God and female pronouns

[yellowsmileyface]

I recently attended a new CofE church, and I was quite surprised to discover they use female pronouns when referring to God.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I see God as an entity that transcends gender, and that we simply attribute a gender to Him and personify Him in order to more easily facilitate a relationship with Him. I consider myself a feminist, so with all this in mind, why can't we use female pronouns instead?

On the other hand it just doesn't quite feel right to me. In terms of feminism, it feels like sort of an empty gesture of inclusivity. It almost feels satirical. It actually feels a bit blasphemous but I can't quite figure out why. It feels like they're pushing an agenda, and even if it's an agenda I agree with, I don't quite agree with how they're doing it. Does my issue with this stem from a place of internalised misogyny?

I'm having trouble figuring out how I feel about it, so I'd be very interested to hear others' thoughts.

Hi OP, it does sound a bit agenda-ry to me tb honest. People trying to pigeon hole God isn’t new, eg into their expectations or assumptions, it can even off road completely and cults can start this way.

It puts me in mind of Matthew 15:-9

New Living Translation
’These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’”

(English Standard Version)
“‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

God loves men and women equally. The voice of the Lord is beautiful and in my life long walk with him I have always heard him as male/Father through his son Jesus. None of us have had completely perfect fathers, as they are all subject to human failings (as we all are) but God is a perfect Father, and I think this is something to embrace and enjoy rather than rail against.

It doesn’t feel right because 99.9% of your socialisation from birth has been to think of God as male. You cannot trust your gut on something like this.

I wouldn’t call it internalised misogyny, because there is no hatred or contempt of women, so much as internalised patriarchy.

Well Christianity states that God is the Father therefore he is a he.

The creator God in Genesis -Elohim is made up of make and female and plural. So really both make and female. adanoi is Lord. So really should be using male pronouns in keeping with their own rule book.

Yeah definitely an empty gesture. You're right God transcends any gender concepts, wouldn't matter if we referred to Him as masculine or feminine. Surprised your church hasn't started calling Him "Them" to be seen as even more inclusive.

God is "the Father", it feels slightly blasphemous because it is.
Trans Jesus coming next!

Interestingly, I was once taught in a mainstream church that the Holy Spirit is implied to be female by the original Greek. Not sure if this is true, though!

I’m not sure but a common trinity idols is king (god the father) queen (Holy Spirit) prince (the son/Jesus)

Oh there’s numerous videos out there claiming this (apparently god is also trans)

I quite like being challenged on my assumptions about God every now and then. It's a reminder that whenever we think about God, we're using human conceptions. God is beyond gender.

And conceptions of God change and evolve. You can see this in the Bible when God goes from being a tribal war god to the transcendent God of all mankind, to a God who could become incarnate in a human.

The Greek term - pneuma - is neuter and the Latin spiritual obviously masculine. But apparently both relate to a Hebrew term - ruach - that is grammatically feminine. I don't think theologically that's ever played into an understanding of "spirit" as female similar to, say, the Catholic habit to think of the Church as such.

Don't get the people who think this is blasphemous OP. It's nothing to do with gender religion either. The saying "when God created man she was merely joking" has been around for decades! Yes I get it can be mildly irritating, but surely that's the very point?

That should be spiritus not spiritual!

interestingly Ruach or air is often associated with the masculine principle in spirituality in Jewish mysticism. It’s interesting to see it’s place in the Kabbalistic tree of life

The Bible - all bibles, of all religions - may be the divine word of God, but it has been passed on to us by men. Written down, transcribed, edited and interpreted by men. It defaults to male grammatic gender and male perspectives.

We are indoctrinated in male-as-default from our earliest days, from the moment we begin to acquire language. It is far easier to become an atheist and discard our religious indoctrination than it is to discard our linguistic indoctrination. Without the language, how can we think the thoughts?

We may feel or believe that God is beyond sex or gender, but what words do we have to express that? 'She', culturally, implies an emphasis on femaleness, because we have been indoctrinated to accept 'he' as being default. 'They' doesn't work in monotheism, and 'it' is simply disrespectful.

Christian God is 100% a man. look how he treats women!
Gosh I hope he hasn't been trans-ed

That would annoy me, but then God is Heavenly Father to me, the Goddess (Heavenly Mother) is a separate entity in Her own right.

You've expressed very well what I wanted to say.

Yahweh is a male deity, he comes from El of Ugarit. Allah a similar deity is male too.Asherah was the Jewish goddess. Allat and Al'Uzza were the Arabian goddesses who were in the Ka'aba.
Jesus is male too, though Julian of Norwich famously called god 'mother.'
The CofE is retconning.... honestly it's more honest to worship the goddesses. I do!

I have a similar reaction to you but my discomfort is with the nonstop references to the greatness of 'Him'. It feels like reinforcement of hierarchical patriarchy which enables us to accept and normalise inequality between men and women and the huge imbalance of violence of men directed towards women.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about a church that swapped Him to Her, so interested in people's thoughts on this...

Our vicar (and our previous curate) use 'Godself' or 'Gods' instead of he/him, she/hers when they preach. So instead of saying something like 'God's love reveals something of his nature to us', it'll be God's love reveals something of God's nature to us', or 'God's love reveals something of God's self to us' (rather than 'himself').
The first few times I heard it I thought it sounded clunky, but now I'm used to is, and I quite like the 'neutrality' of it now.
I'm fairly open to the using of female pronouns for God, but I'm not sure using ONLY female ones would be helpful, just as ONLY using male ones isn't either.
I think to most of us it sounds weird because we were brought up with 'He/Him', and anything else just feels uncomfortable initally.

Interesting! What did they say about The Lord's Prayer? And Jesus talking about the Father? (My Father is greater than I, for example. )

What is retconning?

Retcon; "Urban Dictionary: (more common usage) Adding or altering information regarding the back story of a fictional character or world, regardless of whether the change contradicts what was said before."

So they are altering historical male Yahweh to be female and male.

In set prayers / readings / liturgy, they do them 'as is' - so the the Lord's prayer is said as 'Our Father' as everyone knows it. The liturgy of the eucharist is done 'as is' - so referring to God as 'he' all through. They don't make any great point of referring to God as neutral or female, it's more a personal thing when they're preaching or in conversation. I quite like it because it's a bit more subtle and makes people think a bit, but isn't shoving it down anyone's throats or making a big point of it.