Last week, numerous woke SDA delegates were laboring to make the Church Manual more gender-neutral. About every 7th delegate at the microphone tried to get in a plug for more female leadership in the church. Others argued for and suggested gender-neutral changes to the church manual (some of which passed). One Andrews University VP said we need to be more inclusive of the LGBTQ community—a community who has no desire at all to be more inclusive with believing Christians, rather they just want to shout us down.
I praise God for a young woman from Mexico who spoke up during the discussion on pre-marriage counseling, saying that the statement should explicitly define marriage as between a biological male and female. A brother from that part of the world also made this suggestion. It fell upon deaf ears, alas. The trend last week was towards ‘inclusivity’ and more gender neutral nomenclature in our church (as if that could cure our Laodicean lives). Here’s a rich irony for you.
While this political correctness was chipping away at God’s distinctions, a Non-SDA school in England (Tiverton) just banned girls from wearing skirts in order to create a more gender-neutral clothing policy.
In a letter to parents, Mrs. Crook, headteacher at the school, said: "We will follow other secondary schools in implementing a more gender-neutral uniform policy. Parents/carers will be pleased to know that the majority of the uniform will remain as it is, with the exception that from September all students will be expected to wear trousers."
Mrs. Crook added:
The wearing of skirts shorter than knee-length, which is the school’s current policy, has attracted complaints from the public and from visitors to the school.
"It has proven time-consuming and frustrating for staff to enforce in-school and is beyond our control out of school. We wrote to parents in November about our concerns and expectations around skirts, and in January we held a series of assemblies with all year groups about skirts, advising them that unless the uniform policy was properly observed we would move to an all trousers policy.
"Our current policy has allowed girls to wear trousers, which many do already, and boys have been able to wear skirts if they want to. Trousers also standardise how our students dress, so that we and they can focus on what we consider to be our primary objective: learning.
The school is farther along the continuum than the aforementioned delegates, but they are animated by the same spirit.
Our world is warring against God’s distinctions. That means we should uphold those distinctions (John 17:16).
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I”" have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth” (John 17:14—17).
