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.
First of all, the ‘book of nature,’ that is to say the observable nature of what God has created, teaches us that all human beings are in fact either male or female. All human beings have bodies and these bodies have a sex that is either male or female, but not neither and not both. As Christopher Tollefsen writes:
‘Our identity as animal organisms is the foundation of our existence as selves. But fundamental to our existence as this animal is our sex. We are male or female organisms in virtue of having a root capacity for reproductive function, even when that capacity is immature or damaged. In human beings, as is the case with many other organisms, that function is one to be performed jointly with another human being; unlike the digestive function, no individual human being suffices for its performance.
Accordingly, reproductive function in human beings is distributed across the two sexes, which are identified by their having the root capacity for one or the other of the two general structural and behavioral patterns involved in human reproduction. In male humans, this capacity is constituted by the structures necessary for the production of male gametes and the performance of the male sex act, insemination. In females, the capacity is constituted by the structures necessary for the production of oocytes and the performance of the female sex act, the reception of semen in a manner disposed to conception.’ [4]
There are a variety of other physical and psychological differences between men and women that have been noted,[5] but these are all characteristics of human beings who are fundamentally differentiated by the fact that their bodies are ordered towards the performance of different roles in sexual reproduction and in the nurture of children once they have been born.
At this point someone may raise the issue of those who are intersex since it is often held that those who are intersex sit outside the male-female sexual binary. However, this idea is mistaken. People who have intersex conditions have bodies that are atypical of their sex to a greater or lesser degree. Nevertheless, this does not mean that they are not male or female. As we have seen in the quotation from Tollefsen, to be male or female is to have a body that is ordered to play either the male or female role in the process of sexual reproduction and this true of all human beings, even those with intersex conditions.
As Abigail Favele notes in her study The Genesis of Gender, there are no human hermaphrodites. Using the term the more accurate term CCSD (Congenital Condition of Sexual Development) to refer to intersex conditions she writes:
‘Hermaphrodites are species that do not have separate sexes, such as snails and slugs; instead, each member of the species has the ability to produce both large and small gametes[6] and can thus take on either the male or female role in reproduction. For this kind of species, hermaphroditic reproduction is the norm. Humans biology on the other hand, does not support this mode of reproduction. In the rarest CCSD an individual can develop both ovarian and testicular tissue, but even in this case he or she will produce one gamete or the other not both. There have only been about 500 documented cases of ovotesticular CCSD in medical history and there is no direct evidence in the literature of a hermaphroditic human being, someone able to produce both small and large gametes.
When all the dimensions of sex are taken into account sex can be discerned in each human being. To conclude otherwise is to exclude some individuals from a reality in which we all participate.’ [7]
As she goes on to say:
‘The most humanising and precise way to view CCSDs is to understand these conditions not as exceptions from the sex binary, but as variations within the binary.’[8]
Secondly, the Bible confirms what we learn from nature. It too teaches that human beings come in two sexes, male and female . However, in the twin creation narratives in Genesis 1:26-31 and Genesis 2: 18-25 (narratives endorsed as authoritative by Jesus in Matthew 19:3-6 and Mark 10:2-9) the Bible gives us additional teaching about our existence as men and women.
First, it teaches us that the division of human beings into two sexes is not an evolutionary accident. It is how God, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, has created human beings to be. ‘Male and female he created them’ (Genesis 1:27).
Secondly, it teaches us that, like everything else created by God, the division of humanity into two sexes is something that is good. ‘And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good’ (Genesis 1:31).
Thirdly, it teaches us that it is as male and female that human beings are the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1: 26-27). For human beings to exist as the image and likeness of God means that they have the capacity to know and love God, each other, and creation as a whole and the vocation to rule over creation on God’s behalf. However, they can only rightly exercise this capacity and fulfil this vocation as men and women acting together. That is why God says in Genesis 2:18 ‘it is not good that the man should be alone.’
Fourthly, it teaches us that there is a correspondence between the existence of human beings as male and female and the life of God himself. As the plural verb in Genesis 1:26 (‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’) indicates, God exists as three divine persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who possess both identity and difference. They are identical as God, but different in the way they are God.
As Genesis goes on to say, God has made human beings as persons who are likewise marked by both identity and difference. The identity and difference between men and women (identical in their humanity, differentiated by their sex) is the primary form of this human identity and differentiation from which all other forms of identity and difference then flow.
Fifthly, it teaches us that by creating the first man and woman and then bringing them together in marriage (Genesis 2:22-23) God has established the model for human sexual relationships for all time. As the American Old Testament scholar Richard Davidson notes, the introductory word ‘therefore’ in Genesis 2:24 ‘indicates that the relationship of Adam and Eve is upheld as the pattern for all human sexual relationships.’[9]
According to this pattern, the context for sexual intercourse is a permanent marital relationship between one man and one woman that is outside the immediate family circle, is freely chosen, is sexually exclusive and is ordered towards procreation in accordance with God’s command that men and women should ‘be fruitful and multiply’ (Genesis 1:28).
What all this means for us is that living rightly before God as those made in his image and likeness means living as the man or woman God has created us to be, serving God in company with members of the opposite sex, and having sexual intercourse only in the context of the sort of marriage that Genesis describes.
As Oliver O’ Donovan writes:
‘….. we cannot and must not conceive of physical sexuality as a mere raw material with which we can construct a form of psychosexual self-expression which is determined only by the free impulse of our spirits. Responsibility in sexual development implies a responsibility to nature – to the ordered good of the bodily from which we have been given.’ [10]
As he goes on to say:
‘When God made mankind male and female, to exist alongside each other and for each other, he gave a form that human sexuality should take and a good to which it should aspire. None of us can, or should, regard our difficulties with that form, or with achieving that good, as the norm of what our sexuality is to be. None of us should see our sexuality as mere self-expression, and forget that we can express ourselves sexually only because we participate in this generic form and aspire to this generic good. We do not have to make a sexual form, or posit a sexual good. We have to exist as well as we can within that sexual form, and in relation to that sexual good, which has been given to us because it has been given to humankind.’[11]
This means it is not legitimate to deny the God-given form by rejecting the ‘gender binary,’ or to deny the particular version of that form that God has given to us by making us either male or female. However difficult this form may be for us to accept, to deny it would be a form of sin since it would involve a refusal to say to the God who created us in a particular way ‘thy will be done’ (Matthew 6:10).
Because denying the exclusively male or female sex God has given to us is a form of sin it follows that it cannot be right for the Church of England to ordain those who identify as non-binary. As the 1662 Ordinal declares, those who are ordained are called to provide ‘wholesome examples and patterns to the flock of Christ.’ That is to say, they are not only to tell people how God wants his human creatures to live in their sermons and other teaching, but also to model it in the way that they behave. Those who are living openly and unrepentantly as non-binary cannot do this since the sinful manner of life they have chosen to adopt is contrary to how God wants human beings to live. Consequently, it is not right for them to be ordained so long as this state of affairs persists.
In summary, we can say that a priest cannot truly be non-binary for the simple reason that that no one can truly be non-binary. All priests, like all other human beings, are either male or female. In addition, no priest should live as if they were non-binary because this would mean living in a way that did not provide a wholesome example or pattern to the flock of Christ and no one who does live as if they were non-binary should be ordained by the Church of England.
[1] The Daily Mail,2 January 2023, ‘Britain’s ‘first non-binary CofE priest says ‘God guided me to the truth”
[2] The Liverpool Echo, ‘Church of England Priest on how God guided them on their journey of becoming queer’ at:
[3] The Evening Standard, ‘International Non-Binary People’s Day’ at: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/international-non-binary-peoples-day-gender-identity-meaning b1012455.html#:~:text=Nonbinary%20is%20an%20umbrella%20term%20for%20people%20whose,of%20binary%20identities%2C%20while%20others%20reject%20them%20entirely.
[4] Christopher Tollefsen, ‘Sex identity,’ Public Discourse, 12 July 2015, text at http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/07/15306/
[5] See for example, Richard A Lippa, Gender, Nature and Nurture,2ed (London: Routledge, 2005).
[6] Eggs and sperm.
[7] Abigail Favele, The Genesis of Gender (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2022), p.129.
[8] Favele, p.131.
[9] Richard Davidson, Flame of Yahweh – Sexuality in the Old Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007), p.43.
[10] Oliver O’Donovan, Begotten or Made? (Oxford: OUP, 1984), p. 29.
[11] O Donovan, pp.29-30.