Episcopal priestess stirs outrage for claiming Jesus is transgender: 'Heretical and vapid'

An Episcopal priestess in New York City has stirred outrage in recent days for a viral clip in which she proclaimed from the pulpit that God is nonbinary and Jesus Christ is transgender.

"God is nonbinary," Father Flourish Klink, who identifies as nonbinary and transgender, said during a homily in March at the historic Cathedral of St. John the Divine on the Upper West Side.

A clip of the sermon posted to X on Wednesday has drawn more than 7 million views.

"But I'm going to go further than that, and I'm going to say God is actually also trans," continued Klink, who went on to say she was helping congregants "get on the same page."

"When we trans people are born, folks assign us a gender based on what they see. Then, 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? OK, good," Klink said.

Episcopal priestess says Mary assigned Jesus male at birth, but he was trans. And when he was resurrected, he came back as His true, transgender self. pic.twitter.com/ox1yIfAT9e

— The Dissenter (@disntr) September 23, 2026

"Alright, here's why God is trans: 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,'" she continued, then paused for effect.

"God isn't a boy, we have established this. God is beyond boy and girl. God was assigned a gender at birth, and later on it became clear that that gender wasn't quite right."

"So if you’re going [to] deny that God is trans, I think you’re going to be denying the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and I have some notes about that," said Klink, who went on to argue that Jesus was not "traditionally masculine" because He never married and "chose to engage and teach with women in ways that were very unusual."

Acknowledging that her view was speculative and not explicit in the Bible, Klink suggested that because Jesus was not immediately recognized after the Resurrection, He may have "transitioned."

“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," concluded Klink, who holds a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary and co-chairs the Greater New York Area Episcopal Trans Task Force.

The clip drew a Community Note on X that said: "Mary did not assign a gender to Jesus. Mary was told before his birth that Jesus would be a male." The note cited Luke 1:30–31, which reads: "But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.'"

Many X users also pushed back, including Ceirion H. Dewar, a missionary bishop in the Confessing Anglican Church.

"Jesus Christ is not a blank canvas upon which ungodly clergy may paint whatever anthropology happens to be fashionable in their generation," Dewar wrote, later adding: "There is also something seriously pastorally irresponsible about presenting speculation as though it were Christian revelation. People experiencing questions concerning sex or gender deserve compassion, dignity and serious pastoral care. They do not need clergy rewriting the person of Christ in order to validate a modern unbiblical theory."

"This is blaspheming of the Holy Spirit, which Christ called the unforgivable sin. And a sign you're already damned or dangerously close to damming yourself if you don't repent imminently," BlazeTV host Steve Deace said, referring to the sin Jesus described in Mark 3:22–29 after teachers of the law accused Him of casting out demons by satanic power.

"This woman is mentally ill, thinking this haircut makes her a man — and saying the looniest things imaginable from a pulpit in a church. The Episcopal Church leadership that made her a 'priest' is, of course, heretical and vapid," said Christian author and broadcaster Eric Metaxas.

The Klink clip comes amid a similar online uproar over another Episcopal priestess, who said from her rainbow-draped pulpit that the Ethiopian eunuch baptized by Philip the evangelist in Acts 8:26–40 tells the story "of how a gender-ambiguous individual became an apostle."

In the clip, shared Friday by Protestia, a popular Christian X account, the unidentified priestess cited a later church tradition that the eunuch was named Simon, a name she said could also have been "Simone."

Episcopal pastrix says the Ethiopian eunuch that Phillip baptized was a gender ambiguous apostle named 'Simon' who possibly went by the feminine name 'Simone.' pic.twitter.com/D4IYnT7uuL

— Protestia (@Protestia) September 25, 2026

The clip drew condemnation from Howell Scott, pastor of First Baptist Carlsbad in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Scott suggested that the culture's descent into sexual confusion reflects the supernatural judicial blindness the apostle Paul described in Romans 1.

"When Paul wrote Romans 1, I'm not sure he would have envisioned the extent of the spiritual darkness that happens when God abandons people to their sexual perversions. They have abandoned the truth and embraced the lie," Scott said.