Only in the Church of England!

Just four weeks until Christmas and a high profile loony Church of England cleric supports as legitimate speculation that Jesus Christ could have been transgender.

At an evening service at Trinity College chapel Cambridge last Sunday, one Joshua Heath, a junior research fellow, displayed paintings of the crucifixion, including Jean Malouel’s 1400 AD work Pietà. Delivering the sermon for the evening:[1]

“In Christ's simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ [is] as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body,” Heath is quoted as saying.[2]

He continued by observing that Jesus’ side wound, inflicted by a spear wielding Roman soldier, with blood flowing to the groin ‘looked like a vagina’.

Far from being shocked, the Dean of Trinity College in Cambridge, Dr Michael Banner, defended this exercise in deviant art appreciation as describing speculation that Jesus Christ might have been transgender as being “legitimate.” Taking it both ways however, the good Dean also insisted that while the opinion was the speaker’s own, he “would not issue an invitation to someone who I thought would deliberately seek to shock or offend a congregation” or speak against Christianity.[3]

No of course he wouldn’t, would he? Letting a loony post-grad student loose at an Evensong sermon, with a bagful of images of the Crucifixion and gabful of whacky ideas wouldn’t shock or offend a congregation – would it? 

Well, golly gosh. It did. One congregation member wrote a complaint to the Dean observing that: “I left the service in tears. You offered to speak with me afterwards, but I was too distressed. I am contemptuous of the idea that by cutting a hole in a man, through which he can be penetrated, he can become a woman.

“I am especially contemptuous of such imagery when it is applied to our Lord, from the pulpit, at Evensong. I am contemptuous of the notion that we should be invited to contemplate the martyrdom of a ‘trans Christ,’ a new heresy for our age.”[4]

Significantly, Heath’s Ph.D. was supervised by the former Arch Loony of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.[5] Given the paucity of Christian faith among the Church of England hierarchy, Heath’s ignorant and insulting comments are hardly surprising.

Ignorant inasmuch that there exists no actual physical depiction of Jesus Christ and the Medieval and Renaissance paintings are just that, simply paintings from the fevered imaginings of their artists or the instructions from their patrons. For in truth Jesus could possibly have had a chest like a hairy gorilla and hung like a ram.

The timing of the fool’s dilettantish art appreciation evening defies basic common sense. With Christmas around the corner his was hardly the sort of message to resonate well with Christmas church goers. One can well imagine the solid Anglican families of Cambridge popping into the chapel to exchange greetings and share family Christmas spirit with pews full of theological retards and sexual deviants.    

Only in the Church of England! Little wonder it will be extinct in thirty years.

ENDS. 

Words. 557

DATE. 28 November 2022

[1]  Pietà is a noun describing a picture or sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ on her lap or in her arms.

[2] Jesus Christ could have been transgender – Cambridge Dean — RT World News

[3] loc.cit.

[4] https://www.christianpost.com/news/cambridge-sermon-claims-jesus-wound-is-a-vagina-savior-is-transgender.html?uid=*%7CUNIQID%7C*&utm_source=The+Christian+Post+List&utm_campaign=CP-Newsletter&utm_medium=email

[5] loc.cit.