Tightly Wound

(raises hand)

Disciples of Christ here.

We have the same issue, at least in some congregations. (The one I currently belong to is more conservative and no one seems to take issue with the God-as-He tradition).

One of the newer hymnals, which I have used in some congregations I've visited - well, they have rewritten a lot of the hymns to remove "male" symbolism. Or warrior-related symbolism. Or symbolism-that-could-be-construed-as-exclusionary.

In a FEW cases it's not so bad, but in many, I'm sorry - the hymns become clunky and ugly. It makes me sad. It's as if we have become so unmoored from history that we have to remake everything for fear that some chronic sensitive would be offended.

(Or maybe they're trying to MAKE people give up hymns and go to that (IMHO) God-awful "praise" music, that is not discernable from the sort of soft-rock pablum the dentist's office plays, save for the fact that it mentions Jesus and Heaven now and then).

Then again, I've heard a DoC minister comment that we are "as close to Unitarians as you can get and still be a Trinitarian." So I don't know. Personally, God as Father works for me.

Its effect is the same as what Thurber calls the ``cross-country'' use of ``one'' throughout a sentence, resembling to the ear, he says, a trombone solo.

See ``Ladies' and Gentelmen's Guide to Modern English Usage'' in _The Owl in the Attic_. Fowler sent him a letter of praise.

I'd sure hope that Astarte was multi-breasted.

She'd look funny with only the one, and all the other heathen deities would call her names, and not let her play any heathen deity games.

Us Hebrews have taken the position (well, the Orthodox amongst us have, anyway - heck if I can figure out what the other denominations are thinking) that the Lord is genderless. Any appellation we attempt does not denote His being male or female, it's just a designation for convenience. Any attempt we make to define God will fall short of His reality anyway, so I don't think most Orthodox Jews worry about it.

And I think I'd very gently beat the preacher over the head with a collection plate until he promised not to do it ever again.

Hmm - southern Methodists. Did your pastor, by chance, go to Candler School of theology at Emory? If so, by the late 1980s, they were being automatically failed for using masculine pronouns in reference to God. HONEST. I had classes with some of those folks (things cross-listed in Religious Studies). It was my first experience of theological PC totalitarianism.

We've had some pastors who seem to have contracted some sort of pronoun paranoia and it is disconcerting to listen to in their sermons. I'm fortunate to attend a southern seminary that encourages inclusive language yet still allows us to call God Father. I survived a physically and verbally abusive marriage and was raised by a father who was seriously lacking in parenting skills to say the least but I'm not taking any of that out on God or demanding that everybody stop calling him a he. I think Jesus knew that Father was a term we humans could use to grasp at least part of the idea of who God is so that's the example he used. It works for me.

Ricki - Bwah! We have asterisks that are strategically placed within our hymns, letting us know that "Father" is "metaphorical," and you can always substitute "people" for "man" when referring to large groups of humans. Thanks, hymn-writers! Of course, it's no longer universal knowledge that "he" is the pronoun to use when gender is in question, or that "man" is shorthand for male and female, so maybe their helpful notations are needed.

It seems to me that the kinds of people who would freak out about nomenclature aren't necessarily the ones that are gonna show up in any sort of traditional church, since in my experience the more radical PC types are all about rejecting "tradition" of any kind, and have so many issues with God in the first place that they'd never make it as far as the actual terminology.

Skinnydan -

I think most protestants are down with the idea that when you talk about the Father, you're using human language to approximate something so mind-blowingly beyond human experience that you can't describe it. I wonder why the folks in charge of the seminaries can't seem to grasp that.

I wonder how long it will be before someone petitions the Vatican to "alter" the Sistine Chapel to be less, you know, gender-specific when it comes to the depiction of God.

And our collection plates are brass, and would probably create a joyful ringing noise when making contact with the cranium.

Michael -

I think he went to Duke Divinity, but given the way their English Department went off its collective nut in the 90s, I wouldn't be surprised if the divinity school had suffered a bit of the out-of-conrol PC taint as well.

Betsy -

Exactly. Pronouns are our friends, people! Not the tools of the evil patriarchy! Sheesh.

God is both male and female, and neither male nor female; that said, I'm pretty sure He (so I'm literate) would use pronouns correctly.

Different Michael -

See? This is what happens when you start playing fast and loose with the universal "he." Chaos! Badly constructed sentences in sermons! Using the plural "they" in a singluar context in poorly written student papers!

But that's a grammar rant for another time.

I just have this sneaking (okay, not so sneaking) suspicion that if confronted with the stupidity of excising pronouns when speaking of God, d-school types would recite some pablum about the All-ness of the Almighty, and completely gloss over the fact that said All-ness was formerly completely understood by everyone even when the male pronoun was attached, thereby managing to avoid the truth of the matter, which is that by trying not to offend anyone, they've just made the whole thing stupid by deliberately calling attention to the fact that the pronoun might be a (gasp) problem.

When it really, really isn't.

And when, exactly, did they have time to sit down and discuss something this ridiculous? What, poverty, war and famine were on a break one day, so religious types drew in a collective breath and said, "Whew! Finally we have a minute to deal with some real church business: this Super Important Pronoun Dilemma!"

Not that I'm bitter. I didn't title this blog Tightly Wound just for grins, you know.

There's something sadly lacking about even the most reverent "It". Maybe we could borrow an "It" from another language - say, Japanese - the way we borrowed "tsunami?"

PFP -

You're right. "It" sounds like you're worshipping a chair, or a space alien, or Monty Python.

This is just a case of screwing around with something that didn't really need to be screwed around with, thereby creating mass stupidity for No. Apparent. Reason.

Do you happen to know the Japanese word for "it?"

When we weren't jumping pews or shouting into the early hours at revival, we Pentecostal Holiness folks had plenty of names that we used to refer to The Good Lord. Just getting Him addressed in a prayer was tiring! By the time we got to what we were actually praying about, my uncle (the preacher) was glad to have his notecards for reference. That man had more names for God than The Hallelujah Chorus!
Ever consider swapping churches? Will you be needing to borrow a tambourine or do you have one of your own?
Bless your heart....

I teach college English, so I am sure I should not confess to this, but the PC grammarians have personally convinced me... and now I use "they" when referencing an unknown person (or someone I don't want to reference correctly) in my personal speech and correspondence. I still don't write it, but I sometimes get a bit clunky, like your preacher, doing that.

However, despite the fact that I think any human appellation of God is probably overly limiting, I do still refer to God as "He."

BAW, there seem to be two Japanese words for 'it' - "sore," meaning "it" or "that" and "itto," meaning "it" but also "a way, the course, the only way."

This is pretty convenient as "Sore" could be used for other denominations' God while "Itto" would - obviously! - apply to one's own. A minor benefit of this arrangement is that *their* congregations would be the ones stuck with all the 'orrid puns. ;^)

PFP - your dictionary is a bit misleading. "Itto" has almost nothing to do with most meanings of the English "it". The are two words in Japanese that correspond to "it/ that" and "it / this". If something is close to you, like in your hand, you use "kore" (cor-ray), meaning "it" or "this". If you could use the English "that", meaning it's across the room or in some other remote place, you use "sore" (sor-ray). Since we (used) to use "thou" when referring to God, I'd say "kore" is the best bet - He's supposed to be near.

But then again, I say just use "kare" - "he" -it's close enough to "kore" that you could always say that's what you meant to say when confronted by a PC weenie. And it is very different from "she" - "kannojo".

My personal favorite on the whole pronoun thing is reading about Episcopalians of a certain type using "Godself"

Marc -

No. Seriously? I'm sorry, but my brain is undergoing spontaneous shutdown due to the sudden influx of stupid.

I kid not. Do a quick search and you'll see there's a whole big movement around the term. I don't have the carefully transcribed studies and citations handy to link, but I'm pretty sure it was a woman who started it.

You know, if you're feeling oppressed by a freaking pronoun, you've got bigger problems than I care to deal with, is all I'm saying.

Grr.

Disciples of Christ church here, too, and the preacher does the same thing. The hymns are all changed too. I'm OK with "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice" rather than "Good Christian Men" because it doesn't really change the meaning (much) but more importantly, it doesn't change the cadence. "All Creatures Of Our God And King," though, is now "O, praise God! O, praise God!" instead of "O, praise Him," which is WRONG. It's hard to put the emphasis on "praise," where it should be musically, with that substitution. You're saying "King", not "non-gender-specific Monarch", anyway, so what the heck.

Our Presbyterian preacher uses "Godself." Makes me want to puke.

Tom -

That's...disturbing. I would be torn between bursting into musical numbers from "Godspell" and saying, "Bless you" every time I heard it.

In the Mormon church, the trend seems to be in the other direction - in general they're fairly careful not to overuse "God" name; they tend to use pronouns and titles. I think the reasoning behind it is that if you use the God's name constantly, it becomes commonplace and we don't revere His name - sort of a different angle on taking His name in vain.