Book Title: Trans Deus
Author: Paul Van der Spiegel
Publisher: Perceptions Press
Cover Artist: Paul Van der Spiegel
Release Date: August 11, 2020
Genre: LGBTQ – Christian
Tropes: Trans Christ in modern day England
Themes: Trans Christ persecuted by the religious, the transphobes, the haters; closeted Peter, terrorist Judas, addict Andrew, humanist Thomas.
Heat Rating: 3 flames
Length: 75 000 words/ 249 pages
It is part 1 of 4 Queer Gospels – each one is a different take.
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Trans Christ born in a modern-day, transphobic England
Blurb
The Word was with God. The Word was God. Nothing was created apart from the Word. The Logos became a trans woman and she dwelt amongst us, full of grace and truth.
Four men have their lives changed forever: Jude, the terrorist sent to kill the transgender Christ; Peter, the repressed gay man grasping after a religion of certainty; Andrew, the slave to his sexual appetites; and Tom, the ardent atheist with crippling financial problems.
From the towns and moors of northern England to the shadow of the cross in the City of London… the light shone in our darkness and the consumer, military technocracy comprehended it not.
Read the first part of this excerpt here:
“The writers of Genesis describe how once Adam and Eve perceived their nakedness, they went and found clothing for themselves. The serpent in Eden did his job well: he introduced them to despair, and so the first humans went out and found themselves certainties in which to clothe themselves. The question that God asks is profound, ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ This question reverberates through the centuries. I ask all of you today, who is telling us that we are naked?”
Nobody answered the woman’s challenge.
“The world believes morality is relative and certainties are absolute. I’d argue instead that morality is absolute and that our certainties are relative. When someone demands proof or evidence for God, what they are asking is, ‘Is your certainty more certain than mine?’ God’s response is, ‘What do you need certainties for?’”
Tom stifled a giggle at the absurdity of God-girl’s argument.
“The evidence for the Will to Love and the Will to Power is all around us, scattered on the ground, in the eyes of our brothers and sisters. Rather than gather up this evidence, rather than spend time thinking and fitting it together for ourselves, we want the evidence to jump together and present itself to us. This is the real non-thinking. When we catch a glimpse of this absolute morality, it is such a God-awful prospect that we would rather resort to denial. Our certainties are a strategy to support this state of denial. Like Adam and Eve before us, we hide from God.”
Hide from God? Tom thought. Which one of planet Earth’s many deities do you think we’re running from?
“Our day-to-day human reality is an implicit acceptance of the Will to Power. Our question is how much power is an individual allowed before they upset the balance across the rest of society? I can sit at home torturing myself with online porn: but when I go out on a shooting rampage, then I cross societies’ Will to Power line. Surely, the question isn’t ‘how much power is too much?’ or ‘how much power am I entitled to?’ The question must be, ‘why power, and not love?’”
Silence. No words. The occasional cough. A scraping chair leg. The muffled sound of traffic turning onto Victoria Bridge.
“Biology is our certainty too,” she said. “As a trans woman, I tell you that love is all that matters.”
Tom could feel the antagonism building inside the building. Homo sapiens eliminated the Neanderthals, he reminded himself, and all the other evolved apes on their march to global mastery… difference wasn’t good then, difference had to be exterminated, difference led to slaughter, and difference ain’t good now.
“This is our reality,” she said. “We need to learn to trust the God who eternally sacrifices her power. Our tragic optimism asks us to trust, to struggle, to give our lives if necessary, without ever being able to fully understand what we are about. Our reasoned uncertainty asks us to run the risk that we are following a powerful and convincing lie. And, in the absence of anything else more credible, to stumble on through life towards death regardless. Norman Maclean offers the phrase “divine bewilderment” in his book Young Men and Fire. Separation from the Will to Love is original sin. Pride is original sin. This land called Wandering somewhere east of Eden is the spiritual state of desperation. And we walk on it, drive on it, live in it, every day. Thank you for listening to me.”
The preacher sat facing her audience and a shiver ran through her body.
Tom felt the electric anticipation within the stone walls of the chapel, as if this woman was facing a firing squad instead of a room of middle-class Faith-heads.
An immaculately dressed, older woman rose from her seat in the front row and, as she turned around, Tom recognised leaflet-lady from outside Boots. She faced the silent, hostile audience, “Well, I’m sure that we’d all like to…thank…err…Jessica Arkuss for her words,” she said, attempting to clap in slow motion.
When nobody else joined in, the woman smiled weakly at her cross-armed presenter. “We now invite you, the audience,” she said, “to ask any questions that you may have. May I remind you that we are in God’s house and that we should all show due courtesy to one another.”
The woman sat down as fast as she could, as if she expected a barrage of missiles rather than questions.
Tom watched as an elderly priest in the middle row raised his hand. The rest of the audience was silent, watching.
“A question, if I may, to mister speaker,” the baritone voice boomed.
“Miss, if you please,” Jess said.
“Sir,” the old priest said, “you preach a vacuous heresy to those of us schooled in the fundamentals of Holy Scripture. You have insulted the freedom of speech given to you by the elders of this cathedral by inciting rebellion against the gates of heaven. You have ridiculed both the common believer and those learned in the law. Tell me, who gave you the right to leach these lies and fabricate these falsehoods?”
A smattering of applause greeted the red-faced cleric’s rhetoric.
“My mother gives me the right to speak the truth,” Jess said. “I am not a sir, I am a…”
“Your mother? That same mother who was a pregnant teenager? The same mother who claims to be the only virgin in Wigan?” The laughter drifted around the chapel. “You are a false teacher,” the priest said, pointing his crooked finger, “a cross-dressing imposter who tempts the foolish and the weak away from the true path of salvation.”
“And what is this true path, Father…?”
“My friends call me George, so you can call me Reverend Reinford-Bentley, laddie. The true path is the One True Religion laid down for us by our father, Möse, who led us from slavery in Jutland, parting the waters as we walked across Doggerland into the promised land of England. He ascended Walbury Hill and God gave him our Common Prayer Book. We preserve this. We protect our heritage. No war, no foreign occupation, no famine or pestilence, no exile, and no thirty-year old gender neutral with an NVQ in Social Work will prevail over this one singular truth.”
“You call Möse your ancestor, but if he were here in this room, he wouldn’t know you.”
Reinford-Bentley choked on his answer, “How dare you speak to me like that, you vile, perverted creature? God will see to it that you, and those like you, burn for eternity in the pits of Hell. Repent of your sins before you are condemned for eternity to the tortures that await deviants and devil worshippers. As Saint Paul said…”
“Save yourself the trouble of quoting Romans 1 at me, George,” Jess interjected. “You delude yourself that God is the Chief Executive of your Religion. You seek to bind the Almighty Mother with the key performance indicators of an earthly corporation. You forget that love is the task and the process, that love is the law, that we are all loved irrespective of gender and sexuality, that salvation is a gift for all, that submission to the will of God is submission to love and to loving.”
Tom could see the puce priest was primed and ready to explode.
“Prove to me,” the cleric roared, “prove to all these gathered here today, that you, Joshua Arkuss…”
Tom made his mind up, he’d had enough of the old priest dead-naming the girl, “She’s a ‘she,’ you old cunt,” he shouted.
There were disapproving murmurs and looks of animosity shot in his direction, but no one moved to eject him from the cathedral.
“…that you, Joshua Arkuss, are the Holy One of the Most-High, the chosen deliverer of God’s people, the Christos, the High Priest of Albion, the Heir of King Dafydd, and then, perhaps, we shall fall onto our knees and worship you.”
“I am not…”
“Answer the question, do you claim oneness with the Creator? Do you self-certify as England’s Messiah?”
“You say that I am.”
The priest was on his feet and hobbling towards her, supported under both arms by cassocked cronies. “Your wordplay is wasted. Your exegesis excommunicates you. Your doctrine damns your soul. You are an enemy of the Church, and of God. There is no safe place to hide from his wrath.”
“George, you must grow younger the older you get,” Jess said to the man towering above her, “fatty deposits of certainty have clogged your arteries, and unthinking has hardened your heart. For all your religious robes, degrees in doctrine, doctorates in divinity, you are not prepared to pay the price. You are not prepared to let God penetrate you. You, and those like you, want to capture Her, imprison Her, rape Her, tape Her, then claim to the rest of the world that you speak on Her behalf. You are worshipping at the altar of a masculine machine that has no meaning other than the preservation of a priestly elite.”
Reinford-Bentley turned to address the room, his ancient face scarlet with rage. “God is a He. It says so in the Bible!” he barked. “You, sir, deserve to be thrown from the roof of a tall building!” The enraged minister was led from the chapel, scowling and muttering curses as the two young priests supported their master’s steps.
The crowd began to leave, standing up, murmuring amongst themselves until only a few remained.
Tom decided he quite liked Jess the trans tornado. It had been amusing to see the owd bastard in the cape trundling off with a face like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. But now it was time to call a spade a spade.
He walked across the stone floor—the trusty sword of sarcasm ready to strike down this troublesome priestess.
“Hi there. Jessica is it?” he asked. “I want to ask you, what are you offering that isn’t in the Gita, the Dhammapada, the Tao, or The Phantom Menace?”
“You’re the one who shouted out.”
“I am.”
“What do you call yourself?”
“Thomas Bauer.”
“I teach the difference between incoming and outgoing, ‘Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled,’ as Milton puts it,” Jess said.
“People with invisible friends usually end up in padded rooms wearing tight fitting jackets. Are you hearing voices?”
“I’m hearing yours. What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a planner, an out of work planner.”
“A detail freak, right? A completer finisher?”
“It has to be right,” Tom said, his smile starting to disappear.
“I could use a planner, Thomas,” Jess said. “I’ve a project that needs someone to make things happen.”
“What’s the project?”
“The project is a church, a new kind of church, a place with space for grace.”
“I appreciate the offer, but you’re asking a vegetarian to run a burger factory.”
“You’re the guy.”
“Reinford-Bentley says you’re the guy.” As soon as the words left Tom’s mouth, he regretted it.
“That’s a cheap shot, Thomas. We trans folk just want to live our lives as the gender we know we are, free from persecution and violence, free from bigmouths attacking us in public. Is that too much to ask?”
“I promise you I’m not a transphobe,” Tom said. “Sometimes my mouth runs ahead of my brain.”
“And that makes what you just said okay, does it?’
“How do you know that I’m the right person?” Tom said, sheepishly.
“For God, nothing is impossible.” Jess said, as she wrote her number on a slip of paper and passed it to Tom.
“What? Nah, this ain’t for me. Sorry, love.”
“Think it through. It could be something to tide you over for a few months.”
“I’m going to say no.”
“Talk it over with your wife. It’ll be better than kicking your heels around town or watching Loose Women every lunchtime.”
“You don’t know me.”
Jess reached out. She shook Tom’s hand, then she made her way through the Cathedral door and out into the city.
Tom went to retrieve the newspaper he had wedged between the heating pipe and the stone wall. The disabled man was sitting on his own. Tom could see the man’s caregiver having a coffee with others assembled around the baptismal font.
It was then he heard the man singing—a gentle sound, a beautiful melody that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Tom listened, transfixed. He stood amidst the nothing, framed by the beauty of a building, the song of angels in his ears. Understanding penetrated his carefully constructed defences.
He perceived his nakedness.
Tom bolted for the door and didn’t stop running ’til he had passed the front of Selfridges. Across a barren land of wandering east of the Arndale Centre, he journeyed, on through the darkness of the Printworks, out into the light of Dantzic Street, over the tram line to Shudehill, and a bus ride home.
I am the author of Trans Deus, 7 Minutes, Parably Not, and A Particular Friendship. My stories are about the intersection of faith and sexuality. I am a William Blake obsessive, and I’m working on new books with Blake’s themes – sex and gender, revelation and rebellion – at the heart of the narrative.
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