The Luminescent Soul

By Reis 

In the early days of Christianity, when it was still fighting to establish itself as the mega-religion we know it as today, there was a certain offshoot branch within which was almost unanimously hated by the entire tree. Gnostics were perhaps one of the first groups to be oppressed by Christians, deemed heretics and the vast majority of their works destroyed. But for what reason? What threat could Gnosticism, a small subsect within early Christianity, possibly have posed to the wider religion? It’s simple: Gnostics believed (and still do believe) the material world is a trick, and the most valuable thing is the soul and the unique knowledge it holds. While Gnosticism has largely faded into obscurity, modern-day Christians have found new targets, who inherently understand that the body is not representative of the soul: transgender people. 

In today’s world, especially within America, where the topic has become incredibly sensationalized, it’s almost impossible to not have heard of transgender people. Gnostics were once in the same position, roughly 2 thousand years ago. Gnosticism— in particular, the Valentinian branch— was deemed important enough by early Christians to have texts dedicated to rebuffing their beliefs. In fact, much of our knowledge about Gnosticism before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library came from these lengthy criticisms. Yet, the average person has next to no knowledge regarding Gnosticism, if any at all. To understand the connections between Gnosticism and transgenderism, one has to know what Gnosticism is first. 

The Gnostic creation myth begins with Aeons, deified ideas, which exist in a perfect, higher reality called the Pleroma (translating literally to ‘fullness’). As expected of a realm of fullness, all the Aeons are connected, and indeed one, but appear to be divided to human beings. To make things even more confusing, Aeons are either masculine or feminine (yet bear no sex or gender) and are paired with a corresponding masculine or feminine opposite. Aeons are capable of ‘reproducing’ more Aeons through their opposite. Sophia, the Aeon personifying wisdom, sought to reproduce asexually, in her desire to know all. She succeeded, but through this act she fell from the Pleroma and created an imperfect being called the Demiurge. Both Sophia and the Demiurge fell into the Kenoma (‘emptiness’), or what we know as the material world. Sophia abandoned her cursed child to wander the cosmos and chase forgiveness from the Monad (‘one’, the highest and most unknowable Aeon). Alone, the Demiurge created the world and humanity and deceived them into believing it was the only god. But an imperfect god can only make an imperfect creation. 

One might believe, given this knowledge, that Gnostics detest the material realm and the lie it represents. While this is certainly true for certain branches of Gnosticism, such as Sethianism, this would be a grand oversimplification and generalization of how many other Gnostics feel about the world. Ancient Valentinians, for example, were relatively comfortable in the Kenoma. It’s quite likely the entire myth is not meant to be taken literally, as Christopher McIntosh in Gnostic Philosophy: From Ancient Persia to Modern Times puts it. The mythology functions as an allegory, warning against the dangers of following without question and simultaneously telling the reader they’ve the knowledge to rise to divine heights (qtd. in Churton 9). Gnosticism advocates for knowledge through learned experience and self-accountability. Dogmatism is a great offense. While there is something to be learned from each person, they cannot live your life for you, nor should they. 

Gnosticism was also incredibly progressive for its time. In the ancient world where women were considered little more than property, not only was the very idea of wisdom portrayed as a feminine deity, Mary Magdalene was considered to be Jesus’ most beloved disciple, and the only one who truly understood his teachings, which inspired the jealousy of the male disciples. Mary Magdalene’s teachings were preferred by Gnostics to the raving rants of male disciples. The merit of the soul is what matters most to Gnostics, not what arbitrary labels others force onto you. In fact, souls are said to be androgynous within some texts. 

To many conservative Christians, there is no nuance. Either something is of Heaven, and therefore good, or it is Earthly and inherently sinful, which condemns it to Hell. It is true that God made Adam and Eve, which they have taken to promote a cisgendered gender binary as the ‘natural’ state of things. Transgender people, to these close-minded people, are perversions. Even Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church, referred to transgenderism as ‘an ugly ideology’ (“Vatican declares transgender surgery risks dignity”). You are made the way you are, because God made you that way, and what your soul tells you is irrelevant. The implication is clear: cisgendered people are of Heaven, and anyone who exists out of cisgendered norms is not. (Even so, if transgender people are not natural, there are plenty of unnatural things that are undoubtedly beneficial to the human race, such as modern medicine, the lightbulb, and computers— at least where the Amish aren’t concerned.) 

Many Christians are also of the mentality that suffering is all a part of God’s plan— in their attempts to justify why evil exists if God is all-benevolent. For transgender people, this often comes in the form of gender dysphoria, which can be crippling and, in the worst cases, can cause suicidal ideation. However, to many pearl-clutching Christians, this is simply something transgender individuals must persevere through, not a debilitating illness that must be treated. Any attempt at transitioning, to them, is a defiance of God’s will and an attempt to escape a divine lesson. Transgender individuals rarely regret surgery (Hess et. al) (Day et. al). Yet, if many Christians had their way, these surgeries would sooner be banned than simply allowing these adults— and it is adults; children aren’t getting these surgeries— to do what they want with their own bodies. ZIKLAG, a far-right Christian ‘charity’, launched many attacks against transgender people and collaborated to have Trump re-elected. Internal documents referred to transgender acceptance as the ‘final sign before imminent collapse’. They’ve also referred to transgender surgeries as ‘genital mutilation’. 

A transgender person is a threat to the status quo, who, simply by being happy in the right skin, tears down the misconception that gender is immutable. Those who are openly transgender refuse to let others define them, and those who are ‘stealth’ obscure what were thought to be clear roles. In any form, they assert the right to exist outside of suffocating traditional gender roles, and that’s why so many Christians spend so much time and effort trying to make them miserable. It’s why they advocate for bans on gender-affirming care, even knowing the bans cause suicide rates among transgender youth to skyrocket (“Anti-Transgender Laws Cause up to 72% Increase in Suicide Attempts”). It’s so they can later point to the corpses of the children they’ve betrayed and cry that transgenderism is a self-hating ideology these poor, naive children were groomed into. 

It’s certainly interesting how many Christians will project the experience of being groomed onto transgender people, when it’s very much the opposite way around. Many churches work to instill ‘traditional family values’ into those who attend. Preachers from every parish take the stage and condemn any deviation from their strict set of senseless rules. The Catholic Church still has not fully embraced same-sex marriages, even though gay marriage was legalized within the US 10 years ago (and hopefully continues to remain legal, fingers crossed), and many places within the world are becoming more tolerant. Researchers at Australian Catholic University examined 29 studies across 5 different databases after a rigorous selection process, and found that religious people (excluding religious Jews, for some reason) across the board were significantly more prejudiced against transgender people than those who identified as nonreligious. Church attendance was listed as an amplifying factor of transprejudice, as well as religious fundamentalism (Campbell et. al). 

To see things from the transgender perspective, several researchers working with the University of Denver, Colorado State University, and the Trevor Project, hosted an online survey for gender variant individuals between the ages of 18 to 24 to determine their relationship to religious faith communities. There were 12,000 individual responses. Among the respondents who had ever been a part of a religious faith community, 60.6% reported they’d left due to fear of being rejected. Young gender variant people were more likely to hide their identity from their faith communities than not. While only 14.8% of respondents were pushed to leave due to actual rejection, trans men, trans women, and crossdressers were statistically more likely to be outright rejected than their nonbinary peers. Nonbinary individuals of either sex were also less likely to leave their communities due to fear of rejection compared to binary transgender people or to crossdressers, indicating that visible transition or deviance from gender norms is more likely to draw ire from Christian communities. 

While both studies cast a wide net across all religions, it’s certainly insightful to how transprejudice in Christian communities forms, and how it contrasts with Gnosticism. The Church functions as an intermediary between God and humanity, and so attendees will listen to what they’re being told largely without question, believing it to be holy. It’s the same relationship with the Bible. The roots of transprejudice lie in a psychological fixation on the body, the status quo, and obedience. 

There’s a story within Gnosticism about the creation of the human race, a “parody of Genesis” (Churton 48). The Demiurge, along with the help of their archons (‘rulers’), sought to create man in their image. However, when their creation turned out to be greater and more luminous than each of them, they were disgusted and jealous and so they banished him. In other stories, angels degraded Adam’s immortal soul to a physical body. This is reminiscent of the relationship between transgender people and Christians. To be clear, this essay is not arguing that transgenderism is inherently superior to Christianity. That argument is wholly uninteresting and unproductive. Yet, transgender individuals are freer to express themselves. Meanwhile, women who follow traditional gender roles are more likely to be religious and report higher levels of stress due to the strain of conformity. When one is caught in a restrictive system, a common reaction may be to lash out at those who have what they do not. 

The ways in which Christians lashed out against Gnostics (and sometimes still continue to lash out at) is not unlike how Christians demonize transgender people today. Dunderburg, in his book Gnostic Morality Revisited, explains how the barest hint of Gnostic philosophy in religious texts, even texts that made no mention of demiurgic myth, would immediately draw scrutiny and suspicion:  

The locus of explanation is shifted from what the text says to what it does not say. The old accusation brought against early Christian mythmakers, that they sought to dupe their audiences and only laid bare their true teaching to those they managed to deceive, still persists in modern scholarship, though this suspicion is now usually more politely formulated (4). 

It’s a familiar sentiment to many trans people, who’ve been accused of spreading a ‘trans agenda’ with nefarious intent to convert children. Ironically, Irenaeus, a 2nd century bishop, did the exact same thing Gnostics were accused of. He posed as a friend to Gnostics, interested to learn their ideas, before stabbing them in the back with what was essentially a hit piece against the Gnostics in the surrounding area, his five-book Against Heresies, yet which still defines many’s perceptions of Gnosticism as a whole to this very day. Janice Raymond, formerly of the Sisters of Mary convent, used her status as a lesbian and radical feminist to publish The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, which was fundamental in cementing anti-trans rhetoric clothed in vaguely feminist wording. 

Dunderburg also notes that Gnostics were frequently accused of being sexually impure or immodest by their detractors. This is another common talking point arguing against the existence of transgender people, as discussed earlier. While transgender people are often accused of trying to convert youth into their ‘agenda’, they are simultaneously accused of ‘sexualizing children’. At the time of writing this, it was only 5 days ago that Zooey Zephyr, the first openly transgender person to be elected to the Montana Legislature, was forced to stand and defend her right to exist in the Montana House of Representatives after a bill was proposed— by a Republican representative who has described transgenderism as a fetish— to ban Pride parades and drag. A thinly veiled attempt to criminalize transgenderism and gender variance under the basis of ‘protecting children’. In response, Zooey Zephyr argued, “I am here to stand before the body and say that my life is not a fetish. When I go to walk [my son] to school, that’s not a lascivious display. That is not a fetish. That is my family” . 

Transgender people, in their mere existence, are revolutionaries against the false narrative of bioessentialism. Just as Gnostics were, who resisted obediently following those in power without question. But, transgender people are human beings with an inherently valuable soul first and foremost. It cannot be forgotten, even as many Christians harp on about alleged child surgeries and pick apart the bodies of our fellow human beings. It only comes from a place of hatred and a desire to control. Unique perspectives outside of the norm challenge our perceptions and allow us to grow into wiser and more compassionate people.