Here, England, is your Faith
What do you get when you decide that you can have a national church with a King as its vicar? Eventually you get women ‘bishops.’
What do you get when you make women ‘bishops?’ Feminists.
Support is growing within the Church of England to rewrite its official liturgy to refer to God as female following the selection of the first women bishops.
Growing numbers of priests already insert words such as “she” and “mother” informally into traditional service texts as part of a move to make the language of worship more inclusive, it has been claimed.
But calls for a full overhaul of liturgy to recognise the equal status of women have already been discussed informally at a senior level.
It comes after the “Transformations Steering Group”, a body which meets in Lambeth Palace to examine the impact of women in ministry on the Church of England, issued a public call to the bishops to encourage more “expansive language and imagery about God”.
Hilary Cotton, chair of Women And The Church (Watch), the group which led the campaign for female bishops, said the shift away from the traditional patriarchal language of the Book of Common Prayer in already at an “advanced” stage in some quarters.
How can people seriously believe the teachings of their religion today when things just keeps changing? Does anyone ever entertain the idea that maybe some Anglicans may connect the dots between new lady bishops and this new female God?
Mrs Cotton said that while congregations were already experimenting with new terminology, it was time for the issue to be considered by the Liturgical Commission, the body which drafts official service books, as well as those drawing behind a planned new catechism.
“Until we shift considerably towards a more gender-full expression in our worship about God then we are failing God and we are missing something,” she said.
“We are [also] going to miss some of the opportunities that otherwise particularly women might feel themselves called to.”
Her comments came following a discussion at the Westminster Faith Debates on whether the consecration of women as bishops would “change” the Church of England.
The Church of England’s worship already includes some references to God as female, many of them centuries old.
I think at this point, if our great grandparents could see our day, they would only laugh and pity us in the hands of these monsters.