Among the big news headlines recently was the Supreme Court ruling that decided a woman is defined by their biological sex, in accordance with the 2010 Equality Act. The Court also deliberated the meaning of “man,” “woman” and “sex”.
Justices Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler, along with other justices, unanimously agreed that “woman” can only be defined biologically. And therefore this ruling protects women from biological men trespassing into boundaries reserved exclusively for women – for example girls toilets, changing rooms etc.
The Government has finally published its long-promised Conversion Practices Bill. Ministers describe the draft legislation as "balanced and targeted" and insist that it is not intended to interfere with religious belief and expression. Yet a careful reading of the bill raises a different question: if existing laws already prohibit abuse, why is this legislation needed at all?
Is new legislation really necessary?
Before considering the detail of the bill, Parliament should ask the same question that should have been answered during the conversion therapy debates of 2021: What evidence demonstrates that new criminal offences are needed?
Editor's note, added 19 June 2026: Andy Burnham has won the by-election in Makerfield. Earlier this week, we published a piece by James Mildred in which he reflected on Burnham's stance on key issues and what he's said about Christianity – as well as another potential candidate for PM, Wes Streeting.
It seems clear that if Andy Burnham wins the by-election in Makerfield on 18 June, he will challenge Keir Starmer to be Prime Minister.
Women’s world number one Aryna Sabalenka and former men’s Wimbledon finalist Nick Kyrgios have agreed to tennis’s latest iteration of the Battle of the Sexes.
The event, which will take place in late December in Dubai, will be the latest such contest to take place, following Billie Jean King’s high-profile victory over 55-year-old Bobby Riggs in 1973, which is widely considered a watershed moment for the women’s game in its bid to gain greater recognition and funding.
“When words are many,” wrote Solomon – while his wisdom remained with him – “transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent” (Prov.10v19). It is a lesson that is especially timely right now.
We have never seen such a proliferation of words as we do today, due largely to the digital communication revolution. The inevitable result is that words become cheapened and debased. In the same way as a cash-strapped government discovers that mass money-printing leads to inflation, so it is with the reckless (mis)use of words. The more people talk – or text, or tweet, or emote, or sound off – the less they truly say. The purchasing power of their words is shrunk.
This time two weeks ago, Charlie Kirk was an unfamiliar name to me.
It was a bit like the morning of 9 December 1980, when John Lennon’s death was announced. I’d never heard of him, though I was familiar with Paul McCartney and knew that the Beatles had been a notable pop group in the 1960s. I suppose my defence was that I was only eleven at the time.
If you’ve ever looked around at the chaos of the current moment and wondered, "Who could have seen this coming?" I have an answer: Walker Percy.
Percy, an American writer, died 35 years ago this week—long before Trump, Twitter, TikTok, or transgender sports debates. But more than half a century ago, he eerily foresaw something like 2025, in which technology, tribalism, and spiritual emptiness converge. If we’re to find our way through the madness, maybe we should listen to what he had to say.
With the death of Pope Francis, my thoughts went in many different directions, but one of them was the memory of my humiliation at the front door of his house.
Invited by the Pope to speak at the Vatican on an evangelical view of marriage and fidelity, I arrived in Rome jetlagged and exhausted, having just finished teaching at a Southern Baptist seminary on Martin Luther’s view of conscience.
‘US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that prevents transgender women from competing in female categories of sports,’ a recent BBC item says.
Trump’s move followed on an earlier order which restated traditional and indeed scientific truths about men and women, declaring: ‘Ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong.’
Throughout my Christian life, I have experienced acceptance and belonging in church by publicly identifying as (what some would call) a ‘card-carrying’ evangelical.
On reflection, I must confess that, among fellow evangelicals, the experience that I have most enjoyed has had little to do with being perceived as sacrificially loving, or exceptionally forbearing. To be brutally honest, neither of those virtues is my strong suit. Instead, as an evangelical, I’ve been choosing the far easier task of focusing on being what I call ‘confessionally sound’.
When considered in isolation, few would object to that focus. After all, for persecuted Christians, such as Martin Luther, Deitrich Bonhoeffer and even 21st century martyrs, confessional soundness has been one of the most conspicuous and admirable hallmarks of Reformed belief.
Nevertheless, there is danger in the pursuit of apparent confessional soundness at the expense of all other virtues, such love and forbearance. For example, it can result in a total lack of remorse over directing sarcastic ad hominem remarks and put-downs towards those people whom most evangelicals no longer consider to be confessionally 'sound.'
The running debate over transgenderism has revealed the obvious conflict between two ideologies that the Olympics are attempting to unite.
The controversy around boxer Imane Khelif has been one of the many at this year’s Paris Olympics. Viewers were horrified to see Italian hopeful Angelina Carini pull out of the fight in just 46 seconds to 'save her life.'
JK Rowling tweeted: 'Explain why you're OK with a man beating a woman in public for your entertainment.' However it was intended, this comment from such a public figure turned a single boxing match into a global debate about transgender issues.
This long, hot, sporty summer rolls on. Schools have been broken up for weeks, and children are everywhere - including all over my home! My three sons scrap over just about everything in the summer heat. Cries of ‘It’s not fair!’ seem to constantly ring out from one or the other; but how do I discern whose rights matter more when push comes to (literal) shove between the children?
Over in Paris, the Olympic women’s boxing has also been dominated by cries of ‘It’s not fair!’ Just 46 seconds into her bout against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, Italian Angela Carini was punched so hard in the face that she fell to the floor weeping, ended the fight, saying to those in her corner 'Non è giusto' ('It’s not fair'). Later, she said she had feared for her life.
Be reasonable! That’s a cry I’ve not heard for some time. Maybe ‘reason’ is out of style in our modern ‘what you feel is what you are society’.
But one aspect of the controversial Scottish Government Hate Crime Act is that it is predicated on what a ‘reasonable person’ would think what has been reported is hateful, likely to stir up hatred and cause ‘fear and alarm’. But there is the rub – what is a ‘reasonable person’?
During the lengthy period of debates about same-sex marriage and sexuality, the Church of Scotland leadership often spoke of the ‘trajectory’ that the Church was on.
By this they meant a trajectory towards a more ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ theology and practice. For over 20 years I have been writing about the Church of Scotland’s ‘trajectory’ – a trajectory which I believed would end up with its demise. I had thought it would be a gradual decline resulting in extinction by 2050. I was wrong. As this year’s Assembly demonstrates, the Church of Scotland has now fallen off a cliff edge and is in a state of terminal decline. It is doubtful whether it will exist in any meaningful form by 2030.
Few issues have provoked more controversy in contemporary culture than the transgender ideology which asserts that individuals can define their sex for themselves irrespective of their biology.
Progressive society has largely adopted and accommodated this transgender ideology, and treated those who reject it as reactionary or oppressive. Feminists, such as Germaine Greer, who have opposed transgenderism have been cancelled and vilified.
In many ways George Orwell’s 1984 could be regarded as a prophetic novel. Although written in 1949 there are parts of it that are even more apposite for 2023.
In the novel Orwell describes the Two Minutes Hate – a daily public period in which the citizens of Oceania watch a film showing Emmanuel Goldstein, the main enemy of the State, and his Brotherhood. They are encouraged to show their hate for him and their love for Big Brother. Orwell’s picture is a masterful description of group psychology – what he calls groupthink. It shows how people can transfer their own anxieties and anger on to an external enemy (who doesn’t really exist), and thus diverts them from questioning The Party – the governing authorities. In this way The Party can deal with thoughtcrime and thoughtcriminals.
‘Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel,’ writes Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:16.
As we move from 2021 to 2022, and with so many things potentially crowding our minds – the pandemic, rising gas and electricity prices, the refugee crisis, climate change, moral relativism, transgender issues, cancel culture, or whatever it might be – it is good to return simply and firmly once again to… the gospel.
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ (Who guards the guardians?) is the question the Roman poet Juvenal asked, at just about the same time as the New Testament church was rapidly expanding.
It’s not often that Latin phrases come to mind (mainly because I know so few), but this one seems entirely appropriate for the increasing tendency we are seeing in our major internet platform providers to decide that they, and they alone, are the arbiters of truth.
When the Equalities Act was passed more than a decade ago, it seemed to limit the freedoms that Christians had long taken for granted.
It became unlawful to discriminate against others on grounds of religion or sexual orientation with the result that, for example, a Christian-owned hotel could no longer refuse a room to a same-sex couple. Similarly, a Christian could not serve as a magistrate and take the view that children were always better adopted by a heterosexual couple. New laws against hate speech meant Christians were more fearful of preaching the gospel in case they offended others; and they faced the possibility of disciplinary action in the workplace if they challenged transgender ideology. These changes reflected the fact that we live in a secular, post-Christian context. Christian views and values are no longer widely shared across society and deemed worthy of privileged status. Instead, government has to balance the interests of competing opinions in a multicultural society.
If you read the recent Spectator headline, ‘Let’s kick ‘gender identity’ out of school’, you would be forgiven for assuming that it was a guest post written by a staunchly conservative religious leader.
In fact, it was written by Debbie Hayton, a transgender teacher and journalist. Hayton came to national prominence last year as a result of incurring disciplinary action from the LGBT committee of the Trades Union Congress. To Hayton, a trans person, it must have felt like a cruel irony to be denounced as transphobic by so-called ‘cis-gendered’ (ie non-trans) members of that committee for doing little more than to don a T-shirt that bore the slogan: ‘Trans women are men. Get over it!’
Increasingly, Evangelical Anglicans are finding it difficult to remain within the Church of England.
Now, as a Dissenter, you will hardly be surprised that I think they should all leave. But I don’t think those who are convinced of Anglicanism should necessarily leave their faithful Anglican communions. I may not be convinced of their ecclesiology and praxis, but if you are – and your church holds to the gospel – I wouldn’t expect you to leave. But the Church of England, however, is a different matter. Here are five reasons I think it is untenable for genuine believers to remain.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York – an event which was the catalyst for the modern LGBT movement.
‘Pride’ marches, days, weeks and months have become ubiquitous throughout the Western world – especially in the English-speaking countries. The politicians and the corporations are falling over themselves in the rush to identify with ‘Pride’.
In the car, Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones has become my companion.
Through someone’s kindness I have come into possession of the recordings of his messages on Romans. What a thrill it is to listen! And unsurprisingly, he has brought me great encouragement recently.
How should we relate to the transgender community?
Among the big news headlines recently was the Supreme Court ruling that decided a woman is defined by their biological sex, in accordance with the 2010 Equality Act. The Court also deliberated the meaning of “man,” “woman” and “sex”.
Justices Lord Hodge, Lady Rose and Lady Simler, along with other justices, unanimously agreed that “woman” can only be defined biologically. And therefore this ruling protects women from biological men trespassing into boundaries reserved exclusively for women – for example girls toilets, changing rooms etc.