From The Washington Post-
The terms for God, in the poetic language of the
prayers written for centuries, have almost always been male: Father.
King. Lord.
And in the Episcopal Church, the
language of prayer matters. The Book of Common Prayer, the text used in
every Episcopal congregation, is cherished as a core element of
Episcopal identity.
This week, the church is
debating whether to overhaul that prayer book — in large part to make
clear that God doesn’t have a gender.
“As long
as ‘men’ and ‘God’ are in the same category, our work toward equity will
not just be incomplete. I honestly think it won’t matter in some ways,”
said the Rev. Wil Gafney, a professor of the Hebrew Bible at Brite
Divinity School in Texas who is on the committee recommending a change
to the gendered language in the prayer book.
Gafney
says that when she preaches, she sometimes changes the words of the
Book of Common Prayer, even though Episcopal priests aren’t formally
allowed to do so. Sometime she switches a word like “King” to a
gender-neutral term like “Ruler” or “Creator.” Sometimes she uses “She”
instead of “He.” Sometimes, she sticks with the masculine tradition. ”
‘Our Father,’ I won’t fiddle with that,” she said, invoking the
beginning of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to say in
the book of Matthew.
More here-
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