Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 09:4 (Fall 1995)
Article: Imaging God: Another Evangelical Perspective
Author: Kari Cunningham Ifland

---

PP 9:4 (Fall 1995) p. 8

Imaging God:
Another Evangelical Perspective

Kari Cunningham Ifland

Kari Cunningham Ifland is a 1993 graduate of Denver Seminary, with an MA in Christian Leadership. She is currently South Central Regional Representative for CBE, and lives in Louisiana.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable in a church service because of the overwhelming number of masculine references to God? Have you ever found yourself changing the words to a hymn as you sing in order to be more inclusive? Have you ever found yourself counting the number of times a masculine reference is spoken, prayed or sung versus the times a feminine one is used? You will if you read Paul R. Smith’s Is It Okay To Call God “Mother:” Considering the Feminine Face of God (Hendrickson, 1993). An evangelical pastor of a Southern Baptist church for thirty years, Smith has led his congregation through nine major changes; the most recent one has been to recognize “the feminine face of God.” In his book, Smith thoroughly explores this issue, its importance, and objections to it; then he offers practical advice to implement change in the church today.

Smith calls eleven o’clock on Sunday mornings “the most sexist hour in America.” Not only are women

PP 9:4 (Fall 1995) p. 9

excluded from leadership in most evangelical church services, but the feminine “side” of God which they were created to image is never presented.

The problem, according to Smith, is that many evangelical public worship services present a distorted picture of God. If masculine language for God is used predominantly, in exclusion of feminine imagery, we are stating, both explicitly and implicitly, that “God is exclusively masculine or male. This in turn appears to make men more like God than women are.” Smith writes with three purposes in mind: to expand our image of God; to recognize that calling God “Mother” is biblical, beneficial and significant; and to understand the need for corporate recognition of the biblically-based masculine and feminine images of God.

One objection to including feminine God-language in worship services is that the Bible never refers to God as a woman. This assumption is false. Smith discusses over thirty biblical references to feminine imagery for God. He calls them “Bible verses you never memorized.” He questions why allegorical metaphors used only once in Scripture, like. “Lily of the Valley” or “Rose of Sharon,” are quite easily used in song and speech about Jesus, while “in spite of numerous references in the Scripture to God as a maternal figure and a woman in labor,” as well as others, feminine images of God are still shunned.

Smith answers oth...

visitor : : uid: ()