Sexuality and gender issues continue to have a profound impact on church and society. Now some feminist thinkers are challenging the idea of God as our heavenly Father. (Fortunately, most evangelical feminists are more interested in fairness than in revising names for God.)
Elizabeth Achtemeier believes the issues in this debate penetrate to the core of the Christian faith. Not all readers will agree with every aspect of her analysis (as, for instance, our own J. I. Packer and Kenneth Kantzer disagree with each other about women’s ordination). Most readers, however, will agree with Achtemeier’s conviction about what is at stake.
No aspect of the feminist movement promises to affect the church’s life more basically than that movement’s attempts to change language for God. Rather than refer to God as Father, many feminists insist, Christians must be more “inclusive” in how they speak to or about God.
With the introduction of the first volume of the National Council of Churches’ Inclusive-Language Lectionary in 1983, such language has steadily made its way into the Scriptures, prayers, liturgies, hymns, and publications of the mainline churches, often to the dismay of the people in the pews. While inclusive language for God is less hotly debated in evangelical churches, the issue has wide implications and relevance for all Christians.
The radical feminists argue that women in the church have been oppressed since the first century, and that language has contributed to the oppression. By the use of generic terms such as man and mankind, males have come to be seen as the definition of what it means to be human. And the use of masculine titles and pronouns for God absolutizes maleness and ...
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