The Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, recently passed a resolution to drop gendered references to God in favour of gender-neutral language. The resolution adopted states:
If revision of the Book of Common Prayer is authorized, to utilize expansive language for God from the rich source of feminine, masculine, and non-binary imagery for God found in Scripture and tradition and, when possible, to avoid the use of gendered pronouns for God.
Prior to that, the diocese issued a resolution on the inclusion of transgender people. The resolution, “affirms that all transgender people, and anyone whose gender identity and expression differs from that assigned at birth, are beloved children of God…” Further, the resolution encourages “all parishes to remove all obstacles to full participation in congregational life by making all gender-specific facilities accessible, regardless of identity and expression.”
The resolutions were proposed by Rev Alex Dyer, of St Thomas’ Parish, Washington, DC. Dyer told Tucker Carlson, “We don’t want to take away anything. We want to add on to it.” After Carlson pointed out that our understanding of gender is heavily influenced by the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1, Dyer retorted:
I’m sure you also know too, that there’s another Genesis story in chapter 2, where God creates Adam and then he creates a helper. Eve doesn’t identify gender actually until chapter 3.
When Carlson asked Dyer if he believed Eve was a woman, he responded, “I wasn’t there.”
In his book The Great Evangelical Disaster, Francis Schaeffer rightly said: ” Here is the great evangelical disaster – the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth. There is only one word for this – namely accommodation. The evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age. First, there has been accommodation on Scripture, so that many who call themselves evangelicals hold a weakened view of the Bible and no longer affirm the truth of all the Bible teaches – truth not only in religious matters but in the areas of science and history and morality… This accommodation has been costly, first in destroying the power of the Scriptures to confront the spirit of our age; second, in allowing the further slide of our culture. Thus we must say with tears that it is the evangelical accommodation to the world spirit around us, to the wisdom of this age, which removes the evangelical church from standing against the breakdown of our culture.”
