Putin and the Almighty’s gender self-ID

Vladimir Putin suffered a difficulty of his own making in his big anniversary speech on Tuesday. He was calling for something not far short of total war – a cluster of schemes to house, improve, offer therapy to and reconfigure the command of the armed services, to withdraw Russia and Russians from the global economy and to direct economic activity into areas most likely to defeat western technology. Yet he has always maintained that his country is not at war, and it does not sound very ringing to call (in the phrase which he first used a year ago and repeats today) for a total ‘special military operation’. He therefore likes to maximise the number of enemies and threats Russians must consider. Not satisfied with his traditional ones, such as Ukrainian ‘neo-Nazis’ and the imperialist United States, he also fastened on what he called ‘the Anglican Church’. It was planning, he said, ‘to explore the idea of a gender-neutral God’. Appropriating Christ’s words on the cross, he said: ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ It must have been exciting for the Bishop of Lichfield, the Right Revd Michael Ipgrave, spokesman and vice-chairman of the Church of England liturgical commission that is considering such questions, to find his work up there with other foes Putin mentioned, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ‘the long centuries’ of western ‘colonialism, diktat and hegemony’ and the Death’s Head division of the SS. I suspect that Putin takes as his ecclesiastical model the Russian Orthodox Church, and therefore imagines that the British government is issuing orders to the C of E. We must not disillusion him.

Not but what one mightn’t feel a smidgeon of sympathy for Putin’s complaint. Until our age, the Almighty’s gender self-ID as male has always been recognised without challenge. It must be distressing for Him to have this denied by the General Synod of the Church of England.