Followers of important trends may have missed the debate within the Church of England on the question “Does God, the Almighty Creator of the Universe, have to be male?” A group of leading female clerics campaigned to change the language with which God is described in the Christian liturgy. Their idea was to refer to the Almighty as “she”, and “God the mother”, pointing to passages in the Bible that describe God in feminine terms. In Deuteronomy, God gives birth; in Isaiah, She breastfeeds; and in Luke, She is a girl hunting for a piece of lost jewellery. These images, though they may be few and far between, show that God is not definitively male, so why should the language of the liturgy be? Female worshippers want “to know that they are made as much in the image of God as any man”.

In opposition, the Reverend Kate Bottley replied in The Guardian, pointing to the absurdity of the argument: “God is not a woman. God is not a man. God is God”. Damian Thompson (in the Daily Mail) pointed out that throughout the Gospels, Jesus refers to God as “Father” or “Lord”, words that generations of church-goers have grown up with. And so alarmed was former archbishop Lord Carey that he warned that the Church “could be extinct in 25 years’ time”. The last thing the Church needs, he opined, is another trendy linguistic “gimmick” that “will make worshippers squirm. Nothing empties pews faster than that.” (original report by Reverend Sally Hitchiner, The Daily Telegraph).

Those of us who endured interminable chapel services growing up in the Church of England, sat puzzled at many of the unexplained words and concepts in the bible and the book of common prayer, and wondered if the clerics who pontificated at us understood these things themselves. Now, as adults, we ask why is it important to establish whether God is male or female when manifestly he or she seems to be either uninterested or powerless to frustrate the knavish tricks of the wicked, the cheats, the plunderers, the greedy, the selfish and the violent.