Sep 24 | Resistance Lectionary Part 13: (Trans)formed

Today’s citation: Galatians 3:27-29

This is another one of those passages incredibly popular among liberal and progressive Christians. It is often used to celebrate the idea that in Christ’s Church nothing divides us, none of the artificial barriers that exist between people matter. Paul writes to the community in Galatia that the covenant of Abraham has been extended to all who believe, and so the divisions between ethnicities, nations, and even genders should no longer separate us. This truly is a family of love, sharing the same blood, living “like angels in heaven,” outside of human-made hierarchies. The only hierarchy that matters is Christ as the head, the one who brings us into covenant with the Creator.

It’s interesting to note that while Paul could not have foreseen the modern (re)constructions of gender when writing this, he was schooled in Greek thought. Greek philosophy was often heavily dualistic in nature, but there was a most curious notion that gender was, in a sense, fluid, dictated by behaviour. This can be seen in early Christian writings, perhaps most famously in the story of Perpetua and Felicity, both martyred shortly after giving birth. Perpetua recounts a dream in her prison diary in which she fights in the arena as a male gladiator not long after noticing that she is no longer lactating. Emitting fluid was seen as a “feminine” characteristic by the ancient Greeks; failing to do so proved that she was becoming “masculine” in her fight to keep her faith, substantiated by the dream and by her stoic (masculine) indifference to the emotional (again, feminine) pleading of her father to recant.

This trend which we can trace in ancient literature proves not only that today’s discussions around gender are not entirely a construction of the modern era (or perhaps, more appropriately, a deconstruction), but that Paul’s call for us to embrace our identity as Christians before any other can truthfully be labeled as a call to be embraced exactly as we are, whatever pronouns we use or whatever body we are given.