God Is Nonbinary
Does a single-gendered God make any sense and does it yield a more equitable world and a more loving religion?
He’s got the whole world, in His hands…
I learned this song so long ago that I actually don’t remember learning it. It seemingly came with my default operating system: a part of parochial school programs, summer camps, and Sunday school lessons. On its face, the heart of the song is steadying and beautiful: everyone and everything and everywhere is OK, because God’s got it covered. All of Creation is safe, including you. But there is an odd caveat imbedded in the lyrics that I didn’t recognize for decades: yes, God is glorious and wondrous; limitless in beauty, unfathomable in scale, beyond our collective comprehension — but also a dude.
God the Father.
God the man.
God, the He of He’s.
Throughout my life, I was taught that God most certainly was all of those things and it has taken decades to comprehend how toxic, how dangerous, and how limiting an idea that was — and to begin to have God renovated in my head.
Growing up, the idea of God as a white-bearded older gentleman was impossible to avoid. I lived for forty years with a decidedly…
