Should Christians be using preferred pronouns?

Question 12026

Preferred pronouns have turned an ordinary part of speech into a test of allegiance, and believers are being asked to take that test at work, at university and increasingly in the family. It is a small word with a great deal loaded onto it, which is exactly why it is difficult.

I want to think this through carefully rather than issue a slogan. There are Christians who treat compliance as obviously loving and Christians who treat refusal as obviously faithful, and I do not think either has done the work. The question deserves better than a reflex.

What is actually being asked

Begin by identifying the request accurately, because it is not one request but several. Sometimes it is simply a request to be polite. Sometimes it is a request to affirm a claim about reality. Sometimes it is a compliance test in a corporate setting, where the point is to secure public agreement rather than to make anyone comfortable.

That distinction matters enormously. Preferred pronouns used in ordinary conversation with a colleague who is in genuine distress is one thing. A mandatory declaration of pronouns in an email signature, designed to enlist everyone in a particular account of human identity, is another. Treating them as identical will produce confusion in both directions.

So the first question is not “may I say this word?” but “what am I being asked to affirm by saying it?” That is a question a Christian should be willing to ask out loud, politely, before answering.

Why the truth claim cannot be waved through

The Christian position on this is not squeamishness. Scripture presents male and female as an act of God at creation: “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27), which Jesus affirmed as the starting point of any discussion about human beings (Matthew 19:4).

That means sex is not an opinion about oneself but a feature of one’s creation. Language that treats it as self-assigned is not neutral. It carries an anthropology, and it is an anthropology in which the body is subordinate to the inner sense of self and can be overruled by it.

Since Christians are commanded to speak truth (Ephesians 4:25), the request cannot be handled as though nothing were at stake. Whether every use of a pronoun actually asserts that claim is a further question, and a fair one, but the claim itself is real and Christians should not pretend to be unaware of it.

The case for accommodation

Let me put the strongest form of the other argument, because it deserves it. Language is conventional. When I call a man Bill whose name is William, I am not lying. Titles, honorifics and names are courtesies rather than truth claims, and a great deal of ordinary speech works this way without anybody being deceived.

Pastorally, insisting on a pronoun with a person in acute distress may end the conversation permanently, and with it any chance of speaking about Jesus. Paul became “all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22), and he was willing to concede a great deal that he had every right to insist on.

There is also a plain matter of kindness. The person in front of you is usually not an activist. They are frequently young, frequently unhappy, and frequently have a history you know nothing about. Winning a point at their expense is not a victory worth having.

The case for declining

And now the other side. Preferred pronouns differ from names in one important respect. A name is an arbitrary label; a third-person pronoun in English encodes sex. When I use one, I am not addressing the person at all. I am describing them to somebody else, and description is where truth-telling lives.

There is also the question of what compliance does over time. Speech shapes thought. If I habitually describe reality in terms I believe to be false, I should not be surprised if my convictions quietly soften. That is not a paranoid observation; it is how language works on all of us.

And there is a duty to others. Christians who comply in institutional settings make it harder for the next believer to decline, and for the person struggling with dysphoria who may need somebody in their life who is not simply agreeing with everything they say.

Preferred pronouns: where I land and why

I do not think Scripture yields a single rule that covers every case. What it yields is a set of commitments to hold together: truthfulness, love of neighbour, the dignity of every image-bearer, and a willingness to bear cost for faithfulness.

In practice I find the name is usually the workable path. Using a person’s chosen name is a courtesy that asserts nothing about biology, and it allows a conversation to continue. Structuring sentences so that third-person pronouns are unnecessary is easier than people expect, and it is not evasion, since I am not deceiving anyone about what I believe.

Where preferred pronouns are demanded as a declaration of belief, I would decline, respectfully, and explain why if asked. What I would not do is announce my position unprompted, treat every request as an attack, or make a stranger’s difficult life into a platform for my convictions.

Manner matters as much as content

Peter tells believers to give a reason for their hope “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15-16). Both nouns are instructions. A Christian who is technically correct and habitually contemptuous has failed the test just as surely as one who says whatever is asked.

I would also press anyone taking a stand to examine the heart underneath it. Is this conviction, or is it cultural irritation wearing theological clothing? There is a great deal of anger about these questions circulating among Christians, and anger is not the same thing as faithfulness (James 1:20).

Colossians gives the standard: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6). Each person. Not each category. The instruction assumes that the right answer varies with the person in front of you.

When the cost is real

For some believers this is not theoretical. Employment policies, professional registration and academic requirements can put a Christian in a genuine bind, and I do not treat that lightly. Nor should churches, which are often better at applauding faithfulness than at supporting the people who pay for it.

If you face that, seek counsel before the moment arrives, know your legal position, and be as reasonable as you can be for as long as you can be. Peter and John did not go looking for a confrontation with the council, but when it came they said, “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).

And if you conclude that a particular accommodation is acceptable and another believer concludes otherwise, be slow to condemn him. This is precisely the sort of question on which sincere Christians will differ, and we should be able to differ without dividing.

What to do when it is your own family

The hardest version of this question never appears in the online arguments. It arrives when it is your daughter, your grandson, your brother, and the request is made across a kitchen table by somebody you love. Everything abstract about the discussion evaporates at that point.

My counsel there is to protect the relationship above all, because you cannot influence someone you no longer speak to. That may mean using a name, avoiding third-person constructions, and saying very little about pronouns for a long time. It does not mean pretending you have changed your mind, and most families know perfectly well what you think without your having to restate it monthly.

Keep the door open, keep praying, and take the long view. The father in Luke 15:20 was watching the road while his son was still a long way off. That is a picture of patience, not of approval, and it is the posture I would want for any believer whose family is walking through this.

So, now what?

The question of preferred pronouns is really a test of whether Christians can hold truth and compassion together when the culture insists we choose one. The answer is not a formula that fits every situation but a set of commitments: to God’s design, to the dignity of the person in front of us, to honest speech, and to bearing whatever faithfulness costs.

So think it through before you are asked, not during. Decide what you can do gladly, what you can do with a clear conscience, and what you cannot do at all. And whatever you decide, make sure the person on the other side of the conversation comes away knowing they were treated as a human being rather than as an argument. Related reading: how Christians should react to gender dysphoria, whether gender is a biological reality and what about transgenderism.

“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

Ephesians 4:15 (ESV)