But that’s all when dealing with others, especially in the UU Fellowship I attend. When I’m by myself, I’m a Goddess worshipper, gender emphasized. I think maybe my attraction to female representations of the Divine is a rebellion against the pervasive masculinity of “mainstream” conceptions of God. I pray to Lakshmi, Saraswati and Kali mostly. Don’t tell anyone, they’d probably think I was weird!

Maybe because a lot of people, including Schussler Fiorenza thought it was broken at the time?

And maybe it’s a generational thing. If anyone would have suggested that the word “God” was “gender-neutral” (whatever that was) or even female to your garden variety believers back in the 1970′s, they would have been looked at as a bit of a kook or at least a feminist academic. It was in the 1970/1980′s when Schussler Fiorenza and others initially made their case about the gender laden (read: male) implications of the word “God”. Maybe times have truly changed so that now at least a few people don’t read “male” into the term “God”.

OTH, if you notice, most Christians in the States are of the evangelical and fundamentalist kind these days. Guess how they’d interpret the word “God” as being? Also, ask some average Muslim about what he thinks “God” implies (as in male, female, or neither). I have a good idea what he’d say.

Me? I forgo the word altogether. Words like “divine”, “ineffable”, “transcendent” work much better.

“God, the way I mean it.”

almost immediately degenerates into something that does not mean God. . .

The last time I checked God is not amused with people paying lip service to God and the phrase “God, the way I mean it” goes a step or two beyond paying lip service to God. “God, the way *I* mean it” may be readily seen as a form of taking God’s name in vain in more ways than one. . . I would advise against muddying the waters of religion by using the word God to denote things that are not God, something that Unitarian*Universalists, especially Humanist U*Us, are all too prone to doing.

As far as pronouncing “God” but with the added hand signal of quotation marks, meaning “God, the way I mean it” goes. I would consider that practice to be “less than advisable“. . .

As the idea of one God took hold, whether by intent or by the quirks of language or by both, that one God was definitely male – a usage that continues today, to our collective detriment. The image of God as the old man with the long white beard is still very much with us.

As much as I find it awkward and clumsy, I think it’s important to avoid masculine pronouns and to use gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language where ever possible. Perhaps, someday, God will be understood to be inclusive of all. But we’re not there yet.

“God, the way I mean it.”

almost immediately degenerates into something that does not mean God. . . The last time I checked God is not amused with people paying lip service to God and that goes a step or two beyond paying lip service to God. “God, the way *I* mean it” may be readily seen as a form of taking God’s name in vain in more ways than one. . . Please do not muddy the waters of religion by using the word God to denote things that are not God.

As far as pronouncing “God” but with the added hand signal of quotation marks, meaning “God, the way I mean it” goes.

I would consider that to be highly inadvisable. . .

Another possibility is “God”, pronounced “God” but with the added hand signal of quotation marks, meaning “God, the way I mean it.”

Is Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza aware of the fact that, from the humorous perspective of famous U*U Kurt Vonnegut Jr. at least, the asterisk symbol is a “picture of an asshole”?

Presumably not. . .

Most ironically, inspired by another U*U blogger’s “less than polite” blog post title earlier today, I blogged about this unfortunate but quite hilarious perception of the asterisk symbol myself this morning on *The* Blog That Cannot Be Named.

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza proposes the alternative G*d because it “also allows for a God without male or female characteristics.” Well it does and it doesn’t. . . From where I stand it doesn’t do so any more so, or any less so, than the word God does, in that it is but a slight variation on the word God. Does the asterisk remove any perception of gender from the word God? I think not. The word G*dess might be the proverbial exception that proves *that* rule. . .

Why can’t people leave things well enough alone?

What ever happened to, “If it’s not broke don’t fix it.”?

http://www.cuc.ca/whos_who/ed/MarySR_Dec03.pdf

Still ROTFLMU*UO after 280 weeks or so of *that* EPIC FAIL!

Oh. My.

This is the argument that “mankind” and “man” refer equally to male and female humans. English lacks a neuter (and a neutral) form.

Apollo is a God. (No statement of gender. Assume one has no prior knowledge of Greek mythology. What implicit assumption does one make?)

Artemis is a female God. (Does that really not ring oddly to your mental ear?)

Now, in a language which didn’t gender the same way, the case you’re making might be true–I wonder if it’s true in Cantonese; my aunt always opts to use “she” when referring to people, including my sons, unless someone corrects her. I think it has to do — but this is a guess — with a neuter human pronoun in her native language. My own experience with a transgender friend suggests very, very, very, very strongly that the gender implications are rooted incredibly deeply in us. I’ve known this friend for 30 years, and for eight of them now as a male.

Yet although we’re close and have frequent contact… in conversation, even with him, sometimes the wrong gender referent slips out. The assumptions about gender and gendering are very deeply rooted. The idea that although God “can” be used to indicate a male, we don’t mean it or assume it unless it’s made explicit… well, I think that’s inverting reality.