The mother church of the international Anglican Church has admitted that it cannot define what a woman is. A man named Adam Kendry, a lay member of the denomination’s General Synod, plainly asked, “What is the Church of England’s definition of a woman?”
And the umbrella church of the Anglican Communion, which boasts over 100 million members, couldn’t answer the question.
“There is no official definition, which reflects the fact that until fairly recently definitions of this kind were thought to be self-evident, as reflected in the marriage liturgy,” said Senior Bishop Rt Rev. Robert Innes.
Instead of saying, “just kidding,” the bishop engaged in Orwellian doublespeak that catered to the LGBTQ community.
“The [Living in Love and Faith] project however has begun to explore the marriage complexities associated with gender identity and points to the need for additional care and thought to be given in understanding our commonalities and differences as people made in the image of God,” the bishop added.
The Living in Love and Faith (LLF) initiative began in 2020, with the goal of enabling “the Church of England churches across the country to participate in a process of learning and praying together as part of discerning a way forward in relation to matters of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage.”
So, while the Church of England can’t answer the question right now, Anglicans worldwide can rest assured they’re working on it.
“The Church of England is keenly aware that issues of gender and sexuality are intrinsic to people’s experience; their sense of identity; their lives and the loving relationships that shape and sustain them,” the Church’s website declares. “We also know that the life and mission of our Church – and of the worldwide Anglican Communion – are affected by the deep, and sometimes painful, disagreements among us which have been debated and discussed on many occasions over the years.”
Rev. Angela Berners-Wilson, who in 1994 was, ironically, the first woman — (how did they know?) — to be ordained as a priest in England, seemed to have a problem with Innes’ answer, although she conceded that the church needs to be sensitive to the needs of the LGBTQ community.
“I’m not totally happy with it. I mean, I do think certain things like men can’t have babies, just to say the complete obvious thing,” Berners-Wilson said. “But I think we need to be very sensitive and maybe we need to reexamine our boundaries.”
The question of what a woman is has become one of the hardest and most politically charged inquiries of our time. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during her confirmation hearing in March that she could not answer the question, telling Senator Marsha Blackburn (R- Tenn.), “I can’t,” when asked to define what a woman is.
Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire has even produced a documentary entitled What is a Woman?, which asks the question in its title. Walsh’s documentary, which takes the traditional view of what a woman is, currently enjoys a 97-percent audience approval score on the ratings site Rotten Tomatoes.
“There’s two different things going on here. You’ve got people who can’t answer the question, who are actually confused about it,” Walsh told Piers Morgan. “But then you also have people who are pretending to be confused when they’re not really, which is actually even more concerning in a lot of ways.”
The Church’s unclear answer regarding what a woman is, is disheartening to those of us who have known the difference between men and women is since we were toddlers.
Maya Forstater of Sex Matters, a group which seeks “to promote clarity about sex in public policy, law and culture,” called the Church of England’s answer “shocking,” and said “the concepts of male and female did not need to have a formal official definition” since “they are older than human life itself.”
“When the Government redefined women through the Gender Recognition Act, the Church of England could have stuck with its long-established understanding, which makes sense whether your starting point is biology or the Bible,” Forstater explained.
“It is shocking that they so readily gave up the definition of man or woman for the state to amend, as if this fundamental truth did not matter,” she concluded.
The Church of England is right in reaching out to the transgender community, as they are people who are in obvious need of God’s love — as we all are. However, you don’t bring people to the truth by lying to them or by turning a blind eye to their obvious delusions. In a world desperately searching for moral clarity, the Church of England’s limp answer when asked to define what a woman is, is a textbook definition of the “lukewarm” church described in Revelation 3.
