Our non-birthing parent

What do you call a man who doesn’t believe in God? An atheist. And what do you call a priest who doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t understand basic theology, but upholds every woke fad going? The Archbishop of York.

One has to arrive at this melancholy conclusion every time the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, the second most senior Anglican prelate, opens his mouth in public.

This time His Grace delivered himself on the Lord’s Prayer, whose wording he considers problematic. I’m sure the originator of that text must apply the same adjective to His Grace.

The eloquent way he explains the nature of the problem brings to mind the great preachers of the past, from St Paul onwards. The famous pagan orators, such as Demosthenes and Cicero, also rate a mention as worthy precursors. But judge for yourself:

“I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life — then those of us who say this prayer together, whether we like it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, even if we determinedly face away from each other only turning round in order to put a knife in the back of the person standing behind us, are sisters and brothers, family members, the household of God.”

Let me see if I get this right. Even though we’d dearly love to stab one another (incidentally, that feat would be easier to accomplish on a person standing in front of us), we are all sisters and brothers, members of the same family in the household of God. Yet people are siblings by virtue of sharing two parents, or at least one. In every language I am familiar with, parents are identified as ‘father’ and ‘mother’.

So God has to be either one or the other, and his son seems to have settled the issue by referring to God as Father and telling believers to start their daily prayer with “Our Father, which art in heaven…”.

One would think that even in our gender-fluid times any priest has a professional obligation to accept Jesus Christ as something of an authority on such matters. Where is the problem then?

It’s true that many earthly fathers take a rather lackadaisical view of parental duties. And yes, their offspring may have unpleasant associations with the concept of fatherhood.

However, I’d suggest it’s the pastoral duty of any priest, never mind a prelate, to explain to Kevin what’s what. God the Father, Kev, shouldn’t be equated with your Dad, who shagged your Mum, did a runner, and turns up only every couple of years to shag your Mum again, nick her social cheque, and then use you and her in lieu of a football or a punching bag.

God the Father isn’t that kind of bloke. In fact, Kev, God isn’t a bloke at all – he is God. He is called Father because he created us all and guides us lovingly through life, the way your Dad doesn’t.

I wouldn’t take Kevin into the thicket of recondite theology, but the Archbishop should understand, and be able to explain, why the first hypostasis of the Holy Trinity is called Father. This is how I tried to do so in an earlier piece:

“Judaeo-Christian God made the world as a free act of absolute creation, that is out of nothing (ab nihilo).

“The human father imitates this act by initiating conception. Though both he and the woman are essential to it, the man, by impregnating the woman, is the active agent; the woman, by being impregnated, is the passive one.

“Thus, referring to God as ‘he’ is a sound metaphor. But it’s also a sound analogy, for a father embodies what theologians call the ‘principle’ of procreation.

“Because a man procreates outside his own body, he stands outside and above his creation in the sense in which a woman doesn’t. She conceives and gestates the child inside her body, and in that sense the child is a part of her, even though the man also contributes his DNA.

“Symbolically the couple imitates the act of divine creation. The man is both transcendent (standing outside and above his creation) and immanent (present within it). The woman, on the other hand, is only immanent.

“The reason theologians insist on referring, both metaphorically and analogously, to God as father is that his transcendence is a more important property than his immanence.”

Kevin’s feelings about his Dad don’t come into this at all – they belong in a totally different spiritual and physical realm. Kevin’s plight is awful, but a priest isn’t above all a social worker, and nor is Jesus Christ a Shadow Home Secretary.

However, there’s something Kevin may not know, but a priest should. Orphanages were among the first institutions created by the early Christians acting in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Such institutions, along with those for the care of the old and infirm, widows, lepers and cripples rapidly spread already during Constantine’s reign. In fact, the emperor Julian the Apostate, who had switched from Arian Christianity back to his beloved paganism, reluctantly praised the ‘Galileans’ for looking after the weak and needy, “not only theirs, but ours as well,” so much better than the pagans did.

The church was thus willing to provide not only spiritual solace for children like Kevin but also tangible support, shelter, food and education. That was an attempt to ensure that children who lost their fathers would never remain fatherless.

The ‘problem’ highlighted by His Grace is new to me. So new, in fact, that one begins to suspect many of today’s Anglicans are actively looking for ways of taking Christ out of Christianity. The older problem, that of God’s pronouns, hasn’t gone away though.

In fact, the Church of England is about to switch to ‘non-gendered’ pronouns in honour of a fad that’s not only secular but aggressively atheist. Thus, the Rev Christina Rees said the Archbishop “has put his finger on an issue that’s a really live issue for Christians and has been for many years”.

I’m sure that’s “a really live issue for Christians” like her, those whose mission in life seems to be vulgarising Christianity into extinction. I’ll refrain from enlarging on my view of female priesthood, other than saying I regard it as an abomination.

But whatever one’s views on clerical ladies may be, any person with a modicum of taste would abhor the way the Rev Christina bemoans that: “It’s the way it’s been set for so long and so we’re stuck. And because Jesus called God ‘Daddy’, we think we have to call God ‘Daddy’.”

Alas, I am incapable of reading the Scripture in its original languages, but in no translation I’ve ever seen does Jesus refer to God as ‘Daddy’, ‘Dad’, ‘Pop’, ‘Pa’ or any such familiar term. The Rev Christina obviously wants to kill two birds with one stone.

First, she is out to reconfirm her woke credentials by insisting on a ‘non-gendered’ God. Second, she is trying to imply her special intimacy with God, with whom she seems to be on more familiar terms than even Jesus was.

In fact, she succeeds only in parading her staggering ignorance, irreverence and – I’m sure – crypto-atheism. She is such a strong living argument against female priesthood that I consider the case closed.

His Grace, however, isn’t a woman. Hence he must be a strong living argument against something else — I’ll let you decide what.