This week a respected maths teacher at an Oxfordshire secondary school faced a disciplinary hearing.

Joshua Sutcliffe has been asked to answer allegations that he addressed a child born female as a ‘girl’.

The hearing follows a complaint made after Mr Sutcliffe had said to a group of pupils, “Well done, girls!"

One member of the group, who identifies herself as a boy, responded angrily.

Mr Sutcliffe immediately apologised – but after a week-long investigation, he was found to have mis-gendered the pupil and so to be in breach of the school’s equality policy.

Mr Sutcliffe commented: “While the suggestion that gender is fluid conflicts sharply with my Christian beliefs, I recognise my responsibility as a teacher and Christian to treat each of my pupils with respect and dignity.

“The aggressive way in which transgender ideology is being imposed is undermining my freedom of belief and conscience, as well as the conscience of many people throughout our nation who believe that gender is assigned at birth.”

All this is happening against the moral wallpaper of a world where autonomy rules. As those famous theologians, Boyzone, once sang: ‘No matter what they tell you, no matter what they say, no matter what they teach you, what you believe is true’.

In other words, we’re free to find our own identity – free to think as we want, free to live as we want.

The good news of the Christian faith is that we’re not left to ourselves to create our identity.

We are created by God, ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ as the Bible describes us. And we are created with bodies.

Our sexual identity – male or female - is part of God’s good gift of creation.

The recent Church of England Education Office report ‘Valuing all God’s children’ rightly stands up to any form of bullying within our schools.

But in an age of increasing identity confusion, I believe we also need to be clear - not least for the sake of our children - that gender is not something we choose for ourselves.