No ‘woke’ gender neutral god in my church: Bishop

The bishop of the breakaway Anglican movement, the Diocese of the Southern Cross, says a proposal to stop referring to God as ‘He’ or ‘Our Father’ is a vindication of his split with the church.

Bishop Glenn Davies at St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney. Picture: Darren Leigh Roberts

The bishop of the breakaway Anglican movement, the Diocese of the Southern Cross, says a proposal to introduce gender neutral language by the Church of England is a “vindication” of his church’s split with the Anglican Church.

Bishop Glenn Davies – who served as the archbishop of Sydney for eight years before forming Australia’s Diocese of the Southern Cross in 2022 – said any attempt to stop referring to God as “He” or “Our Father” represented a “woke” and “outlandish” distortion of the true Christian faith and its scriptures.

Following a meeting of the General Synod in London this week the Church of England confirmed on Thursday that its Liturgical Commission had launched a special project to “explore” updating future teachings, including the adoption of gender neutral language.

The project, according to a senior Church of England spokesman, will consider changing centuries of religious teaching to give God gender-neutral pronouns, and allow churchgoers “to speak of God in a non-gendered way”.

Bishop Davies – whose diocese is aligned with a cluster of conservative churches under the Global Anglican Future Conference – said the commission’s project was an “absolute vindication” of the Diocese of the Southern Cross and its pledge to maintain the traditional teachings of the Gospel.

“God is not male or female. He reveals himself to us with masculine pronouns and that’s a key distinction,” Bishop Davies told The Australian.

“If you want to have a religion where you make God in your own image … then go ahead, but the Christian religion and the real Anglican faith is a revelation-based faith and you cannot change revelation to suit your modern persona. This is what is occurring in England at the moment at the General Synod, where these ideas are being considered.

“But they are failing to see that the Bible is timeless.”

News of the project follows heated debate among the Church of England’s General Synod, which recently established proposals that indicated it would refuse marriage between same-sex couples, but permit priests to bless them in church.

Bishop Richard Condie, who has led the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania since 2016, told The Australian it would be an error for the Church of England to change the language of the Bible in an effort to become more inclusive.

“I think the church exists to welcome people regardless of their circumstances in life, regardless of race, gender or age,” he said. “And I don’t accept that to be inclusive you have to accommodate changes to the language of the Bible.

“For me what the scriptures teach is central to being an Anglican. So when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he says, say, ‘Our Father in heaven’.

“It’d have to be a pretty good reason to change how God himself has said he wants to be addressed.”

Reverend Matthew Anstey, an outspoken critic of the Diocese of the Southern Cross, said the commission’s project was a welcome development in the Church of England and was a sign of “positive change”.

“The church has always been behind, if not centuries behind, and the conservatives continually say we shouldn’t follow contemporary culture and society. But my view is that contemporary culture and society are usually right and figures things out long before the church.”

Bishop Michael Ipgrave, deputy chairman of the Liturgical Commission, told reporters the Church of England had been “exploring the use of gendered language in relation to God for several years”.