Naming God: Maggi Dawn explores Expansive Language

Maggi Dawn, Chaplain at Robinson Chapel, Cambridge University, UK, is, in my view, an amazing voice in today's Anglican Church and emergent theology. Her essay, Naming God, was written early this month and published in the Yale Divinity School's "Marquand Reader".

Here is an excerpt:

ON JUNE 6, 2012 / BY MAGGI DAWN


“Like the nine billion names of God
Don’t bring you any closer
To anyone you can simply set eyes on…”

(Bruce Cockburn, One of the Best Ones)

Language is a powerful tool. How we employ it in theology matters because we are attempting to articulate truth as we find it. But liturgical language has a particular power to reinforce ideas, images and beliefs; it is a performative utterance, enhanced and reinforced by rhythm, poetry, and music, and it sounds the depths within us because it is employed consciously and deliberately in relationship to God and to the worshipping community. It’s hard, then, to overestimate the importance of the language of worship, and in constructing it we need to attend to concerns that are closely entwined: pastoral, theological and aesthetic.

Innovation in liturgical language always has a theological undercurrent, but the initial motivation for change is often pastoral, rising from a concern to ensure that those who come to worship do not feel excluded, disinherited, or undervalued by the language of worship. In response to this, words that imply feudal, military or imperial power, gender attribution, or other culturally sensitive issues, have often been carefully excised from liturgical scripts, rendering unusable for the purposes of worship a whole slew of names for God, such as Father, Lord, King, Warrior, Strong Tower, Shield, Defender.

Problems raised by “Inclusive” Language

There are, though, a number of problems with this exercise. In the effort to make language inclusive to one group, we can inadvertently exclude another, or we find that we have achieved little more than replacing one problem with another. For example, to exclude any charge of patriarchy, liturgical language may be re-cast by replacing all male pronouns with female ones. Certainly this may have some value in shocking the ear, startling the mind into entertaining a new vision of God. But simply employing a new set of pronouns while leaving the structure and enactment of the liturgy exactly the same is at best a temporary fix. If we merely substitute one power structure for another, a new metaphor for an old one, then we are in danger of merely whitewashing sepulchers, rather than drawing closer to truth.

Another approach is to remove gendered language from liturgy altogether, and instead to engage neutral descriptors for God. One of the most-used replacements for Father-Son-Spirit is Creator-Redeemer-Sustainer, which attempts to retain a three-fold character without attributing gender to God. Yet here again the language has theological limitations. It is a seemingly Trinitarian formula, but these three actions properly belong to God in Unity; to assign them to three functionary names is, by implication, to deny the unity of God in creation or redemption. But perhaps worse, used in exclusion, this kind of language describes God in terms of function rather than relationship. It is fundamental to Christian theology that God, while not a corporeal being, is not impersonal. God is not an “it”, and the language of job-descriptions doesn’t serve to address God adequately.

A further issue with avoiding particular names or pronouns is the tortured relationship that results with historic texts that are undeniably beautiful, but were not written in inclusive language. Adapting anonymous texts from unknown sources is one matter, but can we really justify updating the elegant and captivating language of John Donne, George Herbert, or John Mason? (If it doesn’t disturb the artistic conscience to replace a pronoun in one of their works, at least one would hope that respect for rhyme and meter might deter us!) But once we realize we cannot rewrite their words, are we really going to accept the impossible choice that the demands of inclusivity impose, and impoverish our experience by never reading them at all?

“Expansive Language”: a better solution?

It’s clear, then, that inclusive language poses significant difficulties. But another approach is available in “expansive language”, which has been an undercurrent in liturgics for some time, and has more recently come to the fore.

To read the rest of this essay please visit Maggi's blog here.

"Words Matter" by Terri Pilarski+

As we say in the blogsphere, "This'll blog!" and indeed it will and does.  The Church and the use of language and what it means when we do use it, you know inclusive vs exclusive and all of that...intrepid supply priest of the Diocese of Chicago, Terri Pilarski+, opines regarding a recent meeting about language and how words do matter, as well as context for each of us.  Read on and you will see what I mean:

[Episcopal News Service] "For slightly less than half my life I was an intentionally de-churched person. Although the faith of my childhood had been a source of great comfort to me I also found that church to hold a very narrow view of God. My own prayer life suggested to me that God was much more expansive than the church was teaching me."

So began my own story at last week's ecumenical "Words Matter" gathering on expansive and inclusive language in the church, hosted by the National Council of Churches' Justice for Women Working Group at Cenacle Catholic Retreat Center in Chicago.

Through the power of stories, the 25 people -- ordained, lay, gay, straight, women, men, Native American, African American, Latino, white, Asian -- called each other to expand our cultural attentiveness, understanding that language speaks differently in different contexts...

Read the rest of Terri's+ insightful opinion here...right here.

The Abbey of the Arts: Timely for Advent

A while back I stumbled upon a blog/website called The Abbey of the Arts. And I really, really like it. It allows for the expression of spirituality through art media and writing.

This Advent, the theme is light in the darkness. I entreat you to go there and experience it for yourself. Here is an excerpt from Christine's latest post:

To Know the Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

-Wendell Berry

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"In the Northern hemisphere we are in a time of growing darkness. This is my favorite season, the time when the last leaves have fallen from the trees and nights grow wide inviting rest, renewal, and dream-time. I adore the blooming, singing darkness as Wendell Berry writes...."

You can read the rest here.

"I Have Not Yet Done That For Which I Was Made"

O Lord my God

teach my heart

where and how to seek you,

where and how to find you.

O Lord you are my God

and you are my Lord

and I have never seen you.



You have made me and remade me,

and you have bestowed on me all the good things I possess

and still I do not know you.

I have not yet done that for which I was made.

Teach me to seek you

for I cannot seek you unless you teach me

or find you unless you show yourself to me.

Let me seek you in my desire,

let me desire you in my seeking.

Let me find you by loving you,

let me love you when I find you.

Text by St Anslem.

Photos courtesy of ENS Images, Scott Gunn of InclusiveChurch.org and

Google Images.

Blogger's note: I am thankful to God, my Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, for leading the House of Bishops in the way of true wisdom and grace for all of God's people. It is my view that the calm, graciousness and intellect of our Presiding Bishop, Katharine, led the way and created the atmosphere for clarity and listening. And never has our House of Bishops been as clear and attentive to the needs of the baptized than on March 21st, in the year of our Lord, 2007.
Catherine+

Loving Your Neighbor...

"Christians have to find a way--a lens--if you will,

through which to interpret this body of text [the Bible] on which our faith is founded....

My lens--and in this I am not alone--is the two great commandments.

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul, and you must love your neighbor as yourself.

YOU MUST LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.

And I don't see the word "straight" in there anywhere."

--The Reverend Lily Conner, Episcopal priest, in the mystery novel by Michelle Blake, "The Book of Light", page 41, published in 2003--

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Why does it take a fictional character to explain the obvious about scripture?

Photographic images courtesy of Google Images.