Thank you for sharing Shannon K. Evans’ thoughts. I wholeheartedly agree with her insights with the slight exception of when she states that referring to God in masculine terms, “is not something that Christianity does consciously”. That may be true in some communities today, but let’s not forget the conscious suppression of women throughout church history beginning with Mary Magdalene, whose gospel reveals that she was likely person closest to Jesus and “got” his message in a way that the male apostles did not (see Cynthia Bourgeault’s ‘The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity’). The preeminence of the male role throughout church history served to ingrain the male image of God which is still preserved in church structures today. One particular point of contention for me is the continued use of male pronouns for God in the church’s liturgy. Language encodes and reveals our thoughts, and it is not enough to say “we KNOW that God is beyond masculine and feminine categories, but we are still going to refer to God as he/him”. Once we accept this categorization of God, wouldn’t it be logical to ask questions like: how tall is God? how old? what color is God? We would quickly dismiss such questions as absurd, but not so regarding God’s gender. I personally address God as Christ~Sophia, Sophia (meaning Wisdom) being the personification of the divine feminine in the Hebrew scriptures. I grew up in the church at a time when devotion to the Blessed Mother was the order of the day. I even attended Visitation B.V.M. (Blessed Virgin Mary) grade school! Throughout my formative years, I couldn’t relate to this devotion to Mary which seemed to overshadow that of God/Jesus. It just didn’t compute for me. But I am now coming around to appreciating the role of Mary as an expression of the divine feminine (the ‘anima’) which was sorely needed to counterbalance what was the dominant notion of a juridical, stern, and punishing God. It is no wonder that people flocked to Mary as the compassionate and caring mother figure. As we work to meet the challenge of promoting non-binary constructs in society, we must also continue to assert the non-binary nature of the Divine.
"As we work to meet the challenge of promoting non-binary constructs in society, we must also continue to assert the non-binary nature of the Divine." -- yes! this. So tricky to do both.
Thank you for sharing this insightful and informative essay. I have had similar moments of challenges within the church, especially when I worked at a parish and had to navigate the realities of working with priests steeped in theology but not the smell of their sheep. Quite a mess, even with the support of the pastor.
Thankfully I am also blessed by my conviction that God is greater than the gendered limits of our human imagination. Though I sometimes suffer from despair, I persist in my quiet ways and keep listening. Our Queen of Heaven brings me closer to God… knowing her Son and the Holy Spirit helps me see the awesomeness of the Trinity, which will remain a mystery.
Thank you so much for this. I have a fraught relationship with my own mother and lost my mother in law several years ago to cancer. I didn't realize until I read your post that sometimes I want to slump in my chair, close my eyes, and just say, "Mom? Can we talk?" to God. Thanks for giving me that permission.
Thank you for this! I'm listening to K.J. Ramsey's "The Lord is my Courage" and she says that Psalm 23 shows both genders of God, as the Good Shepherd (male) and the Good Hostess (female) who prepares a table. She then jumps to Jesus' back to back parables of the Good Shepherd and the Good Woman. Yes, God is Spirit, but we are made in God's image. So it stands to reason that God has both male and female traits. I appreciate your perspective so much! I also think the book "The Shack" had God represented by a female character.
Wow, so interesting. I have of course thought about this many times but never read anything about it from a Catholic. While I love the idea, I have to admit that I don't see Christianity's use of the masculine for God as anything put completely intentional and in some ways the basis of church teachings. I am not familiar with any times in Scripture when God is referred to as feminine. I am willing to learn though and would have liked these mentioned instances to have been quoted in the essay. I will however say that, despite my wanting it to be another way, I see the Christian God as very much intentionally masculine. At the incarnation, God becomes MAN. A man, with a male body. Distinctively not a woman, not feminine. The Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost...maybe the last could be somehow feminine, but the rest are masculine. I understand that Evans is trying to speak beyond these obvious, and known, church teachings, to expand our horizons and remind us that God, of course, technically doesn't have a gender! But, unfortunately for me, at this time, I really see that God has distinctive made a choice about the gender through which divine grace enters the world, incarnationally and sacramentally at least - which is kinda a big deal for me. I could go on...but I won't.
God didn’t make any choice about gender though—that’s our human lens/perspective. In the very first chapter of Scripture we read ‘God created mankind in his image, male and female he created them. That ‘his/he’ is a writer’s choice of words. It could as easily read ‘male and female God created them’, and that would be more appropriate as male and female are both created in the image of God, who is not human and thus is neither man or woman.
My sister-in-law had a baby and didn't find out gender. So she would refer to the baby as "they" instead of "him or her". SO any people would think the baby was twins because of the gender-neutral pronouns. I think it's interesting that we could intead refer to God as "they" because of the Godhead, there are in fact multiple. But we don't, we continue to use "he". So maybe instead of using the femine, we just start using the neutral.
Sidenote - I'm a public school teacher and when teaching transgender students I find I actually have an easier time using "they" pronouns then the one that is obviously not their gender. So it's easier to be gender neutral than to be "wrong". I wonder if the same will apply to God. Would it be easier to call God "them" rather than "she"? Just a thought! Sorry for all the quotation marks haha.
I do think it's comforting for people to think of God as father and mother instead of a vague "they"--at least, it is for me. They feels a bit more impersonal, whereas Dad or Mom feel much more intimate/present.
Agreed, especially because Jesus used ‘Abba’, but I think that term is more about relationally the masculinity. The Inclusive Bible often uses ‘Abba God’ instead of just Abba which I like.
I don’t disagree with the other responses here but I will throw my hat in with They as being simply more accurate. The Trinity is not easy to wrap our minds around; it’s not even intuitive. It might not be my first go-to in prayer, but “They” has an awful lot to teach us, especially as an antidote to (often unconscious) patriarchal messaging Evans speaks to here.
Thank you for sharing Shannon K. Evans’ thoughts. I wholeheartedly agree with her insights with the slight exception of when she states that referring to God in masculine terms, “is not something that Christianity does consciously”. That may be true in some communities today, but let’s not forget the conscious suppression of women throughout church history beginning with Mary Magdalene, whose gospel reveals that she was likely person closest to Jesus and “got” his message in a way that the male apostles did not (see Cynthia Bourgeault’s ‘The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity’). The preeminence of the male role throughout church history served to ingrain the male image of God which is still preserved in church structures today. One particular point of contention for me is the continued use of male pronouns for God in the church’s liturgy. Language encodes and reveals our thoughts, and it is not enough to say “we KNOW that God is beyond masculine and feminine categories, but we are still going to refer to God as he/him”. Once we accept this categorization of God, wouldn’t it be logical to ask questions like: how tall is God? how old? what color is God? We would quickly dismiss such questions as absurd, but not so regarding God’s gender. I personally address God as Christ~Sophia, Sophia (meaning Wisdom) being the personification of the divine feminine in the Hebrew scriptures. I grew up in the church at a time when devotion to the Blessed Mother was the order of the day. I even attended Visitation B.V.M. (Blessed Virgin Mary) grade school! Throughout my formative years, I couldn’t relate to this devotion to Mary which seemed to overshadow that of God/Jesus. It just didn’t compute for me. But I am now coming around to appreciating the role of Mary as an expression of the divine feminine (the ‘anima’) which was sorely needed to counterbalance what was the dominant notion of a juridical, stern, and punishing God. It is no wonder that people flocked to Mary as the compassionate and caring mother figure. As we work to meet the challenge of promoting non-binary constructs in society, we must also continue to assert the non-binary nature of the Divine.
"As we work to meet the challenge of promoting non-binary constructs in society, we must also continue to assert the non-binary nature of the Divine." -- yes! this. So tricky to do both.
Thank you for sharing this insightful and informative essay. I have had similar moments of challenges within the church, especially when I worked at a parish and had to navigate the realities of working with priests steeped in theology but not the smell of their sheep. Quite a mess, even with the support of the pastor.
Thankfully I am also blessed by my conviction that God is greater than the gendered limits of our human imagination. Though I sometimes suffer from despair, I persist in my quiet ways and keep listening. Our Queen of Heaven brings me closer to God… knowing her Son and the Holy Spirit helps me see the awesomeness of the Trinity, which will remain a mystery.
This has echoes of 'Thunder, Perfect Mind' which I always imagine as the voice of Cybele- goddess of the Lion Gate of Mycenae
Thank you so much for this. I have a fraught relationship with my own mother and lost my mother in law several years ago to cancer. I didn't realize until I read your post that sometimes I want to slump in my chair, close my eyes, and just say, "Mom? Can we talk?" to God. Thanks for giving me that permission.
Thank you for this! I'm listening to K.J. Ramsey's "The Lord is my Courage" and she says that Psalm 23 shows both genders of God, as the Good Shepherd (male) and the Good Hostess (female) who prepares a table. She then jumps to Jesus' back to back parables of the Good Shepherd and the Good Woman. Yes, God is Spirit, but we are made in God's image. So it stands to reason that God has both male and female traits. I appreciate your perspective so much! I also think the book "The Shack" had God represented by a female character.
Wow, so interesting. I have of course thought about this many times but never read anything about it from a Catholic. While I love the idea, I have to admit that I don't see Christianity's use of the masculine for God as anything put completely intentional and in some ways the basis of church teachings. I am not familiar with any times in Scripture when God is referred to as feminine. I am willing to learn though and would have liked these mentioned instances to have been quoted in the essay. I will however say that, despite my wanting it to be another way, I see the Christian God as very much intentionally masculine. At the incarnation, God becomes MAN. A man, with a male body. Distinctively not a woman, not feminine. The Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost...maybe the last could be somehow feminine, but the rest are masculine. I understand that Evans is trying to speak beyond these obvious, and known, church teachings, to expand our horizons and remind us that God, of course, technically doesn't have a gender! But, unfortunately for me, at this time, I really see that God has distinctive made a choice about the gender through which divine grace enters the world, incarnationally and sacramentally at least - which is kinda a big deal for me. I could go on...but I won't.
God didn’t make any choice about gender though—that’s our human lens/perspective. In the very first chapter of Scripture we read ‘God created mankind in his image, male and female he created them. That ‘his/he’ is a writer’s choice of words. It could as easily read ‘male and female God created them’, and that would be more appropriate as male and female are both created in the image of God, who is not human and thus is neither man or woman.
Adam, in Hebrew, means ‘human being’
Female/mother images of God in Scripture:
Matthew 23:37
Luke 13:34
Isaiah 66:13
Isaiah 42:14
Isaiah 49:15
Isaiah 46: 3
Hosea 11:4
Hosea 13:8
Numbers 11:12
Deuteronomy 32:18
1 Thessalonians 2:7-8
There are many more.
My sister-in-law had a baby and didn't find out gender. So she would refer to the baby as "they" instead of "him or her". SO any people would think the baby was twins because of the gender-neutral pronouns. I think it's interesting that we could intead refer to God as "they" because of the Godhead, there are in fact multiple. But we don't, we continue to use "he". So maybe instead of using the femine, we just start using the neutral.
Sidenote - I'm a public school teacher and when teaching transgender students I find I actually have an easier time using "they" pronouns then the one that is obviously not their gender. So it's easier to be gender neutral than to be "wrong". I wonder if the same will apply to God. Would it be easier to call God "them" rather than "she"? Just a thought! Sorry for all the quotation marks haha.
I do think it's comforting for people to think of God as father and mother instead of a vague "they"--at least, it is for me. They feels a bit more impersonal, whereas Dad or Mom feel much more intimate/present.
Agreed, especially because Jesus used ‘Abba’, but I think that term is more about relationally the masculinity. The Inclusive Bible often uses ‘Abba God’ instead of just Abba which I like.
I don’t disagree with the other responses here but I will throw my hat in with They as being simply more accurate. The Trinity is not easy to wrap our minds around; it’s not even intuitive. It might not be my first go-to in prayer, but “They” has an awful lot to teach us, especially as an antidote to (often unconscious) patriarchal messaging Evans speaks to here.