Are the sentences above grammatically correct?  No, none of them are grammatically correct.  “Someone,” “a person,” and “a student” are generic references to a single individual.  In each case, correct English grammar requires:

“I saw someone, and he told me …”

“When a person goes to the store, he should carefully choose what he buys.”

“When a student uses grammar, he should do so correctly.”

These are elementary facts of grammar, universally accepted when I was a child learnin’ readin’, writin’, an’ ‘rithmetic.  Yet, for quite a while, in common speech “they” has been employed by many people instead of the correct generic pronoun “he.”  The error has passed beyond speaking to writing.  Major secular book publishers–and book publishers for Christendom owned by secular publishing houses–are now abandoning the correct English grammatical form for either the incorrect “they,” or for alternating paragraphs where “he” and then “she” are used as a generic pronoun, and so on. Why is this the case?  One word: feminism.

Feminist ideology does not like the fact that “he” is the generic singular pronoun.  This, they affirm, is patriarchal, and so is evil (although, of course, there are no allegedly objective standards for right or wrong), and so must be stamped out. Secular publishers are afraid of not being politically correct and feminist. Placating feminists is more important that using correct English grammar.  What should a Christian do?  Should they (oops, “he,” my apologies to the feminist womyn among us) change the English language to support feminism?  The answer is a clear “no.” Why?

1.) God, the Author of language and of the Bible, uses “he” as the generic third person singular pronoun in His infallible Word.  


The most holy, most loving, most righteous, and most wise God employs the masculine pronoun “he” as the generic singular pronoun in both the Old and New Testaments.  He does so a huge number of times.  Those who complain about the masculine singular pronoun, or who proclaim that such a usage is inferior, are attacking the wisdom and righteousness of God.  They sin the more when they pass beyond proclaiming the superiority of “gender neutral” language to corrupt Scripture itself by changing texts that say “brother” into “brother or sister” and the like, as do the NRSV, the 2011 gender neutral NIV, and other inferior English translations of the holy Word of God.

2. ) Male headship and leadership are Biblical.  Adam, not Eve, represented the entire human race (Romans 5:12-19).  Mankind is underneath either the first man, Adam, or the second Man, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:22).  Woman was made a suitable help for man, not the other way around (Genesis 2:18, 20). The head of the woman is the man (1 Corinthians 11:3) and feminism, with its proclamation of female leadership, is a curse (Isaiah 3:12). Within the equal human nature of the man and the woman (Galatians 3:28) God has ordained distinctions of role between the man and the woman.  The fact that man is the one who represents the race, not woman, is represented by employing the masculine pronoun as the generic one in the Bible.

You should use correct grammar because you should do all things decently and in order (1 Corinthians 14:40), but abandoning “he” as the generic 3rd person pronoun involves more than just a change in what is grammatically acceptable.  It is, on the contrary, an assault by feminism on Biblical patriarchy–which, by the way, is loving and self-sacrificial male leadership, not male tyranny–and on the very Creator of male and female and of language itself.

The Christian should continue to use “he” as the English generic singular pronoun.  He should teach his children to do so as well.  Christian school teachers and homeschool parents need to make sure their children are employing grammar correctly here. Don’t give in to the feminist zeitgeist.  When a person does so, they are sacrificing he is sacrificing an important, and Biblical, aspect of the English language and culture, and is also implicitly confessing an (alleged) inferiority of the Word of God and its Divine Author to the monstrous reign of idolatrous women.