Justin Welby has rejected Ariana Grande’s suggestion that God is a woman. God, he says, is not male or female

Not in His name: God is gender-neutral, says archbishop of Canterbury

Name: Gender-neutral God.

Age: Eternal, of course.

Appearance: NOT an old bloke with a long white beard.

Occupation: Creating the world, then washing His Its/Their hands of the whole mess; showing tough love to Its/Their son divine offspring; moving in mysterious ways.

What’s with all these crossings out? Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has declared that God is not the Father and should not be seen as a male figure.

You mean Our Father who art in heaven is no longer hallowed? Hallowed, yes – just not Our Father any more.

What is He, sorry, It, then? “God is not male or female,” the archbishop said in a lecture at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. “God is not definable. All human language about God is inadequate and to some degree metaphorical.”

I think it may be too late to row back on this. It is true that 2,000 years of patriarchal society have tended to view God as a bloke, but the archbishop is not the first church leader to embrace gender neutrality. “God transcends the human distinction between the sexes,” says the Catholic church catechism of 1993. “He is neither man nor woman: He is God.”

What is the view from the pews? A YouGov poll suggests 36% of British Christians see God as a man, but 41% say God does not have a gender. An intriguing 3% believe God has a “different human gender identity”, while a more relatable 19% say they don’t have a clue.

What about Ariana Grande? Her hit single puts her with the 1% who told YouGov they believe God is a Woman, although Grande cites sketchy theological evidence (“I feel it after midnight / A feelin’ that you can’t fight”).

But surely this is enshrined in the Bible! It is not cut and dried. Mostly God is referred to as a man, but there are feminine references, too – “like a woman in labour” in the book of Isaiah, “like a mother hen” (Matthew), “like a mother eagle” (Deuteronomy). Scholars suggest patriarchal Judaism was building on the foundation of earlier matriarchal religions.

So, if not He and Him, what? It, Them, Their, Mx God.

It will play havoc with hymns – Dear Lord and Father of Mankind; Lead Us, Heavenly Father; The Lord’s My Shepherd ... OK, OK, you have made your point. Until the archbishop sets up a working party to rewrite them all, maybe churches should stick to Morning Has Broken.

Not to be confused with: Allah (God, but not a man – Islam is emphatic on the point, athough because Arabic favours the male pronoun the Qur’an has its own gender neutrality issues); Buddha (a man, but not a god); Shiva (a man, but a rather confused one).

Do say: “It’s a welcome step in the degenderfication of language.”

Don’t say: “Was Jesus non-binary?”