U.S. Episcopal Diocese Votes to Stop Using Masculine Pronouns for God

The Episcopal church in the Diocese of Washington, D.C., passed a resolution last week to stop using masculine pronouns for God in future updates to its Book of Common Prayer.

The resolution to stop using “gendered language for God” was passed quickly by delegates to the Diocese’s 123rd Convention.

“If revision of the Book of Common Prayer is authorized, to utilize expansive language for God from the rich sources of feminine, masculine, and non-binary imagery for God found in Scripture and tradition and, when possible, to avoid the use of gendered pronouns for God,” the resolution stated.

“Over the centuries our language and our understanding of God has continued to change and adapt,” the drafters of the resolution stated. The drafters said that referring to God using masculine pronouns is to “limit our understanding of God.” . . . .

But Clergy delegate The Rev. Linda R. Calkins from St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Laytonsville, Maryland, challenged the delegates to go further.

Calkins read from Genesis Chapter 17, in which God tells Abraham “I am El Shaddai.” She said that if Episcopalians “are going to be true to what El Shaddai means, it means God with breasts.” (Read more from “U.S. Episcopal Diocese Votes to Stop Using Masculine Pronouns for God” HERE)

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