Church of Sweden decides: God is genderqueer

[Helsinkian]

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/24/church-of-sweden-to-stop-referring-to-god-as-he-or-lord

I love how these people look at the hundreds of verses in the Bible where God is referred to as masculine, and then just decide to throw it all out because it doesn't conform to the feminist worldview.

At this point, can't they just stop pretending with Christianity and just start a new religion?

[diptheriadan]

Doesn't Sweden have a political party that calls for a "feminist foreign policy", whatever the hell that is?

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/24/church-of-sweden-to-stop-referring-to-god-as-he-or-lord

I love how these people look at the hundreds of verses in the Bible where God is referred to as masculine, and then just decide to throw it all out because it doesn't conform to the feminist worldview.

At this point, can't they just stop pretending with Christianity and just start a new religion?

This is what almost all Christians do - they ignore the parts of the Bible that they don't like/agree with and choose to believe the parts that suit them.

[JA]

Isn’t that disrespecting God’s preferred pronoun? If they believe the Bible is the ‘Word of God,’ then if God self-identifies by referring to “himself” as a “he/Lord” in the Bible doesn’t that mean “he” has declared masculine as his preferred gender and pronouns?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Misleading thread title aside (the Church never said God is "genderqueer"), I've believed this for a long time.  A transcendent, omnipotent god has no use for sex or gender and to emphasize God's supposed "male-ness" is to miss the point entirely.  I have always used male pronouns when referring to God for discussion purposes, but to ascribe a literal, physical gender to God is limiting and innapropriately kataphatic (for lack of a more appropriate term).

[Tintrlvr]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/24/church-of-sweden-to-stop-referring-to-god-as-he-or-lord

I love how these people look at the hundreds of verses in the Bible where God is referred to as masculine, and then just decide to throw it all out because it doesn't conform to the feminist worldview.

At this point, can't they just stop pretending with Christianity and just start a new religion?

This is what almost all Christians do - they ignore the parts of the Bible that they don't like/agree with and choose to believe the parts that suit them.

Corrected. I can't think of any sects that take literally all of the Bible seriously.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Misleading thread title aside (the Church never said God is "genderqueer"), I've believed this for a long time.  A transcendent, omnipotent god has no use for sex or gender and to emphasize God's supposed "male-ness" is to miss the point entirely.  I have always used male pronouns when referring to God for discussion purposes, but to ascribe a literal, physical gender to God is limiting and innapropriately kataphatic (for lack of a more appropriate term).

Well, duh.

[Classic Conservative]

The same view as my religion teachers, rolls eyes. With the few and far exceptions of a feminine reference to God: ex ruah in Genesis etc, the Lord clearly tells us that He is a male. This is evidently shown in His coming as Jesus, a guy, and the hypostasis of God the Father, again a male. My mind is completely pondered by the modern belief of God as a female or gender-neutral, but I am willing to here others out.

This decision is just stupid and represents the failings of the Church of Sweden, which my great-great grandmother was a proud member of. She would be ashamed of her church.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

This decision is just stupid and represents the failings of the Church of Sweden, which my great-great grandmother was a proud member of. She would be ashamed of her church.

Half the clergy are imams.

[Classic Conservative]

This decision is just stupid and represents the failings of the Church of Sweden, which my great-great grandmother was a proud member of. She would be ashamed of her church.

Half the clergy are imams.

To be totally honest with you, I wouldn't be shocked. The Lutheran Churches in Europe have sadly fallen by the complete wayside. Many clergy in the Netherlands are atheist or agnostic, the church has turned away from its primary function to a social circle.

[Dr. MB]

Doesn't Sweden have a political party that calls for a "feminist foreign policy", whatever the hell that is?

It's probably the Swedish Left, which is one of the few left-wing eurosceptic parties that I don't like, there was one politician of theirs that wanted to make it illegal to pee standing up.

[Zioneer]

Well, since I believe in a embodied God, and one who's literally God the Father (along with a Heavenly Mother who is his wife), I of course disagree.

It's kind of odd that an established state church is doing this though.

[afleitch]

God is male

The Christian god presented itself as male. Twice. It ‘seeded’ a woman (a ‘male’ act) and was born as a man. Even if it had to do the first of these in order to manifest itself, it didn’t have to engender as a male by birth. Zeus carried a god who would be ‘twice born’ in his thigh, subverting his own gender and Vishnu rather beautifully placed his whole self within Devaki, subverting the need to have any conception and by extension, committing an act that could be interpreted as male at all.

Proto-Christianity’s need to have its own ‘miraculous birth’ myth has, unintentionally or not, engendered it’s deity.

(Here's the long read...)

Looking at the issue of sexuality in general, if we roll back modern heteronormativity (an unfortunate hangover that Pauline Christianity itself has left the western world) to a more ancient ordering; namely that ‘sexuality’ was divided into those acts and relationships that were supportive of the social hierarchy (procreative but also between a superior male and inferior male) and those that subvert this (two adult free men or any female/female relationship) then this allows us to regain a sense of ‘place’; namely that adult men should never be passive and women should never be active. When dealing with the NT, we are dealing with a Greek ‘re-orientation’ of the narrative to fit their own audience. Much of that is lost on us. However under no circumstances could god ever be considered passive, which is why he impregnates Mary and why he is presented in birth as a male. Dworkin hits the nail on the head here; insemination as an act is an act of greater maleness than committing a mere sexual act because it redeems a man from the ‘gender ambiguity of any sex act he might commit for his own pleasure.’ Which is why god doesn’t do what other ancient gods do and commit the deed himself.

[Enduro]

I don't really think humans have any place deciding what gender God is.

[Enduro]

I don't really think humans have any place deciding what gender God is.

Furthermore, I don't really think that God's gender is a thing that matters very much. Especially given the fact that He exists beyond human notions of what gender is.

[Lechasseur]

To be totally honest with you, I wouldn't be shocked. The Lutheran Churches in Europe have sadly fallen by the complete wayside. Many clergy in the Netherlands are atheist or agnostic, the church has turned away from its primary function to a social circle.

Yeah and honestly I suspect that's part of the reason (if not maybe the main reason) most mainline Christian churches are collapsing. If people are going to turn to Religion, they want one that actually stands for something and isn't just a social club looking for popularity. Frankly at this point, I think the Catholic and Orthodox churches are the only mainline churches that still do actually look for something deeper than popularity and I think are the only ones with a long term future (and I'm saying this as an Anglican, I'll probably leave it sooner or later for one of the two I mentionned, I actually haven't been to my Anglican church in a couple of years now).

[Simfan34]

Doesn't the Church of Sweden's governance include a council elected by lay members on political lists?

[Classic Conservative]

To be totally honest with you, I wouldn't be shocked. The Lutheran Churches in Europe have sadly fallen by the complete wayside. Many clergy in the Netherlands are atheist or agnostic, the church has turned away from its primary function to a social circle.

Yeah and honestly I suspect that's part of the reason (if not maybe the main reason) most mainline Christian churches are collapsing. If people are going to turn to Religion, they want one that actually stands for something and isn't just a social club looking for popularity. Frankly at this point, I think the Catholic and Orthodox churches are the only mainline churches that still do actually look for something deeper than popularity and I think are the only ones with a long term future (and I'm saying this as an Anglican, I'll probably leave it sooner or later for one of the two I mentionned, I actually haven't been to my Anglican church in a couple of years now).

We fully welcome you into the Catholic Church, lol!

[catographer]

maybe irrelevant to this issue, but why was God made male anyway? My answer is that the people who created the Bible were patriarchal, and of course the leader/creator of the universe was a man. but I think logically it makes more sense for God to either have been a woman or no gender; the former because women give birth and "create" life (see Mother Earth, etc.), and the later because the creator of the universe shouldn't have a bias or identify with one gender or another (also the universal creator ain't a human and doesnt have a biological sex).

[Georg Ebner]

We don't know, how HE is per SE, but we can recognize, how HE confronts us, so how HE wants to be seen:
Not as a sophia, as an abstract reason or as pagan gods, who like to be adored by us and always remain within natura or heimarmene/fate/historia.
But as creator mundi and salvator hominis - as a free will.

[Pennsylvania Deplorable]

I'm not even Christian but this annoys me. Swedish churches will probably ban Bibles within the next ten years at this rate. Lutheran churches have a long great heritage, but they've basically thrown it all away for political correctness. Same goes for Anglicans and Episcopalians.

[Antonio the Sixth]

God the Father obviously has no gender. While what the Church of Sweden is doing is a change in stylistic norms that people may legitimately disagree with, the only heretics here are the people who are attempting to ascribe a human characteristic to a being that's clearly stated to transcend all human characteristics.

[Kingpoleon]

To be totally honest with you, I wouldn't be shocked. The Lutheran Churches in Europe have sadly fallen by the complete wayside. Many clergy in the Netherlands are atheist or agnostic, the church has turned away from its primary function to a social circle.

Yeah and honestly I suspect that's part of the reason (if not maybe the main reason) most mainline Christian churches are collapsing. If people are going to turn to Religion, they want one that actually stands for something and isn't just a social club looking for popularity. Frankly at this point, I think the Catholic and Orthodox churches are the only mainline churches that still do actually look for something deeper than popularity and I think are the only ones with a long term future (and I'm saying this as an Anglican, I'll probably leave it sooner or later for one of the two I mentionned, I actually haven't been to my Anglican church in a couple of years now).

Uh, no.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

God the Father obviously has no gender. While what the Church of Sweden is doing is a change in stylistic norms that people may legitimately disagree with, the only heretics here are the people who are attempting to ascribe a human characteristic to a being that's clearly stated to transcend all human characteristics.

[Lechasseur]

To be totally honest with you, I wouldn't be shocked. The Lutheran Churches in Europe have sadly fallen by the complete wayside. Many clergy in the Netherlands are atheist or agnostic, the church has turned away from its primary function to a social circle.

Yeah and honestly I suspect that's part of the reason (if not maybe the main reason) most mainline Christian churches are collapsing. If people are going to turn to Religion, they want one that actually stands for something and isn't just a social club looking for popularity. Frankly at this point, I think the Catholic and Orthodox churches are the only mainline churches that still do actually look for something deeper than popularity and I think are the only ones with a long term future (and I'm saying this as an Anglican, I'll probably leave it sooner or later for one of the two I mentionned, I actually haven't been to my Anglican church in a couple of years now).

Uh, no.

?