The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) sent a letter on Sunday (Sanctity of Life Sunday) to elected leaders of the United States asking them to stop supporting trans surgeries and to protect those being targeted from further harm:
We, the Presbyterian Church in America, the largest body of confessional Presbyterian and Reformed churches in North America, consisting of more than 1,500 congregations and 374,000 members across the United States and Canada, humbly petition you to protect the lives and welfare of minor children from the physical, mental, and emotional harms associated with medical and surgical interventions for the purpose of gender reassignment.
The letter claims that such interventions violate God’s purpose and intention: “For over two thousand years, the Christian Church in all her branches has stood on the teaching that the value of the human body arises from its source, which is from God, and its purpose, which is to bear God’s image.”
But the moral decline in the culture and its increasing rejection of God’s purposes has led people astray: “Persons who try to change their biological sex through the process of transitioning — including psychotherapy, lifelong hormonal treatments, and extensive nongenital and genital surgeries — are attempting the impossible.”
The letter explains why, if it is attempted, it results in ghastly and permanent damage to its victims:
Since the sexual binary is rooted in creation and determined by God, it cannot be changed; therefore, it is not surprising that transition attempts carry many long-term risks.
Among these risks, which are often irreversible, include conditions such as sterility, infertility, cancer, cardiovascular disease, strokes, blood clots, pituitary apoplexy, pseudotumor cerebri, and diminished bone density.
All of which is supported by science, with copious footnotes provided in the letter.
It calls out the hypocrisy of those who claim they follow the Hippocratic Oath:
Although we respect the expertise of medical professionals, it is striking that traditionally, medical students had to affirm the Hippocratic Oath, which includes the commitment: “I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman.”
The letter was the culmination of an “overture” from PCA during its general assembly last June to prepare the petition. That overture provided many Scripture references to back its request, including:
The Scriptures said in the beginning, “God created man in his own image…male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27, 2:7, 2:21-24, 5:2) …
Jesus said, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female…” (Matthew 19:4, Luke 10:6), and …
David praises God in saying, “For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:13-14).
Such surgeries are anathema to the living God Who made His people:
Medical and social interventions related to so-called sex change procedures are a rejection of God’s design that will prevent His blessing, grace, and joy to be experienced.
In addition, they are anti-science:
The sex of a person is the biological state of being female or male, based on sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous hormone profiles, and is genetically encoded into a person at the moment of conception and it cannot be changed.
Therefore, so-called sex change medical and surgical interventions are a rejection of science.
Finally, it justifies its complaint by referring to the Westminster Confession of Faith (Chapter 31, paragraph 4):
Synods and councils … are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary….
The overture itself is stronger and more persuasive than the petition:
God declares in Sacred Scripture that civil government, no less the Church, is a divine institution and owes its authority to God.
The Bible is the supreme revelation of God’s will and teaches that God made man in His own image, male and female, and called His creation good;
That God blessed man and woman commanding them to be fruitful and multiply;
That children are God’s heritage given a special status of just protection by Christ Jesus before they are capable of choosing good and refusing evil;
And that it is scientifically impossible for a male to become a female or a female to become a male.
The letter assumes that those to whom it will be addressed really have the best interests of the children, and the nation, at heart:
We who love our nation, in the name of God Who alone is sovereign in His good and perfect design of men and women, call upon you to renounce the sin of all medical and surgical sex change procedures in minors by the American healthcare system because they result in irreversible harm.
It also assumes that each elected official to whom the letter is addressed is obedient to His Creator:
The obedience to God, which places us in subjection to your rightful civil authority, requires of us to humbly, boldly and prayerfully proclaim the counsel of God as it bears upon the same God-given authority.
The overture passed the General Assembly by a vote of 1,089 to 793, meaning that nearly 800 worthies attending it were opposed to creating the petition and sending it. While attempting to understand their intentions is futile, it’s fair to ask why. Did they feel that it wasn’t the church’s role to criticize the government (à la Romans 13)?
It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who said:
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.
If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.
Decades earlier German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said the same thing:
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.
Although very late in speaking out against this atrocity, the PCA is to be commended for breaking the silence.
