Does God Have a Gender

With all the headlines about new abortion laws in various states and Supreme Court’s deliberations on gay marriage, there’s no escaping the politics of sex and sexuality these days—or the role of religion in shaping the culture’s conversation about such subjects.

While we aren’t likely to come to consensus on these issues anytime soon, we can work to sharpen our understanding of disagreements, which usually means getting back to basics. One of those core questions about gender, sex, and power concerns God—not just what people believe about God’s commands on such matters, but about the nature of God.

Does God have a gender? Whether or not one is a believer, the answer matters.

It’s common practice in many religious traditions, including the Protestant Christianity community of which I am a part, to refer to God using the male pronoun. Feminist and other critically minded people have challenged this practice, and some congregations (including mine) have shifted to non-gendered language, but the most common practice is to speak of God as male.

Read the rest here