OPINION:
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently released updated guidelines concerning harassment in the workplace. Under these guidelines, “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity (misgendering)” is considered harassment.
While religious organizations will, presumably, retain religious exemptions, many Christians will end up navigating non-exempt workplaces. As such, many Christians will be faced with a choice: do I use an individual’s preferred pronouns or suffer the consequences? So, how might Christians think about this matter?
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First, it is important to underscore the fact that Christians will often suffer for our convictions. Governmental policy is not our final authority. To the extent that the governing authorities exercise their God-given duties in alignment with God’s order, the friction between the Church and society can often seem quite minimal.
However, tensions will ultimately arise as Christians conform more closely to Christ because the world is not committed to living under the authority of Christ. As such, whether or not a Christian chooses to use someone’s preferred pronouns is not determined by the dictates of governmental entities, but by theological convictions developed through the process of discipleship.
Second, our rights are not our primary consideration. Though it is lamentable that the government is enforcing speech that does not conform with reality and thus, doing damage to free speech in the United States, standing up for our rights is a secondary matter for Christians. As I note in “Serpents and Doves,” “Like Paul, we can assert [or defend] our rights, when necessary (Acts 16:37; 21:39; 22:25), but, like Paul, we assert [or defend] our rights as we see to advance the gospel.”
The advancement of the gospel is the task in which all other tasks are immersed. We cannot argue that we are imitating Christ when we allow other agendas (even good and legitimate agendas) to overshadow proclaiming the gospel.
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Finally, we must be adaptable even as we refuse to compromise our theological convictions. When Paul speaks to the men of Athens in Acts 17, he does not call them idolaters. Instead, he recognizes that they are “very religious” saying, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (17:23). Adaptability does not preclude condemnation. Jesus’s teachings, at times, became a stumbling block for those who heard them (John 6:60-71) and Paul is not shy about confronting those who seek to distort the gospel (Galatians 2:11-14; 5:7-12). Still, we must recognize that becoming “all things to all people” that we “might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) requires us to think deeply about how to ensure people are offended by the gospel rather than by us.
Turning to the issue of pronoun use specifically, we can acknowledge that language and narrative are interconnected. Our language reinforces particular stories, and our stories inform the way we understand words. As Charles Taylor argues, “To possess a word of human language is to have some sense that it’s the right word, to be sensitive…to this issue of its irreducible rightness.”
Language, then, is crucial to conveying reality. Using pronouns aligned with one’s gender identity rather than aligned with biological sex (often referred to as “assigned sex”), reinforces the myth of human autonomy apart from God. That said, using pronouns aligned with biological sex is a relatively minimalistic way of describing reality. Suggesting that such pronoun use is “relatively minimalistic” doesn’t mean such use is unimportant or trivial. Instead, it reminds us that there may be ways of conveying reality with more robust theological language that could be used instead of pronouns.
For instance, a professor friend of mine addressed the students in his class as “saints.” Rather than focusing on their position as students in a classroom, he looked past that specific situation and used a phrase that pointed to their union with Christ. They were truly “students,” but they were, in some more profound theological sense, “saints.” It seems that Christians might be able to do something similar in relation to pronouns.
How might we rethink our speech so that we convey a theological reality without using pronouns? What would it look like if we referred not to “him” or “her” but to, for instance, “my neighbor”?
Some of you may think this strategy rather complicated. I don’t disagree. Changing our language would not be trivial. As Stanley Hauerwas writes, “To learn another language, to even learn to speak well the language you do not remember learning, is a time-consuming task.”
Yet, taking up the challenge of reorienting our speech away from pronouns may be one way for Christians to acknowledge that we are not in the business of winning back the culture, but of proclaiming the gospel faithfully within it.
I am not suggesting that Christians ignore the example of Daniel who refused to defile themselves with the king’s food (Daniel 1:8) or to deny God (3:1-30; 6:1-38). Christians will often need to be faithful regardless of the consequences. However, Christians should not neglect creative solutions. We often have options we don’t consider. In part, perhaps we have not considered such options because we want to preserve a particular version of the world…one which is broken and flawed in ways in which we are comfortable.
We should expect a world that does not know Christ to move toward disorder. Chaos will tend to increase (Matthew 24:1-51). Christians will need to prepare themselves to endure faithfully even when doing so inconveniences us or results in suffering. Loving God and neighbor is not always a convenient task. Such love requires all we are and have (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:34-40).
So, as we encounter our broken world, we must be people of conviction and compassion who strive at all times and ways to point to and magnify the Triune God for the glory of God and for the sake of a lost world.
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James Spencer earned his Ph.D. in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He believes discipleship will open up opportunities beyond anything God’s people could accomplish through their own wit and wisdom. As such, his writing aims at helping believers look with eyes that see and listen with ears that hear as they consider, question, and revise the social, cultural, and political assumptions hindering Christians from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. James has published multiple works, including his most recent book “Serpents and Doves: Christians, Politics, and the Art of Bearing Witness,” “Christian Resistance: Learning to Defy the World and Follow Christ,” “Useful to God: Eight Lessons from the Life of D. L. Moody,” “Thinking Christian: Essays on Testimony,” “Accountability, and the Christian Mind,’ and“Trajectories: A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology.” In addition to serving as the president of the D. L. Moody Center, James is the host of “Useful to God” a weekly radio broadcast and podcast, a member of the faculty at Right On Mission, and an adjunct instructor with the Wheaton College Graduate School.
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