AI Is A Gateway To The Welfare State
October 6, 2026 |
Keith Giles
Transgender saints are not a modern invention, no matter how often evangelical pastors insist otherwise. They are not the result of liberal theology, woke ideology, or twenty-first-century cultural drift. They are part of the church’s own history, preserved by the same tradition that fundamentalists claim to defend.
What is new is the aggressive denial of that history.
For centuries, Christian communities told and retold the stories of saints whose lives involved crossing, inhabiting, or transforming gender in ways that would be labeled transgender today. These stories were not whispered in shame. They were canonized. They were preached. They were celebrated as examples of holiness, devotion, and radical faithfulness.
Only much later did parts of the church decide these stories were inconvenient.
You are not going to find the word “transgender” in ancient texts, and evangelicals love pointing that out as if it ends the conversation.
It does not.
The absence of a modern term does not erase an ancient reality. When we read Christian history honestly rather than defensively, we find people whose lives map closely onto what we now understand as transgender experience.
Saint Eugenia of Rome was assigned female at birth and born into a pagan family. They became fascinated by Christianity and eventually converted.
Eugenia cut their hair, put on men’s clothes, lived as a man, and entered monastic life. Eventually, they became an abbot of a monastery (the monastic version of the CEO). Their gender was not treated as deception or rebellion in their hagiography. It was treated as part of their vocation, their devotion, and their sanctity.
Saint Euphrosyne was assigned female at birth and born in Alexandria in the fifth century. Their father’s name was Paphnutius (he becomes central to the story later).
Very early in their life, an arranged marriage was planned. But Euphrosyne felt called to the monastic life. They took the name Smaragdus and lived as a man in a monastery for thirty-eight years.
What I think is the most beautiful part of their story involves their father. When Smaragdus entered the monastery, they did so in secret. Paphnutius, their father, believed his child was lost and grieved for years. Eventually, he went to the very monastery where Smaragdus was living seeking pastoral care and spiritual support.
The abbot assigned Smaragdus to walk with their father in his grief. The abbot had no idea of their relationship, and no idea of the gender they were assigned at birth. Paphnutius did not recognize Smaragdus as his child. Over many meetings Smaragdus sat their father, offered spiritual guidance, and helped him process his loss, all without the father knowing that he was being cared for by his child.
In the final year of Smaragdus’s life, they sent for Paphnutius to come in three days. On their deathbed, Smaragdus revealed their identity and said, “I am your child.”
The story of Saint Marinos is tragic, and it should unsettle anyone who claims the church has always handled gender “biblically.”
Marinos was assigned female at birth and originally named Marina. They chose the name Marinos and lived as a man in a nearby monastery. Later, while traveling on monastery business, Marinos ended up staying at an inn.
While they were staying there, the innkeeper’s daughter became pregnant by a soldier. When asked who the father was, she claimed it was Marinos.
The abbot did not investigate. Marinos was expelled immediately. For years, Marinos lived at the gate of the monastery. The hagiographies describe them sleeping there, begging, and performing acts of repentance.
When the child was born, Marinos was ordered to raise the child as their own, and begged for food and provisions for the child and its mother. Eventually, they were allowed back into the monastery, but only as a servant, not as a monk.
It was only after Marinos’s death that it was discovered they had been assigned female at birth.
There are many stories like these. And I encourage you to research them for yourself, evangelicals too, if they are willing to look beyond modern culture-war talking points.
What matters is this. These people were considered holy. They were canonized. They were some of the first saints of the church. And their gender identities were not scrubbed from their stories. They were named, acknowledged, and affirmed.
In early Christianity, moving from one gender to another was celebrated and seen as symbolic of renouncing the world for God. It was seen as spiritually meaningful, not sinful or demonic.
Today, many people who claim to be “christian” demonize, persecute, and even advocate harm against transgender people.
That posture is not just cruel. It is unchristian. And it is historically indefensible.
Christian history contains a deep and beautiful tradition of honoring transgender lives as holy lives. The fact that the modern booming voice of evangelicalism has buried that tradition is a tragedy.
It perpetuates harm.
It limits the expansiveness of God’s creative acts.
This history deserves to be named, celebrated, and recovered, especially from those who insist that they alone represent the true faith.
