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The Scottish Episcopal Church has this week caused controversy by removing masculine references to God in a revised, newly-published order of service. The new order of service, which removes words such as ‘Lord’, ‘He’, ‘Him’ and ‘Mankind’ from service scripts, has been put together by the church in an attempt to acknowledge that God is beyond definition in terms of human gender.
Episcopalian bishops have approved the introduction of more inclusive language, which can be used by priests if they have difficulties with a male God. But traditionalists have criticised the move on the grounds that it smacks of political correctness and because they believe the changes are not consistent with the teachings of the Bible.
The changes were recently discussed at the Scottish Episcopal Church’s general synod, and the UK’s Daily Mail reports that the minutes …
… of the synod’s meeting reveal that a number of priests had questioned why God was still referred to as male. The altered version of the liturgy and order of service, introduced in response to such questioning, sees masculine pronouns removed when referring to God. The approach also extends to humans – the word ‘mankind,’ for example, has been removed and replaced with ‘world.’
Some senior religious figures in Scotland have spoken out against the new order of service. Rev Stuart Hall of the Scottish Prayer Book Society has said that:
‘It is political correctness. It is quite unnecessary. The word man in English – especially among scientists – is inclusive of both sexes. Those who try to minimise references to God as the father and Christ as his son have great difficulties, because the New Testament is shot through with these references.’
Rev Darren McFarland, convener of the Scottish Episcopal Church’s liturgy committee admitted that the changing of quotes from the bible can be somewhat tricky, saying:
‘We have really tried not to mess around with the descriptions of God in the biblical text. But what we want to see if generous language when it comes to gender. God is above any beyond human gender. We are not saying God is not masculine. God is also feminine. The problem is trying to use human language to describe the indescribable.’
He added that:
‘The bishops have permitted these changes; people do not have to use this form. But we are trying to honour the breadth of descriptions of God in a way that’s helpful to the church and its membership.’
I’ve often wondered about why God is referred to as a man. After all, no-one has ever seen God to give definite confirmation, have they? Though I’m not religious in any way, I have had feminist friends who have followed Christianity and have made the argument that God could well be female. And I don’t think this is an unreasonable argument.
In my mind, the reason God is cited as a male in the Bible is because the Bible was written down by men in a time when women has no rights (which is why I find it odd that the SEC is reluctant to tamper with the words of the Bible – God didn’t write them, after all?). I wonder if things might have been different were the Bible scribed by women.
The Scottish Episcopal Church have made a stand that some people might not agree with, but I think it is progress — albeit in some small way — towards more equality within organised religion, and that’s rather important.
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The Bible received numerous revisions over the years, which people who object to this should take into consideration (but won’t because that’s the nature of these things). I, however, think this is fantastic! Maybe this is the path to eliminating the idea of an old man with a bushy beard looking down on us from a cloud. The problem is, most people need to assign a gender in order to try and “understand” God. Why? Because they don’t really get the whole “faith” in the unknown part of religion. But me? I’m psyched!
I think there is something to be said for a masculine god given the whole ‘made man in his image’, and then made a companion for the man who was a little different.
But then, I’ve not been satisfied with explanations I’ve read trying to reconcile the apparent differences between Genesis 1 and 2.
Kai, I agree with Amy when she says that God didn’t write the bible. Though the who ‘made man in his image’ is a strong biblical motif, who’s to say that’s actually how it went…
I should amend it to say that “there is some reason to believe in a masculine god *if you take the bible to be an inspired representation of the word of god*.”
I don’t mean to suggest that the bible is evidence of history. It’s certainly not my belief system.
I meant it that *if* you are Christian and taking the bible as your basis, and *if* you believe that it is inspired text (fairly standard to Christianity), then I can see some evidence for you also taking it’s suggestion toward a masculine god.
I think it’s great too. A step towards political correctness in religion. Since I believe that the bible was written by people, when times were very different , it makes sense that it may not apply as literally nowadays, and some changes would have to be made.
This reminds me of when I was in kindergarten at a Catholic school and they asked us to each draw a picture of God. I asked the teacher, “how can you draw God?” I had always pictured God as a sort of nebulous entity, definitely not a person, so I figured nobody knew what he looked like or that he didn’t really have a physical body or any sort of physical representation. The teacher told me to just draw whatever God looked like to me… so while everybody else drew either the bushy white bearded old man or the anglicized Jesus I drew a big cloud smiling down on everything below.
When they displayed them mine went in the middle because it was so very different.
I know I used “he” and “him” just now, but that’s definitely just out of habit. I was questioning all the religious crap everybody was doing back in Kindergarten, I’m definitely not religious now. I figure that whether or not there is a god doesn’t really matter and his/her/it’s gender matters even less.
[...] the latest situation of political correctness run amok, a sports team from a Massachusetts is being criticized for their team sweatshirts proudly bearing [...]
lol…”the Bible was written down by men in a time when women has no rights” ahhh, young, idealistic, educated and…ignorant. Right, so the all-powerful God of the universe couldn’t possibly control how the words were recorded. Before one writes, really, is it too much to ask to do some research rather than speculating. Next time try investigating the truth.