"if they believe that, why, they aren't even Chris-tee-ans!"
Thus spake my late grandmother, pronouncing the faith in three syllables in her inimitable way, while discussing the latest revelation by her Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor about the doctrines of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. So their apostasy and heresy are scarcely newsworthy. It must have pained her to hear that I was Wiccan, though she must have taken the matter up with God, as she never did with me. So I can well imagine her fretting in heaven over HerChurch.org, a San Francisco ELCA church which cross-dresses God.
Now I of all people should have no problem in seeing God as feminine. And indeed, I have no problem, as long as the God you're discussing is a goddess as opposed to the God of the Bible. The problem is that if you "re-imagine" God, you have to throw out the images in God's Word, and thus the Word itself. Without that as an anchor, you're making it up as you go along. I don't even have a problem with that; everyone has the right to go to Hell in their own fashion. But it isn't Christianity, let alone Lutheran, and I do have a problem with calling a thing what it's not. If there's anything that Lutheranism has historically been about, it's the primacy of the Bible. The primacy of pudenda seems like a comedown to me.
A feminine deity takes you different places than a male deity. Even if gender is a social construct, a society still holds that construct, and is not easily moved from it. And they will apply that construct to a gendered God, no matter which gender. "We also create an idol when we worship only a masculine deity, breaking the commandment against idolatry," the site supposedly says (I couldn't find it, but it's cited here.) As one who spent many years worshiping mated pairs of deities, it's pretty obvious that if a male deity is an idol, then so is a female deity, so the Ebenezer-ites are breaking the First Commandment twice, and demonstrating rank hypocrisy in doing so. Even Judaism, which has such a cootie about graven images that they're even loath to write out in full the class of being that YHVH is ("G-d"), considers "G-d" to be male. And one of the big ideas of Christianity (and probably the one most offensive to Jews) is that God has a face and a name...and both are male. If Jesus is an idol, He's the joint artwork of Mary and the Holy Spirit. And if a Person of the Trinity is breaking the Commandments, well, the game is over.
Pope Paul VI caught a lot of flack for saying that women couldn't be priests because they did not have "a natural resemblance to Jesus." Some early feminist theologian (IIRC it was Naomi Goldenberg in Changing of the Gods) noted that this was actually very astute, because people model their images of God from those who serve God, and that a female priest(ess)hood would lead to a female vision of deity. So it's not a surprise that Pastor Boom's first name is Stacy. And the graven image of a woman is at the center of HerChurch's rosary beads (!). I'm sure that Dr. Luther is doing a happy dance right now --NOT! I remember some End Times novel from the 60s with a church very much like Ebenezer Lutheran. Clearly, the gift of prophecy is not dead.
Comments
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: October 17, 2007 10:16 PM
Technical correction here--
The taboo on pronouncing the Divine Name doesn't derive from the ban on graven images, but is totally independent. You don't pronounce the Name because you don't pronounce the Name. Additionally, the Tetragrammaton is only one of several Names that are not supposed to be written or pronounced in normal conversation and writing: Ad-nai and El-him/El-hai [insert the letter o]are the two most important of the remaining ones, but I think there are four others, only I don't remember which ones they are. The Tetragrammaton was said aloud only by the High Priest during the Yom Kippur services in the Temple of Jerusalem, which was also the only day that he entered the Holy of Holies (wearing a long chain so they could pull his body out if the Deity decided to strike him dead while inside).
Writing "God" as G-d when using English is a very modern practice found only among the Orthodox, and there is lots of precedent which allows ignoring it. However, those that write it that way (and write L-rd instead of Lord) do so because they conceive of it as having the status of a Divine Name, an extension of the relevant Hebrew word, and not because of the meaning of the word when used as a common noun.
If the names are written out in full, the paper attains of the status of a holy book, and must be disposed of in the same manner as outworn prayerbooks, Torah scrolls, etc.--burial in a special grave in the cemetery (they collect them until there is enough to fill up the graveplot)--or, less common nowadays, putting them away in special places like the famous Genizah of Cairo.
I started to refer to God in periphrases and epithets simply to avoid either offending or incommoding people who do think one should write G-d in English, or to give the impression that I adhered to an unnecessary strictness (chumra is the Hebrew word).
And we do have a conception of the Divine Being as female, I thought you knew that: the idea of the Shekinah as female goes back at least to Talmudic times.
Posted by: Hypnosis
Posted on: October 18, 2007 02:46 AM
Hello, I think you are absolutely right: Woman and man should be equal-righted. In everyday life. In politics. And in religon.
Best wishes
Tim Allgebauer
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: October 18, 2007 11:49 AM
Yes, but it doesn't go back to Biblical times...which would be the issue for Lutherans. What Jews did after they rejected the Messiah is kind of irrelevant to them (while their rejecting the Reformation was far too relevant). But thanks for fine tuning my very creaky grasp of Jewish theology.
Mr. Allgebauer...if you're going to post comment spam, try a little harder. I don't think you read the post.
Posted by: rightwingprof
Posted on: October 18, 2007 02:33 PM
Sigh.
Posted by: Jim Quick
Posted on: October 19, 2007 09:01 PM
Yesss, but the congregation of Ebeneezer Lutheran Church can not be reaL LUTHERANS. Certainly not a part of the Missouri Synod which will never condone Female Pastor's. Luther left the Catholic Church because he wanted a wife, not a competitor. Women are by nature and God's Grace nurturer's and not natural Leaders.
Jimbo