God is Woman

Why, as a male, would I care about female images for God? I answer that question from a number of places. First, as a pastor and practical theologian, I am in search of Truth. Women's experience of the divine is an approach to Truth that has been marginalized in Christian history. If I want Truth I will need to listen to women's experience. As a pastor, I care about the women in my church. What theology will enable them to become equal partners with men? As a husband and father, I care about my wife and daughter. I care about their full equality and blessedness in life. Finally, as a male, I realize that my experience of God is limited by my privilege. If I wish to smash the idols of patriarchy and become a full human being, the voices of women's experience will need to be heard by me.

When I was in seminary I took a course on Feminist Theology. My son at the time was about three or four. Excited about the new insights I was learning in class I prayed with my son and daughter one night. I prayed to God as "Mother." My son objected: "God is a man!" he said. How was a three to four year old so certain, so conditioned, in regards to patriarchy? It was then that I realized the power of language in faith. Is God a man? How did my son come to that so soon? More importantly, how could I challenge this patriarchy that is so embedded in our culture and in worship?

Today, I wish to suggest that God is Woman. God is as much She as He. Our pronouns matter. One of the finest books I have found regarding the use of gender language regarding God is She Who Is by Elizabethon Johnson. She wrote this book in 1993 and her tenth anniversary addition was published in 2005. Elizabeth Johnson is Distinguished Professor of Theology at Fordham University in New York.

In the Preface to the Tenth Anniversary Edition, she writes:

I have received and treasure sheaves of letters from people in the churches describing how reading it has changed their understanding of God and consequently increased their appreciation of the struggle for the human dignity of women.

On the negative side, the forces of reaction oppose these insights with an array of tools from ridicule and trivialization to patriarchal dictates about liturgical translations. This reaction bases its argument on a propositional notion of revelation that reads only certain male terms as proper language for God. Such a position does not float abstractly in the air. It criticizes the use of female imagery for the divine with an awareness that such enrichment of our language entails a political change in the status of women in church and society in the direction of equality and mutuality. The opposition makes clearer than ever the basic argument in She Who Is that the truth about God, the human dignity of women, and transformation of institutional structures are profoundly inter-connected. Regrettably, we still have a long way to go. (p. xi)

If you are new to feminist theology, this book provides an excellent introduction. This is her thesis:

My aim in what follows is to speak a good word about the mystery of God recognizable within the contours of Christian faith that will serve the emancipatory praxis of women and men, to the benefit of all creation, both human beings and the earth. (p. 8)

Throughout the book she repeats the phrase: "The symbol of God functions." By this she means that God is not a speculative entitity but a term that reflects the realities of power relations on Earth. In the words of Mary Daly: "If God is male, then male is God." How we speak of God betrays how we affirm the power relationships between people. She writes:

A religion, for example, that would speak about a warlike god and extol the way he smashes his enemies to bits would promote aggressive group behavior. A community that would acclaim God as an arbitrary tyrant would inspire its members to acts of impatience and disrespect toward their fellow creatures. On the other hand, speech about a beneficent and loving God who forgives offenses would turn the faith community toward care for the neighbor and mutual forgiveness. (p. 4)

Beware, in other words, of someone who says "God hates this or that." It could be a reflection of the speaker's views. Johnson states clearly that the use of language for God directly impacts political realities. She writes:

In society women have for most of history been denied political, economic. legal, and educational rights--in no country in the world are these yet equal to men in practice. In situations where people suffer intolerably from poverty and racism, the dynamic of sexism burdens women with added and profound exploitation: they are the underclass that functions as "slaves of the slaves." subordinated to men who themselves are already oppressed. According to United Nations statistics, while forming more than one-half of the world's population women work two-thirds of the world's working hours, own one-tenth of the world's wealth and one-hundredth of the world's land, and form two-third's of the world's illiterate people. Over three-fourths of starving people are women with their dependent children. To make a dark picture even bleaker, women are bodily and sexually exploited, physically abused, raped, battered, and murdered. The indisputable fact is that men do this to women in a way that women do not do to men. Sexism is rampant on a global scale. (p. 25-6)

Throughout her book, Johnson demonstrates time and again that language for God is responsible for this oppression. She offers alternatives, gems within the Christian tradition that have been underutilized or marginalized, such as the figure of Sophia to recover a female face for God that can empower women and men to greater fulfillment.

God is Woman. Read this book.

Shalom,
John