Affirming God Is Beyond Gender Opens Pathways to LGBTQ+ Inclusion, Writes Theologian
Sr. Barbara Reid, OP
“Does God have a gender?” Sr. Barbara E. Reid, OP, asks this question in a recent U.S. Catholic column—and her answer has tremendous relevance to LGBTQ+ issues.
Reid, the president of Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, quickly answers the question about God’s gender with a definitive “no,” going on to explore gendered metaphors and analogies present in Scripture and how God’s transcendence of gender matters, particularly for LGBTQ+ communities.
She presents various Biblical images of traditional maleness such as “Lord,” “king,” and “father,” noting that this has long been the dominant Western language for the Divine. However, Scripture is also full of feminine descriptions of God, including a myriad of metaphors for birthing or women in labor, God as midwife, and as a woman searching for lost coins or advocating with the unjust judge.
With these descriptions alone, we would still be stuck in a binary understanding of gender that we are simply transposing onto God. Reid reminds us that all language for God is symbolic at best. With figurative language, we attempt to speak towards descriptions of the divine at best, acknowledging that our limited vocabulary can only begin to describe our experience of the intangible.
And crucially, Reid draws the connection between language for God and how we then engage with humanity, created imago Dei:
“If we only use only male language for God, then we are affirming that males are more god-like than females. Yet Genesis 1:27 says that both male and female people are made in God’s image. When we take to heart the female images of God in the scriptures, that enables us to see that women as well as men are made in the divine image and likeness and that the divine is revealed equally powerfully in female experiences as in male ones.”
“Moreover, when we affirm that God is beyond gender, it opens the way for acceptance of all people, whatever their gender identity—be it cisgender, transgender, or anywhere on the gender spectrum—as equally made in God’s image and likeness. God is not confined to any gender, and God’s loving being encompasses all.”
By not limiting our language about God to a gender binary, Reid reminds us that all of us, wherever we might fall on a gender spectrum, are created by and loved by God; that we all image Godself in our very being. Language shapes our reality and if Scriptural language can expansively describe a God who is neither male nor female, but beyond our limited understandings of sex and gender, so too can our advocacy, affirmation, and acceptance of all God’s children.
—Angela Howard McParland (she/her), New Ways Ministry, May 2, 2023
Thank you for this beautiful article!
Sincerley,
Sarah
Thank you for the link to this very fine article. God beyond gender – God reflected in creation.
The sky is blue, plants are green. Sounds reasonable. Until one looks at the cloudless sky and sees many shades of blue. And then sees other colors at sunrise and sunset, and even more colors when the sky is cloudy and storms approach, and other colors beyond earth’s atmosphere.
And when one looks at plants, one sees many shades of green, and flowers of many colors, and on and on.
Animals are only heterosexual and male and female. Sounds reasonable until one finds out that many forms of animal, insect, birds, fish, etc. display homosexual behaviors and attachments, and multiple forms of gender – sometimes even gender changes.
Humans are male and female. Humans are heterosexual. Sounds reasonable until one discovers that there are humans who identify as male, female, transgender, agender, binary, etc., and humans whose desires and actions are homosexual and bisexual, and asexual, etc.
Just as the nature around us is diverse and varies in color, gender, sexuality, so humans vary. If one believes in a creator God, one must also see that God’s creation of not only the natural world and life forms around us, but of humans as well, is remarkably diverse.
A theology caught up in categories of duality rather than reality, is deficient. It identifies the creator with the limitations of the human mind. If the creator is truly reflected in creation, then one must look at creation (including human creation) as it is, not as one might think it is.
It all comes down to observation, doesn’t it? That’s why making policies for people who don’t fit the category of male/female, and making policies for people who have various sexual orientations, without observing who people really are, is fatally flawed. And that is why a theology devoid of human observation is not really theology at all. It is a system of using some beliefs of what is in God’s intention, to discard God’s very creation.
Thank you for your excellent, brief and to the point article. You help me clarify some thoughts about God that I’ve had lately. Uplifting to know that someone like you from a well known Catholic institution is speaking to this important topic, especially when some Catholics abhor individuals who reflect non-traditional personhood.
I found this blog comforting. I have been troubled that it seems to be human nature to see the reflection we see in a mirror as God and anything different is not necessarily to be trusted. I have thought that Jesus was more concerned with what we do with the body/mind we are given is more important than its physical manifestation. That we feed the hungry, cloth the naked, bring justice to the downtrodden are what we should be about with less concern about where we are in society. Thank you for elaborating on that concept.
Peace,
Tom