St George’s Church

The women bishops’ debate at the General Synod sparked a discussion on this morning’s Toby Foster Bigger at Breakfast Show on BBC Radio Sheffield about whether religion has a place in 2010. Cranmer’s Curate, who was invited to take part, tried to make the point that the Church best serves society when it is being faithful to its counter-cultural convictions.

It is worth reflecting on the damage feminism, and the behavioural androgyny to which it has given birth, has inflicted on British society since the 1960s:

• House prices have become unaffordable for many because of the impact of double incomes. The pre-1960s practice of women being required to give up their jobs when they got married certainly helped to keep house prices lower in relation to average incomes.

• Social and financial pressure on young mothers to return to work causes distress to themselves and denies babies and toddlers proper emotional engagement with their mothers at a crucial developmental stage. Institutional supervision is no substitute for a mother’s love.

• Young women growing up are increasingly without positive female role models resulting in an upsurge of teenage pregnancy, binge drinking and the laddette culture. In pre-1960s’ Britain mothers were substantial figures with significant moral authority.

• Marriage has been destabilised because men are being discouraged from giving a lead and women are being discouraged from taking one.

• British society is less capable of producing outstanding women such as Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse, who were products of Christian Britain.

• The education system has been skewed against boys in favour of girls. This is going to cause huge social problems in the disenfranchisement of young men in employment, in family life and in wider society in the future.

With such obvious social problems caused to a significant extent by 1960s’ feminist ideology, Christ’s servants should surely be more, not less, confident to stand up for the God-created complementarity of the sexes in the teeth of fashionable androgyny.