Church of England guidance used against Christian in court
by Archbishop Cranmer:
There’s something ever so slightly disquieting about this, but not for the reasons permeating the websites and chat-threads of Evangelical Christendom. Dr David Mackereth, who said in a Department of Work and Pensions training exercise that he would not call a (hypothetical) six-foot-tall bearded man ‘madam’, was summarily dismissed by the DWP for (future) crimes against equality. In his employment tribunal hearing, the Church of England’s guidance for welcoming transgender people was adduced as evidence against him, effectively in an attempt to prove the Dr Mackereth’s refusal to call a person by their preferred pronouns irrespective of biology was somehow un-Christian and so contrary to his own expressed religious beliefs.
Andrea Williams of Christian Concern explains:
What really upset me though, as a member of the Church of England’s General Synod, was that the people who sacked Dr Mackereth for his Christian beliefs relied on the Church of England’s position to justify their actions. I have spent a lot of time trying to tell Christians, of all denominations, that our public witness to the Truth – all aspects of it – is vital. When we are on TV, radio, or even in court we are often told that our brand of Christianity is not what lots of other Christians think. But, this week, for the first time, what the Church of England says was used as evidence against a Christian in court. For me it was another stark reminder of the damage caused by the Church of England’s abandonment of truth.
The evidence deployed against Dr Mackereth included reference to the House of Bishops Guidance for welcoming transgender people, and the Pastoral Guidance for use in conjunction with the Affirmation of Baptismal Faith in the context of gender transition. I criticised these moves towards acceptance of transgenderism at the time, and Carys Moseley explained why the transgender issue is a first-order gospel issue.
What is important for Dr Mackereth’s case is that the Pastoral Guidance says that transgender people should be referred to using their chosen name and pronoun. The guidance is therefore that Christians should not tell the truth about the biological sex of a transgender person. I think that, at the very least, in a civilised and fair society all people should accept this is, at least, a freedom of conscience issue.
And Bishop Gavin Ashenden was (politely) excoriating on Anglican Unscripted:
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