The Revoice Conference was once at the helm of Side B Theology’s attempt to subvert sound doctrine on sexuality. Side B Theology asserts that homosexual desires and identity are not sinful, only the physical acts. This falls short as sinful desires are themselves sinful, especially if the desires are unnatural, as the Bible says of homosexuality. Side B Theology applies the same logic regarding desire and identity to transgenderism.
Pieter Valk founded EQUIP, a consultant firm that seeks to make more churches “Side B.” EQUIP’s mission is to “help churches become places where LGBT+ Christians could belong and thrive according to a traditional sexual ethic.” Valk is also a writer and advisor for the Center for Faith, Sexuality, & Gender, Preston Sprinkle’s organization. He’s also the most prominent Side B voice in the Anglican Church of North America.
Valk wrote an article for Christianity Today, an outlet that has long affirmed homosexuality, titled A Better Trans Conversation, which is written in reaction to the ongoing United States v. Skrmetti at the Supreme Court. The lawsuit is in response to Tennessee banning transgendering minors. Consequentially, the issue is framed as a childhood issue that did not naturally resolve.
Like many Christians, I believe the Bible affirms biological sex and the gender binary (1 Cor. 11:2–16). God intended each of us to grow into either a male-bodied man or a female-bodied woman, according to his good design at creation (Gen. 1–3).
Unfortunately, because we live in a fallen world, all of us experience some level of brokenness in our biological sex or gender. For some, this brokenness manifests as a painful incongruence between the biological sex of their body and their inner sense of being a man or a woman (an experience sometimes referred to as gender incongruence or being trans).
Amid this distress, God commands believers to resist the sinful temptation to remake themselves in their own desired image using medical transition. Yet God does not abandon trans people in their pain. He invites them to honor his gift of their biological sex and to lean on their siblings in Christ as they manage the pain of incongruence.
Though gender incongruence is a kind of brokenness that God did not intend, it is not a sin, nor is it an experience anyone chooses. And though research suggests that about 80 percent of gender incongruence resolves itself before adulthood without medical transition, there is no formula for reducing that incongruence.
Although the overarching context is regarding transgendering children, the broader issue of transgenderism is not only in regards to children. There are many cases where children are groomed into being transvestites. Valk attributes fallen creation to problems that do not appear without rampant sexual degeneracy. All of the most prominent transvestites chose to be trannies, among them Chris Tyson from Mr. Breast, Bruce Jenner, the creators of The Matrix, Ellen Page, and Blaire White.
Valk then affirms acting on transgenderism medically is a sin.
I don’t think my views here are so unusual among American Christians. Unfortunately, many non-Christians have heard something very different from Christians speaking about trans issues. They’ve heard prominent Christians say that being trans is either fake or a mental illness, something to be debunked, condemned, and stigmatized. They see online chatter about bathroom bills, stereotypical gender roles, and “groomers” and conclude that Christians view trans people as predators plotting to endanger women and manipulate or mutilate children.
It would be a grave mistake to cede this conversation to extreme voices in either direction.
This is where Valk and by extension Christianity Today are running cover for transgenderism. They are treating it as a consequence of the fall and not an active sin. Sin should be debunked, condemned, and stigmatized. But medical conditions should not.
It would be a grave mistake to cede this conversation to extreme voices in either direction.
Valk treats transgenderism as a medical condition instead of what it actually is: perversion. As for children, the question is whose perversion it is, the child or their abuser?
That looks like believing those who report feeling painful gender incongruence and alienation from their own bodies. We should reject baseless allegations that all trans people are predators and dismissive assertions that they’re mentally ill. And while we affirm that God did not intend for anyone to experience gender incongruence, we should also affirm that it isn’t their fault. God isn’t surprised, and God loves trans people deeply. He made them in his image, died for their salvation, and wants them to follow his wisdom so they can experience fullness of life in him.
Obviously theological issues abound, but there are many instances where perversions such as pornography led to transgenderism which debunks the notion of “gender incongruence.” Valk then cites the same data that Preston Sprinkle did in his training for Cru, in which they both argue for the church to be seeker-sensitive to homosexuals and in Valk’s case transvestites.
These numbers reiterate that Christians can and must push back against both transphobia and the idol of self-invention.
Ultimately, the call to action here is for the church to accept heretical premises that undermine our conviction to fight this perverted sin in our culture.
4 Responses
Hey bud you’ve got a typo in that first paragraph. “Sid B”
Also, great article! Thank you!
Wasn’t surprised to learn that Valk is a product of Lipscomb University. (I hate that name BTW, Lipscomb never wanted the school named after him. They changed it after he died.) Liberals can’t infiltrate the Churches of Christ’s national leadership because we have none, but we have Universities so they are taking them over. David French is supposedly faculty at Lipscomb now, but I can’t find any record of him teaching anything. Officially you still have to be a member of a Church of Christ to be on the faculty at Lipscomb, but they clearly don’t follow their own rules anymore which is absolutely not surprising.
This is something I’ve said against the doctrine of total depravity, namely that after gay marriage etc was legalized we learned that total depravity is a social contagion and not something you’re born with. A little bit like the view attributed to Pelagians in the Anglican 39 Articles,
“Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam;”…if it be so, Cranmer, then explain why homosexuality only exploded after the Jews were given carte blanche by activist judges to spread it everywhere? I’m an Arminian, but maybe I lean a little Pelagian, because language like “fallen world” and “we’re all broken” makes me want to vomit; these phrases are never used as anything but an excuse to push the LGBTQP+ agenda of the Jews. Perhaps if the Augustinians sat back and actually listened to the Pelagians for a few minutes and stopped yelling “heresy” then we could fix this. And the tired old “its the Pelagians who have gone woke” doesn’t work, because we all know Pelagius never said “we’re born good, so we can just sin and its ok.” He had a very austere view, that we’re born perhaps more or less neutral and thus able to accept the gospel without a magic zapping, but after accepting the gospel, you better live right or you will be condemned. These guys that teach LGBTQP+ often get labelled by Calvinists as “Pelagians” but they’re really more like Universalist Calvinists, i.e. they believe everyone is the elect, everyone will be saved, and nothing can take your salvation because you (everyone) are elect. They’re as far from Pelagians as anyone can be.