The creator of VeggieTales says God being nonbinary is backed by the Bible

This story originally appeared on Them.

Phil Vischer, the co-creator of the Christian-themed animated series VeggieTales, pointed out that God doesn’t have a gender according to Biblical canon. Naturally, transphobes are absolutely losing it.

After Texas Democrat James Talarico easily won his bid for U.S. Senate in a “blue wave” of midterm victories, right-wing pundit and podcast host Gunther Engelman posted a jab on X referencing Talarico’s support for transgender and nonbinary people. Specifically, Engelman meant to mock Talarico’s 2021 comments on God’s gender, which centered on an interpretation of the Hebrew used in Genesis.

“The first two lines in Genesis use two different Hebrew words to describe God,” Talarico, who has a master’s degree in theology, said. “One of them is the masculine Hebrew noun for divinity. The second is the feminine Hebrew noun for spirit. God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between.” His conclusion? “God is nonbinary.”

In the 2026 election cycle, Talarico dismissed his own comments as being “provocative” under right-wing scrutiny but that hasn’t stopped conservatives from continuing to glom onto them, even after his win.

“Just a reminder to all Texans… God is not non-binary,” Engleman wrote on November 5.

Vischer, who has spent over three decades using talking produce to teach very real Bible lessons, subsequently took to social media to correct this take on the Abrahamic God.

“‘God is a biological male’ is a weird hill to die on,” Vischer wrote in response to the post.

If you were a kid in the 1990s and early 2000s — especially if you attended a Christian school, daycare, or otherwise child-centered religious educational space — chances are you’ve seen VeggieTales. For those unfamiliar, the CGI-animated series was first released in 1993 and follows Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber through their misadventures, instructing the audience in Christian moral lessons along the way, and in some cases recreating Biblical stories beat-for beat with its ensemble cast of farmers’ market staples.

Vischer himself has criticized LGBTQ+ representation in children’s entertainment as recently as 2019, when he told The Christian Post, “If I get pressure from Hollywood to show two men getting married because we've all decided it's right and correct, my pushback is: ‘No, I won't. Because that's not what I believe is best for kids.’” In 2022, however, he was criticized within evangelical circles for referring to LGBTQ+ people as “brothers and sisters.”

Regardless of his views on LGBTQ+ issues as a whole, Vischer seems absolutely certain that defining God according to human biology is not supported by the Bible. And though he merely pointed out the long-standing theories that the Christian God does not have a gender, right-wing posters rushed to his comments to condemn him anyway.

“Good God man, what kind of woke idiot have you devolved into,” one commenter wrote on X. “What’s next? Trans Veggie tales where Veggies come out as fruit?”

“Botanically speaking, cucumbers and tomatoes are, in fact, fruit,” Vischer responded. “Sorry about that.”

Besides being a prolific animator, Vischer is a seasoned Christian educator, meaning he knows a thing or two about the Old Testament. Rather than backing down in the face of the continuing anti-trans comments, Vischer remained steadfast in his canonical reading of the Bible.

“I'm amazed at the # of Christians who believe, since God took on the human form of a biological male, we can conclude that God the Father is eternally male,” Vischer wrote on X on November 7. “Also amazed at the anger generated by pointing out this is not historic Christian teaching.”

Vischer isn’t a stranger to correcting bigoted interpretations of the Bible. In 2020, the animator posted a 17-minute educational video on systemic racism in the United States, encouraging Christians to care and understand why people were participating in historic protests against anti-Black police brutality.

In regards to nonbinary God, Vischer isn’t letting anti-Talarico Republicans get the last word in.

“Let’s be clear: If you believe the eternal God, creator of the universe, is a male (or female) of a gendered species, you have departed from Christian orthodoxy,” Vischer wrote on X on November 9.

Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s newsletters.