Transgender Lutheran Bishop & Nicaea

Michie

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Just elected Lutheran Bishop Megan Rohrer of Sacramento is America’s first transgender bishop. Rohrer, who was born female and identified as lesbian now identifies as “they.”

Rohrer interestingly tweeted yesterday about the fourth century Council of Nicaea that set parameters of Christian doctrine:

The first council of Nicaea’s first action was to try to limit the leadership roles of trans pastors and bishops. I’m grateful the Lutherans of the @sps_elca are beginning to dismantle this and some of the the other hurdles BIPOC and LGBTQ pastor’s encounter.

Claims of suppressing transgender clergy are elusive to history. Rohrer did not cite sources. But presumably Rohrer is referencing Canon 1 from the council declaring eunuchs can be priests unless they castrate themselves. The early church did not fault eunuchs who had been castrated against their will for service to nobles or rulers.

But the early church did condemn self–mutilation as an assault on the goodness of the human body. Self-mutilation was not typically an effort to change genders but to escape sexual temptation. Reputedly the early church father Origen had himself castrated for this purpose though the story is disputed. True or not, the bishops at Nicaea disapproved.

Nicaea is commonly demonized or enshrouded in mythological conspiracies by dissenters from orthodox Christianity who wish to believe their preferred ostensibly more liberating theologies were suppressed for imperial or other nefarious purposes. Sometimes these conspiracy theories become bestselling books and movies.

Infamously, Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, oddly treated as pseudo history by some, portrays the Council of Nicaea as the Emperor Constantine’s tool for unifying the Roman Empire by suppressing theological dissent and imposing belief in Christ’s full deity. Perhaps there is now a new legend about suppressing transgender clergy.

Continued below.
Transgender Lutheran Bishop & Nicaea - Juicy Ecumenism
 

Chrystal-J

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Just elected Lutheran Bishop Megan Rohrer of Sacramento is America’s first transgender bishop. Rohrer, who was born female and identified as lesbian now identifies as “they.”
How much crazier can it get?
 
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