What About Inclusive Language?
Bible Study
Hope For Tomorrow
What Jesus Would Say Today
Object:
If, through omission or commission, I have inadvertently displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, I apologize and encourage your suggestions for rectification. In the quest to develop meaningful literature that is totally free from bias and purged from the influences of its flawed cultural past, I doubtless have made some mistakes.
-- James Finn Garner, Introduction to Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
* * *
A widely accepted linguistic principle is that, as culture changes, so will language. And changes are occurring ... With women going public, many words and expressions in common usage have begun to strike our ears with a dissonance ... By the mid-1970s it was generally acknowledged that these usages were out of touch with the reality of our society. The time was ripe for a change...."
-- From The Feminization of America by Leng and Myerhoff
What About Inclusive Language?
"This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven...."
-- Matthew 6:9
One of my favorite hymns includes this verse:
Time, like an ever rolling stream,
bears all her sons away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.
Or at least that's how it used to read. However, when we sang this hymn in church the other day, I noticed that the second line now reads: "... bears all who breathe away." That was someone's effort to respond to the current emphasis on "nonsexist or inclusive language," a movement with a lot of momentum in mainstream Protestantism. I don't have any idea what Isaac Watts might have thought about the change back in 1719 when he wrote the original words, and I have to admit I have some reservations about the idea of unknown present-day poets redoing a classic bit of verse to please a small segment of the Christian community. As I hear this discussed among fellow church men and women, I find only a few who seem to favor the movement. So far, for every advocate of the rewriting of hymns and the Bible to comply with the current emphasis, I find perhaps ten or a dozen who disapprove.
* * *
America has gone through a recent period of "politically correct" language in regard to race, relationships among the sexes, educational and income differences, as well as in church worship.
* * *
This issue has, in fact, become very controversial in church circles. It runs the gamut from the confrontational feminist clergywoman solemnly intoning, "Hear us, O Mother God," to her congregation, all the way to the grouchily muttering elders of perhaps the same church, griping over Sunday brunch about the idiotic new, and hopefully short-lived, phase the current crop of clergy seem to be going through. "Let's pray they get over this silliness before they ruin the Bible," one mid-fifties gentleman recently remarked. He couldn't know, of course, that at that very moment a clergyperson somewhere was trying to rewrite a prayer to eliminate all references to "he" and "him" when addressing God.
I well remember the Sunday one of my male clergy colleagues, newly won to the cause of political correctness, was praying thus: "And God holds the whole world in the hollow of ..." he stopped. How to finish that bit of theology without using the male pronoun? After a pause, he lamely finished: "And God holds the whole world in the hollow of God's hand." Not exactly an example of grammatical precision for a man with a graduate degree. He was, however, sincerely trying to facilitate what he honestly saw as a necessary change in Christian worship.
Let's think about this. America has gone through a recent period of "politically correct language" in regard to race, relationships among the sexes, educational and income differences, as well as in church worship. There are to be no more chairmen, or clergymen, or waitresses. We have seen the dawning of an entire new way of speaking. Now we have chairpersons (or, to make things a bit easier, chairs). We have clergypersons, and servers or waitpersons in restaurants. But we have also seen a significant backlash in the form of television humorists making jokes about political correctness, and private joke-telling among the general populace. ("When you walk on the beach don't step on a person of war.") By and large this seems to reveal a general disapproval of much of this entire phenomenon. We're all familiar with the frequent revelations of some politician or educator getting in trouble with an in-group for using language quite common in private conversation perhaps, but not permissible in public presentation. Some people argue that as a country, we have lost much of our sense of humor. Self-deprecating humor, the easiest to enjoy, has been replaced by obscenity. Most of us seem, at times, to have grouped ourselves off into "minority groups," with a big chip on our shoulders, ready to take offense at any imagined slight. I even discovered that one of the newest minority groups is white middle-class males.
Is the change of language within the church a genuine move forward in honoring and serving God, or is it merely compliance with a general societal phenomenon which will mercifully go away when a newer generation of clergy come along with their own pet issues? Is this part of what God is doing in the church, or is it only evidence that women have become much more prominent in the management of the church and its theology? Maybe we need to set aside our own biases for a bit and try to discover why this is all taking place and what it means. Remember Paul's word to the Galatians: "So there is no difference ... between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28), and John's injunction: "we must love one another" (1 John 3:11). There's also an interesting observation in Luke's Gospel, where he wrote, referring to people traveling with Jesus: "... and many other women who used their own resources to help Jesus and his disciples" (Luke 8:3), an indication that women responded warmly to Jesus' ministry, in large part because he treated them as equals at a time when women generally felt like second-class citizens.
We have earlier discussed the roles of men and women in ancient times, that men were in complete charge. Wives were virtually bought by payment of a dowry to the father, with little regard for the feelings or wishes of the young girl. Women were not allowed into the inner courts of the synagogues and temples, and therefore most public discourse regarding God and the Jewish faith was transacted exclusively by men. The opinions of women were not sought by men and, when given, were rarely valued. It was not a good time in history to be a woman. One must not, however, blame the men too much. I assume about the men of that time what I find to be true about men of my own acquaintance today: most are good people with a sense of decency, a capacity for kindness, and a minimum of prejudice. I seriously doubt that the men of Jesus' day had a perspective which could have revealed to them the inequities of their societal systems, any more than I did as a young man when black people were treated as second-class citizens, and gay people were looked upon as pariahs, and "woman's place was in the home." We didn't realize the inhumanity in all of this. We simply went about our business, tried to live by the moral principles taught to us by our parents, and tried to be good citizens.
* * *
"If we want God to be understood as more than masculine or feminine, then we must take care to use language that is inclusive."
-- Dr. Linda McCoy, pastor of The Garden
* * *
That is what the people of Jesus' time -- most of them -- were doing. We all seem insensitive now, in retrospect. But keep in mind that women reinforced the prevailing values just as much as did the men. The kind of vision which empowers our society today was unknown in Jesus' time, though hinted at by the teachings of Jesus. Just because fathers were the powerful figures in family groupings doesn't mean they were unkind or unjust as measured by the expectations of the time. On the contrary, they must have done what we do: live out the values we experienced in our homes and in our society as children. When Jesus spoke to the people in their places of worship, he was addressing mostly men, who in all sincerity were simply products of their era. Their very presence in those places of worship must have indicated some willingness to hear of God and the divine will. If Jesus was to hold the attention of his listeners, if he was to win their loyalties and open them to change, he had to remain at least within the cultural context of the society of which he was a part. So, addressing a gathering of people who took for granted that a father was the source of power in the family, and the source of the creative seed, that it was the father who determined the day by day fate of his children, who set the family rules and enforced discipline, and served as the role model for the growing child, and cared for his wife's material needs -- addressing people who saw their world in this way, it was natural to refer to God as "Father."
Jesus wanted to personalize God. He wanted to convey the idea that God, like a good earthly father, is also the source of power -- of ultimate power. God also gives life, and maintains discipline, and determines fates, and cares for material needs, and holds forth the standards to which we are to measure ourselves. He is, like a good and kind earthly father, the Father of this creation. Many of the listening men began to change some of their Old Testament ideas of God as a distant deity, a "storm God of the mountain," and began to understand the idea of a personal God, one who loves each of his children, just as an earthly father loves his children. They began to associate kindness and attention to needs of the individual with God, just as they themselves tried to do this for their families. It was a new way to perceive God and it would ultimately change the world. Had Jesus tried to use the female image in regard to God at that time, he would have so confused the issue and been sidetracked from his main point, not only for men but for women too, that his message might very well have failed. Even as it was, his death would be required, along with the events that followed, for a growing number of people to accept what Jesus was about.
Nearly 2,000 years have passed since Jesus died. Human societies have changed and evolved again and again. We in this country like to think of ourselves as the epitome of this human evolutionary process. That may or may not prove true. But one thing seems certain to this writer: we have developed a community value system within the church which emphasizes the highest possible human values we can know. Those same qualities attributed to God by Jesus in his use of the word "Father" reign supreme in Christendom today.
But -- today, those same qualities which Jesus attributed to God and which he displayed in his own life are embodied in human form every bit as much in mothers as in fathers -- in women as much as in men. I loved my father dearly, and he is my role model for life. But the kindest, most unfailingly loyal and generous human being I have ever known was my own mother. The kind and gentle qualities which Jesus attributed to the God of power were nobly present every day in my mother. It was she, every bit as much as my father, who established my foundations in such a way as to enable me to accept God in my life, and it was they together, neither one more than the other, who enabled me to know what being loved feels like. So, I could receive God with joy.
* * *
"God is much too sensitive to be a male."
-- A smiling clergywoman who shall remain nameless
* * *
If Jesus were with us today, trying to convey exactly what he did as we receive it in the New Testament, I believe he would have used "mother," as well as "father," to make this message clear to us. We all know that men and women are different. There are male characteristics of child-raising which are different from those of female parents. In our home, my wife is more nurturing than I, more physically demonstrative, more willing to sacrifice and be inconvenienced for the sakes of our two teenaged kids than am I (I'm not bad, understand, but more easily frustrated and out of sorts). On the other hand, I'm more ready to face certain problems without becoming emotional, more direct when it comes to correcting conduct, more inclined to take risks, quicker to encourage independence -- in other words, we're different. And we work together well. We think we're good and loving parents, but it's the combination which makes it work. Most good families are more or less like us in that differences, working together, make a more well-rounded childhood than is possible when one parent exercises total control. So Jesus today might very well use that combination as an image of what, infinitely expanded and perfected, would help us understand the nature of God.
I would also like to make another observation. A number of years ago, the church which I served as pastor, having grown to need additional pastors, received two female clergy as part of our staff, making a total of six of us. Almost immediately, the life of the church as directed by clergy began to change and grow. New ideas, new programming, new slants on the scripture, new relationships with members started happening. Much of this was the doing of the new clergywomen, working together with the rest of us. The resultant new life was an immense blessing, a working out in church life of the qualities I was referring to in family life. Currently, about half of all seminary students (a graduate school for people preparing for church vocation) are women, whereas there were none when I was in seminary. One can see a new day dawning, a better day for American Protestantism. It will usher in many beneficial changes while, one hopes, not damaging what is traditionally powerful and good. Those of us who love the church must not merely endure change. We must embrace it, celebrate, welcome in a new and even better day.
How can we empower this change? One way is to understand that a new, young generation will come along who must be gathered into the church with a new understanding of the nature of the greatness of God. Part of that process will be the inclusion of female as well as male imaging of God. I frankly don't find it easy. I still feel much more comfortable with God as "Father," and I will probably end my life using that image. Nor do I fault those readers who, from long years of Christian experience, have the same difficulty. But we must not derail what's happening. John said we are to live and worship together in love. If we do that, we can, together, welcome what is much more than mere political correctness. We can welcome a new and deeper understanding of the very nature of God. I have decided that were Jesus to address us today, he would speak of God as "Father, and Mother, and much more." Having written that, I realize Jesus would say it much better. But the change would be encouraged by Jesus. So, there will be a process of alteration of some of our favorite hymns, and a gentle restating of some biblical passages. There will still be amusing failures to carry it off, like one choir last Sunday elaborately singing, "And God will bless God's children," (rather than "his") only to be stuck with the triumphant closing, "all will be gathered into God's Kingdom." No matter. It's right and good. The church will get it right eventually. And a new generation will understand God even more profoundly than did we. Let's give it a chance.
Questions For Discussion
1. How do you feel about the language changes in hymns and Bible passages?
2. How do you think Jesus might have reworded his teachings today?
3. As women become much more prominent and influential in the church, what other changes do you think this will bring?
4. Do you see children adopting different views of family and church roles from those of your childhood?
5. Do you think there are fundamental sex differences between boys and girls? If so, what might this mean for the future of the church?
-- James Finn Garner, Introduction to Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
* * *
A widely accepted linguistic principle is that, as culture changes, so will language. And changes are occurring ... With women going public, many words and expressions in common usage have begun to strike our ears with a dissonance ... By the mid-1970s it was generally acknowledged that these usages were out of touch with the reality of our society. The time was ripe for a change...."
-- From The Feminization of America by Leng and Myerhoff
What About Inclusive Language?
"This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven...."
-- Matthew 6:9
One of my favorite hymns includes this verse:
Time, like an ever rolling stream,
bears all her sons away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.
Or at least that's how it used to read. However, when we sang this hymn in church the other day, I noticed that the second line now reads: "... bears all who breathe away." That was someone's effort to respond to the current emphasis on "nonsexist or inclusive language," a movement with a lot of momentum in mainstream Protestantism. I don't have any idea what Isaac Watts might have thought about the change back in 1719 when he wrote the original words, and I have to admit I have some reservations about the idea of unknown present-day poets redoing a classic bit of verse to please a small segment of the Christian community. As I hear this discussed among fellow church men and women, I find only a few who seem to favor the movement. So far, for every advocate of the rewriting of hymns and the Bible to comply with the current emphasis, I find perhaps ten or a dozen who disapprove.
* * *
America has gone through a recent period of "politically correct" language in regard to race, relationships among the sexes, educational and income differences, as well as in church worship.
* * *
This issue has, in fact, become very controversial in church circles. It runs the gamut from the confrontational feminist clergywoman solemnly intoning, "Hear us, O Mother God," to her congregation, all the way to the grouchily muttering elders of perhaps the same church, griping over Sunday brunch about the idiotic new, and hopefully short-lived, phase the current crop of clergy seem to be going through. "Let's pray they get over this silliness before they ruin the Bible," one mid-fifties gentleman recently remarked. He couldn't know, of course, that at that very moment a clergyperson somewhere was trying to rewrite a prayer to eliminate all references to "he" and "him" when addressing God.
I well remember the Sunday one of my male clergy colleagues, newly won to the cause of political correctness, was praying thus: "And God holds the whole world in the hollow of ..." he stopped. How to finish that bit of theology without using the male pronoun? After a pause, he lamely finished: "And God holds the whole world in the hollow of God's hand." Not exactly an example of grammatical precision for a man with a graduate degree. He was, however, sincerely trying to facilitate what he honestly saw as a necessary change in Christian worship.
Let's think about this. America has gone through a recent period of "politically correct language" in regard to race, relationships among the sexes, educational and income differences, as well as in church worship. There are to be no more chairmen, or clergymen, or waitresses. We have seen the dawning of an entire new way of speaking. Now we have chairpersons (or, to make things a bit easier, chairs). We have clergypersons, and servers or waitpersons in restaurants. But we have also seen a significant backlash in the form of television humorists making jokes about political correctness, and private joke-telling among the general populace. ("When you walk on the beach don't step on a person of war.") By and large this seems to reveal a general disapproval of much of this entire phenomenon. We're all familiar with the frequent revelations of some politician or educator getting in trouble with an in-group for using language quite common in private conversation perhaps, but not permissible in public presentation. Some people argue that as a country, we have lost much of our sense of humor. Self-deprecating humor, the easiest to enjoy, has been replaced by obscenity. Most of us seem, at times, to have grouped ourselves off into "minority groups," with a big chip on our shoulders, ready to take offense at any imagined slight. I even discovered that one of the newest minority groups is white middle-class males.
Is the change of language within the church a genuine move forward in honoring and serving God, or is it merely compliance with a general societal phenomenon which will mercifully go away when a newer generation of clergy come along with their own pet issues? Is this part of what God is doing in the church, or is it only evidence that women have become much more prominent in the management of the church and its theology? Maybe we need to set aside our own biases for a bit and try to discover why this is all taking place and what it means. Remember Paul's word to the Galatians: "So there is no difference ... between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28), and John's injunction: "we must love one another" (1 John 3:11). There's also an interesting observation in Luke's Gospel, where he wrote, referring to people traveling with Jesus: "... and many other women who used their own resources to help Jesus and his disciples" (Luke 8:3), an indication that women responded warmly to Jesus' ministry, in large part because he treated them as equals at a time when women generally felt like second-class citizens.
We have earlier discussed the roles of men and women in ancient times, that men were in complete charge. Wives were virtually bought by payment of a dowry to the father, with little regard for the feelings or wishes of the young girl. Women were not allowed into the inner courts of the synagogues and temples, and therefore most public discourse regarding God and the Jewish faith was transacted exclusively by men. The opinions of women were not sought by men and, when given, were rarely valued. It was not a good time in history to be a woman. One must not, however, blame the men too much. I assume about the men of that time what I find to be true about men of my own acquaintance today: most are good people with a sense of decency, a capacity for kindness, and a minimum of prejudice. I seriously doubt that the men of Jesus' day had a perspective which could have revealed to them the inequities of their societal systems, any more than I did as a young man when black people were treated as second-class citizens, and gay people were looked upon as pariahs, and "woman's place was in the home." We didn't realize the inhumanity in all of this. We simply went about our business, tried to live by the moral principles taught to us by our parents, and tried to be good citizens.
* * *
"If we want God to be understood as more than masculine or feminine, then we must take care to use language that is inclusive."
-- Dr. Linda McCoy, pastor of The Garden
* * *
That is what the people of Jesus' time -- most of them -- were doing. We all seem insensitive now, in retrospect. But keep in mind that women reinforced the prevailing values just as much as did the men. The kind of vision which empowers our society today was unknown in Jesus' time, though hinted at by the teachings of Jesus. Just because fathers were the powerful figures in family groupings doesn't mean they were unkind or unjust as measured by the expectations of the time. On the contrary, they must have done what we do: live out the values we experienced in our homes and in our society as children. When Jesus spoke to the people in their places of worship, he was addressing mostly men, who in all sincerity were simply products of their era. Their very presence in those places of worship must have indicated some willingness to hear of God and the divine will. If Jesus was to hold the attention of his listeners, if he was to win their loyalties and open them to change, he had to remain at least within the cultural context of the society of which he was a part. So, addressing a gathering of people who took for granted that a father was the source of power in the family, and the source of the creative seed, that it was the father who determined the day by day fate of his children, who set the family rules and enforced discipline, and served as the role model for the growing child, and cared for his wife's material needs -- addressing people who saw their world in this way, it was natural to refer to God as "Father."
Jesus wanted to personalize God. He wanted to convey the idea that God, like a good earthly father, is also the source of power -- of ultimate power. God also gives life, and maintains discipline, and determines fates, and cares for material needs, and holds forth the standards to which we are to measure ourselves. He is, like a good and kind earthly father, the Father of this creation. Many of the listening men began to change some of their Old Testament ideas of God as a distant deity, a "storm God of the mountain," and began to understand the idea of a personal God, one who loves each of his children, just as an earthly father loves his children. They began to associate kindness and attention to needs of the individual with God, just as they themselves tried to do this for their families. It was a new way to perceive God and it would ultimately change the world. Had Jesus tried to use the female image in regard to God at that time, he would have so confused the issue and been sidetracked from his main point, not only for men but for women too, that his message might very well have failed. Even as it was, his death would be required, along with the events that followed, for a growing number of people to accept what Jesus was about.
Nearly 2,000 years have passed since Jesus died. Human societies have changed and evolved again and again. We in this country like to think of ourselves as the epitome of this human evolutionary process. That may or may not prove true. But one thing seems certain to this writer: we have developed a community value system within the church which emphasizes the highest possible human values we can know. Those same qualities attributed to God by Jesus in his use of the word "Father" reign supreme in Christendom today.
But -- today, those same qualities which Jesus attributed to God and which he displayed in his own life are embodied in human form every bit as much in mothers as in fathers -- in women as much as in men. I loved my father dearly, and he is my role model for life. But the kindest, most unfailingly loyal and generous human being I have ever known was my own mother. The kind and gentle qualities which Jesus attributed to the God of power were nobly present every day in my mother. It was she, every bit as much as my father, who established my foundations in such a way as to enable me to accept God in my life, and it was they together, neither one more than the other, who enabled me to know what being loved feels like. So, I could receive God with joy.
* * *
"God is much too sensitive to be a male."
-- A smiling clergywoman who shall remain nameless
* * *
If Jesus were with us today, trying to convey exactly what he did as we receive it in the New Testament, I believe he would have used "mother," as well as "father," to make this message clear to us. We all know that men and women are different. There are male characteristics of child-raising which are different from those of female parents. In our home, my wife is more nurturing than I, more physically demonstrative, more willing to sacrifice and be inconvenienced for the sakes of our two teenaged kids than am I (I'm not bad, understand, but more easily frustrated and out of sorts). On the other hand, I'm more ready to face certain problems without becoming emotional, more direct when it comes to correcting conduct, more inclined to take risks, quicker to encourage independence -- in other words, we're different. And we work together well. We think we're good and loving parents, but it's the combination which makes it work. Most good families are more or less like us in that differences, working together, make a more well-rounded childhood than is possible when one parent exercises total control. So Jesus today might very well use that combination as an image of what, infinitely expanded and perfected, would help us understand the nature of God.
I would also like to make another observation. A number of years ago, the church which I served as pastor, having grown to need additional pastors, received two female clergy as part of our staff, making a total of six of us. Almost immediately, the life of the church as directed by clergy began to change and grow. New ideas, new programming, new slants on the scripture, new relationships with members started happening. Much of this was the doing of the new clergywomen, working together with the rest of us. The resultant new life was an immense blessing, a working out in church life of the qualities I was referring to in family life. Currently, about half of all seminary students (a graduate school for people preparing for church vocation) are women, whereas there were none when I was in seminary. One can see a new day dawning, a better day for American Protestantism. It will usher in many beneficial changes while, one hopes, not damaging what is traditionally powerful and good. Those of us who love the church must not merely endure change. We must embrace it, celebrate, welcome in a new and even better day.
How can we empower this change? One way is to understand that a new, young generation will come along who must be gathered into the church with a new understanding of the nature of the greatness of God. Part of that process will be the inclusion of female as well as male imaging of God. I frankly don't find it easy. I still feel much more comfortable with God as "Father," and I will probably end my life using that image. Nor do I fault those readers who, from long years of Christian experience, have the same difficulty. But we must not derail what's happening. John said we are to live and worship together in love. If we do that, we can, together, welcome what is much more than mere political correctness. We can welcome a new and deeper understanding of the very nature of God. I have decided that were Jesus to address us today, he would speak of God as "Father, and Mother, and much more." Having written that, I realize Jesus would say it much better. But the change would be encouraged by Jesus. So, there will be a process of alteration of some of our favorite hymns, and a gentle restating of some biblical passages. There will still be amusing failures to carry it off, like one choir last Sunday elaborately singing, "And God will bless God's children," (rather than "his") only to be stuck with the triumphant closing, "all will be gathered into God's Kingdom." No matter. It's right and good. The church will get it right eventually. And a new generation will understand God even more profoundly than did we. Let's give it a chance.
Questions For Discussion
1. How do you feel about the language changes in hymns and Bible passages?
2. How do you think Jesus might have reworded his teachings today?
3. As women become much more prominent and influential in the church, what other changes do you think this will bring?
4. Do you see children adopting different views of family and church roles from those of your childhood?
5. Do you think there are fundamental sex differences between boys and girls? If so, what might this mean for the future of the church?
