Wineskins Contributor・05/23/19

This past Mother’s Day Iworshipped at the church in which I grew up in Abilene, Texas. This is not aperfect church by any stretch of the imagination. It is not even a church thatI agree with on issues that I may consider primary. But the thing that struckme so significantly on this Mother’s Day was its speech about God.

Elizabeth Johnson says that ourspeech about God is “the ultimate point of reference for understandingexperience, life and the world. Hence the way in which a faith community shapeslanguage about God implicitly represents what is takes to be the highest good,the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty.”

This faith community where I grewup and where I worshipped on Sunday easily, readily, and naturally spoke of,preached on, and prayed to “Mother God” as an assumed truth. This faithcommunity invited the congregants to consider, worship, and honor this DivineMother as a window into understanding the Mystery of God. But this is not trueof all faith communities.

I have been in ministry for my entire adult life. And throughout this time, I have been told not to speak about God as a woman, as a female, or as a Mother. ‘It is too controversial. It will offend people. It is propagating feminist theology,’ they told me. My experience is not unique. Many women have been accused of being too liberal or having a feminist agenda when praying to, preaching of, or writing about God in any female form. It is highly offensive to consider God with a womb or breastfeeding a child. I have been told that speaking of Mother God is even heretical to some and smells like idol worship to others.

As are all symbols, Mother God isnot a perfect one. God is not a Mother anymore that God is a Father. Mother andFather are merely words used in scripture and employed today to give the faithcommunity insight into, an idea about, or a reflection of who the complete Godis. God as a Father tells us something about the nature of God, just as God asa Mother tells us something more about the nature of God, both drawing on ourown human experiences. They are symbols representing a reality and like allsymbols, they are limited and informative. They are descriptive but they arealso prescriptive. In other words, they form us and our faith communities.

Church and Church Leaders, there is a supreme and grave danger in excluding images of Mother God from our conversations, our preaching, and most certainly our prayers.[1] And the danger is highlighted in Elizabeth Johnson’s words above:  speech and symbols about God represent the highest good, profoundest truth, and most appealing beauty. In only choosing male symbols for our speech about God, our picture of God is incomplete -- we are inadvertently claiming that the highest good, profoundest truth, and most appealing beauty is found only in male-ness.[2] And a church’s distaste for female speech about God exposes a deeply engrained and unexamined misogyny that needs to be called out and remedied as any other sin.

Speech about God is of the utmost importance because it forms an ethic, a mindset and a practice for the community. In utilizing exclusively male speech for God our vision of God remains woefully incomplete. It is from this incomplete place that patriarchy, misogyny and other sins reign in a community of faith. You cannot pray to Mother God and not value the contributions and gifts that women bring to the table. You cannot acknowledge God as Mother and still tell a woman to be silent in the church.

It is time for the church toremember the Mother God who gave her birth.

“You were unmindful of the Rock that boreyou,

and you forgot the God who gave youbirth.”

Deuteronomy 32:18

[1] I am addressing “MotherGod” specifically here. I realize that other female symbols are equallyimportant. They just span beyond the scope of this article.

[2] I realize that this is nottrue of all churches. I am addressing ones in which speech about God happens inmale only language.