Posted on 04/22/2007 2:48:10 PM PDT by Zakeet
God has no gender. And the Lord? There's not much Lord in this church service.
At Tucson's largest Episcopal church, St. Philip's in the Hills, the creators of an alternative worship service called Come & See are bucking tradition by rewriting what have become prescribed ways of worship.
For the faithful, that means God isn't referred to as "him," and references to "the Lord" are rare. "Lord" has become a loaded word conveying hierarchical power over things, "which in what we have recorded in our sacred texts, is not who Jesus understood himself to be," St. Philip's associate rector Susan Anderson-Smith said.
"The way our service reads, the theology is that God is love, period," St. Philip's deacon Thomas Lindell added. "Our service has done everything it can to get rid of power imagery. We do not pray as though we expect the big guy in the sky to come and fix everything."
St. Philip's isn't the only local church to re-examine its language. Other local religious leaders already are eschewing the use of "Lord" for similar reasons. First Congregational United Church of Christ in Midtown even has a different name for The Lord's Prayer. They call it "The Prayer of Our Creator."
"We do still use the word 'Lord' on occasion, but we are suspicious of it," First Congregational pastor Briget Nicholson said. "Inclusive language is important. Our United Church of Christ hymnal does have hymns that will say 'Father' and 'God.' but the next verse will always then say 'Mother' and 'God.' It's gender-balanced."
(Excerpt) Read more at azstarnet.com ...
Don’t discourage them from using the hyphen; it’s a handy way to know quite quickly that you’re dealing with a Leftist.
These folks are intimidated by power words like “Lord”?
Well, how about “King of Kings”, the “Alpha and the Omega”, “Prince”, “The Almighty”, “Captain of Salvation”, “Governor”, “Great High Priest”, “Judge of Israel”, “Lawgiver”, and “Mighty One”. Oh, here’s another name for Jesus that ought to make them feel inadequate: “Messiah”.
I left the Episcopal church 25 years ago for many of the same reasons people are leaving it today, including the fact that I did not want to support the National Council of Churches. Our precious Lord Jesus Christ must be weeping hot and salty tears for what is happening in so many of our main line churches! As the hierarchy tumbles away from the True Church, they no longer believe that He is the Son of God, a part of the Holy Trinity which makes up the one true God. How can they believe or follow His word, when they openly and brazenly defy Him?
But the Pentecostal and Evangelical churches are absorbing those leaving the mainline churches at such a rapid rate that multiple services, including those on Saturday evening are necessary to feed the membership. Our church will soon break ground on a new building to accommodate our growth, and we happily include a large teenaged membership. We had already outgrown the last church we built before we could move into it!
Praise God, that we are a house of prayer with frequent outreach programs to the community to gratefully do His work.
Garden hose??
If you change the meaning of words then you can make the bible say anything.
"The Risen Lord Restores His Fisherman and Shepherd" (Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter)
Just checking to see if anybody was really reading this thread.
A Christian pastor takes a heavy responsibility on his head. When you get an idiot priestess and an idiot deacon like this, they are misleading their flock, plain and simple. It’s bad enough to go astray yourself, but to lead others astray is a much worse sin.
Yeah, like the pastor of the Luthern Church where we USED to attend, when he invited a Muslim to come and tell us all about how ‘peaceful’ Islam is. We, and our substantial weekly tithe, walked right out the door, never to return.
Fear of the Lord is a gift of the Holy Spirit! Obviously these folks also are not accepting of the gifts of the Holy Spirit then. Are they in denial of the Holy Trinity too?
No wonder so many Episcopal churches and their congregations are leaving and either starting up their own congregations in union with more conservative bishops - or are becoming Catholics.
Sign of the end of times.
3For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
Five people left in that congregation? Fewer?
“And God is a He whether girl ministers like it or not.”
Really? Since I am a gal and have never ever resented God being called “Father” - after all our Lord Jesus Christ told us to pray to Him that way - I still have doubts that God is a male. God has fatherly attributes such as strength, steadfastness, justice, etc.., and the church that Jesus established has maternal attributes such as nourishing, mercy, etc.. For that reason the Christian Church is called the bride of Christ. But even with such imagery, I do not believe God is a male. Afterall when he made Adam “after His image”, God had to go back and make a complementary human which He called woman so as to complete the attributes of his nature.
God is strictly speaking neither male nor female, at least not in the human sense of being a male. God is simply the Almighty with all the good attributes of humanity and none of the bad, but He does not have a body. God is Love.
And, even so, it is OK with me to use the masculine adjective to refer to God. I think the changing of traditional language so as to not offend some feminists is a lot of hogwash.
Just call Him Buddy. Ooops, that’s sexist. How about Leslie? That could refer to a male or femals demi-god.
Sorry. I meant female, not femals. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t read my own post.
If we don’t acknowledge God’s power, does that make Him any less powerful?
11 For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. 12 So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
That would include the clergy and membership of St. Phillip's on the Hills.
They can call Him Lord now, or they can do it on their knees at the judgment when it's too late.
That would be VS and me. And we're coming up on 25 years in May - happily.
Mrs VS
"There are lots of problems in that prayer book that are just so patriarchal it's laughable
And there's no question "Lord" has patriarchal connotations, he noted. "I'm sorry, but if there is a Lord, by implication there is a Lady," he said.
Here is your problem these Episcopal Churches have become the Church of the Politically Correct.
They are all rapped up in gender politics.
LOL!
Jesus said that He and the Father are One. If you have seen Jesus you have seen the Father. Should we then believe also that Jesus is feminine also?
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