Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

31: GOD OUR MOTHER 233

Liberal Protestants have traveled this route before, during the
1970s. Mary Kassian, in her book The Feminist Mistake,^16 points out
how the three stages on the road traveled by secular feminists were (1)
renaming themselves, (2) renaming the world, and (3) renaming God.
The last stage includes “The Feminization of God,” and that took place
in liberal Protestant thinking and writing in the 1970s.^17
That transformation has found its way into liberal Protestant hymn-
books. In 2002 the United Methodist Church published a supplement
to its hymnal called The Faith We Sing, which included some new hymns
such as “Bring Many Names,” in which Methodists are to sing praise
to “Strong Mother God, working night and day.” The author of the
lyrics, Brian Wren, professor of worship at Columbia Theological
Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, supports these lyrics with an argument
that sounds very much like the arguments egalitarians have used on
other subjects. According to reporter Maura Jane Farrelly,

Professor Wren says the Bible uses the word “Father” because it was

written in a place and time when only men were in positions of

authority. And because this isn’t the case anymore in many Christian

nations, Dr. Wren says there is no need to cling so literally to the

“Father” image.^18

A similar trend has been seen among disillusioned Southern Baptists
who left the denomination in protest over the conservative control of the
SBC and formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.^19 At the CBF
annual meeting that began June 28, 1991, in Atlanta, songs of praise to
God as Mother were prominent:

(^16) Mary Kassian, The Feminist Mistake, rev. ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2005).
(^17) Ibid., chapter 12, 159-174. Kassian points out that in 1972 feminist leader Betty Friedan
uttered the question, “Is God He?” and it was prophetic because that question was “destined
to become the debate of the decade” (160). During that decade the National Council of
Churches, the World Council of Churches, the United Presbyterian Church, the Lutheran
Church in America, and several feminist writers such as Letty Russell began promoting “inclu-
sive language” to refer to God (ibid.).
(^18) Maura Jane Farrelly, “Controversial Hymns Challenge U.S. Methodists’ View of God,”
Voice of America News, July 5, 2002 (www.voanews.com).
(^19) The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was accepted into full membership as an independent
denomination by the Baptist World Alliance in July of 2003, according to World, August 2,
2003, 23.