Which Christian Values Do You Endorse?

Jack Hibbs, whom I have not known of until recently, is the founder and senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California and has a daily half-hour program on Bott Radio. This post was sparked by a Jan. 21 article by Hibbs on The Christian Post’s website.  

The “Christian Values” of Conservative White Evangelicals

In the just-mentioned piece, titled “What’s next for evangelicals post-Trump,” Hibbs (b. 1958) declares that “President Biden is clearly not interested in the concerns of evangelicals.”

“So,” Hibbs asks, “what are we to do, now that Trump is leaving office and we have a new president who goes against our values?”

The “we” he refers to, I assume, are most of the readers of The Christian Post and those who attend his church, said to be about five thousand adults each Sunday, not including teens and children.

Hibbs concludes that “we need to look to 2024 with an eye towards finding the next president whose policies will be in line with our values.”

What, though, are the values of this conservative evangelical pastor? Well, we have some clue in the last five of the 15 points in Hibbs’s church’s “statement of faith” (see here).

Those “Christian values” were succinctly expressed in a Facebook post of West Virginia singer David Ferrell (shared by one of my FB friends earlier this week): “No pastor can support same sex marriage, homosexuality, transgender, abortion and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

But, where in the Gospels do we find Jesus condemning same-sex marriage, homosexuality, transgender, or abortion? The values that Jesus emphasized seem to be quite different.

Jesus’ values are largely affirmed by progressive Christians, including many prominent Black pastors, most of whom were strongly opposed to President Trump—in spite of his being extensively supported by conservative White evangelicals because of his championing “Christian values.”

The Values of Progressive Christians

Last month I read The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope (2017), a powerful book by Wendell Griffen, who is both a pastor and a circuit judge in Arkansas. He also wrote a provocative Jan. 21 article titled “The end of Trump’s presidency does not end America’s root problem.”

In stark contrast to Pastor Hibbs, Pastor Griffen asserts,

Trump will forever be remembered as the most vicious, politically incompetent and corrupt president in U.S. history. He left office dishonored, defeated and despised by most people who value justice, truth, integrity, peace and hope.

Griffen also extols the Christian values of MLK, Jr., including his condemnation of racism, materialism, and militarism.

The same emphasis on the Christian values articulated by Griffen—and ignored by Hibbs—is prominently seen in other noted Black pastors, such as William Barber, Jr., of North Carolina; Raphael Warnock, our new Senator from Georgia; and Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry, among many others.

What gall to suggest that these Black pastors—and the many progressive Christians, White and Black, who agree with them—all of whom spoke out in opposition to President Trump, are opposed to Christian values!

Which Christian Values Do You Endorse?

In his January 3 sermon, a prominent Southern Baptist pastor of a church near Dallas said that President-elect Biden would be a “cognitively dysfunctional president” and then asked: “what if something happens to him and Jezebel has to take over? Jezebel Harris, isn’t that her name?”

According to this 1/29 article, that pastor, Steve Swofford, also said that the Biden-Harris administration would not likely be “doing things our way,” so he urged his congregation to maintain their “convictions for Christ”—or, in other words, to stand firm for the “Christian values” of evangelicals.

On the other hand, in the Conclusion of his book Griffen challenges his hearers to “prophetic citizenship,” which, he says, focuses “on the needs of the people God cares most about.” That is, “people who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, frail, imprisoned, and unwelcomed.”

So, in reflecting on these different sets of values, which do you endorse as the more important and most in harmony with the teachings of Jesus?

Tempest in a Pee Pot?

Public bathrooms have been in the news a lot lately, and the issues being discussed are not likely to dissipate soon.

One question is why they are called bathrooms in the first place. Quite clearly the issue being discussed is not places where people take baths. But for some reason, people seem to think that the word “toilet” is maybe a little uncouth, so some better-sounding word is used.

Last month on our ANA flight to Japan, the “bathrooms” were called lavatories in English and “keshōshistu” (literally “makeup rooms”) in Japanese—and, of course, there were no separate facilities for men and women.

In addition to being called “loos” in Great Britain, a toilet there is often referred to as a “water closet.” It is also common in Japan, and other Asian countries, to see a public toilet identified simply as a W.C.

The issue now in the U.S., of course, is not what the public restrooms are called but who can use what facilities. The “bathroom bill” that recently became law in North Carolina has stirred a nationwide debate, and it looks as if the dispute is far from over.

Having just been in Japan for three weeks, however, the bathroom hullabaloo in the U.S. seems to be a “tempest in a teapot”—or maybe we should say “a pee pot.”

Through the years the use of public restrooms in Japan has not been universally separated according to gender, although there are generally completely separate facilities now. Before we first went to Japan 50 years ago, though, some Americans who had lived there “warned” us about the “co-ed” public toilets—and sure enough, from time to time there would be men and women using the same W.C.

However, I never heard of “inclusive” public toilets causing harm to anyone.

During our time in Japan earlier this month, June and I had the opportunity to meet a young trans man whom we had known many years ago as a girl. He now looks very much like a man—and seems much happier than when he was a young “male trapped in a female body.”

If our young trans friend were to go to North Carolina, however, legally he would have to use public toilets labeled “Women.” The women he would see there, however, would no doubt be greatly discomforted to meet someone like him, who looks fully like a man, in their facility. 

Those with little understanding of, or sympathy for, transgender persons tend to deal with the issue in a simplistic manner. For example, this week I heard talk radio host Mark Levin pontificating about the bathroom issue, which he said shouldn’t be an issue at all.

Who uses what bathroom, Levin said, should be determined solely by what is between people’s legs, not by what is between their ears.

Recently I have seen some good and important things written by Russell Moore, the head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty. Last week, however, he wrote an opinion piece (see here) in which he intimated that the bathroom question is settled by not violating the Bible’s words as found in Genesis 1:27.

Both Levin’s and Moore’s arguments for traditional bathroom bifurcation are not only simplistic, they are also disrespectful of and insensitive to the needs of trans men and women. 

Gender identity, including how people think, look, and act, is determined by more than genitalia.

Rather than creating a tempest in a pee pot, we should acknowledge the existence of transgender people and respect their need to use public restrooms that match their identity.

Observing TDoR

So, are you observing TDoR today?

Oh, maybe you don’t know what TDoR is. Well, neither did I until quite recently. But it seems to be something worth knowing about and thinking about.

TDoR stands for Transgender Day of Remembrance. It has been an annual observance on November 20 for several years now.

TDoR was begun in November 1999 as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a 34-year-old trans woman who was mysteriously found murdered inside her first-floor apartment outside of Boston on Nov. 28, 1998.

The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence that year—and that has been the same for each year since. So far this year, there have been at least 21 transgender people murdered in the U.S. (Check out this article from the Human Rights Campaign.)

There will be TDoR events today all over the U.S.—and in a few other countries as well. I plan to attend the one being held this evening on the campus of the University of Arizona.

In addition to the numerous murders, there is also an extremely high rate of suicide, or attempted suicide, of trans people.

According to an August article in USA Today, “Suicide attempts are alarmingly common among transgender individuals . . . 41% try to kill themselves at some point in their lives, compared with 4.6% of the general public.”

So TDoR should be a time of remembrance not only for those who were murdered but also for those who committed suicide because of being bullied, teased, ridiculed, and/or rejected—and many are rejected even by their own parents.

According to National Center for Transgender Equality (see this link), “one in five transgender individuals have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.”

In this article, a trans man, talking about the suicide of a high school trans person last December, acknowledges “his own childhood experiences of rejection by parents, church community, and religious leaders.”

So I come back to the book I mentioned in my previous blog article, “Al Mohler’s We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage, and the Very Meaning of Right and Wrong.

Mohler is not only against same-sex marriage but very negative toward acceptance of transgender people also. His fifth chapter is titled “The Transgender Revolution,” which he opposes, of course.

In that chapter, Mohler cites Denny Burk, a professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College (the undergraduate arm of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), who co-authored the resolution “On Transgender Identity” that the Southern Baptist Convention passed in June of last year.

That resolution, which passed with little discussion, expresses opposition to any form of physical gender transition, as well as any governmental or cultural validations of transgender identities.

It seems to me that what Mohler and Southern Baptists as well as many other conservative evangelicals write and say about transgender people just exacerbates the mistreatment of such people.

But the U.S. House of Representatives is speaking up. On Tuesday of this week they launched a task force dedicated to issues of transgender equality. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) will chair the new group. That afternoon they also held the first-ever forum on transgender issues.

According to this article, “The violence against the transgender community is a national crisis,” Honda said. “Far too often, they face harassment, discrimination or violence for simply being who they are. ... After 21 deaths of transgender individuals because of violence this year alone, Congress must take notice and act.”

Today, TDoR, is a good time to affirm and support trans people.

What about Those Who Are Trans Formed?

Things used to be so simple when it came to gender issues. Boys/men were males who liked girls/women and girls/women were females who liked boys/men or at least wanted a good one for a husband and breadwinner/caretaker.

In all the “advanced” civilizations of the world that was how things were—in public and on the surface, at least. Those who did not fit the prescribed roles had to keep their real feelings in a “closet.” Those who deviated from the traditional pattern were thought to be, and castigated as, deviants—and often called even more derogatory names.

In several previous blog articles I have written about LGBT issues, focusing mostly on the LGs (lesbians and gays). I am still at a loss to know what to say about the Bs (bisexuals). But now the Ts are being widely discussed. The Ts, of course, refers to transgender persons, now often just calls trans.

A trans man is a female-to-male transgender person who was identified as a female at birth but whose gender identity is that of a man. And a trans woman is, of course, the opposite—and perhaps the best known trans woman in the world this week is Caitlyn Jenner.

The cover story of the June 1 issue of Vanity Fair magazine was “Call Me Caitlyn,” the tale of Olympic gold-medal (decathlon) champion Bruce Jenner’s transformation from the Male Athlete of the Year in 1976 to a female who looks like a model in 2015.

Jenner says that she was trans formed (my words); that is, born as a female in a male body. Therefore, at the age of 65 she was, finally, transformed from a man to a woman. After her transition, Jenner tweeted on June 1, "I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self.”

But there are those, especially some conservative Christians, who do not approve of what Jenner did and do not believe in trans formation or affirm those who are transformed from one gender to the other. One such person is Ronnie Floyd, pastor of a megachurch in northwest Arkansas—and currently the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Among other things that might be said about him, Floyd is the pastor of the Duggar family, about whom many of you know much more than I. Like most of you, though, I have heard that Josh Duggar, the oldest of the “19 Kids,” has admitted to molesting girls when he was a teenager.

Even before the release of the new issue of Vanity Fair, Floyd made reference to the sins of both Duggar and Jenner, saying they were both sinners: the former because of sexual molestation and the latter because of gender transition.  

According to the Christian Post, Floyd stated that “gender is not fluid” and he emphasized that God does not make mistakes. He is also quoted as saying, “Did God make him this way? Absolutely not.” In Floyd’s view, no one is trans formed—and it is wrong (sinful) to transition from one gender to another.

But more and more conservative Christians are admitting that most gays and lesbians are such by birth and not by choice, and that their sexual orientation is due to “nature” not “nurture.” Thus, reparative therapy is largely discounted now.

So why should it be any different for those who are trans? And if they were trans formed, shouldn’t they be supported and affirmed if or when they transition into a trans man or a trans woman?

Blessings on you, Caitlyn Jenner!