Seminary Students: ‘The Resurrection Is Undeniably Trans’ – The American Spectator

On Jun 9, 2023

Jesus’ “transgressive move from death to life” in his resurrection “def[ied] expectations and social norms” and “stoke[d] the flames” of a new “possibility”: You, too, can be transgender.

At least, that’s according to Eric Busby and Brendan Nee, students at the progressive Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In an op-ed they penned for the Easter season, Busby and Nee argue that the resurrection is “undeniably trans” because “[i]f not even the binary categories of life and death are fixed, then our conception of gender must expand.” (READ MORE: Paganism Casts Its Spell Over Methodist Seminary)

Moreover, Jesus’ wounds from his crucifixion demonstrate that vaginoplasties and phalloplasties are morally permissible, Busby and Nee argue.

“[T]he wounds on the body of Christ,” they write, “counter the idea that altering our bodies through transition is wrong.”

“[Transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming Christians] who pursue medical and surgical transition are often told that we are mutilating our bodies—but the resurrected body is scarred. Jesus’ body bore the wounds of his transition from death to life,” they say.

Jesus’ wounds, the two explain, show that holiness is found not in “normative perfection” but rather in “the wild triumph of life over death.”

Busby, who describes himself as a “queer academic and artist,” says he uses “he/him/they/them” pronouns. He was awarded the college’s “Malcom Boyd Veritas Award for LGBTQ+ social justice” upon his graduation last month.

Nee, who says he uses “They/Them or He/Him” pronouns, is focusing on Anglican studies at Union.

In their op-ed, which was published by Union Theological Seminary, Busby and Nee implore people to “proclaim the queer gospel of resurrection, in its panoply of rainbow hues, to the Church and the world.”

They also call on their fellow Christians to be like Mary Magdalene by embracing transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming Christians “in the garden … full of tremulous hope.” That’s a reference to Mary Magdalene’s encounter with Jesus outside his tomb when she at first mistook him to be a gardener.

Union Theological Seminary’s Prideful Past

This op-ed is by no means surprising. Union Theological Seminary is extremely progressive and has a long history of LGBTQ activism.

Last year for Pride Month, the college’s dean of chapel posted a video in which she stated, “Pride Month is very important to me as a pansexual indigenous Latina and a mother of an openly gay man. And it should also be very important to faith communities because we are continuously told that we are bad, that God does not, you know, create negative things, that we are not what is meant to be.”

In addition, Su Yon Pak, the school’s vice president of academic affairs, posted a Pride Month video last year in which she said that the month is “an opportunity to reflect, repent, and to redress the ways in which we have harmed LGBTQIA community through our theology, practices, and biases, and how we have weaponized scriptures against the LGBTQIA+ lives.”

Christians, Pak said, “need new theologies, life-affirming practices, that invites the queer people and community to say ‘I see myself here, I belong here.’”

In an interview published last week by Interfaith America, Pak said: “I am working through myself navigating my Buddhist self, with my Shamanistic self, my Confucian self, and my Christian self. That is true with many people who were colonized.”

Union officially states that it welcomes “people of all faiths and none” and that it “is deeply rooted in a critical understanding of the breadth of Christian traditions yet significantly instructed by the insights of other faiths.”

Union Theological Seminary made headlines in 2019 after its students confessed to plants for sins against the environment.

Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.

What do you confess to the plants in your life? pic.twitter.com/tEs3Vm8oU4

— Union Seminary (@UnionSeminary) September 17, 2019

“Today in chapel, we confessed to plants,” a tweet from the seminary said. “Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.”

The seminary also received attention in 2019 when its president, Serene Jones, said that Christ’s virgin birth was “a bizarre claim” because “[i]t has nothing to do with Jesus’ message.”

“The virgin birth only becomes important if you have a theology in which sexuality is considered sinful,” Jones said. “It also promotes this notion that the pure, untouched female body is the best body, and that idea has led to centuries of oppressing women.”

Busby and Nee’s essay is emblematic of Union Theological Seminary, whose entire purpose is to leverage Christianity’s traditions, stories, people, and symbols to create a faith background for their new religion.

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