Playing God
Gender, religion, and the religion of gender
I sincerely hope that it’s not in bad taste to put this out after the Nashville shooting. I started it months ago, and had it queued up for today; it has nothing to do with that.
I don't go in for ancient wisdom
I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious
It means they're worthy
—Tim Minchin, White Wine in the Sun
Part I.
“You’re gonna want to hear this,” my husband said a few weeks ago, turning up the radio. (This was before I cut out NPR). The story covered the Church of England’s discussion of “how to refer to God without assigning a gender.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t believe in God, so it doesn’t really matter to me what pronouns anyone uses.” Of course, I recognize that for those who do believe in God, and who believe he’s a man, this news is pretty destabilizing, and maybe an unwelcome reminder of the overreach of “wokeness”—even in established institutions like CoE. (Never mind that Ariana Grande had informed us in 2018 that God Is a Woman.)
But when I researched Paleolithic female hunters (who disrupt the notion of male as breadwinner and woman as housewife) for my forthcoming HOUSEWIFE book, I found that many polytheistic religions envisioned gender-bending gods.
Most of this is now gone from my manuscript, but here’s what I wrote in an earlier draft: