The divinity schools at Duke and
Vanderbilt Universities have instructed their professors to start using
more “inclusive” language when referring to God because the masculine
pronouns “have served as a cornerstone of the patriarchy.”
For example: This year’s divinity course catalogue
at Vanderbilt tells professors to give “consistent attention to the use
of inclusive language, especially in relation to the Divine,” because
the school “commits continuously and explicitly to include gender as an
analyzed category and to mitigate sexism.”
Now, that may sound fair, but in many cases, it’s really not
up to the professor. For example, if we are talking about the Christian
God, every single reference to Him in the Bible uses a masculine
pronoun . . . which kind of gives you the vibe that Christians have
decided that their god is a dude. The fact is, teaching anything else
would be giving inaccurate information — which is what makes Duke’s
particular guidelines even more absurd.
According to Heat Street, Duke’s particular
divinity school is “geared toward people already working in the
Methodist church, taking supplemental weekend or summer classes.” Yes,
“Methodist,” as in the Christian religion that has already completely,
officially, 100 percent decided that their God is a man. And yet, Duke’s guidelines suggest avoiding gender specific pronouns when discussing Him and suggest using “God” and “Godself” instead.
Read the rest here.
