How the Church of England’s creation of a ‘Gender-neutral God’ will change the religion

The Church of England has said it is exploring the concept of using gender-neutral terms when referring to God in prayers.

At present, God is referred is by male pronouns and referred to as The Father, or The Lord.

While it says there are no current plans to change the way services are held, it opens up the religion to a range of questions.

While the synod says that God has neither been male nor female, the default has been to the former. And the relationship between many and the Christian deity has been that reference, and with some inserting the Virgin Mother as a component, to mirror those on earth.

Now, in the storm of culture wars around gender in the Global North, the change could radicalise the religion and leave it as a form that in which it has never seen itself.

There will be a question

What does God want to be referred to as?
What is the concept of God if it is allowed to cater to the whims of times as they change?
For those who historically insisted that he was male, does this mean they were wrong?
If they were wrong, given they carried on many of rites of the religion, what else could they have been wrong about? Possibly everything?

Now all of this pointless when you think of it, because humanity is about going from one fleeting disaster to another.

In the 1700s, children were treated as small adults and often expected to work the same shifts as older people. By the 1800s, they were to be seen and not heard and the 1900s created a protected class out of them.

There is every chance that in the next 50 years, children, as women are experiencing now will lose their protected status and be treated as adults in little bodies.

Also the idea of gender keeps changing every 100 to 150 years, depending on who has the power.

And as for God, well, he can be substituted for whatever works for that time. Humans have had so many versions of a deity (Hinduism is the oldest religion – up to 17,000 years – with first texts as old as 3,000 years), so this while radicalising it, should just move whatever works next, and not what is.

Because, after all, what matters is your faith, right?