Per Christum Catholic Blog

Ok, I am sending out a call for your wildest “inclusive language” stories. You can post them on your blog or leave them in the comments here. Please just link back to this blog if you write about it somewhere else.

What is inclusive language you may ask? Basically, it is changing traditional masculine language in the liturgy and Scriptures (or prayers, etc) with either a gender neutral equivalent or feminine word of pronoun. A good example of “exclusive” language is this less than inspiring sentence: God himself gave his grace to his people who otherwise would have rejected him.

Rendering this “inclusive” could look like any of these selections:

- God Godself gave God’s grace to God’s people who otherwise would have rejected God.

- God herself gave her grace to her people who otherwise would have rejected her.

- God him/herself gave his/her grace to his/her people who otherwise would have rejected him/her.

Think people don’t really talk or write like this? Visit a mainline seminary sometime! If I heard “godself” one more time I was going to scream!

For the purposes of this call for stories, you can include prayers, additions to the service, out-there homilies, or any incident related to altering a liturgy or text for the purposes of reducing patriarchy.

Yes, inclusive language (especially for God) generally bothers me, especially when a priest or half the congregation does it when others do not. I am not opposed to inclusive language necessarily, and often try to be inclusive when referring to humans, however, I am not militant about enforcing it. I get a little ticked off when references to God are neutered, because messing with the ecclesiastical and scriptural titles for God simply because a few generations of academics and clergy find such language offensive is chronological chauvinism. And yes, I know God is not humanly gendered; he is not a white, Anglo-Saxon, male sitting in his sky palace who regularly watches football, smites people, and forgets to put the toilet seat down.

Here are a few of my favorite stories, from my graduate school days.

1. One day after chapel service, a seminary student had tears in her eyes, talking to the worship leader. The reason she was crying? The guest pastor had referred to God as “father” and “he” too many times, and it deeply offended her. The worship leader firmly agreed that this was intolerable and this pastor would no longer be allowed to do this. Mind you, this graduate school, which did not require assent to any classical Christian creed, did expect students to sign an “inclusive language covenant.”

2. Yet another chapel incident…A friend of mine told me about this because I stopped going to chapel, as did she, but she happened to be there for this. We just couldn’t handle all the “relevance” I guess. At any rate, the female Presbyterian minister, instead of lifting up the communion elements and saying something like “the gifts of God for the people of God” said “Come let us suck of God’s breasts.” A few frat boys overheard these words and rushed in to receive communion, only to be deeply disappointed (ok, I made that last part up).

I have tons more, but you share some!