It’s a question I’m not sure anyone expected to be wrestling with, ‘what makes a person black?’ because at one very basic level the answer seems obvious – the colour of your skin.

Yet as with the case of Rachel Dolezal, nothing is quite that straightforward. It seems irrelevant that she was very convincing for many years because the ‘truth’ is now out. Dolezal is not, was not and never will be black. She is white.

It didn’t take much to beg the question, if Dolezal is criticized for saying she’s black and she’s not, why is Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner praised for saying she’s a woman? What’s the difference?

Sean Davis at The Federalist blusters,

How can anyone with even the most tenuous grip on reality possibly argue that Jenner, who’s undergone zero surgery (not that that can change one’s chromosomes, which are entirely responsible for determining one’s sex), is not pretending to be a woman? How can you not see the glaring similarities between Jenner’s shtick and Dolezal’s? Nearly overnight, it would appear that the long-standing ideas of race as a social construct and gender as a biological construct have been flipped on their heads.

A little more calmly, Matt Hosier asks

If what one feels about oneself is the basis for gender identification, why should what one feels about oneself not be the basis for racial identification? Why should anyone have a problem if I tick the ‘Black, Caribbean’ box on a census form? They should check their trans-privilege and let me express myself as I want.

The answer, it seems, no problem at all – just don’t lie about it. Jonathan Capehart makes an attempt to explain the difference in an article in the Washington Post,

That last line, the one about Caitlyn not having any secrets is what separates her from Dolezal. “People who are transgender do not lie about their gender identity. Instead they acknowledge that the gender prescribed to them at birth does not match how they feel,” writer and gay rights advocate Danielle Moodie-Mills told me via e-mail. “Rachel Dolezal on the other hand is a white woman who lied about being black in order to elevate her professional standing as an Africana professor and activist.”

That may be as good as you’re going to get in terms of a defence (Matt Breunig takes a closer look at some of the responses). It seems to pass over the fact that at least in Jenner’s case, lying about it was very much the order of the day for large chunks of his 65 male years. The quote from Moodie-Mills also shows exactly how slippery the issue of identity is going to be in the future – because the centre of authority lies with your feelings.

This line of thinking seems to be that I can, in fact, be whatever I truly feel I am but I shouldn’t make up a backstory. What is being valued is a somewhat strange notion of authenticity. Which is why Dolezal gets slammed and Jenner gets prizes, as Moodie Mills bluntly puts it:

“Transgender people seek to live in their truth and have that honored,” she said. “Dolezal is nothing but a cultural carpetbagger living a lie.”

Their truth. Pilate’s question (Jn 18:38) has always been a good one and it continues to show its relevance.

At play are two very different anchors for the building of identity, two different roots of truth. The first anchor is the truth of the physical facts we are born with – skin-colour pigmentation, chromosomes, genitalia. Those things determine identity and that’s the way the world has organised itself from the beginning until now.

The other, newer anchor, as we have seen, is feelings. Your own sense of self. As Paul McHugh University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School explains,

That whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.

The whole article is well worth reading but his conclusion is spot on about the approach of the wider culture:

The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.

What is interesting here is how different cultural narratives are conflicting with each other. Tim Keller has identified five in the mdern western mindset.

1. The Identity Narrative – ‘be yourself’
2. The ‘Truth’ Narrative – self-authorizing truth and morality – ‘only I can determine right and wrong for me’
3. The Freedom Narrative – ‘I must be free to live my life and express myself how I want’
4. Science and Technology Narrative – ‘religion keeps you from all these good things that can help’
5. The History Narrative – ‘history/tradition is bad; new is good’

So what we see in the general case of transgenderism and in the case of Dolezal is 1-3 conflicting with 4. Interestingly, the religious would now find themselves seeking to align themselves in the ‘science’ camp – a ‘look at the chromosomes she’s a man’ kind of approach.

Don’t expect this to be simple or go away anytime soon, as McHugh says,

But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.

As a result Christian leaders are going to need to equip themselves in these areas both from a pastoral perspective and from an apologetic perspective. New books like this one from Mark Yarhouse will prove essential reading (this talk is a good intro).

Leaders will also need to have a firm grasp both of what is going on in the culture and how to respond with clear loving, helpful and Biblical guidance on identity in Christ, what it means to be made in the image of God and yes, what it means to be male and female. Unlike Pilate we cannot afford to wash our hands of the matter.

Photo by Kaptain Kobold