I spent last week with some very interesting people. One of the things we talked about was inclusive language, especially as it is used, or not used, in the church. My own understanding of inclusive language means that we attempt to use neutral language which the object or thing we are describing does not have a gender. For example, to refer to "people" when we are speaking about women and men, boys and girls is inclusive: to refer to the same group as "men" is not inclusive.
Another way to say this is that we try not to assign gender-identified language when gender-identified language is not helpful. So, for example, in my own prayer life, I never refer to God as "he", since God to me is genderless and indeed not in the form of a person. At the same time, when I lead worship, I try to follow our prayer book, which uses 'he' quite freely to describe the Holy. This is difficult for me, and I sometimes cannot bring myself to comply! It causes me an internal division, and these I mostly try to avoid.
Believe it or not, I used to be a person who gave the "who cares" response to such a question. Slowly, in prayer and in conversation, it began to dawn on me that the wideness of God, the breadth of understanding God, was necessarily self-limiting if I could not speak about the Holy as She or as it or as something not describable. Language is very powerful, and as this seeped in, I began to feel uncomfortable with all of the "he he he"s. I love the "hes" in my life, but there's more to God than He! I've become quite adept at "inclusivizing" prayers and readings on the fly, and have learned from both men and women about how to do this adeptly.
How does language - both what you hear and read, and what you use - affect the way you understand God?
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