Using Gender-Neutral Language for God

This month I am preaching each Sunday at the Rosedale Congregational United Church of Christ. The title of my sermon yesterday was “Good News of the Kingdom,” from Mark 1:15.

Updated terminology. In the first part of the sermon I had to take time to talk about terminology. The UCC does not usually refer to God with gender-specific words: as a rule, they do not call God “Father” or use masculine nouns in referring to God. I don’t have any trouble with that, for I adopted that same general approach years ago.

In addition, the UCC doesn’t like to talk about the Kingdom of God—for that implies there is a king, and we all know that kings are male. So the preferred term is “realm of God.” A section in “The New Century Hymnal,” the UCC hymn book published in 1995, is titled “Realm of God.”

While I see the point in that new wording and appreciate the consistency of it, I have had some trouble making that shift in terminology. Maybe “kingdom” doesn’t always mean there is a male monarch—it certainly doesn’t for the United Kingdom where Queen Elizabeth has been the monarch for more than 60 years.

Updated hymn. For the service yesterday, I chose the closing hymn from the “Peace and Justice” section. The title is “Lead On Eternal Sovereign,” and the words are attributed to Ernest Shurtleff. But the hymn that he wrote to be sung at the graduation service of Andover Seminary in 1888 began, “Lead on, O King eternal.”

Even though Shurtleff’s name appears at the bottom of the page, there are few words that are the same as those he wrote. Not only is gender specific language not used, military images have also been changed—for which I am grateful. The result is a fine hymn, but it is not really the same as what the author wrote.

Here are the words of the third verse to the updated hymn:

Lead on eternal Sovereign, till sin’s fierce war shall cease

    and all your saints together will sing a hymn of peace;

Then all in your dominion will live with hearts set free,

    to love and serve each other for all eternity.

Updated Lord’s Prayer. There are three versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the UCC hymnal. I was surprised to see that all three begin, “Our Father,” and all three use the word “kingdom.” So to be consistent, I thought there ought to be an alternative version without gender-specific language.

My Google search failed to find anything suitable, so I decided to write a paraphrased version myself. Here is what I came up with:

Creator God, Redeemer and Sustainer of all that is,

May your Reality be honored by us and by all creation.

May your will be done on earth as it is in your Eternal Realm.

Give us the food we need for our sustenance today.

Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Save us from times of trial and deliver us from evil.

For the glory and power of the Eternal Realm is yours forever.

Amen.

So, what do you think? Is it necessary to use gender-neutral language for God and for “his kingdom” as well as for the Lord’s Prayer? And if that is desirable for the latter, is the version I came up with satisfactory, or are there places that need to be changed and improved?

Can the Church Ever be United?

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to preach at the Rosedale Congregational United Church of Christ (RCC) in Kansas City, Kansas. As RCC is currently without a pastor, I was asked to preach each Sunday this month, and I much appreciate their invitation. (It will be the first time for me to preach at the same church four Sundays in a row in 50 years.)

As you may know, the United Church of Christ (UCC) was formed in 1957. It was the result of a merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches. RCC was formerly a part of the latter.

The vision of the UCC is a great one—but one that is unlikely to be actualized anytime soon. Of course, this is not the first time an effort has been made to unite the Church, doing away with denominations.

In the 1830s the vision of Thomas Campbell, along with his son Alexander and others, led to the formation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). But now that Church, as well as the UCC, is just another denomination.

The history of Christianity is a history replete with divisions, great and small. The first major division occurred in 1054 when the Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, separated from the western Church, centered in Rome.

The second great division took place with the Protestant reformations in the 16^th century—and then very soon there were divisions among the Protestants. In January 1527 Felix Manz, whom I wrote about here, was martyred in Zurich, the first Protestant to be punitively killed by Protestants.

Since the beginning of the 20^th century there have been attempts toward great unity among Christians. The 1910 World Missionary Conference, held in Edinburgh, was an important step in that direction.

Then after the disastrous divisions caused by two world wars, the World Council of Churches (WCC) was formed in 1948. And that ecumenical body, composed of Protestants only, has in recent years reached out to greater cooperation with the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

But, alas, the WCC has been largely rejected and is often criticized by conservative Protestants. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., has through the years remained aloof from the WCC.

Conservative Protestants formed the World Evangelical Fellowship in 1951, changing their name to the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) in 2001. While recently there has been some fruitful interaction between the WCC and the WEA, greater unity is highly unlikely.

The disunity of these two Protestant groups is largely between fundamentalist/conservative understandings of Christianity and moderate/liberal understandings, which differ seriously—and maybe irreconcilably.

Recently, referring to J. Greshem Machen who made a similar assertion in his book Christianity and Liberalism (1923), Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president, said, “Rather than representing two points on a spectrum of Christianity, evangelical Christianity and liberal Protestantism are different and competing religions” (see this article by Bob Allen).

As much as I hate to say so, I’m afraid he’s right.

While I hope and pray for Christians to move from the extremes (and errors) of both fundamentalism and liberalism and to the “radiant center,” as I propose in my book “The Limits of Liberalism,” I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

While in the years ahead there may be greater unity among conservative Christians and especially greater unity of moderate/liberal Christians, I think, sadly, there will be little movement toward or formation of a truly united Church of Christ.

Remembering Thomas Merton

Growing up in rural northwest Missouri, I didn’t have much opportunity to know people who belonged to the Catholic Church.

And then during my years in two Baptist colleges and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, that didn’t afford much possibility of getting to know Catholics, either.

Actually, as I think back, I guess my first Catholic friend was Zénon Yelle, a Canadian priest who lived in the same city in Japan. In the 1970s he became a member of a book discussion group that June and I attended monthly.

Fr. Yelle was a thoughtful man and a good scholar, and getting to know him helped me gain a more positive idea about Catholics.

It was also probably in the 1970s that I first became aware of, and then read a book by, Thomas Merton, an outstanding Catholic thinker and prolific author who was born 100 years ago tomorrow, on January 31, 1915 (exactly six weeks before my father).

The first of Merton’s more than 70 books that I read was “New Seeds of Contemplation” (1962), and I have read it a time or two since. And then a few years ago I read “The Seven Storey Mountain” (1948), his highly acclaimed autobiography.

Partly in honor of his memory, this month I have read Merton’s “No Man Is an Island” (1955), one of his most widely-read books on what he calls “the spiritual life.” These books are quite beneficial for Protestants as well as Catholics.

In 1941 Merton became a Trappist monk in the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky. That was his home for the next 27 years before his untimely death.

Dr. E. Glenn Hinson was one of my teachers at Southern Seminary in the spring semester of 1960—and after all these years I still exchange emails with him regularly.

In the fall of 1960 Dr. Hinson (b. 1931) began taking students to Gethsemani. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in any of his classes that did that, so I never had the privilege of meeting Merton or hearing him speak—or of learning more about Catholics then.

But the contact with Merton was quite meaningful to the seminary students who did go to Gethsemani with Dr. Hinson, and in a recent email Dr. Hinson wrote, “Merton had a very profound impact on my life and ministry.”

Through the years, Merton became a strong proponent of interfaith dialogue, engaging in deep discussions with Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama, the Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki, and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

In December 1968, Merton went to Thailand to attend an interfaith conference between Catholic and non-Christian monks. From there he intended to go on to Japan to learn more about Zen Buddhism. After speaking at the conference in Thailand, though, he suddenly died.

It is generally concluded that while stepping out of his bath, he was accidentally electrocuted by an electric fan. It was a tragic loss to the religious world and to all who knew him.

It is impossible to know how much more good he could have done if he had lived 39 more years as my father did.

One chapter in “New Seeds of Contemplation” is titled “The Root of War is Fear.” Several times I have quoted the concluding words of that chapter, and they are words worth remembering and worth considering over and over again:

If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed—but hate these things in yourself, not in another (p. 122).

Super Bowl Idolatry

Like many Americans, I enjoy a good football game. While not particularly a professional football fan, I do follow the Kansas City Chiefs. (As many of you know, the Chiefs played in the very first Super Bowl, which was on Jan. 15, 1967.) I watched at least some of almost all the Chiefs games in their rather mediocre 2014 season.

Next Sunday I am going to be preaching for the first time in many months, so I am looking forward to doing that. As one of the lectionary Scripture passages is from 1 Corinthians 8, I decided to preach about idolatry, past and present.

Upon realizing that February 1 is Super Bowl Sunday, I began to reflect upon the idolatrous characteristics of the Super Bowl. In searching the Internet, I found that I am not the first to have such thoughts.

Thus, I may not watch any of the Super Bowl—mainly because with all of the hype it seems to border on being idolatrous.

New USAmerican "Golden Calf"?

Consider the cost of attending the Super Bowl. Five days ago I checked to see what it would cost to purchase a ticket. The most expensive one, and there was only one at this price, was $115,000!

Most were much cheaper: I found 64 tickets priced from $10,000 to $13,500. The cheapest tickets, and there were 226 of them left, were $2,491.35. That is the price for just one football game! And even the parking costs more than $100.

In addition, millions are spent for the television advertisements: it is reported that a 30-second TV ad during the Super Bowl costs $4,500,000—not to mention the cost of making the ads.

In addition to those exorbitant prices, the football “idols” make outlandish salaries. For this past season, the top twenty players in the NFL made salaries of from $14,000,000 to $22,000,000. Some made more than $1,000,000 a game!

Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots who will be playing in the Super Bowl, isn’t even in the top 20. But he, and others, makes a great sum of money from endorsements.

Of course, there are other idolatrous segments of American society, such as is seen in the world of entertainment and advertisement. For example, Tom Brady’s wife is Gisele Bundchen, a model.

According to this August 2014 article on Forbes.com, since 2002 Gisele has made more money than any other model in the world. “At 34, she is still sitting pretty at the top of the world’s highest-paid models list, pulling in an estimated $47 million before taxes and fees in the last 12 months.”

The article goes on to say, “Bundchen also made about $16 million more than quarterback husband Tom Brady’s $31.3 million annual paycheck.”

Actually, Super Bowl is just one part of the extensive hedonistic idolatry of this country with such excessive emphasis placed on pleasure and consumption, spurred on by millionaire models and multi-million-dollar Super Bowl ads.

In a Jan. 22 online article in Christianity Today, Kutter Callaway of Fuller Theological Seminary says, “The NFL is, in a real sense, our civic religion. It has Sunday worship services, mid-week Thursday celebrations, patron saints (Hall of Famers), and a liturgical calendar that begins with the NFL draft (in April) and ends with the Super Bowl (in February).”

But rather than confronting Super Bowl idolatry, many churches buy into the hype and have watch parties and other activities embracing it. Pastors.com even suggests making Super Bowl day “Football Sunday.”

There is a legitimate place for athletic contests, even championship football games. But let’s not make an idol of them!

“On the Pulse of Morning”

January 20, 1993, was a big day for the woman who was born in 1928 and named Marguerite Ann Johnson.

You probably don’t know her by that name, for she was introduced as Maya Angelou before reading one of her poems at Bill Clinton’s inauguration as POTUS on that January day 22 years ago today.

Angelou was the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. Also, she was the first woman as well as the first African-American to do so.

The poem Angelou recited at President Clinton’s inauguration was titled “On the Pulse of Morning.” It ended with these words:

Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister’s eyes,

And into your brother’s face,

Your country,

And say simply

Very simply /

With hope –

Good morning.

It was a very suitable poem for the new President from Hope, Arkansas.

Marguerite was born in St. Louis but mostly spent her early years, from age three to twelve, living with her grandmother in Stamps, Ark., a small town not far north of the Louisiana border.

Reading about the indignities she suffered as a little black girl in Arkansas helps us to understand Martin Luther King Jr’s passion for changing unjust laws, for he was just a year younger than Maya.

The town of Stamps is about 65 miles southwest of Bearden, Ark., where black theologian James Cone was reared. And even though he was born ten years after Maya, the violence against African-Americans in Arkansas, and elsewhere, led Cone to write his most recent book, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” (2011).

In 1940, after Bailey, Maya’s brother, saw the body of a black man who had been lynched, “Momma,” their grandmother, decided to take the two children to their mother, who then lived in California.

Bailey, a year older than his sister, is the one who gave Marguerite her new first name. When they were small, he referred to her as “my-a sister” and then the nickname Maya stuck. Around 1953, after she became a night club performer in San Francisco, she took the name Angelou for her stage name.

Angelou’s most widely-read book is “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” (1969). It is her autobiography from the age of three, when she and Bailey were sent to Arkansas, until she was 17. I just finished reading it for the first time last night. It is a beautifully written book, and definitely one well worth reading.

Maya had a wide variety of experiences between the age of 17 and when she was 64 in January 1993. Among other things, by then she was a nationally known author and poet. And in 1991 she had become a professor at Wake Forest University.

Her memorial service was held at WFU’s Wait Chapel on June 7 last year, ten days after her passing at the age of 86.

It is amazing how people can rise from humble circumstances to great heights. That fact is clearly seen in the outstanding life Maya Angelou. It was also true for Bill Clinton, who was born just about 30 miles north of Stamps.

Amazing Maya Angelou left the world many good poems and other words worth considering well, such as these from her book “Celebrations” (2006):

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.