personal pronouns – Protestia

Michelle Higgins, the senior “pastrix” of Saint John’s Church (United Church of Christ) continues to leave us vexed but unsurprised at the blasphemously progressive way she’s running her new ~~church~~ goat pen, this time with a series of proverbial open-handed slaps to the face of Jesus. This is being done while flying David Hammons’ Pan-African Flag, whose colors according to Black Art in America “are representative, as the red is for the blood, the black is for the people, and the green is for the natural wealth of the Motherland, Africa,” in the background.

A Prophet Gets Misgendered?

To kick things off, Higgins insists on using a unique pronunciation for the prophet Joel, proffering in her opening salvo:

My name is Michelle, I’m the pastor here. And I want to just give us some kind of grounding and opportunity for us to join together in the Word of God. So if you have your Bible app, if you have a Bible in front of you, we’re going to go to the book of Joelle, the prophet Joelle.

Now some of us just pronounced it ‘Joel.’ And that’s alright too. That’s alright (unintelligeble). We love you anyway. I’m not trying to shade nobody. If you go to the second chapter, this actually chapters one, verse thirteen. We have an opportunity today, beloved, to lament so many spaces where Faith is the center.”

No word yet if she insists on calling the book of John “The book of Joanna,” but over the course of the scattered, aimless “sermon” she repeatedly calls the prophet “Joelle.” We’ll assume she’s just using some esoteric pronunciation rather than misgendering based on her well-established pro-queer ideology, but you really never know.

Everyone Must Reveal Personal Pronouns When Introducing Themselves in Church

After a brief scripture reading, several people come up to the front to share what the verse meant to them, with Higgins instructing them to give their personal pronouns before they speak. (Apologies for the video quality: the original feed itself was choppy.)

“Morning beloved community. My name is Andrew I use he/him pronouns….”

“Good morning. My name is Elisa. I use the ‘she’ series…”

“Hi, I’m Maggie, I’m she/her pronouns. Yeah, it’s interesting that…”
and the best:

“Good morning. My name is Heidi. she, her, whatever, I don’t know. I don’t do the pronoun things. I’m too old for that. My name is Heidi. (Editor’s Note: Hahahahahaha…)

Offer Prayers and/ Or “Positive vibes”

Pastrix Higgins forgets she is in a Christian church rather than at a festival for bygone hippies and pagans, telling the congregants:

If there are any prayer requests that people want to quickly shout out and I’ll say them from the microphone. I’ll give you all items to pray over. Or if you are up the tradition of sending positive vibes, hopes and wishes for well-being you are welcome to do that as well.

More Queer Trinity Talk

Higgins reiterates her belief that the Trinity is queer:

We believe that the body of Jesus is that forever and ever, but we believe that God is three persons. Now I invite you to email me and talk to me about my trinitarianism. Let me assure you that I’m a little more ‘the Trinity is kind of queer,’ more so ‘the Trinity will strip you negative, hang you upside down unless you believe exactly what I believe.’

Again, this woman is one-third of the podcasting trio The Truth’s Table that is lauded and platformed as an orthodox, excellent resource for faithful Christians. Higgins shares the mic with co-hosts Christina Edmondson (wife of Mika Edmondson, whose always ragging on the SBC) and Ekimini Uwan. They know exactly who she is. They know how deep the rabbit role of blasphemy goes, and all parties affirm her as a sister in Christ.

This should naturally lead you to ask: can you trust the parties that hold up her?

You all know what we think. Or at least you should by now…

In a recent Gospel Coalition podcast, author and contributor Rachel Gilson answers the question of whether Christians should use people’s personal pronouns, noting that this issue “is probably one of the most difficult to answer well in a space like this, and I mean like in a digital question and answer type space.”

We do not know what is difficult about it: the answer is simple.

No. No, we should not use them.

This is true of the more benign ones like he/she/them/etc., but also the grotesque world of “nounself-pronouns” and “neo-pronouns” where people identify as “xe/xem/xyr, moon/moonself, star/starself, bee/beeself, bun/bunself, and anything else under the sun.

However, the question is a bit more complicated for Gilson, who has been smuggling unbiblical perspectives on biblical sexuality into the church for years. She previously advocated (or at the very least, gave a tacit approval) that if one partner in a “gay marriage” becomes saved, then they should not necessarily divorce their same-sex “spouse,” because “God hates divorce,” but rather continue in the marriage and remain celibate.

She’s also expressed her belief that becoming saved and having a new heart has essentially zero effect on one’s sexual orientation, and that for all intents and purposes, sexual orientation is not something that is touched by the sanctifying process of the Holy Spirit. She believes that the number of gay people who get their sexuality redeemed by Christ and oriented towards the opposite sex is a fraction of a fraction of a percent, but that this reality is “ok” because her homosexuality is a “gift” to the church.

In her podcast answer, Gilson goes straight to the scriptures which talks about the weaker versus stronger brother, and says that if people do not wish to use these [ridiculous and made up] pronouns, that is their choice, but that “you have to recognize that when you are interacting with a transgender person your inability to use their preferred name or pronoun could actually be received as very offensive by them or deeply hurtful by them.”

In contrast, she explains the “stronger brother” position, which according to her warped theology is that “others of us have no problem at all using preferred names and pronouns. We’re like, “Yes! This is a way of showing love. I’m ready to do this.” And in that case, your conversation partner is probably easily going to feel loved and accepted by you.”

Once this compromise is made, calling a boy a girl or a girl a boy, or a boy “bunself” or a girl “fairyself,” Gilson explains that this grants you “access to the heart of your friend,” which then in turn lets you talk about spiritual things with them by getting those pronouns and lies “in.”

Sadly, Gilson has it completely backwards. It is not the weaker brother who refuses to call people by their preferred pronouns, but rather the stronger one who is not willing to compromise the truth of God’s reality and break the 9th commandment despite enormous pressure from the world and once formerly reputable Christian organizations like the Gospel Coalition telling them to do so.

[Editor’s note: If you aren’t familiar with Paul’s thoughts on this, you can look the up in Romans 14. In context, weaker brothers are the ones that make up rules that they try to make “religious” and impose on everybody else. Kind of like Rachel Gilson is doing.]

Transcript below, provided by WPC

I think the question of preferred pronouns…really can come down to a question of conscience. So if you’ve done a quiet time recently in the weak brother/strong brother passages of scripture, Paul has a category for the reality that some Christians are going to come to issues and fall in different spots. And one of the most important questions there is how are we going to relate to each other when we fall in different spots? So, on the one hand, some of us would feel incredibly compromised using a transgender person’s preferred name or pronouns, because it feels like we’re complicit in a lie. It feels like we’re breaking the ninth commandment, right?
Like we’re bearing false witness about a neighbor, and we need to take that really, really seriously. It is never safe to go to a place that your faith doesn’t allow you to go against your conscience. And if that is your position, you have to recognize that when you are interacting with a transgender person, your inability to use their preferred name or pronoun could actually be received as very offensive by them or deeply hurtful by them.
And so I would encourage people in that category to think, “Okay, well, my truth is clear. How can I communicate clearly the grace of Christ here? How can I go above and beyond to show love, knowing that my posture on pronouns is going to be tricky for the person I’m talking with?” Others of us have no problem at all using preferred names and pronouns. We’re like, “Yes! This is a way of showing love! I’m ready to do this.” And in that case, your conversation partner is probably easily going to feel loved and accepted by you.
So then I would challenge you, since you have access to the heart of your friend, what would it mean for you to use that access to have truthful conversations either about who Christ is, maybe, if you feel competent about the nature of the body, even just beginning conversations of if your friend has thought about how God relates to these questions in their lives. But no matter where we come down, I want us to be able to relate to each other with honor and respect, because the church has not had to answer these questions before, and we we need to have grace with each other, right? We know that God loves desperately the transgender people in our lives, and so we need to be thinking as a community: how can we expose them to the love that we have received ourselves?