The War on Pronouns

At my church we've historically taken a practical approach to inclusive language: we make changes when it's convenient, and leave it alone otherwise. Generally we've left historical music alone, but occasionally a "man" has been changed to "one" or "we". (Someday I'll tell the story of when a well-meaning reader changed "but I am a worm and no man" to "but I am a worm and no one" in Psalm 22.)

Now we have a relatively new pastor and choir director, and they've decided that "he", "him", and "his" are four-letter words which can no longer be uttered in church. This was particularly noteworthy this last Sunday, which incorporated Psalm 23, which starts out "The Lord is my shepherd ... he makes me lie down in green pastures...". The first two verses refer to God in the third person, and then it switches to second person. But in order to avoid the third-person pronouns it got all changed to "you" throughout.

This wasn't so bad, but the choir anthems got a similar treatment. Virgil Thomson's chestnut

My shepherd will supply my need
Jehovah is His Name;
in pastures fresh he makes me feed,
beside the living stream.
He brings my wandering spirit back
etc.

turning into second person required some awkward constructions such as "thou mak'st" and "bring'st" and, even worse, "lead'st". And the venerable

The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green he leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
He leadeth me, he leadeth me
The quiet waters by.

also needed some serious modification.

But the choir darn near revolted when the director tried to update Tallis's classic "If ye love me":

...And I will pray the Father,
and he will give you another Comforter,
that he may bide with you for ever

Can't do a second-person substitution here, since this is quoting Jesus' words. Can't really change "and he" to "who" without totally destroying the music, and that last line is pretty tough to change. I think we'll end up leaving that one as is.

The word "Father" also generated some discussion, because there's almost nothing you can substitute for it which doesn't kill its meaning. "Parent" has the same scansion, but doesn't have the warm-and-fuzzy associations; it's a word which has historically been used principally in the plural, and thus "parent" has a connotation of being only one of a pair, which doesn't fit with most churches' theology. This Sunday's Gospel, in which Jesus says "The Father and I are one" got changed to "God and I are one" which worked okay. Our new (thankfully interim) pastor has also insisted on changing the beginning of the Lord's Prayer to "Our Father and Mother in heaven...".

This pastor has also taken to eliminating male reference to Jesus, a procedure I refer to as "emasculating Jesus". Not to be crude about it or anything, but he had a penis. He was a male. He was crucified naked, for heaven's sake (despite prissy artistic renderings showing him in a loincloth), so it wasn't any secret. Of course his maleness wasn't the important thing about him, but why try to deny it? I won't even bother to quote the version of the Creed we're saying now, which avoids every third-person pronoun like the plague.

What's the purpose of this war on pronouns? These words have a real purpose in the language. You wouldn't say "Allen woke up this morning and turned off Allen's alarm clock and got out of Allen's bed, put on Allen's clothes and brushed Allen's teeth." It sounds stilted and silly. So why would we say

Know ye that the LORD is God: it is God that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are God's people, and the sheep of God's pasture.
(Psalm 100:3)

Isn't that just as silly? Pronouns make the language flow more smoothly. How many women are there who really think they're being excluded and oppressed when we refer to God (or even Jesus) as "he"? I don't think for a second that God is male, but our language doesn't have any way to reference a nongendered person (since "it" is obviously out). Whenever I hear these convoluted language changes it makes me focus my attention on language and gender issues during the church service, which is a distraction from what I'm supposed to be thinking about. A zero-tolerance for male pronouns is counter-productive.

I understand there are some churches which are actively avoiding "Lord" as well, considering it too masculine. Why stop there? There are goddesses and shepherdesses, right? so we can't use the masculine forms of those either. And every time we refer to the "right hand of God" as something particularly significant, aren't we demeaning left-handed people? Being left-handed isn't a choice.

P.S. on this same Sunday we sang a "feminist" hymn (words by Jann Aldredge-Clanton):

Our strong and tender God we praise;
She dwells within our souls...
God stretches out Her mighty hands,
And shelters us from harm...
Her comfort makes our hearts rejoice;
She is our all in all.

which the pastor introduced with a condescending speech encouraging us to open our minds to female images of God. We aren't used to female images of God, he said, and promptly contradicted himself by mentioning Jesus' analogy to a hen keeping her brood under her wing. I think of this as "affirmative action for God". "She" is obviously only a three-letter word.