The Gender of God

Man's gender has long been God's gender. When man visualised God in a male dominated society, he declared that God created man in his own image. But now there seems to be some shakeup. A news report appeared in the TOI a few days ago that the church of England was thinking about using a gender-neutral term to refer to God. The existing liturgy is expected to be substantially revised. I felt happy that they were gradually moving towards Vedanta, which always used the pronoun 'It' with a capital 'I' while referring to God. It is an impersonal entity at a higher level, and at a layman's level, it could be male or female or even non-human. But people in most parts of the world believed that God was male. Religions told the same.

There may be two reasons for the church's bold step to revise their core doctrine. The west has always been in the forefront of accepting change. An important feature of their society is the growing number of people leaving the fold of religion. In addition, the sexual revolution has resulted in new types of behaviour, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ). Religion had some traditional views about what appeared to be abnormal, but the gender barriers have been broken. An astonishing development is that the school kids are allowed to declare their sex and identify themselves as anything they wish. James, a boy, may not call himself Mr. James but can call himself James, 'she', or 'it', or 'they'. A girl, Sarah, can do the same. Not stopping with that, they can even have gender surgery. All this is in the name of liberalism, which seems stronger than religion, particularly in the intellectual field. Hence religion seems to be toeing the line of liberals by changing the gender of God and feeling the compulsion to change the liturgy.

The second reason may be the influence of Vedanta on the west. The influence is by no means small. Scores of western swamis have been teaching Vedanta and Buddhism to large masses of people. As a theistic religion, Christianity has to cope with the growing discomfort faced by its followers to believe in a male god sitting in a spatially definable place, heaven. It has to keep the critics satisfied. After all, man is the measure of all things, including God.

A welcome feature is that Christianity is ready to accept and cope with change. A twin purpose is being achieved – coping with the changing values to keep the flock in the fold and secondly, to upgrade the theological base of God to a more rational, ontological foundation.

(Writer is former

DGP, Andhra Pradesh)