Episcopal Priest Declares ‘God Is Trans’ in New York City Sermon, Sparking Online Backlash

An Episcopal priest’s declaration that “God is trans” has sparked an angry debate online after a video of the New York City sermon circulated this week.

The Dissenter shared a clip on X on Wednesday, September 23, showing the Rev. Flourish Klink speaking from a church lectern. The sermon was delivered months earlier, on March 21, during a service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine celebrating transgender joy and resilience. Klink is an assistant priest at Christ & St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

In the sermon published on Klink’s website, the priest said “God is nonbinary,” before adding, “God is actually also trans.”

Klink began by describing how transgender people can come to understand their gender differently from the one assigned to them at birth. “When we’re old enough, we realize that wasn’t right and we’re not, in our deepest selves, the gender that everyone thought we were. Right? Reasonable working definition of a trans person, yeah?” Klink asked the congregation in the video.

Klink then applied that idea to Jesus‘ birth. “When God, who – as we have established is nonbinary – was born in human form as our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary said, ‘Oh look, a baby boy,'” the priest said. Klink argued that God exists beyond male and female, so Mary’s description did not capture what Klink believed was Jesus’ full identity.

“When I say that later on it became clear gender wasn’t quite right I mean it. We already know Jesus didn’t live life exactly the way the average first century Judean man did, right?” Klink said in the video. “To the best of our knowledge he didn’t get married, we don’t know for sure, he chose to teach and engage with women in ways that were very unusual, that were not the traditionally masculine way that people might be behaving with each other. And then Jesus died.”

The priest acknowledged that the Bible does not explain why the disciples failed to recognize Jesus upon his resurrection and presented the idea as a personal interpretation: “But based on everything else I know about God, I have an idea. I think Jesus was resurrected as Jesus’ true self, which is beyond male or female. I think Jesus was not only transfigured; I think Jesus transitioned.”

That interpretation drew objections in the comments section of an X post by conservative Christian publication The Dissenter. “I don’t understand how so many Christians just stand by and let this happen? Where is the push back?” one commenter wrote.

Another commenter challenged Klink’s description of Mary identifying Jesus as a boy, writing, “Mary didn’t say ‘oh look a baby boy’ and decided his gender!? This is a lie.”

“Oh look. One of many reasons I gave up on church,” a third person wrote. The Dissenter replied, “This isn’t a church.”