Dean of Trinity College says Jesus Christ could have been transgender

The sermon was given by junior research fellow Joshua Heath at Trinity College last week, The Telegraph reports. Heath's supposition was based on his observation that the Renaissance and Medieval paintings showing the wound on Christ's side looked like female genitalia.

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He said that in "the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, from the 14th century, this side wound was isolated and 'takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance.'" Heath finished his sermon by saying "In Christ's simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body."

"Worshippers," The Telegraph reports, "were left 'in tears' and felt excluded from the church, with one shouting 'heresy' at the Dean upon leaving." Heath showed three paintings. He used Jean Malouel’s 1400 Pietà, whcih shows blood from Christ's wound flowing into his groun area, as well as Henri Maccheroni’s 1990 work "Christs."

On congregant told The Telegraph that "I left the service in tears. You offered to speak with me afterwards, but I was too distressed. I am contemptuous of the idea that by cutting a hole in a man, through which he can be penetrated, he can become a woman. I am especially contemptuous of such imagery when it is applied to our Lord, from the pulpit, at Evensong. I am contemptuous of the notion that we should be invited to contemplate the martyrdom of a ‘trans Christ’, a new heresy for our age."

This congregant said that worshipers, including children, were "visibly uncomfortable" with the sermon, finding it "truly shocking," and making people "feel unwelcome in the church."

A spokeman for Trinity said "The sermon explored the nature of religious art, in the spirit of thought-provoking academic inquiry, and in keeping with open debate and dialogue at the University of Cambridge."

For his part, Banner defended the sermon, saying it "suggested that we might think about these images of Christ’s male/female body as providing us with ways of thinking about issues around transgender questions today."

"For myself," he said, "I think that speculation was legitimate, whether or not you or I or anyone else disagrees with the interpretation, says something else about that artistic tradition, or resists its application to contemporary questions around transsexualism."