by KATHRYN POST
Many congregations are actively deciding how to refer to God’s gender in their liturgies, hymns and prayers.
More than three years after Beth Allison Barr moved to the small Texas church where her husband is pastor, the Baylor University historian was alerted to a single word in the church’s belief statement, posted on its website: “Godself” — an attempt, apparently inserted with the blessing of one of Barr’s husband’s predecessors, to portray the Almighty as beyond gender, neither a “himself” nor a “herself.”
Barr, author of the recent bestseller “The Making of Biblical Womanhood,” was only made aware of the pronoun’s appearance after the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, a conservative group, sent a fundraising email teeing off on “Godself,” criticizing Barr for denying “God’s revelation.”
(A related article written by the group’s executive director linked to an earlier pair of columns by Religion News Service columnist Mark Silk asserting that God’s pronoun should be “they.”)
The council’s gambit backfired: The church received more than $26,000 in donations in support of Barr, if not the pronoun, which the church has since changed to “Himself.” And the email only fueled a somewhat dormant, if sometimes divisive, debate on the matter of God’s gender.
In some seminaries and university religion departments, “Godself,” though somewhat awkward, has become second nature; professors are even known to dock points from papers that use “he” for God.
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