The Church of England has been accused of failing to uphold Biblical views on sexuality and gender following a string of concerning cases at Church of England schools and an update to its anti-bullying guidance.
The Church’s “Flourishing for All” guidance was updated in April, following the Supreme Court ruling in favour of biological reality determining a person’s gender.
Christian Concern has said the new guidance is not based on a biblical worldview, but instead on intersectionality and critical theory.
Under the guidance all people are assumed to be oppressed or privileged based on their various characteristics and identities.
Christian Concern has described it as "woke" and is critical of the way that the policy “defines human flourishing as allowing every child to fully explore and experience whatever their protected characteristic entails, including sexual identities and gender identities which do not conform with Christian morality".
It was also noted that under the guidance school chaplains should avoid talking about sexual ethics in absolute terms, and even if they do, they should make it clear that not all Christians believe such things.
Following the Supreme Court decision, the Church of England’s guidance no longer refers to school children as being “transgender”, however they can still be regarded as “LGB/GQ”, in which “GQ” means “Gender Questioning”.
Christian Concern lamented the current state of teaching on this subjecting in Church of England schools, pointing to a slew of cases in which parents and staff have been at odds with the leadership or even faced disciplinary action for attempting to uphold biblical rather than “woke” beliefs.
“The fact that it took a secular government (the courts and the Department for Education) to push the Church’s guidance towards a slightly more Biblically accurate pastoral approach [on transgenderism], is damning," the organisation said.
Andrea Williams, CEO of Christian Concern said, "The Church of England’s latest guidance once again shows its failure to uphold biblical morality in the 4,500 schools under its care."She added that the new guidance “promotes a secular, ideologically driven agenda rather than affirming genuine Christian teaching on equality and morality”."We urge Christian teachers to reject this guidance and to remain faithful to biblical truth, which is what children need to hear," she said.
