Inclusive language

So... I have been out of the US for a long time now- over three years, actually. And in that time my "sensitivity training" has definitely started to go soft around the edges. I have lost some of my acquired political correctness. I have started, with the Germans, to laugh at us a little for becoming insulted at the drop of a hat and blaming it on the turn of phrase of our various "oppressors".

And so I turn a wary eye on a certain issue that has been raised in my life lately, that of "inclusive language." Now... I went to a certain fairly progressive, urban, tending toward the left-wing-iness seminary, and so I have been well steeped in this rhetoric. I despise things like "mankind" when "humankind" or "humanity" work just as well. And I understand that there are people who have difficulties feeling loved or included by a God who is described exclusively as an alpha male, and I can understand that as an important pastoral care issue.

I appreciate that there is a need for more expansive metaphors for God's care and love and mercy and might: "Father" and "King" have been overused and triteness of any kind doesn't inspire people to faith. I really enjoy some of the less gendered (or, I should say, less stereotypically male-gendered) images of God in the Bible, like the hen nestling her chicks under her wings, rising up on wings of eagles, the lamb of God und so weiter.

But I have to draw the line somewhere. Does your "inclusive language" mean that you take a permanent marker, or worse, a scissors to the Bible and cut out all the parts that don't suit you? Does your inclusivity include a list of words that are verboten? Because to me, that seems a little... I dunno... exclusive. If suddenly you can't sing along with the other Christians of the world because oops! It says "Lord" in there!, then aren't you actually missing out on the unity that you are trying to achieve with your "inclusive" language? If you can't say the Lord's prayer anymore because it starts out with the evil F- word, and the Creed is but a distant memory, then where are you placing yourself in the body of Christ?

In most of the other languages I have been exposed to, everything gets a gender: a badger, a tape dispenser, your armpit, God, a rainbow. There is no biological system for this: you can't put a sewing machine or a shoe insole under a microscope and check for Y chromosomes or a tiny penis or vulva... you just learn as a small child which grammatical gender is assigned to an object, and it always is so. We English-speakers have the extreme luxury of being able to dispense with the question of grammatical gender in our everyday speech (for the most part). But as with every luxury, eventually we start to feel a little entitled to it.

Hmm. I will end rant here, lest I become unbearable. Clearly this is not the battle that I am called to fight. So, it's back to work I go (hi ho, hi ho).