The War on Pronouns, cont'd

Last week's Revised Common Lectionary readings included an accusation against Paul and Silas that they had ruined someone's business by removing the spirit of divination from their slave girl. They went to the authorities and said, "These men are disturbing our city...". When the lector read it, it came out as "These two are disturbing our city...". So not only do we have the emasculation of Jesus, but of all men in the Bible. No more four-letter words (e.g. "he" "his" "him"). And of course the psalm, (97): "The Lord is King" got changed to "...Sovereign".

Here's the completely pronoun-free Creed we're using now:

I believe in God, the almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Child, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
Having descended to the dead,
and having risen on the third day,
Christ ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of God,
and will come to judge the living and the dead.

Gotta appreciate the technical deftness of using all those participle clauses to evade the pronouns, but what's the point? Who really thinks that we'll be able to get rid of all pronouns? And of course, why try to conceal Jesus' gender?

I think a hint to the last question came in the sermon from the week before, which was basically about how wicked men are (all warlike and competitive and everything), and how much better things would be if we all adopted women's values and became all nurturing and caring and everything. The irony is almost laugh-out-loud funny: gender stereotypes as a rationale for gender equality. But I think this pastor and his PC supporters are actually embarrassed that Jesus was a male.