Blue Ridge Style & Beyond
Andrea Williams comments on how the Church of England’s Diocese of Derby added to the harm caused to Rev. Dr Bernard Randall under the guise of safeguarding.
After putting the Rev through a “safeguarding process” to ensure that he was not in fact a risk to children the Diocese of Derby issued a report that cited “the Church itself as a risk factor and, for firmly holding to the Church’s view, Dr Randall is treated as a reputational risk.
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Who Are The Extremists?
Rev. Dr. Bernard Randall, 48, an ordained minister in the Church of England, former chaplain of Christ’s College, Cambridge, is out of a job and is suing his former employer, Trent College, for discrimination, harassment, victimization and unfair dismissal. After a sermon he preached in the school chapel, Trent College reported Rev. Randall to the UK government’s terrorist watchdog, Prevent, as a potentially violent religious extremist and then dismissed him. The sermon was entitled ‘Competing Ideologies’ and it encouraged respect and debate on ‘identity ideologies.’ He had been approached by students at Trent to discuss the LGBT issue. One student indelicately asked: “How come we are told we have to accept all of this LGBT stuff in a Christian school?” So he wrote and delivered a sermon to help his young pupils sort things out.
You may read the sermon in full here and judge for yourself whether the School’s actions were appropriate.
After delivering that sermon he was summoned to a meeting with the Deputy Head (vice-principal) and the school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL). The meeting did not go well. He was told his talk had hurt some people’s feelings and undermined the School’s LGBT agenda. After the meeting, and without his knowledge, he was reported to Prevent, the government’s counter-terrorism watchdog! In addition to that, the DSL reported him to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) as a danger to children!
Additional details here. And video of the chaplain describing his ordeal is here.
If you read the sermon that brought about his dismissal, and I hope you did, ask yourself the following: Is this how we want to order our lives together? Our Christian lives (for those who are Christian)?
In his sermon Randall explained to his young students what the Church of England’s historical teachings are on marriage sexuality and gender. He reminded them they are not required to embrace the claims of LGBTQ activists, and are entitled, under English law to believe what they wish on such issues.
Randall’s main point in the sermon, was that people who hold to profoundly different ideologies must treat each other with respect:
“Now when ideologies compete, we should not descend into abuse, we should respect the beliefs of others, even where we disagree. Above all, we need to treat each other with respect, not personal attacks — that’s what loving your neighbor as yourself means. By all means discuss, have a reasoned debate about beliefs, but while it’s OK to try and persuade each other, no one should be told they must accept an ideology. Love the person, even where you profoundly dislike the ideas. Don’t denigrate a person simply for having opinions and beliefs which you don’t share.”
This is a point I’ll make repeatedly going forward. Some listeners will not share my basic assumptions about life, assumptions which flow from my understanding of God and the world created by that God, conscience forming beliefs that cannot be easily undone. We will differ. Which brings me to my next point: No one should be compelled to go against their most deeply held beliefs. That’s why Religious Freedom is a high priority for me. Moving forward I’ll be devoting some of the content of this blog/podcast to defending that basic Constitutional principle.
Religious Freedom was placed in the FIRST Amendment of our Constitution for good reason. Unfortunately, Rev Randall lives in the U.K. and must rely on the British courts and British Common Law for legal relief, if any. But first he must encounter the British Administrative State. An employment tribunal hearing is expected to be heard on June 14, 2021. If you sympathize with his plight, you might want to include him in your prayers.
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Sometimes our beliefs are wrong. Therefore humility calls out to humility as deep calls out too deep. We dialogue, we discuss, we mutually respect, in hopes of bridging the gap between us. But not necessarily. That is one characteristic about deeply held convictions, the chasm width may ultimately prove uncrossable. The distance is too great, like trying to build a bridge to the moon. (Needless to say, coercion on either side is wildly inappropriate and dehumanizing.) A New Testament scholar I know once spoke about how at Harvard Divinity School the staff and students were so anxious not to offend that everyone gravitated to a “lowest common denominator.” They would say, “oh well we can’t agree on that one so let’s lay that denominational distinctive aside.” But after going down the distinctives list, so as to throw out any offending thing, they ended up with defacto Unitarianism, “well maybe we can agree that there is a God,” although none of them were actually Unitarian. Sometimes setting aside crucial beliefs for the sake of agreement leaves you with very little to discuss.
You could bring up race as an example of how deeply held beliefs were used to justify the enslavement of blacks in America, but the analogy doesn’t work because the reality of immutable characteristics, like race, sex and ethnicity, are precisely what most Gender Ideology Activists deny. This is not your parents or grandparents civil rights movement.
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In 2018 Rev Randall attended a staff seminar at Trent College, entitled “Educate and Celebrate.” He raised an objection when the leader, Elly Barnes, instructed the staff to chant ‘smash heteronormativity’, smash heteronormativity!
For his anti-celebratory concerns he became a marked man at the college.
The obvious most humane response anyone could offer to Ms Barnes, or anyone like her, is to say, without heteronormativity, without the “gender binary,” humans and many other creatures would not exist. In the normal course of life, if heterosexual males and females don’t “get together” human life on this planet would end. Transgender activist Nicholas Teich says, “There is no getting around the fact that the gender binary of men and women—as we always knew it—is not the reality.” Really! Again, it must be emphasized, in the real world, it was gender binary fruitfulness that gave Mr. Teich his life.
This could lead us into discussing the Trans-humanism movement or the push for widespread surrogate mothering via in-vitro fertilization, or the rapidly arriving Brave New World of human cloning, to name but two technological developments, but following that rabbit trail will have to wait…
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Our bodies are a gift from our Creator, says Randall. So do I. So did Jesus,
“Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’” [Matt. 19:4].
If we find someone’s thoughts morally or mentally (not to mention ontologically) indefensible we must not be compelled to say or act otherwise. It would be dehumanizing to ask that of anyone, or compel anyone to affirm what they believe is deep psychological disturbance in the case of gender dysphoria.
But today people are being asked, compelled even, to do just that. Or they will lose their job. And have their reputation besmirched. A former chaplain at Cambridge University has. No backwoods Bible-thumper he. Rev. Randall was being investigated as a potential terrorist, and released from his job at an ostensibly Christian Academy for denying the view that people can be born in the wrong bodies. Among other things.
If you read the details I linked above, you will see that the Reverend’s defense rests squarely on the official teachings of the Church of England, not exactly a non-progressive bunch. The Right Reverend rightly asks, “is the COE an extremist organization?”
“Yet I ended up being told that I had to support everybody else’s beliefs, no matter what, while my Christian beliefs, the Church of England’s beliefs, were blatantly censored. “During the disciplinary hearing, I was never asked what I thought, they just assumed that I had extreme religious views. I don’t think the Church of England is an extremist organisation.”
And I ask you, is this the world we want to live in? We need to come up with some answers quick. Things are moving swiftly.
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Who Are The Extremists?
All of us must be horrified at the outbreak of real violence over the weekend against a Gay and Lesbian Club in Colorado Springs. Apparently a 22 year old man who had previous run-ins with the Law and by some accounts had previously demonstrated mental illness, yet nonetheless, that young man acquired a gun and killed 5 night club members.
18 others were wounded as well. Send your prayers out to them. And pray for Justice.
But what we should not do, because of kookoo birds like that loon, is attempt to silence honest discussion about the current debate raging in the Western world.
If you believe you are born in the wrong body or that your biological sex is not part of who you really are, then you have a dissociative disorder. You have a mental illness that must be squarely faced and lovingly treated. The discomfort is real. I know. And you need help.
There are those who disagree.
On Nov. 12, Jennifer Lima a Rhode Island school district committee member shared a post from an activist group which said the following: “Purposefully misgendering students is an act of violence. Respond accordingly.” Adding to this statement, Lima included the definition from the World Health Organization. She said, “any act of violence in our schools which creates an unsafe environment (physically or emotionally by or for any member of the school community) needs to be dealt with accordingly.” Source: Fox News (I'd really like to include other U.S. legacy news sources on this issue, but they by and large do not run stories critical of Gender Ideology. Though, I've noticed recently that is starting to change. More about that at another time.)
For those who don’t know. Misgendering can occur if you use the wrong preferred pronoun. Or if you refuse to admit in any way that a man can become a woman or vice versa. If you do that, according to this Gender Activist and many others like her, you have committed “an act of violence.”
As a Christian, I’m all in favor of using inoffensive language. But the use of language that denies reality is more than slightly problematic. Therefore, I won’t use someone’s preferred pronoun if that pronoun doesn’t correspond with physical reality.
I don’t have a problem using someone’s preferred name since names are merely conventional. But pronouns like she/he & her/him reflect the reality of God’s bi-natured creation and cannot reasonably be changed anymore than you can change your sex. Soul and Body were meant by God to be integrated parts of a single whole person.
I can’t lie about that.
I use sex-based pronouns for people. I do so out of deeply held beliefs. Rational Beliefs derived from Science, Natural Law and Religious Authority. So I’m going to insist that you please respect my beliefs as well.
Of course, it is true, sometimes we can’t tell someone’s biological sex. But when we do know…..we must speak truthfully. For those who wish to point out the existence of “Intersex” people, that is to say, those with a Disorder of Sexual Development (DSD), as a reason for adopting a more flexible stance on sex, gender and pronouns, I’m going to address DSD’s in a future podcast. So stay tuned.
Language matters, my friends.
If I’m in the presence of someone who wishes to deny biological reality, I will respectfully avoid the use of pronouns. It won’t be easy. But that’s where I draw the language line.
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Below is a table of both gendered and gender-neutral pronouns, along with their pronunciations. It is important to note, though, that some people do not subscribe to any pronoun and may like to be referred to by name only. [My Policy]. I’m simply not going to use a preferred pronoun if it denies biological reality, the reality of God’s good creation. I won’t do it.
The table below is not an exhaustive list.
| Subject | Object | Possessive | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|---|
| She | Her | Hers | shee, hur, hurs |
| He | Him | His | hee, him, hiz |
| They* | Them* | Theirs* | thei, them, thehrz |
| Xe | Xem | Xyrs | zee, zem, zeres |
| Ze | Hir | Hirs | zee, here, heres |
| Ze | Zir | Zirs | zee, zere, zeres |
| E | Em | Eirs | ay, em, airs |
* Though they / them / theirs are traditionally plural, these pronouns can be used as singular in a particular context. Example: Janice scored well on their final paper; they received an A.
Another real world example may be found in a previous post “For Women Scotland.” If you follow the Twitter link there you will be able to read the news story about the convicted sex criminal, Laura Miller, who identifies as gender-neutral . Laura is a biological male. Here’s how the news story about Miller’s crime begins:
A pervert who filmed themselves sexually assaulting a sleeping woman has been jailed for almost two years.
For the uninitiated “themselves” does not refer to more than one pervert but to a single person who identifies as gender-neutral and whose preferred pronouns are “they/them/theirs“. The journalist Jenni Gee would be guilty of “misgendering” if she had used different pronouns in reference to Miller. In fact, in some jurisdictions in the Western world, you may be brought up on charges for misgendering someone.
(See the video I posted below for evidence of the criminalization of wrong pronoun usage!)
The “TQ+” of the ever expanding Gender acronym is rightly regarded as a fiction by the majority of us in the Western world. And virtually all non-westerners. The majority of Western parents don’t want their children taught that it is possible to change your sex or your gender. They don’t want their children taught that their “authentic self” has nothing to do with their bodies. And if they are Christians they know, or at least they ought to know, that our bodies are gifts from God as mediated through our parents and not something chosen by us. But something lovingly given to us.
This majority will rightly oppose any real physical violence against those who self-identify as Queer or Trans or whatever the + means. They will oppose any verbal or physical abuse directed toward all people.
But they can not affirm what they believe is a Big Lie.
They can’t affirm the mutilation of children’s bodies.
They won’t do that. And they will not be silenced.
Watch the video below about the criminalization of pronoun usage & misgendering. I’ve provided minute:second markers to help.
(6:20). “One of the basic rules of safeguarding (our children) and something we saw with the Catholic Church….” Please pay close attention to the “sacred class, a class that cannot be questioned” statement.
(11:46). “People need to start getting angry, because these are fundamental human rights we are letting slip away. Our police appear to be out of control.”
(12:29). “I was piqued, I became an activist after what the NSPCC (U.K. children’s charity) did back in 2019, when an employee of theirs dressed in some sort of rubber fetish gear masturbated at work, filmed it and provided a link to the video on his LinkedIn profile. And various people raised concern that this was happening in the offices of a children’s charity. In defense of their employee the NSPCC tweeted ‘anyone who comes at us with this homophobic nonsense we will report you.'”
(14:35). Comments about misgendering. Which can get you arrested these days in the U.K. and other Western countries.
TERMS
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Is this the world we want to live in? We better come up with some answers quick. Things are moving swiftly.
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Love Refuses To Affirm Confusion