When Rev. Dr. Bernard Randall preached a sermon that told students to make up their own minds about LGBTQ issues, he did not expect to be reported as a terrorist.
Rev. Randall had been at Trent College in Derbyshire, England, which is affiliated with the Church of England, for five years. He is an ordained minister with the Church of England as well, and is witnessing the perversion of the church’s teachings firsthand.
When one of his students asked him why they had to accept the LGBTQ ideology being taught to them in a Christian school, Rev. Randall devised a sermon to answer that exact question.
His answer was that the students did not have to blindly follow the agenda being taught to them, “I gave a sermon in chapel saying you don’t have to accept anybody’s ideology, you make up your own mind,” Rev. Randall told Fox News Digital. “On certain issues, LGBTQ activists and Christians are in full agreement: there should be no discrimination, no one should be attacked personally or whatever. But there are issues where there’s disagreement.”
This sermon would lead to his being reported by the school to England’s counterterrorism watchdog organization, and being blacklisted by his own diocese.
“The school leadership took exception to that, dragged me in for an interrogation, suspended me, subsequently sacked me for gross misconduct despite being a Church of England school,” he said. “I was a Church of England minister in a Church of England act of worship, giving a sermon saying you may accept Church teaching.”
Much like schools in the United States, Trent College had hired a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) ‘specialist’ to train their staff. The instructor, Elly Barnes of Educate and Celebrate, works to teach various groups and institutions to “embed gender, gender identity and sexual orientation into the fabric of your school or organization.”
Rev. Randall then had to deal with a whirlwind of investigations which led to his initial firing, then was re-hired after an appeal process, was then furloughed during the pandemic and finally dismissed in December of 2020.
“They decided that simply holding to the Church’s teachings meant that I was potentially a safeguarding risk; that I might cause anxiety to anybody who came to talk to me about matters regarding sexuality and whatever,” Randall says. “Based on no evidence other than I just accept the teachings of the Church that employs me and employs the people who are making the safeguarding assessment.
“It hasn’t made me any less confident of Christian truth. It made me a lot less confident in the Church of England, so trying to work out my place in the big scheme of things has been really difficult. But ultimately, I’m an ordained minister. And when you get ordained, you promise to speak the truth. You’re effectively appointed as a ‘prophet,’ so to speak, to society. I promised to do that, so that’s what I’m doing,” he says.
This same apostasy infecting the Church of England has led to splits in several mainline denominations in the United States. With the recent split within the Methodist church, there are those who, like Rev. Randall, are not willing to sacrifice biblical doctrine to ensure people are not offended.
This fight against ‘woke’ in churches has also contaminated many aspects of the wider culture in the U.S. and Britain, and many are fighting the indoctrination within the school systems. Rev. Randall believes that these woke beliefs, steeped in Marxism, run counter to what the Bible says:
“I definitely think that the whole ‘woke’ agenda—gender identity ideology, all of those things—is profoundly Marxist in its attitudes,” he says. “And we know that Marxists absolutely hate religion. They don’t want religious people around because ultimately religious people—both Christians, Jews and others—speak what they hold to be truth higher than what the state says.
“And for Marxists, the only truth is what the state tells you the truth is, so they have to stamp out any other version of the truth. And that’s why religion comes under attack in sometimes blatant ways and sometimes the subtle, chipping away at the foundations, and making fun of religion as if it’s foolish. Whereas, actually, those who believe know there’s nothing foolish about having the joy and the peace and the promise of eternal life that faith in Jesus brings,” he continued.
As a lifelong member of the Church of England, Rev. Randall is rightfully perplexed and disturbed by the turn the church has taken in recent years.
“I’ve always been in the Church of England,” he said. “My family has always been Church of England. I can’t quite imagine not being in the Church of England. It’s more about the Church of England leaving me, in a sense. I’m not going to make any promises, but I think I want to stick it out.
“And if I need to be a nuisance to try to call the Church back to where it should be, I think maybe that’s my calling. God never promised an easy ride, so I’ll stay where God has put me and do the good that He has put in front of me. That’s the basic attitude I take,” he concluded.
To combat this ideology and prevent it from affecting the minds of young people around the world, more Christians must stand up for biblical values like Rev. Randall is doing. By taking the school to court, he hopes to help stem the tide of indoctrination that is attacking his former students.
As the reverend said, it is not promised to be an easy, but God is greater than all that the enemy can throw at Christians, and the battle is already won. {eoa}
James Lasher is a Copy Editor for Charisma Media.
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