Sophie Rand THEO 1402-16 Professor Wamaitha 15 December 2023 How Sexism Inhibits God From Transcending Gender Ariana Grande once said, “You’ll believe God is a woman.” When this song was released, it was a tremendous shock to the world. It was unfathomable to most that God could now be named a female, especially after decades and decades of only thinking about God using “He/Him” pronouns. Throughout time, most Christians have referred to God as a man, because that is how God is referenced in the Bible. As a believer myself, I was raised to think this the same way, and there was no questioning that. However, through the lens of this class, there have been many readings that made me begin to wonder why that was so. These materials gave a new perspective that instead of being certain God is…show more content… They aren’t able to recognize that the Bible was founded in a time of heavy gender disparities, and that there are major flaws with that. Frederick Douglass essentially points out that he doesn’t agree with American Christianity because of the inability to change, which adds to the argument of this paper by proving that God is not masculine, but transcends gender, and the only reason that isn’t accepted is because of sexism. The next source that aids in this paper’s argument is Dr. Wil Gafney’s TheoEd Talk, “Biblical Language for a God who Transcends Gender.” The message Gafney was trying to convey in her speech was that society has always viewed God as a masculine figure, but that we need to ask ourselves why that is. She mentions that the Bible informs us that Jesus was an inclusive being, and Jesus told the same story with two different gender viewpoints. Gafney’s central argument is that Jesus did, so why can’t we, which is about inclusive language. She goes on to talk about how Hosea also used inclusive
