Remember back in February when the Guardian published a whacky story with the headline, “Church of England to consider use of gender-neutral terms for God”? They quoted the Bishop of Lichfield, who sits as the vice-chair of the Church of England’s liturgical commission, saying the Church has been “exploring the use of gendered language in relation to God for several years”.
Today, on the opening day of General Synod – the Church of England’s governing body – the Archbishop of York has said that the Lord’s Pray is “problematic”.
Stephen Cottrell said, “I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life”
An interesting position for the second most senior church leader in the country to take.
We call it the “Lord’s Prayer” because it is the prayer the Lord gave us. He taught us to pray it. We call God “Our Father” because that is how he instructed us to address him.
In the Gospel according to St Matthew (chapter 6, verse 9), we read Jesus’ words, “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven…” and in the Gospel according to St Luke (chapter 11, verse 2), we read the same, “And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven…” Even in the Gospel according to St Mark, there is an abridged version (chapter 11, verse 25) reading, “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven…”
The Reverend Canon Chris Sugden made a good point, asking, “Is the archbishop of York saying… that Jesus was not pastorally aware?” After all, if God told us his preferred pronouns, should we not respect them? The Rev’d Sudgen went on to hit the nail on the head, “It seems to be emblematic of the approach of some church leaders to take their cues from culture rather than scripture.” Thank God there are still Bible-reading Christians like the Rev’d Sugden on the General Synod. The Archbishop of York appears lost. We should pray for him. And in the meantime, he should step down. He is in no position to lead the Church; he is leading the flock astray. The Bible has grave warnings against such people.
All this in the week the Archbishop of Canterbury backed the horrendous anti-free-speech legislation, the so-called ‘hate crime bill’, in what he describes as a way to back trans students. Any good Christian would say there is no such thing as trans students because we are either male or female, made in the image of God, and that we should encourage young people to read the Bible and come to understand that it’s a logical fallacy to be in the wrong body because we are our bodies – we are our bodies, and our souls. Instead of encouraging the use of harmful chemical castration drugs relabelled as puberty blockers and pushing for the mutilation of young people’s bodies, we should be loving them as they are, as God made them, and leading them away from sin and toward Christ.
To make matters worse, the Archbishop of Canterbury conflated ‘trans students’ with Jews, as if to imply all minorities are the same in his eyes. Comparing a mental disorder to an ethnic and religious group would have been considered highly offensive had it been any mental illness other than gender dysphoria.
The trans ideology is one strand of the new ‘woke’ religion. There are many branches, including queer theory, gender theory and critical race theory. They’re all from the same neo-Marxist framework of looking at the world through a particular lens and perceiving injustices where they might not exist in order to create division through imaginary power dynamics. I’ll write a separate piece on this new woke cult another time, but I’m sure you have already noticed they have vestments, liturgies, creeds, and their virtues are what Christians call vices (i.e. pride).
These branches of the woke cult all share the same mottos/taglines, too. They’re obvious because they seem out of place. There’s an odd juxtaposition when you read the Black Lies Matter manifesto and see “smash heteronormativity” What has sexuality to do with race? The most common chant, though, is “destroy the patriarchy” or “down with the patriarchy” Why do they want to destroy the patriarchy? Because this entire movement is an affront to God.
Read it all at Substack
