, dead bodies, children, unconsenting adults, etc. Pedophilia is the best known paraphilia, but foot fetishes would be another example. Not all paraphilias cause harm to others as pedophilia does. Sometimes they are just mildly disturbing neurotic disorders. Because autogynephilia is a paraphilia and not a gender identity, “autogynephilic trans*” is a misnomer. Autogynephilia has nothing whatsoever to do with gender identity. It’s not a type of trans. The idea that all or most trans women are autogynephilic has been proposed and widely rejected by the scientific community, practitioners who help trans people, and trans people themselves.Even the two people Sprinkle mentioned as “autogynophilic trans*” downplayed the erotic elements. Sprinkle describes one saying, “he’s just comforted by femininity, which he experiences when he wears soft and silky female clothing.” I can certainly see why someone in a religious community that opposes transgender identity might favor autogynephilia, as it seems to make their desire to live as a woman less connected to their essential being. Instead of being an unchangeable gender identity, they could think of it as a weird impulse. But what this man is describing is “autogynophilic trans*” does not actually fit the DSM definition at all. It’s not autogynophilia.Sprinkle admits that “autogynephilic trans*” is controversial. However, this is not just controversial. It’s widely discredited. This isn’t the only perspective Sprinkle presents as just-another-way-to-be-transgender which is actually problematic, pejorative, and rejected by the majority of the trans and scientific communities.Sprinkle then takes his thesis that there are lots of ways to be transgender way too far. He told the story of a young girl who experienced horrific trauma and believed (with typically childlike naiveté) that she could have stopped it if she was a boy, and therefore wished she was a boy. After telling this tragic story, Sprinkle says “if you’ve met one transgender person, you’ve met… one transgender person.” But nothing about this story indicates transgender identity. Sprinkle is trying to link trans identity with trauma and mental illness.Sprinkle is leaving a skewed impression. He quotes youtube stars and controversial ideas not accepted by most transgender people as descriptions of what it is to be transgender. He conflates gender stereotypes with gender identity. He leaves out the main, identifying quality of being transgender, which is a persistent sense of gender identity at variance with one’s external sex.In his appendix, Sprinkle addresses the suicide risk that is so prevalent in the transgender community. He strongly implied that the suicide risk is from transgender people having mental disorders and is unrelated to their treatment by their communities. As someone who is familiar with the research in this area, I found it shocking that he ignored the robust and convincing research demonstrating confidently that bullying, transphobia, discrimination, harassment, assault, rejection, and other behaviors motivated by prejudice directly cause mental health struggles in the trans community. He even made a list of why people might be suicidal (p. 233) and while including very uncommon difficulties, he ignored the discrimination and rejection by others. It’s difficult for me to fathom how he could have accidentally missed this.He quoted a trans friend of his who said that people who commit suicide are “volatile and unstable” (p. 235) and it’s not really about things that were said to them by those who reject them. He says “suicidality can be socially contagious, which means we need to be extra sensitive in how we talk about it.” (p. 237) But he is misunderstanding the recommendations of psychologists. Suicidal behavior and thoughts are contagious. Therefore we shouldn’t do things like reading suicide notes or encourage suicidal people to describe their thoughts and feelings of suicidality to potentially suicidal people. We should also be cautious when someone commits suicide because people whom they know are at risk. However, he says that a medical professional should not tell someone they are at risk of suicide if they don’t transition.Frankly, if a medical professional believes suicide is a real risk, it would be unethical to withhold this information from their patient or their patient’s guardian. Talking about suicide risk, openly asking people if they are suicidal, and addressing it directly is the cure, not the disease. Being candid will help families make informed decisions. It may help them choose to support and affirm trans people, which is protective against suicide (and Sprinkle never acknowledges this). Instead, Sprinkle makes people feel like it’s coercive for medical professionals to be candid about suicide risk. Perhaps that has to do with his belief that “relieving someone’s suffering is not really a strong, stand-alone ethical point.” (p. 187) He seems more concerned with people violating what he believes to be the Bible’s ethical teachings.The big-picture impact of this book is a fraught relational pattern. Preston sets his readers up to have particular relationships with transgender people which could seem compassionate, but that I believe is ultimately disingenuous. He coaches his readers not to be upfront about their beliefs throughout the book. Being too upfront isn’t a good way to start a relationship. This is something he does in his other books as well. On page 195 he makes it clear. Christians should start with lots of earnest listening, but “one long-term goal of discipleship is for all believers to identify with their biological sex.” This is a relationship with an unstated agenda destined to end in either conformity to that agenda, or rejection.Whether you read Sprinkle’s book or not, I sincerely hope you read with some skepticism and don’t stop with his book. Please also read Austen Hartke’s book “Transforming,” and if you have a more scholarly bent, read Megan DeFranza’s book, “Sex Difference in Christian Theology.” And for a more balanced dialogue between different perspectives, read “Understanding Transgender Identities: Four Views.”

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