Does all of this Gender Identity Talk have You Confused?

Hi, I'm Joanne Vickner, Memaw with It's Storytime Memaw, an answered prayer for stories that point children to God on the Truth Network for kids. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Hello, and welcome to The Christian Perspective. We've got a great guest today, Dr. Candy Finch, and we're going to be talking about gender issues. So it's going to be a controversial day.

I can't wait to get all the emails from the liberals out there that like to troll me and go after me. But that's the truth. That's okay, because we're talking about issues that pertain to God's Word and how to develop a biblical worldview. But before we do that, I want to thank Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary and the College at Mid-America. If you have a child or grandchild, or maybe you are someone who's getting ready to go to college, I want to encourage you to do your research and take a look at the College of Mid-America. It's based in Memphis, Tennessee, so it's centrally located in the country.

It's right here on the Mississippi River. There's great barbecue here and so many great activities. But more importantly, if you go to the College of Mid-America, you'll be attending a college where you can study all kinds of different subjects. But when you do that, you're not going to have professors who are trying to brainwash you with critical race theory or transgender issues. Everything they teach you will be taught from a biblical and a Christian perspective.

So I encourage you to check them out. And then if you're at a point in your life where you're saying, hey, I sure wish I knew more about God's Word. Have you ever thought about going to seminary? Did you know you don't have to become a preacher to go to seminary?

That's right. Men and women, all kinds of different people in different professions sometimes just want to learn more about the Word of God. So if you'd like to learn more about Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary and find out ways you can learn more about God's Word and how you can take His Word into your everyday life, visit MABTS.edu. That's Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary and learn more about how you can get engaged today. The great thing is they were way ahead of the curve when COVID-19 hit, and they have a great online program. You don't have to come to Memphis to take all the classes.

There are a lot of great opportunities for learning right there in the comfort of your own home or office. So Chet Kowd, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. And of course, we're right here on the campus of Mid-America where we broadcast our show, The Christian Perspective, here at the Christian Perspective Studios on Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary's campus. Of course, we want to thank our main sponsor of the show, the Citizens for America Foundation, where we're dedicated to helping Christians understand what they believe and why they believe it. What does the Bible say about different cultural issues?

We're going to be talking about one of those issues today. And how do you develop a biblical worldview? All of us have a worldview. A worldview is just simply the lens through which you see the world. And as Christians, we are charged to see the world through the lens of the Bible.

And that's what it means to develop a biblical worldview and understand what God's Word says on every subject out there and think about what God would do in every situation in our lives. My guest today is Dr. Candy Fitch, and I want to thank her so much for being here. She's been a big help to us. You all know that we have a big event coming up in just a little over a week on April 30th. The Culture Engagement Summit is going to be held on the campus of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. And if you have not registered yet, you need to do it right now. Go to citizensforamericafoundation.com.

That's citizensforamericafoundation.com. Click on the summit button on the top of the page and register to come hear some of the biggest names on cultural issues, biggest names in Christianity. Some of the most famous preachers and some of the most powerful politicians in the world are all going to be here.

And we need you to be here with us as we learn about different subjects in the Bible and what God's Word has to say about them. My guest today is Dr. Candy Fitch. Dr. Fitch is the Director of Missions at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, but I'm having her here today wearing a different hat because she's also the Dean of Women.

And so we're going to talk about gender ideology and some women's issues and transgender issues and things that are going on in the culture today. Dr. Candy Fitch, thank you so much for joining me today on The Christian Perspective. It's my pleasure to be with you, Chris. I'm looking forward to our discussion and thank you for the shout out about Mid-America.

We are committed to solid biblical teaching and we want people, men and women, who are passionate about the Word of God, but also passionate about impacting the culture for Christ. So thank you for having me on your show. Like I said, I'm looking forward to our discussion. I had to give you a good commercial today as the Director of Admissions. And so I just want to encourage before we really jump into our subjects today is, folks, I can't tell you what a great, great school this is. And I know if you'd like to visit, Dr. Fitch and her team would love to give you a tour and send you a lot of information. So be sure to take a look. So, Dr. Fitch, before we get started into all the political and social things that are going on today, I always like our guests to have the opportunity to share with the listeners of who they are and kind of get to know you on a personal level.

And then after that, if you can maybe share how you came to know the Lord. Oh, I'm delighted to say a few things about that. I grew up in Tampa, Florida. I'm a big Bucks fan.

Go Bucks. Excited that Tom Brady is back for another season, but I grew up. We did not go to church regularly, but church was a part of our life.

We would go on Christmas and Easter and other times of the year. But I think the first time I remember hearing the gospel, I was really wrestling with what I believed, and I had seen I have some older brothers and sisters that I saw that became committed to the Lord. And I realized that I didn't know what would happen if I died. I was at a conference. It was right before I started high school, and I clearly heard the gospel, realized that I was a sinner in need of a savior, and I gave my life to Christ right before I started high school. And everything changed for me. How I wanted to spend my time, my direction in life, and shortly after that, I felt like the Lord may be calling me in to minister.

I didn't know what that looked like as a 15-year-old young woman. I was really thankful for men and women in my church that came alongside me. They were Titus 2 men and women in my life, and so I felt like the Lord may be calling me in the ministry to invest. I really have a heart for discipleship, but in college, I worked at my church there in Tampa, Florida, doing girls' ministry, and got my undergraduate degree in interpersonal communication. My pastor said, get a degree in something that will help you with people. I spent some time overseas working with the International Mission Board with teenagers and whales, and then I went to seminary. I picked a degree that had the most Bible classes because I'm just really passionate about the Word of God and passionate about people understanding what God says on a subject matter versus what the culture says. Because while I was in college, I was pretty heavily influenced by the worldview of secular feminism, and so when I got to seminary and started really examining what does God's Word say, and also believing that if God says it, it is good news. So I dug into scripture, got my Master of Divinity and also my PhD in systematic theology, and I'm delighted now to be at Mid-America. I'm a professor here.

As you said, I'm the Dean of Women, so I get to come alongside our ladies that are here wanting to be better equipped to be workmen unashamed, correctly handling the Word of Truth, and serving the Lord in biblically appropriate ways. So it's my delight to be here in Memphis, Tennessee. We have good barbecue, although I have to tell you, Chris, when I just moved to Memphis in August and everyone said we're known for our barbecue here, but I'm actually partial to North Carolina barbecue, the Vinegar Base.

So that's been a little bit disappointing. Are you from North Carolina? No, I spent a few years of graduate school in North Carolina and fell in love with the barbecue there. I also lived in Texas for many years, and so all of those places think they have good barbecue, but I am partial to the North Carolina kind. Oh, goodness, Dr. Finch, you're speaking heresy to the Texas people and the Memphis people, but my home is North Carolina, so I know what you're talking about, but a lot of the world doesn't know about that Eastern North Carolina Vinegar Base sauce.

It's really different. It's good, too. Now you got my mouth watered and I'm hungry.

Thank you. Oh, my goodness, I love me some barbecue. Well, let me give you, I didn't realize you had just moved to Memphis, and so there are different types of barbecue, and you may not realize this, Dr. Finch, or know this, but I've written three cookbooks on barbecue, and I used to have a TV show for eight years. And, yeah, there's a professional barbecue circuit based out of Memphis called Memphis in May, and there's different ones, Kansas City, different areas around the country. But where you live, just coming up in a couple weeks, there's a huge, huge barbecue festival.

They call it the Super Bowl of Swine. It's called the Memphis in May World Barbecue Championships, and it's right down there on the banks of the Mississippi River. So you probably, their style is not the vinegar base, but you ought to get a ticket and just go down there because the best cooking teams in the world will be converging.

I think it's the third week of May, I'm not sure, in Memphis, Tennessee. This has nothing to do with gender studies, but it's important to understand barbecue, and so you ought to just check them out. You know, learn something about a different culture there, the Memphis barbecue style culture while you're working there at Mid-America. Well, that's tremendous, and now I'm so hungry now that you've talked about that because I love me some barbecue. Well, anyway, I wanted to touch on, we're going to have to take a break here in just a second, but before we do, I love how you mentioned when you were sharing your testimony that your pastor gave you advice. What a great testimony, and that's something that I think many young people don't do, is go to their pastor and take advice. So I just wanted to commend you on that and thank your pastor for putting some thought into what you should study and how that would apply in your life down the road. Is that something you counsel women on as, you know, maybe as you have applicants coming to Mid-America to talk to their youth pastor or their senior pastor to get advice on some of the studies that they should look into when they go to college?

Well, sure. Well, you know, I love working with teenagers. That's really the age group that I'm very passionate about. And part of what we do as we see people that are pursuing studies or in our churches, part of what we help equip them to do is learn how to make decisions from a biblical perspective. And so when you are thinking about who you should marry, what degrees you should pursue, all of those kinds of things, you seek God's wisdom ultimately, and we hear that through prayer and reading scripture. But another way that we seek God's direction is by getting godly counsel. And so I am thankful that my pastors were actually shepherds.

They could be trusted, they're proven character over time, and I was really blessed to have people, pastors, youth pastors, Sunday school teachers, that poured into my life that were wise older men and women in my life. And so I do counsel people as they are making decisions to seek godly counsel. But Chris, I'll be honest, I don't know every pastor out there. And so the way I phrase it is seek godly counsel. Look at people's lives, look at people that are pursuing the things of the Lord, that are on the path of wisdom, and that's where you should seek advice. Because I may have applicants that have pastors that are not walking with the Lord, that are advocating unbiblical things, and so I hope they're sitting under godly teaching. But the way I phrase it is, as I said, seek godly counsel.

Boy, that's great advice, because there are so many pastors who are not preaching the entire and the inspired word of God. Folks, we're talking today to Dr. Candy Finch. We're going to be talking about gender issues and feminism and a lot of the things that are going on in the culture today. So stick around, we'll be right back with more of Dr. Candy Finch. We'll be right back. We'll be right back with more of Dr. Candy Finch. We'll be right back with more of Dr. Candy Finch. We'll be right back with more of Dr. Candy Finch. We'll be right back with more of Dr. Candy Finch. Welcome back to Christian Perspective.

It's Chris Hughes. My guest today is Dr. Candy Finch. She is the Director of Missions and the Dean of Women at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. And she's also affiliated with the College of Mid-America, which is on the same campus with Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.

And we've kind of been talking about the need for kids to get godly counsel when they go to school and the direction of what they're going to study in their life. And Dr. Finch, when you were sharing your testimony, you shared that when you were I guess when you were going into college, there was a lot of influence coming into your life from something called secular humanism or excuse me, secular feminism. For those of our listeners, I mean there's so many terms, Dr. Finch, today in culture and new terms popping up all the time and sometimes we don't really know what some of those mean. When we hear the term secular feminism, what does that mean?

That's a great question. So feminism is a misunderstood word. It's a loaded word.

People hear different things. Some may think empowerment. Some may think hating men. But secular feminism is a movement. It's a historical movement, but it's also a message or worldview or ideology. And so as a movement, you can study it like you study anything in history.

You can study World War I, World War II. You can study the different, when you study feminism, we talk about it in waves and you can study the different waves of the movement of feminism. And the first wave was back in the 1800s when people were fighting for primarily women's right to vote, but also other things like the abolition of slavery, access to education for women. And so when people talk about secular feminism, they may think of that first wave that happened in the late 1800s, early 1900s, or they may think of the second wave. And they talk about it in waves.

I told you I was from Florida. If you think about a wave, it has, if you go to the beach, it has an uptick of activity. It hits a crescendo or a crest and then a waning of activity. And so feminism is talked about in waves because there was a, you know, usually a momentum building and then a waning. And so we saw the waning of the first wave after women received the right to vote in the mid, after their first ability to vote on something that was consequential, specifically for women in the mid 1920s, they did not turn out for the vote.

And so kind of a waning of activity, which makes sense because of what was going on in our nation at the time. And so second wave feminism, it really starts in the 1960s, the early 1960s, and some proponents of that wave of feminism are still around today, like Gloria Steinem. But that's the probably classic idea of feminism that people think about today. Betty Friedan had a book, The Feminine Mystique, that was published in 1963, that said women are unhappy with the roles assigned to them, that women cannot be happy if the work that they do is not paid work.

And so Friedan was a college educated woman who got married and had kids and felt like that this was not fulfillment for her. And so what we see in second wave feminism is a lot of political activism. You hear of organizations like NOW, the National Organization of Women, NARAL, People Fighting for Abortions Right, and others. And so that's the movement of second wave feminism. And then we had third wave feminism that started really in the 1990s. And it was distinct from second wave because women were saying we want to be more inclusive, we don't hate all men. And it was in third wave feminism that the Caesar planted for what we're seeing with the gender ideology today. Third wave feminism said that for a woman to be empowered, she had to have control of her sexuality. And so you would see women with symbols of the Playboy Bunny on their shirt saying that this makes me empowered, I'm embracing my sexuality. Whereas second wave feminism, they said, you know, they burned playboys and other things saying that was a sign of oppression. And now there is a difference in how we express what is empowering. And so I could go on.

I love talking about this kind of stuff. But when you ask about the word feminism, it's a movement and you can talk about what they were advancing, what they were fighting for. But it is also a message. It's a worldview. And secular feminism is fighting when you think about it. It sounds like, oh, this is not a, this is actually a good thing. We should all be for this. But it's the movement, the worldview, its message is fighting for the social, political equality for men and women.

And Chris, you probably think, well, that sounds, well, we should be for that as believers. However, the word equality, as feminists define it, is saneness. They're saying you can't have equality if everything is not the same. But that is not a biblical definition of equality. You can have equality with distinctions.

So in First Corinthians 12, it talks about the household of God, the church, that we're all part of one household, one body, but we have different members, different gifts. And so you can have equality with distinctions. And a feminist would say, if there's no, if you have an opportunity that I don't have, then that's not equality.

Meaning, you know, if I can't fight on the front lines in the army, then that's not equality. And for us, with a Christian worldview, the problem is any worldview that you put ahead of scripture impacts how you see the world. Feminism is a world where you put glasses or contacts in and it impacts how you see things. But the worldview of feminism is in direct opposition to the Christian worldview. And so feminism is, as I said, both a movement, but it's also a message.

A message that at its heart wants to go against scripture, and even some of the things of the movement that I'm appreciative of. I have a PhD, so I'm very grateful for anyone who fought for me to have a right to pursue education. When a couple hundred years ago, people were making the argument that women couldn't pursue education. Based on our biology, saying that if a woman studied certain subjects, her brain would overheat and she would become infertile.

I'm thankful for a change in thinking about that. Professor Clark at Harvard University made that argument in the 1800s. To be generous to him, let's say he was doing that to be protective of women, thinking that that was true. But that was a wrong understanding of biology. It was a wrong understanding, and I'm thankful for anyone who is pursuing truth, but I don't think there's any truth outside that doesn't ultimately reside in scripture. So I think Christians should have been arguing for those very same things that early feminists were, because Genesis makes it very clear both men and women are made in the image and likeness of God.

We are fully valued, fully image bearers, and so I'm thankful for that. But at the heart of that movement, as I discovered, was an antagonism towards scripture. Katie Stanton, who was an early feminist in the first wave, edited a book called The Woman's Bible and said, as a believer, she said, no other book has done more harm to women than the Bible.

And Chris, that's just not true. The Bible brings freedom. The Bible is the only place for us to find how to have a relationship with Christ. So the more I studied the movement, the more I went down the rabbit hole, I realized that while there were some goods that were brought about because of the movement of feminism, the message behind it is damaging. Well, I just don't see, Dr. Finch, when those people are saying the Bible is hurting women, there's never been a greater defender of women than Jesus Christ himself. When you look at what happened in his life at a time period where women were treated like property and really worse than property, but Jesus surrounded himself in a godly way, in case nobody twists what I'm saying, in a godly way, and honored them in a way where no man in that culture had ever done before.

So it was kind of crazy that they would say that. Yeah, Jesus Christ modeled how we should, how men should relate to women. And the interesting thing about Christ is sometimes we think that in order to honor women we can't ever confront them, or I've seen this on social media, that when we confront error, some people are saying that's misogynistic, but Christ loved women, he included them. In Luke chapter 8 it talks about him allowing women to minister to him, but he also confronted error. And so we see Jesus modeling how to relate to an image bearer with dignity and worth, but sometimes the way we show love is by pointing to the truth. And so Jesus Christ has raised about, in the first century, whether you were Greek or Roman, women were considered property, as less than, not fully human, and Christ definitely modeled during his incarnation how to treat women.

He's a great example for that. Well folks, we're talking to Dr. Candy Finch about feminism in a minute, we're going to switch to gender ideology. Please be sure to stick around, we've got more coming up on The Christian Perspective. The United States of America has a strong Christian heritage, but most Americans don't know the truly important role that God in the Bible played in the founding of this great nation. This June, join nationally syndicated radio host and founder of the Citizens for America Foundation, Dr. Chris Hughes, for four amazing days in our nation's capital. With Chris, you'll embark on a journey of discovering the hidden secrets of Washington, D.C., and rediscover much of America's forgotten Christian heritage. Your tour will include an up-close and personal look at the nation's establishment and how it's evolved over the centuries. Learn about the government and the men who helped forge this new kind of republic, one that acknowledged the Creator from its very inception.

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Welcome back to Christian Perspectives. Chris Hughes, my guest today is Dr. Candy Finch, and she is the Dean of Women at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary and the College of Mid-America. We've been talking about feminism, and we're going to switch in a minute to gender ideology, but before we do, I was just thinking while you were talking, Dr. Finch, you were talking about how it's like a wave and it crests and then kind of resides, then comes back again, and I've really been confused. Now, I'm not a woman, but I certainly believe as a Christian in supporting the rights of women, and I've just been shocked because the movement made so much headway in the 20th century. And then a couple weeks ago, we've got a woman who is being nominated to serve on the United States Supreme Court, and she's asked what a woman is, and she can't even define it. How has the feminist movement allowed itself to be hijacked where they won't even identify as women anymore? Yeah, that was so interesting, and I don't want to dodge your question, but what was even more fascinating to me when Justice Jackson answered that question, she said, I'm not a biologist, which actually flies in the face of the gender ideologists who are saying that gender is self-determined.

It's not a matter of biology, and she's saying, well, the people to answer that question are biologists, but it was very interesting to me. People that are advancing that world view are found, Chris, in cultural Marxist, in the LGBTQ community, and within feminism. What's been so interesting to me is third-wave feminists, that wave that started in the early 1990s, that were wanting to be more inclusive of people of different racial backgrounds but also sexual preferences, that this wave was saying that. In doing that, they opened the door for Caitlyn Jenner, Bruce Jenner, to be called Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan a few years ago, and feminists were like, wait a minute, that's a bridge too far, because if Bruce Jenner was this Olympic athlete who decided that he wants to be a woman, and so some people are lauding this man as brave, but others are thinking, wait a minute, he doesn't know what it means to be a woman, to live his entire life as a woman, but in doing, in advocating for the things that they did, they opened the door for this. I mean, all the work, hundreds or thousands in our country, hundreds of years, has been done to advance the causes for women, and they've let themselves be hijacked.

I don't care, I'm going to get in trouble for this from some listeners, I don't care. Bruce, and I don't want to even call him Caitlyn, Bruce Jenner's a man. I mean, if you took a blood sample, the DNA is male DNA, and it's a slap in the face to women to call him, I'm sorry, I'm going to start preaching, but to call him a woman of the year, it's just wrong. And I don't understand, where are all these feminists that, you know, in the 60s were burned abroad, and all this, and let's get higher pay, and all the things that women were wanting to do, and they're silent right now, and they've let their identity as women be hijacked by a bunch of men running around pretending to be women. And it just, it fires me up. I'm sorry, it really makes me sad.

Oh, that's okay. There are some that are being vocal about it, but they realize the hypocrisy. When society allowed the idea that we get to define ourselves, when we moved from objective truth to subjective truth, saying that human beings could define themselves, they opened the door for this slippery slope. And feminists in the second wave were saying this, Betty Friedan and others were saying that one is not born a woman, but becomes a woman, that we've let society define what we are. And so they were saying we want to define it.

We want to take back the power of naming. And so they opened the door for this. They opened the door for the highest rated NCAA women swimmer right now is a man. And you're starting to see pushback, because we have guys that are saying now that they've decided to be a woman, and participating in women's sports, it's going to destroy women's sports. But by allowing it, yeah, by allowing this idea that we get to define ourselves, they put this in practice. Or think about it, our president named a man as the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. And I don't know what Rachel Levine's name was, but Rachel Levine is a man.

This man is being lauded as the first female four-star admiral in the history of the U.S. Public Health and Service Commission. They've unfortunately opened the door for this. They have no way to object, and it gets even worse than that, Chris. The problem is, when you say humanity can define themselves, well, why can't we name our own race? Why can't we name our own age?

People are doing that. They're even naming their own species. There are people advocating that they're not male or female, they're not human, that they're wolves or mythical creatures. You have a man in the Netherlands who, in a lawsuit, petitioned to have his age change, to be 20 years younger. And the court said that would erase 20 years of history. But this man made the argument, because it was based on this gender ideology, that, well, if you can name your gender, why can't I name my age?

And the implications for what people have set in motion, not realizing that we're making this argument now, how far are people going to take this? Well, and it's really getting out of hand. I had a guest on the show about a month ago talking about, in some public schools right now, you were talking about people identifying as mythical creatures and animals. There are students in public schools in this country that are identifying as animals, and there's at least, I think it was in Oregon, I could be wrong about that, but there was a public school that put litter boxes, Dr. Finch, in bathrooms because a young woman in this one school that I was told about was identifying as a cat. So instead of saying this is nonsense or getting her mental health help, they just went along with the fallacy and put litter boxes in the bathrooms so she could have a place to go to the bathroom in a litter box. It's crazy.

Yeah. Culture has, society has lost its mind. What's happening with gender ideology in schools is a tragedy. And where we used to think of, adults used to think of the role of adults protecting children. It's why we have laws about age of consent and all of that kind of stuff, but now we're saying that a child as young as four, five, or six can name his or her own identity or species. And on top of that, they're trying to take parents out of the equation. I just read a story this past week where there are schools that are putting up closets, transition closets.

So if a young boy age of six or seven wants to present as a girl, well, he can change his clothes at school so his parents don't know that he is presenting this way. Or as you say, if they want to act like a different species. But the reason that this lunacy, let's call it what it is, lunacy is happening because society has said we get to define ourselves. And we don't. We are defined. We're not the creator. We are the created. We have a great designer and we're just ignoring that. Yeah. So frustrating.

I'm getting my blood pressures up as we talk. Well, let's help our listeners out a little bit. So we hear a lot of terms on the news and we hear this gender, the term gender ideology. What is gender ideology? What does that mean?

That's a great question. Well, ideology is just a worldview. So gender ideology is just a way of approaching life. It's a way of viewing life.

Three specific things. That truth is relative, that biology is meaningless, and that gender is self-defined. So it's a worldview that says all of those things, but then people that ascribe to this idea, this way of looking at life, you'll find them in, as I said earlier, in a bunch of different camps. So you find people that are advocating that truth is relative, biology is meaningless, and gender is self-defined, you find them in the LGBTQ community. Or you find them, as I said, among feminists or among cultural Marxists, and their motivations are all different, but you see them in those spaces advocating those ideas. This might seem basic for you, but we have a lot of listeners who may not know what some of these terms, if I can put you on the spot here.

Can you help our listeners understand? So there's so many terms, and this isn't going to be nearly all of them, but one term we hear on the news a lot now is gender binary. What does that term mean? Well, binary means two. And so people that are advancing this idea that truth is relative and gender is meaningless, saying they want to get beyond a gender binary, meaning that there's only male and female, that there's only two options. And so they're trying to destroy the idea of a gender binary, that there's only male and female. So what does gender fluid mean?

So it's interesting. That term actually was popularized through pop culture. When you get people like David Bowie, who was gender bending, or Harry Styles, who is a pop artist who used to be a part of a very popular boy band, and they were gender bending or gender fluid, meaning that there's not male or female, but it's fluid. You could present as feminine in some cases, where you'll see Harry Styles wearing a dress on a cover of a magazine with pearls, or he may present more masculine. And they've made very complicated this idea of sex and gender. So gender fluid is, and actually, let me take a step back, Chris, if I may. We didn't use gender in this way up until probably 50 or 60 years ago. 50 or 60 years ago, gender and sex meant the same thing when we were talking about biology, but two psychologists wanted to diagnose mental illness. And they said people that one guy, Robert Stoller, he had patients who were men, but wanted to cross dress. So he had this idea of transsexuality and would use the term gender to describe how someone expresses their sex, and he split the terms.

And then you give a guy named John Money comes along, who needed Jesus. He was an advocate for pedophilia. He did experiments on young children, and he came up with the idea of sexual orientation and said gender, if we divorce the term sex from gender, we can say that maybe, maybe it's because of your gender that you are attracted to what you're attracted to, whether that's, you know, adult men to little boys or girls to other girls or boys to other boys. And so this started this redefinition of terms to this explosion now that you get gender fluid or pansexual and all of these ideas, because they're trying to redefine, they're trying to get away from God made them male and female. Tell you what, let's take a quick break.

I hope you don't mind me asking these definitions, but I think lists are pretty diverse. And when we come back, I'm going to ask you a few more in our last segment. So y'all, very fascinating to have Dr. Candy Pinch with us. She is truly an expert, so honored she's here with us. Let's take a look around when we come back where we talk more about what some of these terms mean. We'll be right back. Give us a call today at 704-984-2432 or connect with Diggs Design on social media. In a world crowded with viewpoints and voices, critical condition after a. I believe the message of this financial problem.

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Welcome back to Christian Forsaken. My guest today is Dr. Candy Finch from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. She is an expert on gender and feminism and she's been so helpful today because I know a lot of you have asked me what do these different terms mean.

You threw one out before the commercial break, Dr. Finch. You said pansexual. Can you tell our listeners and go ahead and also tell us transgender. So what's a pansexual and what's a transgender?

Sure. I will give you a kind of common understanding today. However, these terms have evolved. And so I started teaching on gender redefinition about 15 years ago in a class I was teaching on girls ministry and the terms continue to evolve. But now pansexual became popularized because of artists like Miley Cyrus that used to be on a children's show on the Disney Channel and now as a recording artist. Pansexual means that a person is attracted to sexually all types.

So Miley Cyrus said it this way. She's down to get down, sorry I don't want to be crass but that's what she said, down to get down with anyone who's of a consenting age. So that pansexual has to do with who you're sexually attracted to. And so used to that would have been bisexual meaning you just like the man or woman. Pansexual is anything or wherever they identify.

Whether they identify as an animal or whatever. Correct. Or if they identify as androgynous or if a person identifies, an adult woman identifies as a man who's attracted to other men. And so that's what that term is. It's an all encompassing term.

And the other one that you said was? Transgender. Transgender.

Okay so that is actually an older word that when I told you about those two psychologists that were writing in the, honestly one was writing in the early 1960s, one in the late 1950s. Transsexual at first had to do with what your biology, because sex refers to biology, who you are sexually attracted to is different than your biology. And so a transsexual would be a woman who at first was attracted to another woman. We use the term lesbian today now in that case. Transsexual could also be someone, a woman who wants to dress as a man, which we used to use the word transvestite or cross dresser. So transsexual now is a broader term referring to someone who is either sexually attracted or expresses themselves, the way they dress or the way they identify as something different than what their biology would say. Because what people have done, Chris, is gender.

There was a book that came out a few years ago that was written by Sam Killerman. It's a guide to gender and they expanded the term gender to talk about gender expression, meaning how you dress, how you reflect femininity or masculinity, gender identity, how you feel, what you believe yourself to be. And then they talked about gender biology, what your sex was, but they also talked about sexual orientation and romantic, people who you are romantically attracted to.

And it's so confusing how you put all those parts together, then that's what your identity is. And so to give you an example, in 2014, Facebook, if you signed up for Facebook, which I know is really for older people now, you don't use it as much. But if you sign up for Facebook, when you're entering your information, before 2014, you could put male or female. Those were the only gender options. In 2014, they expanded that to add an other category. And if you chose other, other than male or female, it gave you 56 custom gender options. Well, now, you know, since then, over seven years later, it's over 100 gender options. People will say, well, I can't find my identity in that list. I feel like there's something different.

And that's what happens when we let humanity be the source of truth instead of an objective standard like God's word. And so you get this ever explosion of terms of ways to identify yourself. And I've got two more, and then I'll leave you alone with the definitions.

But I think people really need to understand. And then I promise I quit with the definition, because we're almost out of time anyway. So people, you mentioned earlier, LGBTQ, and now it's LGBTQ+, because they keep adding stuff. What is the difference between gay and queer?

Okay. So gay usually refers to homosexual behavior, someone who is a man that is sexually attracted to other men. Queer is a kind of a broader term. So that could be someone who is not only who they're sexually attracted to. It could be a man who's sexually attracted to another man, or it could be a woman attracted to another woman. But it also could include someone who, what we used to refer to as bisexual, but someone who's attracted to a variety of both men and women. Queer is kind of an all-encompassing term, though, but it also has to do with how you express yourself. Someone who's queer may be a woman who's attracted to men, but presents...wants to express her gender in a more masculine way. And so it's just kind of a broad term that people use to advocate for who they're sexually attracted to, but also how they express themselves. So it's a broader term than pansexual.

What? But also, it became popular for someone to say they were queer as a way to identify with this community. So someone who's saying they're queer is someone who's saying, well, I don't want to put a definition on it, and so I identify, I feel, an advocacy for or an affinity to this community. It's hard to give you a distinct definition because it's evolved so much. Well, I really appreciate you sharing those, because I think particularly in that case, there's a confusion among a lot of, okay, let's say the straight people, the people who follow God's design, particularly between the gay and queer, because there was, I can't remember, there used to be a TV show about something for the queer eye.

And I think a lot of people associated gay, meaning male homosexuals, is the same thing as queer, but it's not the same. So thanks for sharing that. So we've only got like two minutes left, and I didn't even hardly get any of the questions I planned to ask you. But why don't we just kind of in the last couple of minutes, if you could kind of wrap up, where does this leave the church, Dr. Finch? What can we as Christians do to stop this avalanche of craziness and sexual perversion that's going on in the country and the world today? Well, I don't know about you, but sometimes I can feel overwhelmed, especially when I see how quickly this ideology has taken root.

I mean, the fact that when our president went into office, he updated the White House system for people to put their preferred personal pronouns. I just, the embrace of this ideology has been disheartening. However, for believers, I always like to say we have a hope because Christ is still on his throne. We still have a mission. Our mission is to advance the kingdom.

We are to be salt and light. And so we don't lose hope because we believe that truth does set us free. And I've seen believers say, well, we've lost this battle. And I don't want to agree with that, but they say we lost this battle.

And so we just got to, you know, we got to fight on different fronts because society has changed so much. And I say, no, we have to stand for truth because truth is where freedom is found. And so I like to tell believers a few things. When we're talking about gender ideology, it can be easy because it's so far gone from God's standard. And sometimes we can think, this is lunacy. I used that word earlier, but I want us to remember that when we talk about this, we are talking about people. People that are fellow image bearers that God loves, that God died for. And so I want to encourage believers to remember that we're talking about people that are in the grip of sin who are confused. So we want to make sure we are not mocking others. We want to stand for truth, but we don't want to do it in a way that is sinful.

This discussion is not just about issues, it's about people. And so we have to remember that we have to speak the truth in love. And we have to stand up on what the Word of God says because there are believers that are saying that gender can be self-defined. And gender is not self-defined. Gender is a gift from God, it's not socially constructed, it's not self-determined. God has a plan for the uniqueness of our genders, and so we must stand for truth. We must not lose heart because we have a mission to be salt and wine. Amen.

Well, that uses up our time today. Dr. Finch, thank you so much for being here with us. Folks, you can learn more about Dr. Finch and her research at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, that's M-A-B-T-S dot E-D-U. Please come here every day to your favorite radio station to hear our show.

It becomes a podcast later in the day, and share it with your friends. God bless you. Now let's go impact the culture for Jesus. Thank you for listening The Christian Perspective with Chris Hughes. Learn more about impacting the culture for Jesus. Visit CitizensForAmericaFoundation.com.