{"id":1442,"date":"2013-05-02T15:51:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T15:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/05\/neutering-god.html"},"modified":"2013-05-02T15:51:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-02T15:51:00","slug":"neutering-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/05\/neutering-god.html","title":{"rendered":"Neutering God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

God reveals Godself\u2026<\/span><\/div>\n
My ears pricked up during a recent sermon at a local Presbyterian church. I\u2019ve heard \u201cGodself\u201d used by mainline ministers with some regularity since I went to seminary some dozen years ago, but I\u2019m not used to it.<\/span><\/div>\n
I\u2019ve long been fascinated by the liberal Protestant quest to neuter God. I sat among students in seminary who would render male Greek words into gender-neutral alternatives. In my mind, this simply led to mistranslation, because the language of scripture is patriarchal. May as well translate it properly, and then think about how to use it in liturgy and preaching.<\/span><\/div>\n
Liberal Protestants make, in my view, a good argument that male language for God sacralizes patriarchy. If human beings think of God as male, it lends a certain amount of credence to patriarchal structures of human relations. This is probably true even if Christians add disclaimers that male language about God does not mean that God is male. Thus, by this logic, it is good that Christians have been seeking ways to rhetorically distance themselves from patriarchy.<\/span><\/div>\n
I\u2019ve just finished reading Ed Blum and Paul Harvey\u2019s\u00a0The Color of Christ<\/em>, an account of how Americans have imagined Jesus\u2019s appearance since the seventeenth century. Toward the end of the book, Blum and Harvey note that most evangelical churches have removed pictures of Jesus from their sanctuary because of the inevitable problems raised by choosing a skin color for Jesus. Churches no longer wanted to sacralize whiteness by hanging pictures of a white Jesus, and there wasn\u2019t an easy substitute. Similarly, churches should want to take steps to avoid sacralizing patriarchy by using rhetoric that presents a male God. However, one simply cannot banish male language for God. One needs substitute words and phrases.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God reveals Godself\u2026 My ears pricked up during a recent sermon at a local Presbyterian church. I\u2019ve heard \u201cGodself\u201d used by mainline ministers with some regularity since I went to seminary some dozen years ago, but I\u2019m not used to it. I\u2019ve long been fascinated by the liberal Protestant quest to neuter God. I sat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nNeutering God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"God reveals Godself\u2026My ears pricked up during a recent sermon at a local Presbyterian church. 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