Gender
Gender names categories of embodied human life. The Church of Humans receives the historic witness of Rabbinic Judaism that such categories are not limited to male and female alone. Gender does not determine a person's standing before God.
Ancient Jewish teachers recognized six to eight genders, including:
- Zachar — Male.
- Nekevah — Female.
- Androgynos — A person possessing both male and female sexual characteristics.
- Tumtum — A person whose sexual characteristics are indeterminate, concealed, or unclear.
- Ay'lonit — A person assigned female at birth who does not develop the characteristics ordinarily associated with female maturity.
- Saris — A person assigned male at birth who does not develop the characteristics ordinarily associated with male maturity, or who is a eunuch.
These categories were employed in religious and legal discussion for centuries. The church does not receive the Talmud as canon, but receives this witness as evidence of how the heirs of the Hebrew scriptures understood the complexity of human embodiment.
God is spirit and transcends all human categories of sex and gender. Human beings, however, live as embodied creatures. Gender therefore belongs to human life, but does not determine a person's worth before God.
The church rejects the use of gender as a basis for spiritual rank, privilege, exclusion, or domination. As it is written:
- There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
— Galatians 3:28
The faithful are called to honor every person as bearing the image of God.