On 4 March, the BBC broadcast the first of its Lent Talks on Radio 4 in which opposition to transgenderism was compared with the temptation of Jesus. The talk was given by a male Church of England priest, who presents as a woman.
Rachel Mann began her talk by criticising an intolerant 1970’s generation who had assigned her a male at birth, and had then forced her to grow up as a normal little boy.
Mann then proposed that Lent was really ‘all about being exposed to and facing reality in all its knots and wrinkles – about trying to get a grip on who we really are and who we might become’. Mann’s costly identity search was subsequently parallelled with Jesus’ costly search for his identity in the wilderness – a growing sense that one day he might ruffle some feathers and then eventually accept who he truly was.
Consequently, Satan is pictured as one who ‘tempts Jesus to turn His back on His truest identity.’ Hence it is the dangerous hateful voices that told Mann not to transition that are compared with the voice of Satan.
For Mann, Christ is worth following this Easter because despite all the temptations He was true to himself.
