For too long, intersex individuals have been overlooked in Christian theological discussions. While many churches still struggle to acknowledge gender diversity, historical and biblical perspectives suggest that rigid binaries were never the only framework. A closer look at Scripture, Jewish tradition, and early Christian thought reveals a more complex and inclusive understanding of sex and gender—one that challenges us to embrace intersex people as a vital part of God’s creation.

1/ Beyond the Binary with the Bible
Christianity teaches that every person is created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), a truth that includes intersex individuals. The phrase “male and female He created them” is often misinterpreted as supporting a strict binary. However, in biblical literature, this type of phrase—called a merism—is a rhetorical device that represent the entirety of something by mentioning its opposing polarities or extremes. Just as “day and night” is a literary expression that includes dusk and dawn, the description of humans as “male and female” encompasses the full diversity of human existence. Jewish tradition recognized multiple sex and gender categories beyond male and female. Ancient rabbinic texts described at least eight different genders, including individuals with ambiguous or
changing sex characteristics. The Talmud even discusses androgynos (people with both male and female traits) and tumtum (people with unclear sex characteristics), affirming that human diversity was well understood long before modern medical and psychological frameworks emerged. Jesus himself recognized bodily diversity in Matthew 19:12 when he spoke of eunuchs—some born that way, some made that way by others, and some who chose a different path for faith. This passage challenges rigid gender norms and affirms that not all bodies fit traditional categories. Throughout His ministry, Jesus repeatedly centered the marginalised and rejected exclusionary interpretations of religious law.

2/ Intersex in Theology Today
Despite these rich theological foundations, Christian discussions about intersex people remain rare and often harmful. Some contemporary theologians even suggest that intersex people will be “restored” to a binary male or female identity in the hereafter. These perspectives erase intersex experiences and deny their place in God’s creation. Yet, a growing number of Christian scholars are challenging these harmful narratives. Megan DeFranza, a theologian and intersex woman, argues that God’s image is not confined to a binary understanding of sex characteristics. She critiques teachings that equate one’s sex characteristics with one’s vocation to love. She emphasises that intersex people deserve full recognition and dignity in both theology and church life. Susannah Cornwall, another leading theologian, highlights the spiritual harm caused when churches refuse to acknowledge intersex people as “first-person knowers”—those with the authority to speak about their own lives and experiences.

3/ True Inclusion Requires Agency
Intersex Christians have often been dismissed, misunderstood, or ignored within faith communities. In a 2022 article, Susannah Cornwall and co-authors highlight that even well-intended inclusion efforts can result in epistemic injustice—where intersex people are invited into discussions but denied true authority over their own narratives. Genuine inclusion requires churches to let go of control over the terms of the conversation.
This commitment implies:

Recognising theological and church-induced trauma, allowing individuals the space to step away while still offering opportunities for healing.

• Challenging sex and gender essentialism, ensuring intersex people are fully included in
  theological reflection.
• Affirming intersex persons without expectation, so they are not required to justify their
  existence or prove their faith.
  Meaningful inclusion is not achieved by simply “inviting in.” Instead, it calls for growing into
  allyship, critically examining one’s own expectations of marginalised people, and honouring their
  agency. Without this foundation, no inclusion practice can truly be transformative.

4/ Faith That Celebrates All Bodies
Psalm 139:14 reminds us: “I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” If we truly believe that all bodies are part of God’s intentional design, then intersex people must be fully embraced as beloved members of the body of Christ. Churches cannot continue to see intersex existence as an anomaly, a problem to be fixed, or a theological afterthought. Instead, we must recognise intersex people as gifts to honour, voices to uplift, and fellow believers with wisdom to share. In doing so, we move closer to the radical love and justice that Jesus preached—a faith that does not erase people but sees them as God sees them: good.

Christian respone to transgender and gender nonconforming humans: Eunuchs, and the 8 genders

If one is called to serve the outcast, the weird, the socially unacceptable, and powerless then there is no better mission field than youth ministry. Youth ministry is where you will experience the hard work of making space for powerless human beings and witness the near-impossible work of a still-developing person making sense of life.

Every time a person, theologically trained or not, opens the Bible looking for answers, they are entering into a negotiation with the text. Greek and Hebrew words do not often translate well into English or any other language either.

First and second century culture will not translate seamlessly into twenty-first century culture. There is scriptural evidence of both a masculine and feminine deity when referring to Adonai. All I’m offering is some ideas about scripture, Jewish tradition and trying to find a Christian response using the very few words that Jesus said about this subject. Genesis 1:1 “When God began to create heaven and earth.” This simple phrase is an example of a
merism. A merism is a literary device commonly used in scripture to represent the entirety of something by mentioning its opposing polarities or extremes. The scripture doesn’t mean that God begin to create only heaven and earth, but rather, God began to create heaven, earth, and everything between. In Genesis 1:27 “And God created the human in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.” God creates male and female at the same time. Both are made in God’s image. This merism suggests that biological sex is not a binary, but a spectrum. It also does not place one above the other in importance, but side by side.

The second creation account in Genesis 2 is a near complete rebuttal of Genesis 1, placing the male above the female and making the female’s actions the catalyst of sin. You can decide which account is “right”…

Do you put Genesis 1 over Genesis 2 and reinforce that the equality of gender and the spectrum of maleness and femaleness was created by God, in God’s image, and it was good enough to survive thousands of years to reach us today. It is good to remember that biological sex does not equal sexual orientation which does not equal
gender.

In scripture, is God male? Female? Non-binary? The short answer is, “yes.” The Jewish legal tradition used by teachers during the era of Second Temple Judaism identify up to eight genders, according to the work of Professor Sarra Lev of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, PA. According to her work, the genders in question are:

zakhar – Male – “The one with phallus”
aylonit hamah – assigned female at birth, naturally develops male characteristics
aylonit adam – assigned female at birth, develops male characteristics through human intervention
saris hamah – assigned male at birth, naturally develops female characteristics
saris adam – assigned male at birth, develops female characteristics through human intervention
androgynos – both male and female
tumtum – one whose biology is unclear
nekevah – Female – “The one with the hole”

Jewish culture wrestled with and in some ways addressed the tension caused by TGNC (transgender or gender non-conforming) individuals. In Bikkurim 4:1 of the Talmud, we find: “An androgynos, who present both male and female physical traits, is in some ways like men and in some ways like women. In some ways, they are like both men and women and in other ways, like neither men nor women.” (3) Rabbi David Meyer writes about Jewish Kabbalah, and contends that it can be said that Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob, was conceived with the soul of a man. Isaac was ensouled as a woman, but born a man so he could carry forward the family covenant with God.

(4) How? Through Gilgul ha-neshamot, or the “cycling of souls,” a form of reincarnation through which the soul of a male will take a female body and vice-versa. (5) These examples describe all describe the Jewish relationship with gender fluidity through the mechanisms of scripture and tradition. TGNC (transgender or gender non-conforming) people were common, there was enough presence to be recognized in the writings. Clues in scripture and commentary help us understand that even the exemplary patriarchs like Isaac and Jacob were not exclusively stereotypical “man’s men.” Words by Jesus in Matthew 19, “For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” are cultural signposts within a larger conversation about marriage.

The eunuch “born thus from their mother’s womb” could be one who was unable to produce children because of transexual status or a birth defect. The eunuch “made eunuch by men” could be one who was castrated or assigned to an office which demanded the man not produce offspring. (6) Those who “have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” implied a sexual orientation, gender role, or some other reason for a person not to reproduce. The word we know as eunuch refers mostly to the lack of capacity for reproduction rather than the absence of reproductive organs.

What is Jesus’ directive to his disciples regarding the various “born, made, or chosen” eunuchs? Jesus reasons a middle way with the final word of accepting people as they are. Would not the truly conservative, orthodox, and Christian response to TGNC humans be to proclaim a message of radical inclusion, to remove all the labels and judgment, and adopt an old social construct where humanity can be seen as God sees us: good?

Christian Inclusive Theology

Christian theology is rooted in the belief that every human is created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), a truth that includes intersex individuals. As Tarja already pointed out, the phrase “male and female He created them” is a merism, a rhetorical device (or figure of speech) in which a combination of two contrasting part of he whole refer to the whole. Just as heaven and earth represent all of creation, “male and female” encompasses the diverse ways God’s image is reflected in humanity. The Bible presents eunuchs as literal castrated men, royal officials, people born with bodily differences, voluntary celibates, and marginalized individuals whom God ultimately includes in His plan. The concept of eunuchs in Scripture challenges rigid gender and reproductive norms and serves as a owerful argument for the inclusion of intersex and gender-diverse individuals in faith communities. Jesus affirmed bodily diversity when He spoke of eunuchs “born that way” (Matthew 19:12), acknowledging those who, like intersex people today, exist outside strict gender norms. His ministry consistently uplifted the marginalized, calling for radical inclusion and respect for God’s creation. Romans 9:20 warns against questioning God’s design, urging us to accept people as He made them.

“Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” Christianity is, at its core, a faith of love and justice, grounded in Jesus’ commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). This love is not conditional; it embraces all people as they are, including intersex individuals. Galatians 3:28 affirms that in Christ, there is no division based on gender or status, for all are one in Him. Intersex individuals, like all human beings, deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and full inclusion in the body of Christ. When we exclude or attempt to “fix” those who do not fit societal norms, we violate the very essence of Christian love – radical acceptance and affirmation of every person as a beloved child of God.

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Christianity is also a faith that champions human rights, aligning with Jesus’ call to uplift the marginalized. Throughout His ministry, Christ stood against injustice, defending the dignity of those society rejected—the sick, the poor, and the outcast (Luke 4:18). If we, as followers of Christ, truly believe in defending the least among us, then intersex individuals must be fully embraced as equal members of God’s kingdom. To deny them rights, medical autonomy, or inclusion in faith communities contradicts both the Gospel’s call to love and the fundamental Christian belief in human dignity. True faith does not erase people—it protects, uplifts, and celebrates them as God’s creation.

The story of Job teaches that God’s ways are beyond human understanding. When Job’s friends tried to explain his suffering with simplistic reasoning, God rebuked them, saying: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). Just as Job’s suffering was not a mistake but part of a larger mystery, intersex individuals are not errors, but part of God’s intentional creation. Human beings are limited in their ability to judge what God is doing in someone else’s life, and attempting to “correct” what we do not fully understand is an act of arrogance, not faith. Instead, we are called to trust that God’s creation, in all its diversity, is purposeful and good.

This idea is echoed in John 21:22, when Peter asked Jesus about another disciple’s fate, and Jesus replied: “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You must follow me.” This response reminds us that God’s work in each person’s life is unique and not for others to question or control. Just as Peter was told to focus on his own faith rather than someone else’s journey, Christians are called to accept intersex individuals as they are, without assuming we know what God is doing in their lives. Faith means trusting that God’s wisdom is greater than human understanding, and true Christian humility demands that we respect the mystery of His creation.

Psalm 139:13-14 reminds us that all bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made, meaning intersex people are not anomalies but part of God’s intentional design. To reject or “correct” their existence is to reject the diversity that God declared good. The church must follow Christ’s example by embracing intersex individuals fully, not as problems to fix, but as gifts to honor. Affirming their dignity is not just an act of justice but an act of faithfulness to God’s creation and Christ’s love.

“But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”

Intersex Inclusive Theology

Theology is a discourse about God and the world in relation to God. ex: God is relational, God is Father, Son and Spirit etc.

Christian theology builds on the Bible, meaning the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the more recent accounts of Jesus’s life and what happened afterwards (New Testament).

The Bible never addresses LGBTI+ existence as we currently know it. The way we understand being queer, intersex, trans etc… draws from modern medicine, philosophy, psychology and political science. Despite the fact that the categories we currently identify with did not exist, sex and gender diversity, as being part of the human experience, also existed in Jewish, Roman and Greek antiquity.

Early Jewish rabbinic literature accounted for intersex and gender non-conforming identities, acknowledging that:

• some people have ambiguous gender and/or sex characteristics (tumtum)
• some people possess characteristics of both female and male types
• sex and gender characteristics can evolve over the course of a lifetime, whether spontaneously or through surgery, accidents, deliberate efforts to be “feminised”…

“Tumtum” was its own gender role, with its own obligations. Often, when the law was stricter towards men than women, they are treated as men, when the law was more demanding towards women, they are treated as women.

The Jewish tradition is full of examples of humans, thousands of centuries before us, trying to combine a normative set of laws that rely on and enforce gender roles, with the recognition of the complexity and diversity of actual human bodies and lives.

The early Christian tradition keenly debated Adam’s gender. The first human in the story of Genesis, some of them thought, had been created hermaphrodite.

We also know of controversies, attributing intersex variations to failures, monstrosity, or sin. Augustine of Hippo (5th century) condemned these claims as heretical. He argued that God wisely and knowingly designed each person as their child – making any insult to the creatures an insult to their creator. Augustine went as far as to write that humans cannot know God’s creation before having explored it, and should be open to learning and marveling about it.

In the late Middle Ages, the Western Christian tradition re-invested the notion of hermaphroditism. At that time, Christian women were still forbidden to read the Bible or pray by themselves, let alone study theology or speak publicly; this was in large part due to beliefs in their bodily inferiority, and susceptibility to evil possession. But, as mysticism was becoming more common, several women claimed to have experienced visions of a feminine Christ; sometimes picturing him as a mother – his side wound on the cross, being interpreted as a vulva when giving birth.

These women used gender non-conforming imagery, as well as their alleged “direct, irrational, physical” relation to the supernatural, to promote their own theology and self-actualise within a very misogynist environment. This resulted in paintings of Jesus with breasts, being fully God and fully human, but also fully man and fully woman, and a renewed appreciation for bodily experiences of the divine. Following the Protestant Reformation however, a more stringent gender hierarchy and church order was implemented across Europe.

Today, there has been little reflection on intersex inclusion by Christian theologians, policymakers and pastoral carers. It’s a topic that is under-discussed:

• total absence of discussion points to the invisibility of intersex Christians
• when discussions happen, they tend to further a negative view: intersex has been portrayed as illness (Christian Institute, 2004), deformity (Colson, 1996), distortion of God-ordained creational norms (Hollinger, 2009).

Discussion of intersex inclusion within Christian theology is made more difficult in the context of “culture wars” and “gender ideology” narratives. Anti-queer theologians accuse LGBT+ activists of associating with intersex people as a way to promote their “gender agenda”.

These theologians can still promote a compassionate attitude towards intersex people. They may for instance claim that, because of original sin, no body is perfect, and it is okay to live as an intersex person – so long as intersex people commit to a binary gender identity and to heterosexuality before they get married and have sex. They may also claim that intersex people will have their bodies “restored” at the resurrection, and be made “man or woman” for the rest of their after-life.

This is where we come in. Queer and inclusive theology, on the contrary, affirms the existence of people outside of the sex and gender binary, in this life as well as in the next. They posit that while ambiguous sexual characteristics are not dangerous, or bad in any way, ambiguous theologies are dangerous – and bad, in many ways.

Two main authors can be trusted with this: British Theology Professor Susannah Corwall (she/her), and US American theologian and sex therapist Megan DeFranza (she/her). Megan DeFranza published Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God, in 2015. She is out as an intersex woman, and promotes not only a Christian counter-narrative regarding intersex characteristics, but also healing for those hurt by religious discourses on sexuality, gender and sex.

In her book, she argues that reality is messy, and truth is more shades of grey than black and white. As an intersex theologian, she starts from the complexity of lived experience, to re-imagine a biblically orthodox view of humanity. It is a good educational, reassuring book for Christian (including Evangelical and Catholic) intersex people and their relatives. DeFranza argues that Christian churches need to make room for intersex people and learn from their insights, alongside dyadic people.

She however openly critiques Christian theologies that advocate for gender essentialism – using similar arguments as the medieval mystics. Evangelical and Catholic “theology of the body”, insisting on the different essence of men and women, makes it impossible for women to relate to Jesus – a man. She writes: “Presenting not only Jesus’ body but also his soul as radically, ontologically different from the bodies and souls of women puts Jesus’ humanity beyond the reach of over half the human race.”

She further argues that, defining love as the vocation of the man or the woman to procreate within a heterosexual marriage (a vocation that is enshrined in the form of one’s genitalia), implies that it is impossible for intersex people to love and be loved. Christian theologians have gradually equated the image of God with the heterosexual, cis and dyadic couple. Sexuality between spouses is supposed to reflect the love of God, and be a necessary condition for the continuation of the human bond to God. On the contrary, DeFranza says, the image of God is reflected outside the binary model of spousal sexuality: in the wider community of extended family, neighborhood, church, etc. She concludes that she wants intersex related topics to be discussed seriously and outside the context of controversies over queerness – appearing to disengage from the LGBTI+ movement. Susannah Corwall, on the other hand, has researched the topic and keeps publishing new books. She engages with intersex Christians’ experiences or accounts of interactions between their intersex and Christian identities, and renewing Christian theology based on the insights of intersex people. She notes that intersex Christians share common experiences:

• being met with ignorance
• believing that more discussion and acknowledgement in church and society would lessen stigmatisation
• some of them find support in the Bible (which goes against the theology according to which the Bible unambiguously forbids any sex and gender variations)
• most of them believe that God created them intersex
• most of them changed denominations at least once in their life, often not because of discrimination directly to them but rather because of anti-queer narratives.
• many report that Christians who consider homosexuality illegitimate are unlikely to deal sensitively with people who have unusual gender expressions or atypical sex-gender configurations (which goes against DeFranza’s stance that we can decouple LGBT and I rights)
• some report that they feel that it’s easier to be accepted as an intersex Christian if you’re cis and straight.
• most of them are Christians because of a personal relation to God, and affirming interpersonal connections within their faith community, rather than the adherence to a specific church
• several tend to present their own experience as a way to prove that intersex does not equal disaster

I do recommend her books, for a comprehensive analysis of the theological implications of physical intersex variations and their medical “treatment”. 1/ Sex and Uncertainty in the Body of Christ Intersex Conditions and Christian Theology, 2010, 2/ Intersex, Theology, and the Bible, Troubling Bodies in Church, Text, and Society, 2015.

I want to conclude with her 2022 article on epistemic injustice. She explores the trauma caused to trans and intersex people, by theological and church discourses which do not recognise them the autonomy and legitimacy to be “first-person knowers”. Not being able to speak for oneself, being dismissed as an unreliable source of knowledge about one’s lived experience, induces trauma. This is particularly ironic, considering that surgeries have been forced on intersex people as a way to prevent psychosocial trauma.

She argues that communities of faith may, to a certain extent, be therapeutic sites for trans and intersex people who have been traumatised by such epistemic violence. However, in the experience of many trans and intersex Christians, these communities can reactivate this trauma; even when aiming to be inclusive. Retraumatisation happens when communities fail to acknowledge that the very fact that a discussion about trans or intersex existence is taking place in a church setting may be triggering.

Ex: “Inviting someone in” to discuss their experience, while still retaining the power to set the terms of the conversation, or police participants’ tone, is epistemic violence.
Ex: Atoning for past inadequate responses to trans and intersex existence, while trans and intersex people are still enduring the consequences of these responses, carries some epistemic violence.
Ex: The church’s desire for unity, ignoring the views of all the people who needed to leave it or distance themselves, is epistemic violence.

Quote: “A tendency to “invite in” people from “outside” to speak as “experts” on their experiences can, even while well-intended, expose them to scrutiny and retraumatization which institutions have not always been equipped (or for which they have not always taken responsibility) to help them manage.”

Inclusion, then, relies on the person “invited in” being able to handle a potentially adverse situation. The problem is, when they cannot handle these situations, they are assumed to be responsible for their own (lack of) resilience, when in fact it is the church setting that lacks resilience. → Inversion of responsibility.

Inclusion can be made safer by:

• raising awareness on theology and church induced trauma, and its long lasting consequences
• providing space for healing
  1/ allowing trauma to be expressed and “held”, in liturgy
  2/ recognising past violence and working to improve Christian responses (preferably done by other
  people and in another setting as that of the harm)
• offering opportunities for restoring trust and connection, while affirming the person’s agency to walk away
• managing the expectations of dyadic, cis and straight Christians, ensuring that they do not expect people with intersex characteristics or any queer people to justify their existence. “The capacity of sex- and gender-diverse people to know God and know themselves is no more inherently flawed or limited than that of those whose sex and gender go unremarked.”

So intersex Christians may as well speak about faith and God, instead of defending their right to speak.