Faith & Spirit Quote by Carol P. Christ

Christ’s question lands like a polite grenade: it’s framed as a linguistic quibble, but it’s really an indictment of how power disguises itself as “just language.” By calling masculine pronouns “a mere linguistic device,” she anticipates the stock defense that he/him for God is harmless convention. Then she flips it: if everyone agrees God isn’t literally male, why defend the convention with such ferocity? The line exposes a cultural reflex - the way institutions cling to symbols long after their literal claims have been abandoned, because the symbol is doing other work.

The intent is less to win a grammar argument than to force a disclosure. Masculine God-language has functioned as a quiet architecture of authority: it normalizes male-coded leadership, makes patriarchy feel metaphysical, and turns dissent into irreverence rather than critique. Her use of “cling” is surgical; it suggests dependence and fear, not reasoned tradition. The subtext is that what’s being protected isn’t theology but a hierarchy, and that “mere” pronouns become the everyday ritual that keeps it plausible.

Context matters: as an educator and a major voice in feminist theology, Christ is speaking into religious communities that often claim God is beyond gender while keeping liturgy, scripture translation, and pastoral speech aggressively gendered. The question presses on that contradiction. It’s also a teaching move - a Socratic prompt that nudges readers to notice how language shapes imagination. If God is imagined as “He,” it’s not neutral; it trains the mind to picture ultimate authority with a male face, again and again, until it feels like common sense.