The state established Lutheran Church in Sweden has asserted that church language in the future should not use terminology that identifies God as being a particular gender.
Conservative Christians go nuts over the news.
To which I say, which is the greater blasphemy?
A. Taking the language of Scripture, written down by men, framed within highly patriarchal bronze age societies, crafted in periods when only men could define the law and women were considered mere chattel property in birth families or marriage, as the actual definition of reality by God.
B. Considering God beyond the bounds of earthly gender or societal gender roles.
I submit that those who choose “A” have something to gain by it. Suggesting that God adheres to anything earthly seems, on the face of it, limiting of the Deity, and therefore blasphemous. And suggesting that anything humans can do would “castrate God” similarly seems to limit the powers of the Deity.
‘Castrating God’: Conservative Christians melt down after Church of Sweden says God not male
While in college 15+ years ago, I attended a panel on the gender of God. One of the women on the panel made a comment that always calling God him and only labeling him "father" caused real trauma to individuals that had suffered abuse, especially sexual abuse, at the hands of their dads. It was an interesting perspective that I'd never encountered before, but made a lot of sense.
+Brian Barth I've definitely heard that before.
To my mind, humanizing references to the Deity are useful only to the extent that they focus on aspects that draw us closer, not if they drive us away (or cause us to conflate our own negative experiences with our fathers with God). They are certainly un-useful when those become the only aspects we see, and so force God into a limiting box.