No wonder the church is becoming more and more irrelevant- we who are to reveal God are not sure ‘who he is’ anymore! Read on:“God has no gender. And the Lord? There’s not much Lord in this church service. At Tucson’s largest Episcopal church, St. Philip’s in the Hills, the creators of an alternative worship service called Come & See are bucking tradition by rewriting what have become prescribed ways of worship.
For the faithful, that means God isn’t referred to as “him,” and references to “the Lord” are rare.
“Lord” has become a loaded word conveying hierarchical power over things, “which in what we have recorded in our sacred texts, is not who Jesus understood himself to be,” St. Philip’s associate rector Susan Anderson-Smith said.
“The way our service reads, the theology is that God is love, period,” St. Philip’s deacon Thomas Lindell added. “Our service has done everything it can to get rid of power imagery. We do not pray as though we expect the big guy in the sky to come and fix everything.”
Other random quotes:
First Congregational United Church of Christ in Midtown even has a different name for The Lord’s Prayer. They call it “The Prayer of Our Creator.” “We do still use the word ‘Lord’ on occasion, but we are suspicious of it,” First Congregational pastor Briget Nicholson said. “Inclusive language is important. Our United Church of Christ hymnal does have hymns that will say ‘Father’ and ‘God.’ but the next verse will always then say ‘Mother’ and ‘God.’ It’s gender-balanced.”
“I’m sorry, but if there is a Lord, by implication there is a Lady,” he said.
“We don’t stress the blood and gore of the crucifixion and the so-called sacrifice of the Mass,” he said. “I think that calls attention to Jesus’ death but it doesn’t call attention to why we are Christians. It seems to me, being a Christian isn’t just about the birth and death of Jesus. It’s about living in the world with his life as an example.”
First Congregational United Church of Christ in Midtown even has a different name for The Lord’s Prayer. They call it “The Prayer of Our Creator.” “We do still use the word ‘Lord’ on occasion, but we are suspicious of it,” First Congregational pastor Briget Nicholson said. “Inclusive language is important. Our United Church of Christ hymnal does have hymns that will say ‘Father’ and ‘God.’ but the next verse will always then say ‘Mother’ and ‘God.’ It’s gender-balanced.”
“I’m sorry, but if there is a Lord, by implication there is a Lady,” he said.
“We don’t stress the blood and gore of the crucifixion and the so-called sacrifice of the Mass,” he said. “I think that calls attention to Jesus’ death but it doesn’t call attention to why we are Christians. It seems to me, being a Christian isn’t just about the birth and death of Jesus. It’s about living in the world with his life as an example.”
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While most Protestant churches still refer to God as “him” and pepper their liturgy with references to Lord, there’s been a shift among the mainlines for the past 20 years, said Ruth A. Meyers, academic dean and professor of liturgics at the Seabury-Western Theological School, an Episcopal seminary in Evanston, Ill. Such changes in liturgy often are called “expansive language” and can be found in supplemental Episcopal Church materials, including one titled “Enriching Our Worship,” published in 1997, she said.
All is not lost though:
“If we continue to water down and make ourselves politically correct, there won’t be anything left. God is the king of the universe. We are to bow before him. He is king, savior, Lord and master. … God is the great patriarch of heaven and Earth,” said Mark Roessler, pastor of Catalina Foothills Church, part of the non-mainline conservative Presbyterian Church in America.
“We call him ‘Lord’ because he is Lord,” said the Rev. Joe Bettridge, senior pastor at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on Tucson’s Northwest Side. The church is part of the mainline Presbyterian Church U.S.A.
While most Protestant churches still refer to God as “him” and pepper their liturgy with references to Lord, there’s been a shift among the mainlines for the past 20 years, said Ruth A. Meyers, academic dean and professor of liturgics at the Seabury-Western Theological School, an Episcopal seminary in Evanston, Ill. Such changes in liturgy often are called “expansive language” and can be found in supplemental Episcopal Church materials, including one titled “Enriching Our Worship,” published in 1997, she said.
All is not lost though:
“If we continue to water down and make ourselves politically correct, there won’t be anything left. God is the king of the universe. We are to bow before him. He is king, savior, Lord and master. … God is the great patriarch of heaven and Earth,” said Mark Roessler, pastor of Catalina Foothills Church, part of the non-mainline conservative Presbyterian Church in America.
“We call him ‘Lord’ because he is Lord,” said the Rev. Joe Bettridge, senior pastor at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on Tucson’s Northwest Side. The church is part of the mainline Presbyterian Church U.S.A.
“If you read the Bible, he — God — created everything from nothing. That’s pretty powerful to me.”
Only the fool and confused have problems with Jesus’ revelation of The Father God.
2 comments:
I can just imagine a "modern" version of the 23rd Psalm:
The being is my agricultural consultant.
I shall not want.
The being kindly recommends that I lie down in neutrally-colored pastures (taking care not to harm any sentient plant life)...
man, you got it!!
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