Angry in the Great White North

From the Times Online:

AS AN Oxford graduate, an acoustic guitarist and with personal experience of the pain of divorce, the Rev Sarah Jones had all the credentials to be the perfect priest in the modern-day Church of England.

This week, her parishioners in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, were surprised to learn that her credentials were even stronger than they had suspected.

Ms Jones, 43, has been a woman for just ten years. She was born, baptised as a Roman Catholic, had girlfriends and married, all as Colin Jones.

But years of confusion, followed by a conviction that she should have been born a woman, led to a sex change operation.

See, the problem here, from a theological point of view, is the notion that "she should have been born a woman".

If that were the case, God would have made it so. The cross dressing, the sex change operation, and the hormone treatments, are all statements that say, in effect, that you think God made a mistake.

God doesn't make mistakes. The confusion is yours.

You don't have to buy that reasoning of course, but we are talking about a Church here.

Needless to say, this whole thing gets absurd:

Technically, Ms Jones could be ordained a bishop, making her the first woman bishop in the Church of England, because legally she is a man. However, she intends to apply for gender realignment under the Gender Recognition Act, which comes into force in April. That would give her a new birth certificate and make it impossible for her to be elevated into the episcopate until the Church votes to ordain women bishops.

Now the Times Online makes no mention about the controversy. Everything is about how everyone is very happy:

Ms Jones left a meeting while the information was relayed to wardens of 14 churches in the area and, when she returned, was greeted with a round of applause. The Hereford Diocese decided to go public after news of Ms Jones’s past was leaked to the press.

Of course, the parishioners were the last to know:

Members of the ordained and lay ministry teams were told before her appointment. But other parishioners were informed only on Monday.

Well, despite the impression given by the Times, not everyone is happy. Not by a long shot:

The Evangelical Alliance - the organization of conservatives in the Church of England - called it "blasphemy".

"[The Bible is] absolutely clear that God created human beings as male and female," said Don Horrocks, a spokesperson for the group.

"Therefore there is absolutely no Christian acknowledgement of the 21st Century human idea that it's possible somehow for a person to take charge of their own destiny and to decide what their own sexuality is. Someone who does that... is therefore actually perpetuating an illusion or masquerading and any Christian is clearly not going to be supportive of someone who purports to be what they're not," Horrocks told the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The Nigerian church was furious over the election of practising homosexual Gene Robinson as a bishop in New Hamsphire:

Earlier this month the leader of the worldwide conservative element in the church severed ties with the Church of England. (story)

Nigeria's Archbishop Peter Akinola said that the Nigerian Anglican Church would delete all reference to Canterbury, the “mother” church of the Anglican Communion, from its constitution. Communion with Canterbury is regarded as one of the defining characteristics of Anglicanism.

The Nigerian Church has the second largest number of Anglicans in the world outside of the UK.

This is going to really put the freak on.

But this touchy-feely bishop thinks the critics have it wrong:

Bishop Anthony Priddis called the alliance's attack on Jones unwarranted and unchristian.

"What's important is that she's a person made by God, loved by God and given gifts by God who feels that she's called to be a priest and that's a call that's been checked out by the church rigorously," Priddis said.

Actually, the Bishop has it wrong. Sarah Jones is not a person made by God. She's a person made by surgeons and the producers of hormone replacement therapy drugs.

The person made by God, Colin Jones, has long since had significant God-given bits tossed out with the medical waste.