Just elected Lutheran Bishop Megan Rohrer of Sacramento is America’s first transgender bishop. Rohrer, who was born female and identified as lesbian now identifies as “they.”
Rohrer interestingly tweeted yesterday about the fourth century Council of Nicaea that set parameters of Christian doctrine:
The first council of Nicaea’s first action was to try to limit the leadership roles of trans pastors and bishops. I’m grateful the Lutherans of the @sps_elca are beginning to dismantle this and some of the the other hurdles BIPOC and LGBTQ pastor’s encounter.
Claims of suppressing transgender clergy are elusive to history. Rohrer did not cite sources. But presumably Rohrer is referencing Canon 1 from the council declaring eunuchs can be priests unless they castrate themselves. The early church did not fault eunuchs who had been castrated against their will for service to nobles or rulers.
But the early church did condemn self–mutilation as an assault on the goodness of the human body. Self-mutilation was not typically an effort to change genders but to escape sexual temptation. Reputedly the early church father Origen had himself castrated for this purpose though the story is disputed. True or not, the bishops at Nicaea disapproved.
Nicaea is commonly demonized or enshrouded in mythological conspiracies by dissenters from orthodox Christianity who wish to believe their preferred ostensibly more liberating theologies were suppressed for imperial or other nefarious purposes. Sometimes these conspiracy theories become bestselling books and movies.
Infamously, Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, oddly treated as pseudo history by some, portrays the Council of Nicaea as the Emperor Constantine’s tool for unifying the Roman Empire by suppressing theological dissent and imposing belief in Christ’s full deity. Perhaps there is now a new legend about suppressing transgender clergy.
In Brown’s novel, one character explains the conspiracy at Nicaea:
Because Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status almost four centuries after Jesus’ death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke…Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.
Many of the books supposedly suppressed by Nicaea, according to contemporary religionists like popular author Elaine Pagels, were gnostic alternative gospels rejecting ecumenical orthodoxy in favor of secret knowledge stressing self-actualization and inner journeys instead of salvation and worshipping the Creator. The Gnostics minimized or ignored the Hebrew scripture that orthodox Christians deem sacred and the foundation of God’s self-revelation.
Ben Witherington of Asbury Seminary explains:
Where Judaism and Christianity emphasize the role of faith and works in salvation, and salvation of both body and spirit, gnostics taught that the soul’s salvation depended on the individual possessing quasi-intuitive knowledge (gnosis) of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulas.
And:
Gnosticism fundamentally rejected Jewish theology about the goodness of creation, and especially the idea that all the nations could be blessed through Abraham and his faith.
Witherington notes that Elaine Pagels highlights a phrase attributed to Jesus by the gnostic gospel of Thomas: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.”
Pagels explains her joy over this gnostic wisdom:
The strength of this saying is that it does not tell us what to believe but challenges us to discover what lies hidden within ourselves; and with a shock of recognition, I realized that this perspective seemed to me self evidently true.
Witherington observes:
Here we find the appeal to personal impressions or experience as the final authority. The believer is not asked to believe specific things that come from without (by revelation), nor to submit to any authority but the self. Instead, we are to be the measure of ourselves and to find our own truths within us.
In this spirit, Bishop Rohrer says she’s glad her liberal Mainline Protestant denomination is “beginning to dismantle” the injustice at the Council of Nicaea. No doubt much more dismantling must be done before true justice and knowledge can prevail against the external authority of revelation proposed by historic Christianity. Or so the Gnostics, yesterday and today, always proclaim.
Comment by Looking under every rock on May 10, 2021 at 12:39 pm
What a great example of Narcissism! Thank you.
Any port in a storm, and cave to hide in I guess.
Comment by Kathleen Corey-Pittman on May 10, 2021 at 3:52 pm
I wish the author of this story would have been more specific in what Lutheran Church Synod she represents. My guess she is from ELCA, she does not represent Missouri or Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, as they do not even allow women to fill the pulpit. Not all Lutheran Synods are uber-liberal. I am now a Methodist, but I grew up in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and I remember when they finally allowed women to vote at church meetings, back in the early 1970s.
Comment by Keith on May 10, 2021 at 7:55 pm
Episcopal Church: “We consecrated the first openly gay bishop!”
ELCA: “Hold my beer.”
Comment by Anneke9 on May 10, 2021 at 8:53 pm
Lord Jesus, save us from our wickedness.
Comment by Star Tripper on May 11, 2021 at 10:27 am
The search for sacred knowledge. This is the worst of the heresies in my opinion because it leads to so many sins and abominations. Whenever someone offers you a chance for secret knowledge (e.g., get rich quick, pick up girls, sinful salvation) look for the Serpent. He will be there.
Comment by John67 on May 11, 2021 at 11:57 am
YIKES! In the very first sentence please add ELCA Lutheran.
Otherwise you are defaming the LCMS, WELS, LCMC and other Lutheran churches.
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on May 11, 2021 at 2:10 pm
Rohrer cites the ELCA in the first quote.
Comment by Brandon M on May 11, 2021 at 6:32 pm
Shadows of the one world religion to come
Comment by Fr William Bauer PhD on May 11, 2021 at 6:33 pm
As a (blank) and not a man she is not a bishop,
Violation of the Nicene.
But think! Planned Ignorance of Creation.
Comment by gillian a on May 13, 2021 at 8:21 pm
what is a “they”?
Comment by Palamas on May 14, 2021 at 8:04 pm
The quote from this “bishop” theologically, historically and linguistically illiterate. It says volumes about the ELCA (and its seminary training) that this person was even ordained, much less elected to a position of responsibility
Comment by Palamas on May 14, 2021 at 8:06 pm
Please insert the word “is” after “bishop” in the first sentence. I can read and write, but I have a problem with typing!
Comment by Jim Radford on May 15, 2021 at 11:17 am
Yet another oxymoron: a transgender bishop. One more: a “Queer Tenebrae Service.” News of this second one reached my inbox shortly before Easter of this year. Post-moderns have gone to seed, in my not-so-humble opinion. Incidentally, if some on this site are not aware, one current statistic, as of this past Spring (and taken from a number of sources including Gallup), the average percentage of LGBTQ Americans is in the neighborhood of 4.3%. Break that down into individual expressions of L-G-B-T-Q gender/sexuality, and the numbers, obviously, are much smaller. Taken together, 4.3% represents approximately between 10 and 11 million people. That’s a lot. Statistics have suggested that for many years the percentage has consistently been between 3.5% and 5% overall. But when compared to the 95%-plus of the people who are not gay, it’s not that much. However, when listening to NPR (and God bless them–I’m a regular listener) the inordinate amount of time devoted to the coverage of LGBTQ concerns and issues, it appears to me, is disproportionate to the actual number of LGBTQ persons. What seems ironic is the fact that almost every television sit-com, both major and internet networks, has a gay story line in it. I have often said that if an alien from outer space, someone with no prior knowledge of this planet, came here and tried to learn more about the behaviors of earth’s citizens, he or she would most likely conclude that half of the population is living in a gay relationship of some type. As part of the 95% of the non-gay population, I have to say that I feel somewhat hornswoggled (I think that this is an apt and appropriate word). It strikes me that the typical modus operandi of gay and pro-gay persons continues, in the propagandizing attempt to establish legitimacy and normalcy for gay lifestyles, to be all about obfuscating–playing fast and loose with the truth–with smoke and mirrors. I believe that the hope of the gay and pro-gay community is to overwhelm people with padded numbers such that people will throw up their hands and say, as I have heard some concede, “Well, I guess that ship has sailed. Might as well get on board with it.” I do not, have not, and will not.
Comment by Ellen Richardson on May 16, 2021 at 5:41 pm
“They” means more than one person. I always though that “trans” folk wanted to be the gender opposite to what they were born. In this case Bishop Roher would want to be “he”.
That is puzzling is it not.
The ministry should not be limited to men. Christ said as much in Scripture.
NIcea was political more than it was religious.
Comment by John Smith on May 17, 2021 at 7:09 am
Do we really expect a bishop to be historically and theologically literate? And even if they are it is secondary to claiming a “historic” victim status.
Comment by Pat Trammell on May 17, 2021 at 1:41 pm
You’ve outdone yourself, Mark. For once, I really don’t know what to say………
Comment by Brother Thom on May 18, 2021 at 5:39 am
Briefly, I’ll say this, if you so disagree with the Bible that you need to rewrite it to fit your narrative, then maybe you’re not a Christian at all. If you have so little faith in the word of God that you omit scripture, and sometimes entire books of the Bible, then maybe you’re not a Christian in the first place. If you believe Jesus came to “change the law,” rather than “fulfill the law,” then maybe you’re not a Christian.
Comment by SallyE on July 18, 2021 at 8:06 am
I watched her video, produced by Cosmopolitan. This person is in serious need of psychiatric help. She described her mastectomies and started to cry. She stated that she does not know what she wants her body to look like for the rest of her life. At best, she is confused and depressed. Her gender dysphoria was painful to observe. There was no explanation as to why she kept her feminine name yet wants to be referred to as they or him.
Meghan has no business being in a profession that requires her to counsel others and/or be responsible for overseeing several parishes. She advocates getting angry and loud when people push back against the LGBTQ agenda. It is shameful that her church has decided to use such a confused person to convince the rest of us that they are “woke”.
I will not refer to her as they/them. They/them is plural. Her DNA says Meghan is a she/her so that is what I am going with. Plus she calls herself Meghan.