Ep. 64: What Are God’s Pronouns? w/ Gary Alan Taylor
Show Notes
Episode Summary
In the second-part of our conversation about the Divine Feminine, we look at the ramifications of believing God is a guy. Institutional Christianity has given us God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, a triune male God with “He/Him” pronouns. And this male dominated theology has created a male dominator culture that manifests itself politically, socially, sexually, religiously, and economically in pragmatism, patriotism, persecution, capitalism, greed, aggression, egoism, hierarchy, oppression, exclusion, bigotry, ignorance, and emotionally stunted men. All of which has the planet on the brink of destruction. But what if we’re wrong? What if God isn’t a guy after all? And how would seeing God in female form change the way we understand ourselves and the world around us?
Rediscovering the Divine female attributes of God is one of the first steps toward our collective liberation from the dominant power structures that rule our lives. In this episode, we uncover all the ways God is referenced in female language throughout Scripture and church history. We also look at Jesus’ primordial identity as Holy Wisdom, or the Sophia of God, making the historical Jesus the personification of the Divine Feminine.
Quotables
“If God is male, the male is God.”
“Domination of women has provided a key link, both socially and symbolically, to the domination of earth.”
“The symbolic evidence of women’s invisibility in the human race is most clear perhaps in her suppression, her camouflage, her negation even in language. Women are subsumed, excised, erased by male pronouns, by male terminology, by male prayers, even by exclusively male images of God.”
“There has always been a vocal minority recognizing the many pronouns for God, including “He/Him,” “She/Her,” “They/Them.”
“All Language about God is metaphorical, but those metaphors matter.”
“One of the most ancient metaphorical understandings and expressions of Divinity is God as womb of the world.”
“How can women be made in the image of God if God cannot be imagined in female form?”
“What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth.”
“Sophia is the first of God’s works, God’s female companion in the creation of the cosmos.”
“Sophia became flesh and dwelt among us.”
“Just as God is our Father, so God is also our Mother.”
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Credits
This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor. Music is by Faith in Foxholes.
Don’t just reconstruct your faith, ReWild your faith by trading in certainty for wonder and literalism for mystery. This episode with Holy Heretics host Gary Alan Taylor is an introduction to spiritual rewilding through the re-introduction of indigenous spirituality and Creation-centered Christianity.