#because i do consider myself genderqueer alongside being a man

[amurder-ofcrows]

i’m stealth in college so no one besides the accessibility office knows i’m a trans man, like the beard and buzzcut and voice and the other ways my body has been changed by 5 years on T and top surgery make people just think that i’m a “cis” man, and i’m friends with these two girls in my quantitative reasoning class and i complimented one of their outfits and made a joke about how i would probably wear it if i didn’t wanna deal with people’s bullshit and she goes “oh you know it’s okay for guys to explore their gender? you don’t have to fit into a mold society put you in based on being born male” and i’m like thanks for the sentiment and i do need to remember this as a trans man who is still exploring his fashion sense, but trust me when i say I KNOW so like ill just be over here internally screaming (but hey at least i know she’s cool about it if i did come out)

[genderqueerdykes]

your post makes no sense? all of the identities that you named are NOT cis men??? and quite frankly it feels transphobic for you to consider them that

i'm a trans woman so i'm part of the group i'm commenting on. you do realize that a bigender trans woman who identifies as a trans woman and a cis man is still partially a cis man and that's not transphobic and it doesn't invalidate their trans womanhood, right? you do realize that a transfemme cis man is still a cis man and that doesn't invalidate their femmehood, right? you do realize a transfemme genderfluid person who identifies as a cis man is still partially a cis man and it doesn't invalidate their other genders, right? being bigender doesn't completely erase 1/2 of the identity. being a woman doesn't cancel out being a man. are you seriously saying that because that person has a queer identity means that it totally erases the fact that they are literally also identifying in plain english that they are also a cis man?

immersing yourself in the transfeminine community will help with this drastically. i don't know you or your history, but most of my IRL friends are transfeminine, myself included. there are many of my transfem friends who never want to be considered a man, and that's perfectly fine. however, i would say a good 1/3rd of the trans women i've met have also still identified as a cis gay man on some level. without shame, without it taking away their womanhood. existing alongside each other; parallel. if you meet and befriend a good number of transfeminine people you will find out that a lot of transfems identify as cis men and trans women at the same time. that's not new. many trans women identify as cis gay men and trans women at the same time. like, it's an extremely common thing. bigender means having two genders- one is trans woman, the other is cis man for people who identify this way. this person is a trans woman, a cis man, and a bigender person.

this doesn't make that person a bigender person, and a trans woman only. why do you think it's okay to completely erase that person's male identity? why do you think it's okay to completely ignore someone's manhood for the sake of their other identity? cis manhood isn't "icky". it doesn't get cancelled out by queerness. them partially being a cis man does not invalidate their trans womanhood. wake the fuck up, you're being transmisogynstic as hell right now and it's embarrassing.

a question you must ask yourself: why are you insinuating that it is transphobic to refer to someone correctly? my post specifically referred to trans women who also identify as cis men in their own words. why, in your mind, is this a bad thing? you MUST ask yourself why it's "transphobic" to acknowledge these identities and refer to these individuals correctly. you must ask yourself why you're putting your comfort before someone else's representation. there are transfemme cis men. there are transfeminine genderfluid people who identify as cis men when they are men. there are non binary cis men. why do you think that cis men cannot be queer, or trans? why are you assuming that a trans woman being a cis man at the same time is transphobic? why

this reeks of "woman cannot be man at the same time or else woman get cancelled out"

what is confusing about trans women having multiple genders? what's wrong with a bigender, multigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, genderfuck, gender non conforming, and/or intersex trans woman having a male identity that's also cis? what's wrong with that? how does that erase or "conflict" with the rest of their identity in any capacity?

there are bigender trans men who are cis women and trans men at the same time. there are bigender trans women who are cis men and trans women at the time. literally how does that not make sense. please explain to me how it doesn't make sense. every single person who has told me i'm not making sense hasn't told me why. please explain to me why you proudly and loudly saying that bi/multigender trans women don't exist is okay, but me fighting for people to understand that they do is transphobic.

stop virtue signalling and shoot the cop in your mind dead. in your attempt to look like a hero and earn brownie points all you did was show that you literally don't understand multigender, genderqueer, non binary, and other gender vast experiences. trans women won't magically like you more now because you decided to show everyone that you think it's transphobic to call someone who overtly in their own words identifies as a cis man, a cis man.

cis men aren't the devil. calm down and stop freaking the hell out over the fact that you can in fact be a cis man and a trans woman at the same time. the sun will still rise. the world will keep turning. it's not transphobic to refer to someone by the terms they ask you to use. get over yourself on this one, anon. that's your cross to bear: you are the transphobe. do yourself a favor and look into multigenderism before you decide to comment on trans theory again

you thought yourself into a corner and you can't find your way out.

[dragynkeep]

I think he saw your posts.

Why hasn't he blocked you yet?

oh he has me blocked, i guess he just can't take responsibility for himself. however big tw for transphobia / nbphobia, ableism, victim blaming & rape mention because actually looking at the post is a major yikes.

i don't care that you made an anti rwde post, crimson. i care that yet again you're using ableist terms & phrases, once again proving that alongside your "apology" for doing so was utterly conditional but that you also just. can't take responsibility for your own actions. no one is forcing you to go into the rwde tag or see our "cold takes", you need to manage your social media consumption better. no one is going to do it for you.

but also by reblogging a post dripping with radfem rhetoric that directly impacts those with bpd, especially genderqueer people with bpd, you've shown that so long as the views are right, you will platform terfs. & considering that you couldn't even believe that i was the target of the transphobic bigotry from the confessions blog you reblogged & not my trans brother, & you accused me of co-opting that when it was never directed at him in the first place, you need to realize how harmful your words & assumptions can be. you need to stop doubling down when you're proven wrong.

people like me are not why borderlines, not "bpd", get so much hatred. we're hated because neurotypicals & non cluster b neurodivergents think that we're fundamentally "non human" because of the way our disorders exhibit. there's multiple instances of just how these attitudes harm us & kill us, we're killed as a result of this ableism.

i haven't blamed anything on my bpd, i've actually been quiet about my mental health diagnosis outside of instances where i felt it helpful or supportive. you're the one pulling the "i have a black friend" in regards to your brother, friend & mother. i am not them. if you've met someone with bpd, you've met one person with bpd. we are not all the same & it's abhorrant you would use this as an opportunity to further stigmatize those with bpd after being told that the post you reblogged from a terf was from a neurotypical transphobic woman who exploited our experiences for money. you can't divorce the terf aspect from your "support" for the ableism, they're entwined.

also "stick your head in an oven" is certainly something to say to a jewish person but i'm definitely not going to assume any antisemitism & just ascribe it to the far more likely instance of you telling me to go kill myself. thank you for the suggestion but i'm fine.

this one was almost kind of funny because i was waiting for a self proclaimed rwby fan to use the instance of me having to flee my house in the middle of the night to escape a situation of domestic violence from the man who was supposed to love & raise me. the man who's same abuse was part of causing my bpd. right now i am homeless because that same bpd, alongside the physical disability i have that prevents me from moving for long periods of time, is the reason i don't "have a job."

you would think that someone who "had to relearn how to walk" would have more sympathy in this type of situation but once again you are proving that just because you are trans & disabled, does not mean that you cannot perpetuate transphobia or ableism. these screenshots & your vile words show that.

it's also hilarious that all 11 notes on your post are further comments of these vile words. it's all you, no one else wants to pay witness to this downward spiral of disgusting bigotry & hatred.

thank you for being inclusive in your unhinged tirade of insults, it really warms my heart after you reblog ableism from terfs against borderlines & prove that your "apology" a few weeks back was completely spineless.

i'm not engaging in your attempts to bring up any "rape smut" i have written, i implore you to see beyond whatever bubble you've trapped yourself in & actually read some literature on how these kinks occur & just how sex, gender & trauma play into it.

your brain damage does not allow you to perpetuate ableism against other disabled people; that's not how power reclamation works. this is not 'pc shit', these are legitimately harmful views you're espousing because you hate me that much, you think you're validated in doing this because i'm a "bad person." because i "deserve it." which unfortunately is the same technique of invalidation & dehumanization that plenty of bigots use, & will use against you.

i'm not angry with you, or pissed off. i was when all of this started weeks back & you invalidated the transphobia i faced, when you called into question my status as a rape survivor & when you refused to take any accountability for your ugly words.

now i just want you to find some peace & learn coping mechanisms that allow you not to blow up & harm other marginalized people whenever they bring up something harmful that you've done. all of this came from one ask that pointed out that you had reblogged harmful rhetoric from terfs, & all of this hatred came from it. what if i was in a worse place, like i was a week ago? what if i actually had killed myself? would you be able to live with that?

i don't think so either. do better.

[irisbleufic]

hi, i hope this is okay to ask! I know you have an extensive cast of trans and intersex OCs in your good omens fic, who I love, but I was wondering if you’ve ever considered writing Aziraphale and Crowley as living a more explicitly trans experience in your fic? I know you’ve written meta on the subject, but I haven’t seen it in your published fic. Or other canon characters! thanks for all your work in this fandom and I hope you’re having a good day.

My answer to this might be slightly disorganized, as I’ve been thinking it over from a number of angles since you sent it many hours ago.  Your primary concern seems to be that I haven’t written any of the main canon characters in Good Omens as what you consider to be “explicitly” trans.  I’m going to look at CoT as a primary example, since that’s the one I’ve worked on consistently for years, which also holds quite a large proportion of my overall GO-fic wordcount.

My original-character version of Raphael inhabits an intersex-variant human body; he’s genderfluid as far as his expression via clothing and adornment from day to day, but still prefers he/him/his pronouns.  I feel very strongly about depicting nonbinary and genderqueer characters who still prefer masculine pronouns, as I feel like that’s been relegated to the sidelines a lot of the time in spite of the number of people I know for whom being nonbinary and preferring he/him/his is a reality (this shows very strongly in my Gotham fanfiction, too).  Madame Tracy’s niece, Petula, who never appears onscreen, but who is referenced quite a number of times in conversation is explicitly shown, in my text, to be trans.  There’s also my original-character version of Asmodai, who in his ethereal form goes by he/him/his, but inhabits a human body and uses she/her/hers pronouns to execute a particular directive on earth.  I started writing this work before I understood just how deep the rabbit-hole of my own queerness went; namely, I knew I was bi (pan, I’m never sure which label I most prefer) in my early twenties and that something unusual had been up with my biological-sex related bodily experience since forever, but I did not yet know I was intersex or understand that my unease with being called a woman had everything to do with being nonbinary/neutrois.  So, the depiction of main cast in Good Omens was not, at the time, a priority due to limited experience in the world and limited self-understanding.  I felt safer executing representation in the form of OCs and canon side-characters, to test the water.

When it comes to main-cast characters in some of my other fandoms, though, things written in, let’s say, the past 7 - 10 years?  I’ve written plenty of them as intersex, nonbinary, and trans (and various intersections of those identities).  My Great Gatsby and Gotham fic are the best examples I can point to off the top of my head.  My Pacific Rim fic, to an extent, is the best place to find they/them/their-preferring nonbinary characters, although a lot of them are also OCs and secondary cast.  This is because I was writing PR fic in a painful transitional period where I finally knew everything about myself, but was with an emotionally abusive who didn’t want me to be open about those things.  From about 2013-2015, I was desperately working it into my PR fic in any way I could.  Said partner tended to read my fic even though they weren’t in fandom; I realize now how intensely monitored I was, how deep the unspoken threats ran.

Now, I’m going to switch back to the matter of Aziraphale and Crowley in the novel, and the essay I co-wrote with @trans-aziraphale.  As the text presents them, and as I have always understood it, they have cultivated their queer masculine identities (whether the authors intended it or not) with as much care as any trans-masculine human I know.  While I’m not undergoing any kind of medically-assisted transition beyond having had top surgery, I am a more strongly trans-masculine leaning nonbinary individual (even though I still tolerate she/her/hers pronouns alongside my preferred they/them/theirs; this is complicated, and it applies mostly to the people who met me when she/her/hers were still the pronouns I predominantly used, or have known me since birth).  I’m speaking from some lived experience in addition to the way the text leads me to read it; I think it’s important to have that in the equation.

Depending on how you look at it within the fictional framework of Good Omens, gender is either a) not innate to angels and demons, or b) angels and demons do have gender, but it’s inexpressible in human terms.  When an ethereal creature (henceforth both angels and demons will be referred to this way) inhabits a human body, we can assume they don’t generally identify with it deeply, or even prefer to express a human gender while they’re at it.  Aziraphale and Crowley, as the essay covers in more depth, break every one of these norms.  They actively prefer being man-shaped; they do nothing to disabuse humans of the notion that they’re a) queer and b) together, at every turn in the text where it becomes an issue (and the answer to that is “many times”).

If it’s bodily configuration, so to speak, that you’re most concerned about, I’m going to touch on that for a second, too.  The way I handle scenes involving physical with them has always been somewhat a step apart from how I handle intimacy between humans, and my readers over the years have consistently remarked upon this.  Regardless what genitalia or other biological-sex characteristics their bodies have, they are navigating a kind of attraction and intimacy that does not come instinctively to their kind.  If I were to give one or both of them genitalia/characteristics different from the ones they have in my stories, it would make very little difference to the way I handle their experience of intimacy.  It’s alien and wonderful and strange, and far more about the emotional closeness amplified and cultivated by the act.

For me, their experience is already trans, and trans enough, even if it’s a fictional variety of transness.  There is nothing I could possibly do to make their experience more explicitly what it already is.  Might I have chosen to put them in differently-configured bodies if I had known myself as gender-nonconforming and intersex at an earlier date?  Will I ever write them in differently-configured bodies in future?  Maybe, but what does it matter now?  My perception of them is set, and I know them well, and I love them as they are.  What is literature for, if not to reflect our hard-won realities in terms of the fantastical?

[queer-buccaneers]

Gender piracy

my icon is inspired by an idea i’ve seen lots of lil references to scattered about the internet. ‘gender pirate’ is a term that gets mentioned alongside genderqueer sometimes, with hints of a definition here and there. here’s my attempt at stringing it all together into a fuller definition!

if going ‘stealth’ is for ninjas, pirates are the exact opposite. they are a flavor of genderqueer which is about being aggressively, loudly, visibly queer. gender pirates take what they like from the existing ideas of gender around them and weave it into something flashy and dangerous. they try to disrupt the average person’s ideas of gender normalcy by appearing charming and menacing, multifaceted and single-minded. gender piracy is as much an action as it is a presentation as it is an identity. it is both hyper performative and incredibly authentic. these people are the the foppish highwaymen, the dapper gangsters, the daring corsairs. you don’t have to incorporate a nautical aesthetic to be a gender pirate, but it helps!

i consider myself a gender pirate because being visibly gender-nonconforming is very important to my sense of self. i don’t care about being read as a man or a woman, but i do care about people thinking i’m cis - the thought of that makes me really dysphoric!

and yes, i do relate heavily to the nautical aesthetic ;) but that part is not mandatory! the aesthetic associated with this label (if you want to associate any aesthetic with it at all!) is inspired by all kinds of swashbucklers.

[englishchinesetranslations]

“Wrong theology in this area has been bound up with wrong action, giving legitimation for Christian support for persecution and discrimination of Jewish communities and eroding the recognition of Jewish people as neighbours whom Christians are bound to love … Christian communities may wish to consider whether there could be suitable opportunities in their public worship to focus and express repentance for Christian involvement in fostering antisemitism.”

“God’s Unfailing Word,” Church of England Faith and Order Commission , 2019

If it can be said that Europeans are today largely blind to Jewish aggressions, then Christians are among those fumbling around in deepest darkness. Historian Jonas Alexis once remarked that, contrary to older Christian anger at depictions of Jesus and Christianity in the Talmud, no such reactions are evident in relation to modern the Jewish comedy in which “Jesus, Christians and the cross are routinely mocked, even obscenely treated.”[1]

Jewish aggression against Christianity is, of course, nothing new. In the fifth century, edicts had to be pronounced banning Jews from burning and desecrating crosses, and Socrates Scholasticus reported in Historia Ecclesiastica that Jews had taken a Christian boy during Purim and crucified him.[2] In his Princeton-published Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (2006), Elliott Horowitz pointed out multiple cases of Jews urinating on, and otherwise exposing their genitals to, crosses from 12th-century Germany and 13th-century England.[3] Even today, Daniel Rossing, a former advisor on Christian affairs to Israel’s religious Affairs Ministry, has commented on anti-Christian violence in Israel, which peaks during Purim. “I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday,” he says. And yet, while Christians are spat upon and assaulted in Israel, and mocked and obscenely treated in the Diaspora, the majority of Christians remain among the most guilt-ridden and philosemitic of Europeans, applauding Zionist wars that kill their sons, and lauding a people that has done more than any other to overturn traditional Christian moral values. It is one of the most glaring contradictions in this age of contradictions.

The latest chapter in this sorry state of affairs is that the Church of England has, in its latest official treatise, decided to announce formal repentance to the Jews for centuries of putative injustices, as well as the Church’s unconditional adoption of Zionism. The Guardian explains:

Christians must repent for centuries of antisemitism which ultimately led to the Holocaust, the Church of England has said in a document that seeks to promote a new Christian-Jewish relationship. … The document, God’s Unfailing Word, is the first authoritative statement by the C of E on the part played by Christians in the stereotyping and persecution of Jews. Attitudes towards Judaism over centuries had provided a “fertile seed-bed for murderous antisemitism”, it said. Theological teachings had helped spread antisemitism, and Anglicans and other Christians must not only repent for the “sins of the past” but actively challenge such attitudes or stereotypes.

I must confess to an overwhelming fatigue when reading statements like this. They blend a profound historical ignorance with the most septic obsequiousness. The first instinct is simply to protest, and then to try to provide a litany of factual correctives. But I have carried out this Sisyphean task so many times, and in so many prior articles. I now find myself asking only why we should even offer explanations or responses to such accusations as “the part played by Christians in the stereotyping and persecution of Jews.” We owe nothing to the Jews. Any Christian intellectually and morally weak enough to be convinced that he does, probably isn’t worth the effort of convincing otherwise.

But how is it that yet another major Western institution has collapsed into White Guilt, in the process rendering itself pathetically pliable to Jewish manipulations? Having read God’s Unfailing Word, I argue that total Jewish dominance in the academic production of histories of the Jews and anti-Semitism has played a major role in shifting opinion in philosemitic directions. This has been amplified by Jewish activity in so-called “interfaith” dialogue, which has been ongoing internationally for over a century and has served Jewish interests exclusively while undermining Christian theology, especially those elements that made Christianity beneficial to Europeans in the past. This poisonous combination possesses lethal power because the Church of England is already in its death throes.

The Diseased Church

The publication of God’s Unfailing Word is reflective of the Church of England’s already-established position as the compliant lapdog of a GloboHomo master. The Church of England is one of the most homosexual-friendly denominations on Earth, going so far as to allow “gay clergy” to live with their partners in secular “civil partnerships.” In February 2018, the Church of England’s Education Office even published a policy supporting degenerate sex education among children which includes the statement that “Pupils should be taught that humans express their sexuality differently and that there is diversity in sexual desire.” Newcastle’s Anglican cathedral attracted attention in June, when it was revealed the church would host a weekend-long LGBT festival that included a panel discussion on “Queering the Church.” One of the four panelists was a Church of England curate who identifies as ‘non-binary genderqueer transgender.’ This is a church in the grip of terminal disease, and its policy on LGBT issues is unlikely to change the downward trajectory of its attendance, which has declined 1 percent/year in recent decades.

At the heart of this disease is the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England, Justin Welby, a man who looks like ten minutes of manual labor would actually kill him. He is the definition of all that is wrong in modern Man. Setting aside his uninspiring physical presence, Welby is a literal bastard, his mother Jane Portal having cuckolded her husband, the alcoholic Jew Gavin Welby (born Bernard Weiler) with her boss, Sir Anthony Montague Browne. The result of these chaotic origins is that Archbishop Welby/Weiler/Browne has fled entirely from any sense of meaningful identity, asserting in 2016: “I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes.” If Welby limited himself to personal genetic oblivion there might not be a problem. A problem does, however, emerge, when Welby uses his position and influence to attack those who do pursue their interests. In 2016, when Nigel Farage told the press that sex attacks by migrants were “the nuclear bomb” of the EU referendum, Welby/Weiler/Browne told MPs in the home affairs select committee that he “utterly condemned” Farage for an “inexcusable pandering to people’s worries and prejudices, that is giving legitimization to racism.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, Welby/Weiler/Browne, who has confessed to struggling with his mental health, appears to have an almost Freudian desire to replace the Jewish father he thought he had with the current Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis. Welby/Weiler/Browne has taken to accompanying Mirvis on numerous excursions, echoing the Rabbi’s sentiments on almost every subject, and even arranging for Mirvis to provide the Afterword for God’s Unfailing Word. In his own Foreword to the same document, Welby/Weiler/Browne (one might call him Welby/Weiler/Browne/Mirvis) is glowing in his praise of Mirvis, and provides a delusional and ignorant elaboration of the history of Jewish-Christian relations:

In simple terms, the Church is being less than its true self when it refuses the gift of Christian–Jewish encounter. … Given the kindness, wisdom and scholarship of the Chief Rabbi, to count him among my friends is one of my greatest privileges. … Too often in history the Church has been responsible for and colluded in antisemitism — and the fact that antisemitic language and attacks are on the rise across the UK and Europe means we cannot be complacent. I reflected on this as I stood alongside other Christian leaders in ankle-deep snow within the camp of Birkenau in 2016, amid the ruins of the gas chambers. … The Chief Rabbi has opened, with characteristic honesty and affection, a challenge upon which we must reflect. We cannot do that reflection honestly until we have felt the cruelty of our history.

Such sickly musings are nothing new. In 2016, the Guardian reported:

The archbishop said Britain had a “shameful record” on antisemitism. “As a nation, we have to recognise that antisemitism has been the root and origin of most racist behaviour going back for the last thousand years in this country,” he said. “We have a shameful record until very recently, historically. It bubbles to the surface very easily indeed. When we see it, it tells us there are strains and stresses in society. It is the canary in the mine.” Welby also said that hate crime against Muslims had increased, fuelled by irrational fear that resulted in a high level of prejudice. Integration of Britain’s diverse population was a huge challenge, he said. “It’s been the biggest failure of the Church of England over the last 40 or 50 years, in terms of how we’ve dealt with integration.” It was a “great cause of shame”, he added.

In September, Welby/Weiler/Browne took his level of shame-promotion to an entirely new level when he prostated himself in front of crowds of amused and bemused Indians, apparently in supplication for a mass shooting by British troops that occurred in the garden of Jallianwala Bagh some 37 years before he was born.

Jewish Influence on God’s Unfailing Word

The Anglican tendency toward navel-gazing self-recrimination, which has assumed pathological proportions under the current Archbishop of Canterbury, has collided with Jewish dominance of the historical narrative. Jewish dominance in the academic production of histories of the Jews and anti-Semitism has played a significant role in shifting opinion in this instance. Notes at the end of God’s Unfailing Word reveal the document to rely heavily on ubiquitous, biased and factually dubious accounts of historical Jewish-Christian relations that have been written by Jewish academic activists (Jules Isaac [who was instrumental in orchestrating the pro-Jewish elements of Vatican II], Yehuda Bauer, Frederick M. Schweitzer, Marc Saperstein etc) or non-Jewish scholars who enjoyed lucrative and celebrated careers for their sympathetic portrayals of Jews (for example, the dreadful Gavin Langmuir).

Looked at objectively, this reliance in itself is maladaptive in the extreme. One struggles to find an equivalent case in history where one of two feuding parties fails to chronicle its own struggles, later adopts the narrative of the opponent, and thereby comes to perceive its entire history through the eyes of the opposing side. By way of explanation, we could suppose that the Church of England’s Faith and Order Commission desired an academic gloss for its theological musings and, since Jews and philosemites dominate the mainstream discussion of Jewish history and anti-Semitism, the Commission was forced to turn to Jewish sources. I don’t think this is a full explanation by any means, but it does provide some insight into the flow of ideas and intellectual influence, and should point to academia as one of the most important areas that must be contested if the West is to survive.

Even without its highly revealing endnotes, Jewish intellectual fingerprints are all over God’s Unfailing Word, where they catastrophically combine with a flamboyant Anglican penchant for weakness and subservience. The primary stated objectives of the document are essentially Jewish, being that of “challenging antisemitism,” and “working together [with Jews] for the common good of our society.” Of course, working with Jews for ‘the common good of our society” invariably means the familiar recipe of “fighting racism,” “rejecting homophobia,” “rooting out anti-Semitism,” and campaigning on behalf of migrants and ethnic minorities. In other words, Christian “tolerance,” always a volatile and deeply problematic virtue, has been weaponized in modernity as a primary engine for self-dispossession, pathological altruism, perverse virtue signaling, and moral self-flagellation.

Irrational shame, of the type exemplified and promoted by Welby/Weiler/Browne, saturates the pages of God’s Unfailing Word. The text, which purports to consist of “Theological and Practical Perspectives on Christian–Jewish Relations,” is remarkably one-sided. You will search in vain for references to the Jewish trade in Christian slaves, or the mass practice of exploitative usury. You won’t see any consideration of the impact of Jewish dissemination of pornography or the general degrading of morals. You will turn from page to page without encountering any mention of Jewish contempt for Christianity, and historical and contemporary violence against Christians. What you will instead find are multiple references to the assumption that “the Christian–Jewish relationship is a gift of God, endless rumination on “the persecution and prejudice experienced by Jewish people through history,” the blunt declaration that “antisemitism is a virus that may appear dormant but can all too easily be reactivated in all kinds of contexts,” and “the Church, which should have offered an antidote, compounded the spread of this virus.” [The concept of anti-Semitism as a virus, now clearly rampant in the Christian churches, is a Jewish contrivance. See here for further discussion.]

God’s Unfailing Word promotes nothing more than nicely packaged Jewish ideas, including the notion that there should be a “recognition on the part of the Church that it bears a considerable measure of responsibility for the spread of antisemitism,” and demands “repentance, for we are rightly reminded of the burden of responsibility the Christian tradition bears for its teaching of contempt over the ages.” Jews are completely absolved of any responsibility for anti-Semitism, and any idea they may have engaged in provocative or antagonistic behaviors, their only role being one of “grave suffering and injustice.” In order to address this assumed state of affairs, God’s Unfailing Word effectively redefines the theological and dogmatic positions of the church in much the same way as the Catholic Church did with the 1965 Second Vatican Council declaration Nostra Aetate.

A Redefined Theology

The Church of England now affirms that there has been a “difficult history” involving Jews and Christians, but only in the sense that Christians have contributed to “grave suffering and injustice.” The Church will henceforth teach that Christians “have used Christian doctrine in order to justify and perpetuate Jewish suffering.” Furthermore, they have “fostered attitudes of distrust and hostility among Christians towards their Jewish neighbours, in some cases leading to violent attacks, murder and expulsion.” Christians today must “reject such misuses of Christian doctrine” and engage in “repentance for the sins of the past.” This new theological approach, which raises White Guilt to the position of dogma, is explicitly explained as adapting to “scholarly research, particularly since the Second World War.” This is, of course, refers to the products of Jewish academic activism.

The historical narrative underpinning the new theology is laughable in its naivete. The mass presence of crypto-Jewish networks in 15th-century Spain, for example, which mainstream scholarship has established at one point threatened to overcome and infiltrate even the Jesuit Order, is held up merely as an example of the fact “the Church has never been without Jewish members.” Suspicion of Jews is argued to have been rooted less in the insincerity of Jewish converts than in “the underlying structure of antisemitism.” The authors of God’s Unfailing Word avoid further digression on Jewish behavior, for reasons one can surmise with little effort.

The section of the document concerning anti-Semitism is awful. It begins by pointing out that the Church of England’s College of Bishops accepted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism with its examples in September 2018. The document explains:

The examples highlight the way that antisemitism tends to weave together four interconnected claims, all of which should be vigorously resisted: (a) that there is something inherently wrong with Jews as a people; (b) that Jews always seek to control and influence others; (c) that because there is something inherently wrong with Jews, this influence is inevitably to the detriment of those others; (d) that therefore those with authority have a duty to restrict so far as possible the scope for Jews to exercise any influence over others.

The authors of God’s Unfailing Word insist that although “these pernicious claims appear in secular forms of antisemitism, … it is also clear that theological ideas have been used to support them in church contexts, thereby contributing to the persistent grip of the ‘virus’ of antisemitism.” Christians should mourn that “centuries of Christian government in European history include a long catalogue of anti-Jewish measures, such as legal discrimination and periodic expulsion, alongside bouts of communal violence leading in some cases to the massacre of entire communities.” Martin Luther, without whom the Church of England would not exist, is castigated because he “described [Jews] as demonic and called for the burning of synagogues.” England, meanwhile, is condemned as “the birthplace of what became known as the ‘blood libel.’ … England became the first country to order the entire Jewish community to leave, thereby seeking to be a Christian territory with no Jewish presence.”

The document then explains a total adoption of the perspective of the Jewish historical and activist Jules Isaac who, in 1947, began to wage a campaign designed to promote specific recommendations in Christian churches, mainly the Catholic Church, for the “purification” of Christian teaching regarding the Jews. The Church of England Faith and Order Commission adds:

Jules Isaac, who wrote on Jewish–Christian relations in the aftermath of the Second World War, saw a profound link between historic Christian anti-Judaism and the eruption of antisemitism in the twentieth century. If the first premise of antisemitism is the perception that ‘there is something inherently wrong with the Jews as a people’, then traditional Christian teaching that the Jewish people are collectively responsible throughout time for the death of the divine Christ, and therefore guilty together of deicide, imbues it with a terrible power. Isaac coined the phrase ‘the teaching of contempt’ (enseignement du mépris) to describe what he saw as key features of Christianity’s sustained hostility to Judaism from earliest times.

Christians are now impelled to apologize for this “teaching of contempt,” and engage in “ecclesial repentance for complicity with the evils of antisemitism.” The Church of England insists that “such ideas should have no place in Christian teaching and belief.” Christian communities are urged “to consider whether there could be suitable opportunities in their public worship to focus and express repentance for Christian involvement in fostering antisemitism, for instance in relation to observance of Holocaust Memorial Day.”

The cathedrals of Norwich and Lincoln have for centuries displayed stained glass windows depicting the boy martyrs William of Norwich and Hugh of Lincoln, both found murdered, and both determined by contemporary investigators to have been murdered by one or more Jews. The authors of God’s Unfailing Word now take some pride in pointing out that supplementary notifications have been placed near these windows, explaining them as:

a shameful example of religious and racial hatred, which, continuing down through the ages, violently divides many people in the present day. Let us unite, here, in a prayer for an end to bigotry, prejudice and persecution. Peace be with you: Shalom.

From here, the Church of England moves to retreat from any theological claim that Christians might be God’s “chosen people.” For fear of placing Jews outside salvation, the Anglican Church now insists on a bizarre ‘acknowledgement of mystery regarding the claims of Jewish people,” which is a vague and cowardly method of asserting that “Jewish people since the coming of Christ nonetheless remain recipients of God’s promises.” Of course, this is necessarily a theology that makes the coming of Christ utterly redundant, since God’s promise can be fulfilled without a Messiah. The only explanation offered for this wholesale abandonment of Christian doctrine is that Christianity “carries a heavy burden of responsibility for antisemitism and its lethal consequences,” and “it has to accept that there is a mystery here that transcends its understanding in history, though its meaning will be revealed at the end of time.” This is perhaps the greatest ever example of “kicking the can down the road.”

Christian teaching is to be adapted in several areas in order to avoid insulting or stereotyping Jews. For example, there is a clear retreat from the position that the Old Testament serves as an obvious prophecy of the coming of Christ:

Those who teach and preach in the Church of England should avoid implying that the meaning of Old Testament prophecy points to Christ in such a direct and obvious way that anyone who denies it must be refusing to pay attention to the text or be somehow defective in their understanding. Such implications feed directly into the negative stereotyping of Jewish people that forms the fundamental structure of antisemitism.

As part of the Church of England’s fundamental revision of theology, God’s Unfailing Word also articulates a new orientation in relation to Israel. This new orientation is profoundly Zionist, even going so far as to insist that “the approaches and language used by pro-Palestinian advocates are indeed reminiscent of what could be called traditional antisemitism, including its Christian forms.”

Conclusion

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of God’s Chosen Word is that it isn’t good enough for the Chief Rabbi, who ruminates on the putative blameless nature of his ancestors in his Afterword:

As for my ancestors, their interaction with Christianity meant being faced with the brutality of the Crusades; it meant being forced to choose between converting to Christianity or certain death; it meant false accusations of sacrificing Christian children at Passover to obtain blood for matzah in what became the cruel Blood Libel; it meant requiring the great Rabbinic leaders, including a figure no less than the Ramban (Nachmanides, 1194–1270), to publicly defend their faith against prominent priests as part of the ignominy of the Disputations, resulting in censorship, violence and slaughter.

Mirvis acknowledges and celebrates “the document’s honest appraisal of the destructive nature and origins of Christian perceptions of the Jewish people,” but he expresses a “substantial misgiving … , despite the progress it undeniably represents and articulates. Namely, that it does not reject the efforts of those Christians, however many they may number, who, as part of their faithful mission, dedicate themselves to the purposeful and specific targeting of Jews for conversion to Christianity.”

In other words, the meaning of so-called “inter-faith dialogue” is the same as that of multiculturalism—Whites/Christians must forever make room for Jews and others. They must engage in endless groveling apologies. And they must never try to convert others or attempt to imply that they should acculturate to their norms. In short, the best position for Whites, in the eyes of Rabbi Mirvis, is crawling on their bellies like his good friend Mr. Welby.

That’s not my style. I think I’ll stick with the historical reality of Christian-Jewish interactions over the centuries, a reality that leads naturally to the teaching of contempt.