The Third Fundamental: The Substitution by Death of Jesus on the Cross Brings Salvation, Part II

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 6 June 2007 1 Comments
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Question

The idea of calling God "He" bothers me. Although I had a loving father, in

my 28 years of teaching I have come in contact with many who were abusive.

One year, a grandmother came in for a parent conference and revealed that

her granddaughter's father, under the guise of saying goodnight prayers with

his daughter, sexually abused her for years. I wonder how this girl will be

able to receive God's message when she continually hears God referred to as

"He"? Even the hymns are filled with references to "Him." Fortunately, our

current pastors use "God" — not the pronoun — and few in the

church have noticed. I write on behalf of all the girls of this world who,

like my beloved student, have been hurt deeply by their fathers.

Answer

I share your concern but we have to overcome perhaps 10,000 years of

training in the maleness of God. An enormous start on this consciousness

raising activity has been achieved, but to erase the influence of the ages

will literally take ages. Liturgies change, but ever so slowly, and most of

them even now are rooted in the 13th century. The gospels reflect the

patriarchal prejudice of the first century Jewish world in which they were

created. Even the Ten Commandments assume that women are the property of

men (thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his ox).

Polygamy is present in the Bible because women were defined as property

hence the richer the man was, the more wives he could possess, as well as

more sheep and cattle. My guess is that it will take another 100-200 years

to remove the prejudice and stain of patriarchy from our patterns of

worship. That is not said to be discouraging since that is very rapid in

terms of how long sexism has been around. The fact remains that for those

who are victimized by this prejudice, every day is one day too long.

This concern only dawned on me well into my adult life. I recall that

when I wrote in 1973 and published in 1974 my second book, "This Hebrew

Lord," I was unknowingly still completely insensitive to male-oriented,

non-inclusive language. That was also no problem for my publisher, Harper

Collins. Even their style sheet was not sensitive to the need for inclusive

language. When HarperCollins asked me to revise this book for a new edition

in 1986, both of us were in a new place. I made approximately 3500 changes

in the text of this 180 page book, 90% of which were to remove sexist

language, like the references to God that referred to God as "father, he,

him or his." A wonderful early feminist woman in my congregation in

Richmond, Virginia, named Holt Carlton, had begun very lovingly, but very

persistently to raise my awareness to my closed-minded, unconscious, sexist

prejudices. I was amazed that in the space of 12 years things about which I

had no sensitivity at all had actually become offensive to me. All of us are

caught up in this change whether we recognize it or not. The rate of change

accelerates every year as the flow of information becomes almost

instantaneous, but for sexism to be completely removed will still take three

or four more generations. One reason for the slow pace is that both

fundamentalist Protestant churches and Roman Catholic churches spend

enormous energy opposing these changes. Those efforts will fail, but they

do keep us from moving as rapidly as we might otherwise move. It is also

one more sign of both the irrelevance and even the death of institutional

religion, which always seems to be on the wrong side of history.

I do not urge you to be patient. I urge you, rather, to be loud in your

complaints until the consciousness of all people becomes aware of the power

of language.

God is not a father or a mother. Patriarchy has defined God for

thousands of years, but patriarchy is now dying.

Thanks are due to people like you for being part of its death.

John Shelby Spong

 

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