Leftist theologians often attempt to reinterpret scripture to justify their political and ideological commitments, but rarely do you get so clear an example as a priest in traditional church robes declaring, “God is trans.”

The Rev. Flourish Klink has recently gone viral online for a sermon he gave at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York back in March, because he reinterprets core Christian doctrine to justify transgender ideology.

In one sermon, Klink manages to claim that “God is trans,” that Mary “assigned” Jesus a gender that was “not quite right,” and that it’s possible Jesus “transitioned” gender somehow when he rose from the dead.

To call these claims outside the plain text of the Bible and Christian tradition would be an egregious understatement, and neither Klink nor the Episcopal Diocese of New York responded to my questions about whether they would defend them.

Klink’s Proof Texts

Klink, who self-describes as “non-binary trans” and serves as an assistant priest at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church in Manhattan, grounds his claims in a few Bible verses and Christian doctrines, but takes them in directions that are far outside the historic teachings of Christianity.

The preacher condemns “proof-texts, those little bits of the Bible that people use to claim that God agrees with their transphobia,” but the way Klink uses certain passages arguably involves “proof-texts.”

Klink cites Isaiah 56 as welcoming “gender-non-conforming folks,” though the passage concerns God’s promise to bless eunuchs—historical victims of castration.

Klink also claims that God is “beyond human categorizations like gender.” That is true, but God nearly uniformly refers to himself in masculine terms.

Claims About Jesus

Having presented proof-texts to suggest this view isn’t out of keeping with the plain text of scripture and Christian tradition, Klink then proceeds to call Jesus trans.

“When God, who is non-binary, was born in human form as our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary said, ‘Oh look! A baby boy!’ But God isn’t a boy,” Klink says. “God was assigned a gender at birth, and later on, it became clear that that gender wasn’t quite right.”

Yet Luke records the angel Gabriel telling Mary she would bear a Son named Jesus, a text difficult to reconcile with the suggestion that Christ’s sex or gender was somehow indeterminate.

Klink can’t point to any text where Jesus says, “I’m not a man.” Instead, the preacher notes that Jesus didn’t marry, that he treated women differently than his contemporaries, and that some disciples initially failed to recognize the resurrected Christ.

“I think Jesus was resurrected as Jesus’s true self, which is beyond male or female,” Klink said. “I think that Jesus was not only transfigured. I think that Jesus transitioned.”

The preacher admits that there is no clear evidence for this claim but attempts to make it seem rational by reframing Christianity as pro-transgender.

Christianity Isn’t Transgender

But Christianity does not teach transgender ideology, and my “proof text” for this isn’t a few cherry-picked verses taken out of context—it’s the entire Bible and 2,000 years of Christian tradition. Klink isn’t offering an unusual interpretation of a few verses, but imposing a framework that requires reinterpreting the entire Christian tradition through the lens of modern transgender ideology.

Christianity teaches that God transcends human limitations. Yet Christians know this only because God revealed Himself through scripture. He revealed Himself as Father, sent His Son into the world as a man, and repeatedly described the relationship between Christ and the church in terms of a wedding between a groom and a bride.

As C.S. Lewis argued, Christians do not project these symbols onto God from human experience. Rather, God’s deeper relationships give human fatherhood and marriage their meaning. The relationship between Christ and the church is not a metaphor borrowed from marriage. Marriage is a dim reflection of that greater reality.

If Christians strain to reinterpret the Bible to remove these clearly gendered themes, we do so at our peril. God delivered these truths to us for a reason, and it is highly presumptuous of us to assume we know better than Him.

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