Over the course of the past few decades, it has become common among many English-speaking
Christians and in many churches (such as my own, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America)
to maintain that, when possible, we should avoid using masculine pronouns (“he,” “his,” “him,”
“himself”) to refer to God. It is argued that to speak of God as if God were male perpetuates
patriarchy, androcentrism, and hierarchical thought, and thus promotes gender inequity.
Thus in many circles it has become standard practice to use gender-neutral or gender-free
language when alluding to God. The thinking is that this is the best way to address the problem
of conveying and perpetrating concepts of God that are non-egalitarian or “sexist” and therefore
oppressive, not only to women but also to other persons who do not identify themselves as male
in gender.
While I concur wholeheartedly with such an objective and support any and every effort to
promote equity of all sorts, including gender equity, at the same time I would argue that to refuse
to use gendered personal pronouns to refer to God ends up doing more harm than good. In
addition to making it difficult to speak freely about God in the way that we normally speak about
persons, such a practice tends to convey an image of God that is impersonal, abstract, distant,
and cold.
For that reason, I propose here that in addition to using personal pronouns of masculine gender
when referring to God, we also use pronouns of feminine gender as well as non-gendered
personal pronouns. By doing so, our language regarding God continues to portray God as a
person who cares deeply and intimately about each one of us in the way that the biblical texts
describe.
