Despite these early musings, it would be many years before I was formally introduced to inclusive language for God. It was in seminary that I was finally encouraged to use other pronouns for God besides he/him. In chapel we alternated between she and he in our prayers. In class we were expected to find gender neutral language for God. I learned about the feminine side of the Spirit, that hokmah (the Hebrew word for Spirit) is a feminine noun. I read about how God’s Spirit is personified in the book of Proverbs as Woman Wisdom. I started trying to avoid gendered language when talking about God, opting simply to say God and avoid pronouns as much possible. But that got awkward after a while. I cringed a little every time I called God “he”. It didn’t feel right anymore but calling God exclusively “she” didn’t feel right either. God was both he and she, but God was neither at the same time.
It was around that time that I first met a non-binary person, my friend Avery. I had been around a few trans people before that, but they were the first person I had ever met who used pronouns other than he or she. As they taught me about gender neutral pronouns, I realized this was what I was looking for all along. God cannot be confined to one gender, because God transcends gender. God’s Spirit is feminine, but God came to earth as Jesus, a man. God is all genders, just as all genders were created in God’s image. God is They.
Finally discovering that third option was an immense relief. When I referred to God as They it just felt right to me. Of course, I couldn’t use it everywhere. Most churches I preached in could barely even handle me calling God “she”. People raised with a masculine image of God tend to have a strong reaction to feminine or gender-neutral imagery. For some it is a very positive reaction: excitement, joy, relief. But the majority react negatively. Once I preached a sermon on God being Mother as well as Father, and was told by several people that I was changing scripture to fit my liberal agenda. Some of them even refused to worship with me after that. Imagine how they would have reacted if I told them I prefer to call God They!
But despite what some may think, I don’t have to change scripture to find a gender inclusive God. One of the things that makes me sure that we should be using inclusive language, is that despite the Bible being written by a patriarchal culture, scripture uses a wide range of language to describe God. Although God is primarily called “he” in the Bible, God is also the hen that gathers her chicks under her wings (Matthew 23:37). God is El Shaddai, the breasted God (Shaddai comes from the root word shad, which means breast in Hebrew). Right from the very beginning, we are told that both male and female are made in God’s image, implying that They could not possibly be solely male. I think that the people who wrote the Bible believed that God had to be either male or female, and since men were considered superior to women, the one God must be male, and so they wrote it that way. But God still managed to reveal Their full, non-binary, gender inclusive self to us.
I believe God cannot be limited to one gender. They are gender fluid, expressing Themselves as different genders as They desire. They are neither male nor female, while also being both and every other gender. Why does this matter? Because God created humans in Their image, and therefore every person, trans or cis, man, woman, non-binary, gender fluid, or gender queer, is the image of God. Because of that, every person has worth that no one can take away, and we know that God loves us as we are because They made us. And for that we can rejoice.