This talk practises the art of ‘double-listening’ as we relate the Bible to the world around us. We examine the strange new world of gender fluidity, gender self-identification and gender transition from a cultural and medical perspective, attend to the experience of gender-diverse individuals and ‘de-transitioners’, and explore a biblical perspective on gender, sex, identity and our physical bodies. This provides the platform for exploring some practical issues such as: how to help children and young people navigate this confusing new world; how to address the claim that Christianity is ‘transphobic’; how to respond to requests to supply your own, or to use someone else’s, ‘personal pronouns’; and how to promote constructive conversations on these issues with individuals and in society.

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Christopher Townsend chairs the editorial group of Cambridge Papers, a quarterly publication with the strapline ‘Towards a Biblical Mind’, which aims to help Christians engage with a complex and changing world (www.cambridgepapers.org). He wrote ‘Gender: Where Next? Personal journeys, radical agendas and perplexing dilemmas’ (Cambridge Paper: December 2016) and since then has engaged with this topic, in conversation with medical professionals, and has spoken at churches and conferences on the ‘gender revolution'. Following his retirement as a lawyer, he completed an MPhil in New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and he is a trustee of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

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