“It is very important for people of any faith know what they look like in the eyes of others.” Lord Rowan Williams (formerly Archbishop of Canterbury) in his recent book Being Human. (More on this later).
“Male and female He created them.” This sentence from Genesis is the basis of the fundamentalist attack on LGBTQ human beings.
But as neurobiologist Patricia S. Churchland has demonstrated in her research , summarized in her book Touching a Nerve, things are a good deal more complex. A summary of her essential discovery is offered in the graphic novel by Maia Kobabe Gender Queer. The basic facts. The determination of the sex organs (gonads) and of gender identity are distinct neurophysiological processes. The second occurs later in time—in the development of the brain. It is thus possible, for example, to have male sex organs and a feminized brain , with the latter determining one’s sexual orientation. The above is the crudest summary of an extremely complex body of scientific research. (Research determined by following the scientific method of multiple working hypotheses, etc.) (Gender Queer is the #1 banned book in our schools today, not because of two innocuous cartoon images, but because it offers young people a knowledge their parents, etc. don’t want them to have.)
So here’s the question. When the Bible and science are at odds, there are only two possibilities:
(1) The Bible is wrong!
(2) I’ve misread the Bible.
Consider this. What if the statement in Genesis was put there by the Deity to test our charity? A test failed by those who condemn LGBTQ persons and/or deny their gender and the legitimacy of their sexual choices. That is, God, having created what science discovers, knew that the “male and female He created them” line referred only to sex organs. That is, the line is not an immutable truth but a trap to expose the fallacy of inerrancy —or literalism —as a method of biblical interpretation. And what is literalism? It is a fear of reading and of interpretation as complex processes. Those who troll the Bible in search of things they can condemn reveal that the inability to read and the hardness of one’s heart are of a piece.
A little history reveals something else about the way that fundies misread the Bible. Abortion is NOT murder., At least it is not so if one follows what the Bible teaches on it. The one time abortion is discussed. In Exodus: If a man causes a woman to lose a child he must pay a monetary fine to that woman’s husband. That’s all, folks. (Jesus never mentions abortion.) History lesson 2. Fundamentalists had no problem with abortion prior to Roe. But then an ideologue with deep pockets named Weyrich got together with falwell and robertson to plot the best way to rope all the yokels into voting for republicans. Abortion became THE issue for fundies (as it had been for catholics) and in no time the faithful salivated like pavlov’s dogs over the one issue that for them xtianity was suddenly all about. And of course they all claim to get this from the Bible—proving once again that they don’t read it. They mouth what some ignorant pastor tells them they must believe—or face the dastardly consequences.
This is just the beginning of making the case that the folks described above are not Christians. I’ll shortly offer a bibliography of books that detail the histories and many egregious errors of he fundies. But first I want to offer some comic relief.
Call me Don Quixote. Or, as my father correctly said almost daily—you don’t live in the real world. My latest proof of his prescience is the novel I recently published on Amazon. Background. Having written and published a number of works in psychoanalytic cultural criticism, I spent the last decade working on a multi volume novel. Only to learn that I would be identified as a first time novelist and as such would be unable to gain an agent or publisher for a 550 page novel , since the “rules” are that first novels are not permitted to be over 250 pages. “If you write it, they will come” turned out to be a truly self-deluding “field of dreams.” So I now face the problem of finding an audience for my book, possibly through reviews by readers on Amazon sparking interest. Unlikely pipe-dream, but leading to this offer from me to you. Anyone who buys the book, reads it, and writes however brief a review on Amazon will get the full price they paid returned to them by me. Consider it. I can, I think, promise you an interesting and thought provoking read.
Having said that naturally I want to end here by offering you a bibliography of other books, these the main ones that have been written recently on fundamentalist xtianity and its connections with right wing politics. The main point. We must stop letting these people get away with calling themselves Christians. That is our Christian duty.
A partial list in no order of importance:
Sutton, American Apocalypse
Stewart, The Power Worshippers
DuMex, Jesus and John Wayne
Gorski and Perry, The Flag and the Cross
Baker, Christofascism
Butler, White Evangelical Racism
Hendricks, Christians against Christianity
Hey-ward, The 7 Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism
Tim Alberta (a very good recent book but I can’t seem to remember the title)
Alberta’s book; The Kingdom, The Power And The Glory.