Glory to God?

The Anglicans have rewritten the Gloria Patri to make it less offensive, bless their hearts. The optional new, improved version goes like this.

Glory to God, Source of all being, Eternal Word and Holy Spirit,
As is was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever. Amen.

As a reminder, here’s the version of the original that I’m familiar with.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen

What’s the critical difference between these versions? It is this: the new version is no longer Trinitarian. The three persons of God have disappeared. Instead, we have three characteristics of a Unitarian God. The first line of the PC version could just as well have read,

Glory to You, Source of all being, and to the Eternal Word, and to the Holy Spirit…

but it doesn’t. Inclusive language turns out to be exclusive, after all. Disguised as an agonisingly sensitive response to the genuine anguish that women have clearly suffered for millennia in reciting the Gloria, the revolutionaries who have gained the ascendency in various Christian jurisdictions over the last forty or fifty years have slipped a Unitarian formula into one of the most oft-repeated prayers of the Church. A substantial proportion of the Anglican communion now regularly proclaim that God, the Trinity, is dead: long live God the Unity.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *