Can a priest be non-binary?
by Martin Davie:
This week there have been articles in both the Daily Mail [1]and the Liverpool Echo[2] about the Revd Bingo Allison who is described as the Church of England’s first ‘openly non-binary priest.’
In this post I don’t wish to comment on the specific case of Bingo Allison. I want instead to consider two fundamental questions which Bingo Allison’s story raises and which the Church of England has not addressed. The first question is whether, from a Christian perspective, anyone can properly be described as ‘non-binary.’ The second is whether it would be right for someone who describes themselves in this way to be ordained.
In order to address these questions we first need to be clear what is meant by the term ‘non-binary.’ As the Evening Standard explains in an article to mark International Non-Binary People’s Day, the term non-binary:
‘….is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t conform to ‘man’ or woman.’
It quotes Stonewall as saying:
‘Non-binary identities are varied and can include people who identify with some aspects of binary identities, while others reject them entirely. Non-binary people can feel that their gender identity and gender experience involves being both a man and a woman, or that it is fluid, in between, or completely outside of that binary.’ [3]
To put it another way, someone who identifies as non-binary is someone who may identify as both male and female, or between male and female, or outside the male-female distinction entirely, but what they do not see themselves as being is either exclusively male or exclusively female.
From a Christian perspective the claim made by non-binary people that they have an identity that falls outside the male-female binary in this way raises the issue of whether God has actually created any of his human creatures in this way.
The answer, I would argue, is ‘no.’ This is for two reasons.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
