Our Father ...

This forum isn't just about transgender issues.

This has nothing to do with transgender.

There are whole strands of feminist theology that have been talking about this forever.

The CofE's busy with their recruitment campaign for Rome again, I see.

But that's updating the language vs changing an essential element of the prayer. Our Father is much more personal, anyway.

the church of England, Mike Pilavachi, bless their marriage but actually refuse marrying them. Don't post more , please. Enough is said and these are people who most surely ( apart from a very special grace of God ) will go to ....

how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings

God the chicken...

Seriously, I did like Motorina's post but hope more for an end to all superstition.

I think it unhealthy to bring children up thinking that the entity which created the universe is a 'he'. This is a mainstay of patriarchy.

Yes, that is a lovely post, @Motorina

To be fair, it wouldn't be hard to update it to Our God in Heaven... Almost no churches use 'art' and 'thy' these days, so it has been updated a few times in my lifetime

All the evidence suggests women outnumbered men in the early Roman church largely because paganism was far more male orientated, especially the military cults. Not only was the teaching attractive to women but Christianity disapproved of infanticide, practised by pagans more often than not on girls.

I think the idea that we shouldn't use Our Father because some people have negative experiences of fathers IS problematic. It's a different argument to the (age old) one about why God is seen as male. It's about whether we should be free to acknowledge the positive way most people love their fathers and use that as an allegory to the way Christians feel about God, or whether that's not allowed because not everyone has that positive feeling towards their father. But if you take that argument to its logical conclusion you'd censor out all mention of love between anyone, no mentioning of mothers (who might also harm some children), friends (who can also be cruel), etc.

We should be allowed to celebrate the strength of what for most people are positive and important relationships (eg with our fathers) without worrying about whether someone else might be offended. That's what's new about what he's said - it's about this modern hypersensitivity to offending people rather than correcting centuries of sexism in Christianity.

Great post, @Motorina

Well whether God transcends sex has been a subject of debate for centuries

God does tend to appear in male form in the Bible, but is that meant to be interpreted literally or allegorically?

But of course that's also tempered by speech habits at the times of the early translations (again an area which has been debated over the ages)

The debate and theorizing about this is pretty much ongoing constantly, but it's rare it ever attracts mainstream attention

Catholics included the Mother of Jesus, unlike other Christians.

Cloistered nuns are heavily respected.

As for rewriting Our Father, it's rewriting marriage.

The first miracle was...

The end of the Bible describes the bride - church and the groom Jesus. Jesus said marriage is one man and one woman. In mass the priest stands in for Jesus and says "this is my body" you can't leave him out of his marriage by transing the priest, as Gen says God not humans created men and women and the two greatest commandments from Jesus says who do you love first?

It's worth quoting what he actually said:

I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life

And... he's right. If your experience of 'father' is abusive or violent, then that language is a barrier. It doesn't mean that that language is wrong or unbiblical, but simply that the images and languages we use for God are a barrier to some.

Fortunately the bible has plenty of other language and imagery for God. There's this from Matthew, for example:

how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings

This is not new. Augustine wrote about God as a nursing mother, bringing milk in the form of Jesus to nourish us. So did St Anselm, who picked up on the hen gathering her chicks image, to talk about Jesus our loving mother. Calvin compared the pains of the crucifixion with the pains of labour. And one of my local saints - Julian of Norwich - talked about "God our loving father; God our loving mother..."

So, if he'd tried this 500 years ago he wouldn't have been burned. He would have been entirely in keeping with generations of religious thought.

Really, it's only in the last couple of hundred years or so that we have lost this language of motherhood and nursing from our understanding of God.

This is not about trans people or about gender neutral language. This is about the church recognising the barriers it chooses to use present, and calling on the wide range of metaphor and imagery it has both in the bible and in two millenia of religious thought to, in the words of Jesus, gather everyone in.

I'm Catholic and I just thought WTF . The whole point of the our father is its the prayer Jesus taught us.

I thought he was referring to making the church more inclusive for women. Is that not the case?

I don't personally have a problem with God being male in the bible. It was an early source of saying that men and women are equal in the sight of god. Bearing in mind it was written by many men. I never imagine a female writer of any of the bible.

It is the devil 's work...

God in the psalm, described as a hen gathering her chicks under her wings is as females as it is possible to be. Wisdom ends up personified as female through the vagaries of gendered grammar. The holy spirit has no gender. I'll keep saying the Our Father. I am not an Anglican, but looking at that church from outside it would seem to have as many real problems as any other denomination, and this sort of headline grab does not seem the best way to address them.

Rev Christina Rees, who campaigned for female bishops, said Cottrell had “put his finger on an issue that’s a really live issue for Christians and has been for many years”.

She added: “The big question is, do we really believe that God believes that male human beings bear his image more fully and accurately than women? The answer is absolutely not.”

In February, the C of E said it would consider whether to stop referring to God as “he”, after priests asked to be allowed to use gender-neutral terms instead.
It agreed to launch a commission on gendered language, saying “Christians have recognised since ancient times that God is neither male nor female, yet the variety of ways of addressing and describing God found in scripture has not always been reflected in our worship”.

I can't imagine why any feminist would have a problem with gender-neutral language to describe an imaginary deity.

They aren't equal prayers, even in Catholicism, but large parts of the CofE will never say a Hail Mary.

Thing is, the language of CofE liturgy is highly patriarchal, just like it's behaviour. He wasn't suggesting changing the prayer, just using it to make a point.

I don't think the CofE is capable of meaningful change and instead makes token gestures but that doesn't mean he's wrong to point the problem out.

Being honest, the genders are the least offensive part of the Bible.

I think that was part of his point. The bible regards women a damn sight better than Christianity has historically done.