There are some words a mother never wants to hear. For me, those words came one evening as I tucked my 3 year old son, G, in to bed. We had just finished reading God’s Dream, a children’s book by Bishop Desmond Tutu, and were discussing what God might want us to do. The conversation went something like this:
G: “I think God wants me to share.”
Me: “I think so too. God likes sharing.”
G: “ “Yeah, He likes it when I share.”
SCREEEEECH!!! Insert here the sound of the needle suddenly scratching and falling off the record.
He?
Where did G get that? With two theologians as parents, G’s religious world has been carefully and intentionally constructed since birth. Nowhere ever did we refer to God as “He.”
Perhaps it was just a slip of the tongue, a mistaken pronoun, an unintentional lapse. God/dess knows I pride myself on my child’s gender fluidity. I take his vacillating male and female pronouns as a sign of early queer, gender non-conformity. Though, I suspect others might interpret that as part of normal verbal development. You choose.
Whether intentional or unintentional, I decided to nip this in the bud once and for all. Continue reading “Imaging God by Tiffany Steinwert”
Feminism and Religion 