The creation of Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as I understand it, was generated by the convergence of two factors. One was the fervent desire on the part of a relative minority in the church to end the use of masculine pronouns (“he,” “him,” “his”) to refer to God. The other was the increasingly serious financial situation of the church’s publishing house, Augsburg Fortress. A new worship book would make congregations pray and talk about God in ways that the influential minority considered essential and would at the same time be a big seller to bail out the publisher. And so it has happened.
What about the majority of us who are not offended by God being referred to as male?
And what about the substantial number of persons who have been abused physically, emotionally, and otherwise by "Mommie Dearest" type mothers for whom a feminine image of God would be absolutely revolting?