Inclusivity & Gender in Christianity

Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.

If we don't change language, then we really don't change culture.

It isn't necessarily a great victory for the like minded, the liberal and progressive, just a huddled together and leave others to go to hell in their own handbasket.

And how we deal with it is to understand the culture that is going on and yet at the same time to dare to be countercultural (MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe' Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week, the debate over God and pronouns.

The Church of England or the Anglican Church has agreed to start thinking more inclusively by making its new liturgy gender neutral.

What will that mean across the pond and here in the U.S.?

Joining me today are Anglican priest Andrew McGowan, who is also dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, and Reverend Linda Calkins, who has served in numerous parishes in the Diocese of Washing John for more than two decades.

Welcome to you both.

How are you?

Thank you, Bonnie., very well.

Fine.

Thank you.

Are we going to a non binary god?

Well, maybe in one sense, Of course.

You know, Christian theologians have always said when pressed, that God is neither male or female, the idea that God transcends gender is actually a very ancient one.

It just hasn't always been made very obvious in the liturgical texts that we use in churches.

So I think there is likely to be a future in which there's greater use of diverse language for God, both male, female and non gendered.

And maybe in some ways that's the fuller expression of what's always been the case, at least when we've had more sophisticated theological conversations.

But there has to be room probably for people who have different perspectives and experiences.

And what I imagine we're going to see is actually a greater diversity of liturgical options rather than simply a unitary trend in one direction where everyone will end up saying the same thing.

When you say liturgy or liturgical, you're referring to what's written down in the Bible versus what people may think.

Yeah, not the Bible as such, but in the prayer book, in the in the Episcopal Church, it's the book of Common Prayer, which, you know, is almost a canonical text like the Bible for many of us.

the words that people use in worship when they express their common identity as members of this tradition when they're worshiping together.

So when you say God has always been neither man or women, where's the reference to that?

Because at least most people have grown up with the idea that God is a man.

I mean, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

There's no doubt that that masculine and patriarchal imagery has been dominant in the tradition, and it's very clear in the Bible.

But the Bible also contains images which are somewhat different.

And the truth is that the church has tended to lean more heavily towards those which fit the cultural realities of its patriarchal and male centric past.

And the Bible itself is, of course, a product of its own times and does have more language or more imagery that leans in that sort of direction.

There's no denying that.

But there are also remarkable and beautiful pieces of scripture which talk about God's love as more like that of a mother.

Ways in which God is is certainly spoken of as being far beyond the ways in which we use picture language that has to do with body parts and so on to think about God.

So both that sort of God beyond gender and the God who's qualities incorporate things that we might have traditionally attributed to male or female roles.

Both of those are there in the Bible.

If we want to dig them out and make them a bit more prominent.

It's true that as as you acknowledge in the past, much more emphasis has been given to the masculine and the patriarchal elements, perhaps because it's been the easiest part to use to convey notions of God in cultures that tended to share those assumptions.

We're in an interesting historical position now where there's probably greater openness to think about those questions in a more expansive kind of way.

And what I'd like to see would be a future in which we didn't jettison everything that was there in the past, but we were much more open to emphasizing a variety of images and possibilities which spoke to the diversity of experiences that people have of their own embodied humanity.

Your thoughts, Reverend Calkins being with the parishes giving, you know, referring to the liturgy, but leading people, Episcopalians and in prayer.

And do you feel that the church has always been as welcoming to women as it should be.

And that is that.

No, the church has not always been welcoming to women.

If you look back at the historicity of the Episcopal Church, women's ordination did not happen until the 1970s.

You have the irregular ordination of the Philadelphia 11, and then you had the regular ordination of women as deacons in the Church of England.

Women were not ordained as priests until the 1980s, So women were supposed to be part of the church and offer their services.

But often behind the scenes, not in front, not as the leaders, not as the celebrant, not as someone leading the liturgy.

I do think that there is more openness, but not everywhere.

I wish it were so.

But there are many churches that I have served that would be horrified to use language of God that was not male.

Horrified.

And what would they what would the parishioners do about it?

Oh, they would totally buck against it and just say, no, we're not going to use this liturgy.

Fortunately, in the last 5 to 10 years, more and more parishes are willing to do that and willing to explore different liturgical terminologies not only for God, but also for people's humanity, past, present, and even into the future.

One of the most beautiful examples that I can think of is coming from the New Zealand book where it says what we trditionally call the Lord's prayer is eternal spirit, Earth maker paying their lunch giver.

And so it's not naming gender, it's naming parts of God that we acknowledge as source of all internal work, Holy Spirit.

It goes beyond that which we can say in a gendered tradition.

Would you place the Church of England as one of the more progressive churches going with the cultural trend that seems to be heading towards humanity as non-binary women are not Women, men are not men, Everybody, somewhere on the spectrum.

Yeah, I think it's heading in that direction.

For an example, in the Episcopal Church here in the United States, we have four, possibly six Eucharistic prayers in our book of common prayer A,B,C and D and then we have two which are two different forms of the Eucharist.

That's six potential ones.

In the Church of England.

You've got A, B, C D, E, F, G , I believe there's an H. So that would be 8.

There's more ways in the Church of England to speak of God in liturgical form, but most of those liturgies are pretty similar one with another.

I have not found so many liturgies that are naming God as either genderless or beyond gender.

And do you feel that your church is more progressive in this way than than most other Christian churches?

Possibly.

I mean, if I look at the difference between the Episcopal Church and the Baptist Church, which was my tradition before I became an Episcopalian, definitely more open, more progressive, more in the sense of honoring both God as beyond gender as well as honoring women.

In many Baptist churches you won't find a woman in a leadership position.

Some you might, but not.

Not nearly as many in this dioceses.

There are far more women priests than I would find in any Baptist church in the area of Washington, D.C.. Well, let's not forget, even though, again, these are small churches, but the UCC and churches of that order who were many of whom were founded by LGBTQ Right and want to have from the beginning have wanted to set up religions that didn't discriminate on any basis race, gender, etc..

Your thoughts about about this, about what Reverend Calkins says You know, I think there's no doubt that the Episcopal Church is a relatively progressive entity.

And as you say, there are certainly other liberal Protestant groups that might be further out there on the liberal progressive end of the spectrum.

But if our point of comparison is global, because you started us off with the Church of England, then I think that the two churches are somewhat different in their history.

The Church of England isn't established church.

It's there technically for every member of the community in England.

And so it sort of has to be a big tent, you know, that covers a range of opinion who are going across political and theological spectrum.

The Episcopal Church has often managed to be more forward with regard to questions of both practice and theology in a more progressive vein.

Partly to be honest, because of its educated middle class and fairly white sort of character, which is very much a two edged sword.

Let's be clear.

The things that have seemed obvious to educated Episcopalians in the in the 1980s and nineties are things that some people in other social groups haven't yet sort of thought about.

And while on the one hand you can assess that in terms of political progress and if your political views a liberal to give that a good big check mark but it isn't necessarily a great victory for the like minded, the liberal and progressive just to huddle together and leave others to go to hell in their own handbasket.

I mean, if what we actually need is to change that, you know, encompasses all people of faith or encompasses a whole society, then you know, there's room for thinking about how you engage with people whose experiences are different and who don't really want to come to the party.

That's, I think, the real challenge when it comes to what the Church of England is facing.

I'd say they're a little bit behind where the Episcopal Church has been at in this regard.

But they have a sort of a they have a bigger mass, the bigger inertia to overcome with such a a much a body, a social body that's much more embedded in the cultural and social reality of our country with quite a significant population.

So the Episcopal Church is a bit of a speed boat, you know, that can make its own way when it wants to.

The the Church of England is a bit of an ocean liner that takes longer to turn around and go in a new direction.

And they're starting they're starting to make noises like this as you've got it.

And let's not forget the the Methodist Church, which is has large followings in the United States and then also but its future is in Africa and other countries where people of color predominate and those countries where it's, you know, growing like crazy are more conservative than the United States.

What do you think about churches that are trying to grow not just in a couple of countries, but globally?

What barriers do they face in terms of becoming non-binary?

I think there actually are a lot of barriers for any church to become non-binary because of history, because of language, because of even in a culture of non inclusivity.

You talk about Africa and you look at some of the places there that the Anglican Church is exploding.

But women are not often are not welcome.

Women are often pushed to the side or pushed down.

I still remember one time when one of the former bishops here in the Diocese of Washington was confronted by an Anglican bishop and he told her to go home to her babies because she was a woman and she did not want a woman as as an equal, as a bishop.

I think there's going to be a constant struggle, not only, as you mentioned, Bonnie, with the sense of church, but also with LGBTQ people.

Oh, my goodness.

Not only in Africa, but in a lot of the eastern countries and some of the areas such as Iran or Iraq, if she'd come out as LGBTQ.

I mean, there have been instances of people being taken up on buildings and thrown off because they were gay or lesbian.

And so it's not just with the church, but it's also the culture, In the United States, we don't have a solid culture We have a lot of different cultures here.

I think the Church of England has something that we do not in that is, as Andrew said, it's like a big tent because it's the Church of England.

We don't have the Church of America or the United States.

We've got a whole bunch of little denominations that are running around trying to make people understand a little better about concept of God as well as Scripture and and how we speak of God.

So globally, there's it's a huge challenge.

How did the idea of God becoming a man or a God being a man come about in the first place?

Because we have in the Hebrew Bible, in the oracles of the eighth century prophet Isaiah, God is described as a woman and a mother comforting her children.

The Book of Proverbs maintain that the feminine figure of holy wisdom Sophia assisted God during the creation of the world.

So and of course, there's always been in the Catholic Church a lot of discussion of the importance of the Virgin Mary.

But but this was way before Christianity even existed.

So taken from these ancient examples, how did churches, Christian Christian sects and and the Anglican Church come to look at God as a man?

Well, you chose some powerful counterexamples.

Of course, Bonnie, Ones which I think that people will be looking to in the future to make more of.

But they were counterexamples.

If you look at the way in which the Bible as a whole is shaped, it's very patriarchal and very male focused, including in the way it talks about God.

How does it happen originally?

I think we have to acknowledge that even those of us for whom the reality of God is something very fundamental and real, that the ways in which people talk about God are shaped by their own experience.

Most of the biblical authors, I think, are likely to have been men because of the ways in which roles of Scribal and other forms of social power were distributed in ancient agrarian societies.

And I think that it's in any context, it's it's natural.

I'm going to say natural, but I don't really want to quite use that term.

But let's say it's it's easy.

It's easy to use the terms that suit our social structures.

It's easy to use the terms that use our experience most.

And I think in the diverse society that we inhabit, we have an opportunity to think about the diverse experiences and perspectives that may allow people to think creatively and positively about the divine.

We as Anglicans are the inheritors, along with Christians as a whole of the Jewish Scriptures, which themselves also have that same sort of reality.

Groundedness in societies where ideas about masculinity or patriarchal rule were seen as the most natural and obvious ways to think about how the divine power might might be imagined, that God was rather like a king, rather like an emperor, rather like a father, rather like but but also also sometimes like a mother.

Also sometimes like a feminine or a non-gender being.

So I think we have to acknowledge that the ways in which people do theology over the millennia are shaped by the social structures that they inhabit.

We have to be thoughtful about that.

We have to be critical about it.

And we can acknowledge that there is still beauty and truth in some of those masculine and patriarchal constructs, to be honest, but that the beauty and truth has been in fact lost through their overuse in some respects.

That rather we would learn to appreciate them better if we put them alongside maternal and feminine and non gendered images and possibilities as well.

And as you reminded us, it's not that they're not there, it's just that we've often chosen to neglect.

Of course these changes proposed changes because nothing has actually been changed yet.

It's just considering considering, considering to make these changes.

But these changes, should they come about, are coming at a time when at least everything in American society today seems to be diversifying, because if you don't diversify, you're cutting yourself off from the growth markets in this country.

And yet a lot of these changes will not only annoy but infuriate the more conservative older members of the church.

And you will see things such as what is going on with the United Methodist Church, which is that it's splitting into two churches.

So tell me how you're going to how you think, starting with you, Reverend Calkins.

How should the church deal with this?

Well, ha ha, I think the way that the church deals with it is the way that we have in the past, but how we have to in the future.

Quite honestly, the Episcopal Church has split as well.

We have the American Anglican Church now.

We've got the Episcopal Church.

You've got the Reformed Episcopal Church.

You've got a couple different denominations within the overarching sense of what it is to be Episcopal.

And how we deal with it is I think in a lot of ways is to understand the culture that is going on and yet at the same time to dare to be counter-culture, to be able to speak of God and of humanity in ways that are expressive, that are expansive, that are inclusive.

Because if we don't, we're just going to sink into a hole, quite honestly.

And we're not going to remain vibrant.

We're not going to be a part of a culture that is looking for answers.

We've got young people I mean, this my church is surrounded by young people because I'm right in the middle of University of Maryland, and these kids are searching for things.

There's been suicides in one of the fraternity houses, literally right down the street from where this church is.

They're looking for something.

And if we don't offer it to them, they're going to go in a whole nother direction.

And God will be just an entity that is somewhere out there and is not vibrant, is not accessible, and they won't care a bit.

And what are the changes that they want you to make?

Inviting them in language that is important to them.

I go back to the sense of that if we don't change language, then we really don't change culture.

And unfortunately, in the United States, we have a lot of new language that is coming up that is very exclusive.

Such as.

Well, political.

You've got there, you've got in all in the Senate and in the Congress, you've got this huge splits between Republicans and Democrats.

And they don't want to talk to each other because they don't want to speak the same language.

They don't want to hear what the other one has to offer.

And if we don't, as a body of believers in God and putting forth the name of Jesus Christ, if we do not understand the culture and speak to that culture and language, especially that these kids understand, then we're lost.

But the other aspect is, and having read articles on this, is that a lot of these young people, they don't want pop bands, They don't want raucous worship.

What they want is something that leads them into simplicity and into a sense of God's presence right there with them.

Do you agree, Reverend MacGowan.

To a significant extent.

Had a couple of writers, though, or additional points.

I think that within US society we see a great diversity of cultural expressions and of experiences that if anything, you know, we do not seem to be making the progress that we would like to in terms of obvious economic disparities, which are very often racially coded, for instance.

And I don't think that it's going to be the answer for a bunch of people who look like the three of us on the screen to tell, for instance, black and Hispanic Christians exactly how they should be fixing their own liturgical language in order to make it more relevant to to whom.

And yet the head of the Church of England is who performed the wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is of African descent, right?

Yes.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in this country is absolutely an African-American.

And then he and other African-Americans in the Episcopal Church who would I think he would very much join in our chorus, by the way, in terms of the issues that Linda and I both raised.

He also would remind us that there are faithful Christians, whether African-American or not, for whom some of that older language is still very authentic and that we can still celebrate using that kind of language.

So I think we need to be able in fact, part of the one of the points I've made is that the Bible itself speaks with a variety of languages and uses a variety of symbols, even to talk about God.

And we've tended to be rather monochrome about this.

In fact, I think that we can use that diversity that's inherent in the Bible itself as a means to engage using different symbols and ideas with different populations.

So contextual would be one adjective I would add.

The other I would add would be authentic young folks that Linda is talking about is, you know, her context.

They have a pretty good nose for what happens when people are simply trying to sort of sketch language that will appeal to people for its own sake.

I think that it is a rather striking and sometimes off putting things off, putting things for the likes of us to see how often evangelical forms of worship in church are actually successful still with with with younger people.

Now, the lesson I think we have to learn from that is not that they're the ones who are doing everything right so much as that.

I think that they often seem to model for younger members of the community a kind of seriousness and authenticity about what they're doing and so for me, wherever we are and whoever we are, there's no point in trying to stitch something together that simply, well, what is it that they're going to pay attention to?

What is it that they're going to like?

They actually will understand if what we have is a faith that's grounded in the claims that we make about the god of the world, about Jesus Christ, about the things that you would expect an Episcopalian would want to say were fundamentally important to faith and life.

And I think that if we have that authenticity on offer and apply it contextually, then that will give us the best chance we have of of remaining of a religious tradition and community that will have something to say to the next generation.

Thank you so much for joining us in this important discussion.

It's going to really be interesting to follow this issue in the coming decades of God and gender, because it's it's it's a big question in a lot of people's minds.

That's it for this edition.

Let's keep the conversation going on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.

And please visit our PBS website, which is pbs.org.

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And whether you agree or think to the contrary.

See you next time.

Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation The Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.

If we don't change language, then we really don't change culture.

It isn't necessarily a great victory for the like minded, the liberal and progressive, just a huddled together and leave others to go to hell in their own handbasket.

And how we deal with it is to understand the culture that is going on and yet at the same time to dare to be countercultural (MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe' Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week, the debate over God and pronouns.

The Church of England or the Anglican Church has agreed to start thinking more inclusively by making its new liturgy gender neutral.

What will that mean across the pond and here in the U.S.?

Joining me today are Anglican priest Andrew McGowan, who is also dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, and Reverend Linda Calkins, who has served in numerous parishes in the Diocese of Washing John for more than two decades.

Welcome to you both.

How are you?

Thank you, Bonnie., very well.

Fine.

Thank you.

Are we going to a non binary god?

Well, maybe in one sense, Of course.

You know, Christian theologians have always said when pressed, that God is neither male or female, the idea that God transcends gender is actually a very ancient one.

It just hasn't always been made very obvious in the liturgical texts that we use in churches.

So I think there is likely to be a future in which there's greater use of diverse language for God, both male, female and non gendered.

And maybe in some ways that's the fuller expression of what's always been the case, at least when we've had more sophisticated theological conversations.

But there has to be room probably for people who have different perspectives and experiences.

And what I imagine we're going to see is actually a greater diversity of liturgical options rather than simply a unitary trend in one direction where everyone will end up saying the same thing.

When you say liturgy or liturgical, you're referring to what's written down in the Bible versus what people may think.

Yeah, not the Bible as such, but in the prayer book, in the in the Episcopal Church, it's the book of Common Prayer, which, you know, is almost a canonical text like the Bible for many of us.

the words that people use in worship when they express their common identity as members of this tradition when they're worshiping together.

So when you say God has always been neither man or women, where's the reference to that?

Because at least most people have grown up with the idea that God is a man.

I mean, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

There's no doubt that that masculine and patriarchal imagery has been dominant in the tradition, and it's very clear in the Bible.

But the Bible also contains images which are somewhat different.

And the truth is that the church has tended to lean more heavily towards those which fit the cultural realities of its patriarchal and male centric past.

And the Bible itself is, of course, a product of its own times and does have more language or more imagery that leans in that sort of direction.

There's no denying that.

But there are also remarkable and beautiful pieces of scripture which talk about God's love as more like that of a mother.

Ways in which God is is certainly spoken of as being far beyond the ways in which we use picture language that has to do with body parts and so on to think about God.

So both that sort of God beyond gender and the God who's qualities incorporate things that we might have traditionally attributed to male or female roles.

Both of those are there in the Bible.

If we want to dig them out and make them a bit more prominent.

It's true that as as you acknowledge in the past, much more emphasis has been given to the masculine and the patriarchal elements, perhaps because it's been the easiest part to use to convey notions of God in cultures that tended to share those assumptions.

We're in an interesting historical position now where there's probably greater openness to think about those questions in a more expansive kind of way.

And what I'd like to see would be a future in which we didn't jettison everything that was there in the past, but we were much more open to emphasizing a variety of images and possibilities which spoke to the diversity of experiences that people have of their own embodied humanity.

Your thoughts, Reverend Calkins being with the parishes giving, you know, referring to the liturgy, but leading people, Episcopalians and in prayer.

And do you feel that the church has always been as welcoming to women as it should be.

And that is that.

No, the church has not always been welcoming to women.

If you look back at the historicity of the Episcopal Church, women's ordination did not happen until the 1970s.

You have the irregular ordination of the Philadelphia 11, and then you had the regular ordination of women as deacons in the Church of England.

Women were not ordained as priests until the 1980s, So women were supposed to be part of the church and offer their services.

But often behind the scenes, not in front, not as the leaders, not as the celebrant, not as someone leading the liturgy.

I do think that there is more openness, but not everywhere.

I wish it were so.

But there are many churches that I have served that would be horrified to use language of God that was not male.

Horrified.

And what would they what would the parishioners do about it?

Oh, they would totally buck against it and just say, no, we're not going to use this liturgy.

Fortunately, in the last 5 to 10 years, more and more parishes are willing to do that and willing to explore different liturgical terminologies not only for God, but also for people's humanity, past, present, and even into the future.

One of the most beautiful examples that I can think of is coming from the New Zealand book where it says what we trditionally call the Lord's prayer is eternal spirit, Earth maker paying their lunch giver.

And so it's not naming gender, it's naming parts of God that we acknowledge as source of all internal work, Holy Spirit.

It goes beyond that which we can say in a gendered tradition.

Would you place the Church of England as one of the more progressive churches going with the cultural trend that seems to be heading towards humanity as non-binary women are not Women, men are not men, Everybody, somewhere on the spectrum.

Yeah, I think it's heading in that direction.

For an example, in the Episcopal Church here in the United States, we have four, possibly six Eucharistic prayers in our book of common prayer A,B,C and D and then we have two which are two different forms of the Eucharist.

That's six potential ones.

In the Church of England.

You've got A, B, C D, E, F, G , I believe there's an H. So that would be 8.

There's more ways in the Church of England to speak of God in liturgical form, but most of those liturgies are pretty similar one with another.

I have not found so many liturgies that are naming God as either genderless or beyond gender.

And do you feel that your church is more progressive in this way than than most other Christian churches?

Possibly.

I mean, if I look at the difference between the Episcopal Church and the Baptist Church, which was my tradition before I became an Episcopalian, definitely more open, more progressive, more in the sense of honoring both God as beyond gender as well as honoring women.

In many Baptist churches you won't find a woman in a leadership position.

Some you might, but not.

Not nearly as many in this dioceses.

There are far more women priests than I would find in any Baptist church in the area of Washington, D.C.. Well, let's not forget, even though, again, these are small churches, but the UCC and churches of that order who were many of whom were founded by LGBTQ Right and want to have from the beginning have wanted to set up religions that didn't discriminate on any basis race, gender, etc..

Your thoughts about about this, about what Reverend Calkins says You know, I think there's no doubt that the Episcopal Church is a relatively progressive entity.

And as you say, there are certainly other liberal Protestant groups that might be further out there on the liberal progressive end of the spectrum.

But if our point of comparison is global, because you started us off with the Church of England, then I think that the two churches are somewhat different in their history.

The Church of England isn't established church.

It's there technically for every member of the community in England.

And so it sort of has to be a big tent, you know, that covers a range of opinion who are going across political and theological spectrum.

The Episcopal Church has often managed to be more forward with regard to questions of both practice and theology in a more progressive vein.

Partly to be honest, because of its educated middle class and fairly white sort of character, which is very much a two edged sword.

Let's be clear.

The things that have seemed obvious to educated Episcopalians in the in the 1980s and nineties are things that some people in other social groups haven't yet sort of thought about.

And while on the one hand you can assess that in terms of political progress and if your political views a liberal to give that a good big check mark but it isn't necessarily a great victory for the like minded, the liberal and progressive just to huddle together and leave others to go to hell in their own handbasket.

I mean, if what we actually need is to change that, you know, encompasses all people of faith or encompasses a whole society, then you know, there's room for thinking about how you engage with people whose experiences are different and who don't really want to come to the party.

That's, I think, the real challenge when it comes to what the Church of England is facing.

I'd say they're a little bit behind where the Episcopal Church has been at in this regard.

But they have a sort of a they have a bigger mass, the bigger inertia to overcome with such a a much a body, a social body that's much more embedded in the cultural and social reality of our country with quite a significant population.

So the Episcopal Church is a bit of a speed boat, you know, that can make its own way when it wants to.

The the Church of England is a bit of an ocean liner that takes longer to turn around and go in a new direction.

And they're starting they're starting to make noises like this as you've got it.

And let's not forget the the Methodist Church, which is has large followings in the United States and then also but its future is in Africa and other countries where people of color predominate and those countries where it's, you know, growing like crazy are more conservative than the United States.

What do you think about churches that are trying to grow not just in a couple of countries, but globally?

What barriers do they face in terms of becoming non-binary?

I think there actually are a lot of barriers for any church to become non-binary because of history, because of language, because of even in a culture of non inclusivity.

You talk about Africa and you look at some of the places there that the Anglican Church is exploding.

But women are not often are not welcome.

Women are often pushed to the side or pushed down.

I still remember one time when one of the former bishops here in the Diocese of Washington was confronted by an Anglican bishop and he told her to go home to her babies because she was a woman and she did not want a woman as as an equal, as a bishop.

I think there's going to be a constant struggle, not only, as you mentioned, Bonnie, with the sense of church, but also with LGBTQ people.

Oh, my goodness.

Not only in Africa, but in a lot of the eastern countries and some of the areas such as Iran or Iraq, if she'd come out as LGBTQ.

I mean, there have been instances of people being taken up on buildings and thrown off because they were gay or lesbian.

And so it's not just with the church, but it's also the culture, In the United States, we don't have a solid culture We have a lot of different cultures here.

I think the Church of England has something that we do not in that is, as Andrew said, it's like a big tent because it's the Church of England.

We don't have the Church of America or the United States.

We've got a whole bunch of little denominations that are running around trying to make people understand a little better about concept of God as well as Scripture and and how we speak of God.

So globally, there's it's a huge challenge.

How did the idea of God becoming a man or a God being a man come about in the first place?

Because we have in the Hebrew Bible, in the oracles of the eighth century prophet Isaiah, God is described as a woman and a mother comforting her children.

The Book of Proverbs maintain that the feminine figure of holy wisdom Sophia assisted God during the creation of the world.

So and of course, there's always been in the Catholic Church a lot of discussion of the importance of the Virgin Mary.

But but this was way before Christianity even existed.

So taken from these ancient examples, how did churches, Christian Christian sects and and the Anglican Church come to look at God as a man?

Well, you chose some powerful counterexamples.

Of course, Bonnie, Ones which I think that people will be looking to in the future to make more of.

But they were counterexamples.

If you look at the way in which the Bible as a whole is shaped, it's very patriarchal and very male focused, including in the way it talks about God.

How does it happen originally?

I think we have to acknowledge that even those of us for whom the reality of God is something very fundamental and real, that the ways in which people talk about God are shaped by their own experience.

Most of the biblical authors, I think, are likely to have been men because of the ways in which roles of Scribal and other forms of social power were distributed in ancient agrarian societies.

And I think that it's in any context, it's it's natural.

I'm going to say natural, but I don't really want to quite use that term.

But let's say it's it's easy.

It's easy to use the terms that suit our social structures.

It's easy to use the terms that use our experience most.

And I think in the diverse society that we inhabit, we have an opportunity to think about the diverse experiences and perspectives that may allow people to think creatively and positively about the divine.

We as Anglicans are the inheritors, along with Christians as a whole of the Jewish Scriptures, which themselves also have that same sort of reality.

Groundedness in societies where ideas about masculinity or patriarchal rule were seen as the most natural and obvious ways to think about how the divine power might might be imagined, that God was rather like a king, rather like an emperor, rather like a father, rather like but but also also sometimes like a mother.

Also sometimes like a feminine or a non-gender being.

So I think we have to acknowledge that the ways in which people do theology over the millennia are shaped by the social structures that they inhabit.

We have to be thoughtful about that.

We have to be critical about it.

And we can acknowledge that there is still beauty and truth in some of those masculine and patriarchal constructs, to be honest, but that the beauty and truth has been in fact lost through their overuse in some respects.

That rather we would learn to appreciate them better if we put them alongside maternal and feminine and non gendered images and possibilities as well.

And as you reminded us, it's not that they're not there, it's just that we've often chosen to neglect.

Of course these changes proposed changes because nothing has actually been changed yet.

It's just considering considering, considering to make these changes.

But these changes, should they come about, are coming at a time when at least everything in American society today seems to be diversifying, because if you don't diversify, you're cutting yourself off from the growth markets in this country.

And yet a lot of these changes will not only annoy but infuriate the more conservative older members of the church.

And you will see things such as what is going on with the United Methodist Church, which is that it's splitting into two churches.

So tell me how you're going to how you think, starting with you, Reverend Calkins.

How should the church deal with this?

Well, ha ha, I think the way that the church deals with it is the way that we have in the past, but how we have to in the future.

Quite honestly, the Episcopal Church has split as well.

We have the American Anglican Church now.

We've got the Episcopal Church.

You've got the Reformed Episcopal Church.

You've got a couple different denominations within the overarching sense of what it is to be Episcopal.

And how we deal with it is I think in a lot of ways is to understand the culture that is going on and yet at the same time to dare to be counter-culture, to be able to speak of God and of humanity in ways that are expressive, that are expansive, that are inclusive.

Because if we don't, we're just going to sink into a hole, quite honestly.

And we're not going to remain vibrant.

We're not going to be a part of a culture that is looking for answers.

We've got young people I mean, this my church is surrounded by young people because I'm right in the middle of University of Maryland, and these kids are searching for things.

There's been suicides in one of the fraternity houses, literally right down the street from where this church is.

They're looking for something.

And if we don't offer it to them, they're going to go in a whole nother direction.

And God will be just an entity that is somewhere out there and is not vibrant, is not accessible, and they won't care a bit.

And what are the changes that they want you to make?

Inviting them in language that is important to them.

I go back to the sense of that if we don't change language, then we really don't change culture.

And unfortunately, in the United States, we have a lot of new language that is coming up that is very exclusive.

Such as.

Well, political.

You've got there, you've got in all in the Senate and in the Congress, you've got this huge splits between Republicans and Democrats.

And they don't want to talk to each other because they don't want to speak the same language.

They don't want to hear what the other one has to offer.

And if we don't, as a body of believers in God and putting forth the name of Jesus Christ, if we do not understand the culture and speak to that culture and language, especially that these kids understand, then we're lost.

But the other aspect is, and having read articles on this, is that a lot of these young people, they don't want pop bands, They don't want raucous worship.

What they want is something that leads them into simplicity and into a sense of God's presence right there with them.

Do you agree, Reverend MacGowan.

To a significant extent.

Had a couple of writers, though, or additional points.

I think that within US society we see a great diversity of cultural expressions and of experiences that if anything, you know, we do not seem to be making the progress that we would like to in terms of obvious economic disparities, which are very often racially coded, for instance.

And I don't think that it's going to be the answer for a bunch of people who look like the three of us on the screen to tell, for instance, black and Hispanic Christians exactly how they should be fixing their own liturgical language in order to make it more relevant to to whom.

And yet the head of the Church of England is who performed the wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is of African descent, right?

Yes.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in this country is absolutely an African-American.

And then he and other African-Americans in the Episcopal Church who would I think he would very much join in our chorus, by the way, in terms of the issues that Linda and I both raised.

He also would remind us that there are faithful Christians, whether African-American or not, for whom some of that older language is still very authentic and that we can still celebrate using that kind of language.

So I think we need to be able in fact, part of the one of the points I've made is that the Bible itself speaks with a variety of languages and uses a variety of symbols, even to talk about God.

And we've tended to be rather monochrome about this.

In fact, I think that we can use that diversity that's inherent in the Bible itself as a means to engage using different symbols and ideas with different populations.

So contextual would be one adjective I would add.

The other I would add would be authentic young folks that Linda is talking about is, you know, her context.

They have a pretty good nose for what happens when people are simply trying to sort of sketch language that will appeal to people for its own sake.

I think that it is a rather striking and sometimes off putting things off, putting things for the likes of us to see how often evangelical forms of worship in church are actually successful still with with with younger people.

Now, the lesson I think we have to learn from that is not that they're the ones who are doing everything right so much as that.

I think that they often seem to model for younger members of the community a kind of seriousness and authenticity about what they're doing and so for me, wherever we are and whoever we are, there's no point in trying to stitch something together that simply, well, what is it that they're going to pay attention to?

What is it that they're going to like?

They actually will understand if what we have is a faith that's grounded in the claims that we make about the god of the world, about Jesus Christ, about the things that you would expect an Episcopalian would want to say were fundamentally important to faith and life.

And I think that if we have that authenticity on offer and apply it contextually, then that will give us the best chance we have of of remaining of a religious tradition and community that will have something to say to the next generation.

Thank you so much for joining us in this important discussion.

It's going to really be interesting to follow this issue in the coming decades of God and gender, because it's it's it's a big question in a lot of people's minds.

That's it for this edition.

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Funding for To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation The Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation