The imaginary lord god

On October 13 and 14 I will be at the Women & Spirituality Conference in Mankato, MN to give a presentation and attend other presentations. My topic is Sexist God-talk.

God as exclusively "HeHimHis" describes male power as natural, normal, proper, and right, and female power as unnatural, abnormal, improper, and wrong. In this way, the Christian “Lord” promotes male domination and therefore gender abuse. In fact, it promotes all types of inequality by establishing hierarchy and domination as the essential, even sacred, structure of the universe. Those of us still in the Christian tradition can help to transform sexist God-talk with its immoral power structure by taking every opportunity to insert inclusive God-talk into liturgical and everyday language. This workshop will suggest many ways to diminish the power of “the Lord” by naming the Holy with feminine and non-hierarchical terms.

This is timely after we watched Half the Sky and maybe cried a little to see how little girls are sold into slavery and getting their genitals cut in the practice of female genital mutilation, called less graphically “female circumcision.” They need us to pay attention to this cruel practice.

The reason for cutting little girls’ genitals? To make sure they will not get pleasure from sex, the better to control their bodies. I’m not making this up. A practitioner said as much in her own language.

The reason she had no intention of stopping it?  She’s making good money at it—it’s what she said. Every day she cuts about 30 girls around eight years of age, without anesthesia or sterilization. Without warning the girls are suddenly grabbed by their mothers or grandmothers and taken to the hut of the practitioner. Their legs are tied to prevent kicking, and their screams are ignored.

Don’t imagine that this is like male circumcision. The clitoris is removed, not only cut. In 15% of the cases, the genitals are cut off entirely. All that’s left is a hole to let urine and menstrual blood flow through.

So what’s the connection between girls used as sex objects and sexist God-talk?
Religious God-talk trains people to worship an idol, an imaginary lord god who endorses male domination. It teaches everybody, not only religious people, that females have no status. Real transformation can come only if we allow women to become confident and powerful.  This requires cleaning our religious language of God-talk that reduces the Source of All That Is to a lord or lords, definitely male and definitely lording it over others, especially women and girls because female terms for God are forbidden.

It’s not hard to clean up the sexist stuff. Just cut out the “HeHimHis” and “Lord,” and add  Mother” in equal portions to “Father.”  There are many enlightening terms for God that would gently and persuasively teach people about the ineffable Transcendent One.

I understand the impediments to change. But refusing to make any effort to reduce sexism in God-talk, out of habit or because of church authority, I find unconscionable.