Church of Ireland body calls for legal ‘recognition of transgender and non-binary people’

Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

From the very beginning of time, it has been a very clear, basic fact of nature that God created men and women.

God didn’t create men in women’s bodies, He didn’t create women in men’s bodies, He didn’t create people who are neither male nor female – “male and female created He them”.

The cultural warriors who seek to shrug off and stomp into the ground all lingering traces of Biblical Christianity in our society have largely moved from the pro-sodomite campaign to the gender and gender identity campaign as the next battleground in their rage against God.

Even ungodly individuals who have sought to speak out against the utterly illogical claims of the gender activists, such as Harry Potter author JK Rowling, noted feminist Germaine Greer and Father Ted author Graham Linehan have been castigated, no-platformed, demonised and barred off social media (in the case of the latter).

Yet while there is not even unanimity on these matters within ungodly members of society, we have a leading body within the Church of Ireland seeking to offer even greater legal protection against those who seek to speak out against the ungodly transgender campaign.

The Church and Society Commission of the Church of Ireland, a body set up in 2013 by the General Synod to “develop areas of living today where the mission of the church can be active” (whatever that means), has called for legal recognition and specific hate crime legislation to cover people who class themselves as “transgender and non-binary”.

Now of course nobody should be subjected to a hate crime, though at the same time the definition of what a hate crime is can be very loosely interpreted to mean whatever those in charge want it to mean.

Speaking out against trans ideology is enough to get someone thrown off Twitter and widely castigated, so how much more dangerous is it for a church to recognise ideologies which are contrary to God’s will?

In the Church of Ireland’s Church and Society Commission’s response to a consultation regarding the extending of provisions within hate crime legislation, they state that “gender… should be sufficiently designed as to recognise the existence of and protect cisgender people but also intersex, transgender and non-binary people”.

For clarity, “cisgender people” is the term used by gender activists to describe people who are born a certain sex and identify as the same sex, ie the vast, vast majority of people.

Of course, there is no need for such a word as “cisgender” as that is what everyone in reality is. You may as well describe everyone as human, it is something which requires no greater elaboration than that.

“Transgender” can mean a large number of things but the Google dictionary defines it as “denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex”.

And “non-binary” refers to those who do not consider themselves to be male or female, generally asking to be called “they” or “them” rather than “he” or “she”.

All those things are at odds with God’s Word, yet a body set up by the Church of Ireland is campaigning for recognition of these deviations from God’s creation.

To say you are “transgender” is to say God has made a mistake when making you, and we know God makes no mistakes.

Furthermore, we are told clearly in 1 Corinthians 14:33 that “God is not the author of confusion”, which all this certainly is.

Many people are left perplexed by the terms being thrown about, the number of which seeming to be exponentially increasing, with many of these activists reassigning themselves within all these various categories almost at will. This is a very confused thing which results from man’s muddled mind.

And it can only be the result of muddled thinking from the Church of Ireland that it starts to recognise such terms.

The Church and Society Commission membership is rather difficult to ascertain for absolute certain, but in a report brought to the General Synod last year by the commission, the membership is stated as follows (and in this same order):

Right Rev Dr Kenneth Kearon (Chair and Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe)
Most Rev Dr Richard Clarke (at that time the Archbishop of Armagh)
Most Rev Dr Michael Jackson (Archbishop of Dublin)
Mr Ken Gibson
Mr Neville Armstrong
Mrs June Butler
Rev Rob Clements
Rev Dr Rory Corbett
Dr Elizabeth Leonard
Mrs Ethne McCord
Rev Martin O’Connor
Rev Andrew Orr
Ms Zephryn Patton
Rev Peter Rutherford

We cannot be certain this remains the make-up of the commission, especially given Most Ecumenical Richard Clarke has retired as Archbishop of Armagh, but it is likely most, if not all, of the others remain as members. We would be very grateful if a reader could confirm for us the current constitution of the commission.

The Chair of the commission, Bishop Kenneth Kearon (pictured, top), does remain the Chair, and he supported repealing the eighth amendment in the Republic of Ireland’s constitution which prohibited abortion, stating his belief that life does not begin at conception, showing his modern, liberal views on another most important matter.

This is, sadly, but a further sign of the malaise within the Church of Ireland, seemingly becoming more profound the higher up the clerical structure one looks.

Compromise is the name of the game for everyone involved in the Church and Society Commission in an effort to try to remain in step with the wicked world around us.

This, the Scriptures tell us, is a very foolish position to adopt.

Romans 12:2: “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

Let us not change, amend or water down our views to try to please the world but rather stand for the truth of God’s Word and let your light shine in this world of darkness.