The Ultimate Outrage Machine

It's the internet; I need a cat picture once in a while.

Ignorance about religion and churches runs rampant on the Internet.  Some of it is even entertaining, like this:

In an effort to update a 31-year-old handbook proscribing [sic] how services should be conducted in terms of language, the national Evangelical Lutheran church in Sweden dropped the terms ["he" and "Lord"]  after the church’s 251-member decision-making body met for eight days.

According to Archbishop Antje Jackelén, the decision was made because, “Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human.”  She added that the idea had been floated as far back as 1986.

While the change won’t take place until May of 2017 [sic] for the church’s 6.1 million baptized members, it was immediately attacked in the U.S. by non-members who took great offense on behalf of God.

No, that's not funny; this is:

Writing at Right Wing News, Sierra Marlee, who described herself as “not particularly religious,” complained the language change was “ridiculous.”

“I’m not particularly religious, but even I know this is absolutely ridiculous. The Social Justice Warrior culture has just gone way too darn far and now even the churches are starting to succumb to its influence,” she wrote. “If you’re pinching the bridge of your nose right now in a desperate attempt to stave off the impending headache of reading the rest of this article and voluntarily exposing yourself to such idiocy, I’m right there with you.”

Showing off her knowledge of English language prayers she added, “For those who are in the know, The Lord’s Prayer commonly refers to God as ‘Our Father.’ Apparently, Swedish Lutherans are being led away from such language, and are now encouraged to say ‘Our Parent who art in Heaven.’ That being said, it will continue to be called ‘The Lord’s Prayer.'”

The Lord's Prayer has been rendered into English in many forms since the KJV almost everyone thinks of (ditto the 23rd Psalm), and besides, they don't commonly speak English in Sweden, so it won't be changing "Our Father" for them. Not literally, anyway.  But wait, there's more!

Conspiracy-mongering website Infowars had a unique, but not surprising take, with editor Kit Daniels writing, “Of course, there’s no coincidence the Church of Sweden’s shift away from traditional Christianity coincides with the rise of Islam in the Scandinavian country.”

Should we tell him almost all of the mainline American Christian churches made this shift in the 20th century?  Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt:

According to Blunt Force for Truth, God was “castrated” by the feminists.

“As feminism wormed its way across the cultural landscape in the 60’s and 70’s, Boston College professor Mary Daly spoke of her desire to castrate God,” the website asserts. “It looks like her vision has come to fruition in the Church of Sweden, where clergy have now been urged to use gender-neutral language in reference to God, advising them to avoid terms like ‘Lord,’ ‘He,’ and of course ‘Father.'”

I don't suppose it would do, then, to read Julian of Norwich from the late 14th century:

And so in our making, God almighty is our father by nature; and God all wisdom is our mother by nature, along with the love and goodness of the Holy Ghost; and these are all one God, one Lord....

For our whole life falls into three parts.  In the first we exist, in the second we grow and in the third we are completed.  The first is nature, the second is mercy, the third is grace.  As for the first, I saw and understood that the great power of the Trinity is our father, and the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our mother, and the great love of the Trinity is our lord; and we have all this by nature and in our essential being.  And furthermore, I saw that as the second Person of is mother of our essential being, so that same well-loved Person has become mother of our sensory being; for God makes us double, as essential and sensory beings.  Our essential part is the higher part, which we have in our Father, God almighty; and the second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature and our essential creation, in whom we are grounded and rooted, and he is our mother in mercy taking on our sensory being.  And so our Mother, in whom our parts are kept unparted, works in us in various ways; for in our Mother, Christ, we profit and grow, and in mercy he reforms and restores us, and through the power of his Passion and his death and rising again, he unites us to our essential being.  This is how our Mother mercifully acts to all his children who are submissive and obedient to him.

But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that I needed to know, answered with this assurance: 'Sin is befitting, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

With this bare word 'sin" our Lord brought to my mind the whole extent of all that is not good, and the shameful scorn and the utter humiliation that he bore for us in this life, and his dying, and all the pains and sufferings of his creatures, both in body and spirit--for we are all to some extent brought to nothing and shall be brought to nothing as our master Jesus was, until we are fully purged:  that is to say until our mortal flesh is brought completely to nothing, and all those of our inward feelings which are not truly good.  Have me insight into these things, along with all pains that ever were and ever shall be; and compared with these I realize that Christ's Passion was the greatest pain and went beyond them all.  And all this was shown in a flash, an quickly changed into comfort; for our good Lord did not want the soul to be afraid at this ugly sight.

....And because of the tender love which our Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this:  'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'*

I had to include the whole quote because of the language Eliot made so famous at the end, and to better put it in context.  Oddly, this was not considered heretical by the Church at the time or since.

I attended four years of seminary at the end of the 20th century (early to mid '90's, to place it better), and we were taught to use 'inclusive language' then.  I have a translation of the New Testament I acquired at that time, using wholly inclusive language in the rendition into English.  So far as I know all the mainline non-conservative Christian denominations in America use inclusive language in their liturgies now.  This stopped being controversial 20 years ago, easily; at least widely controversial.  And now Sweden is catching up, and tout le internet goes mad.  Well, the crazier right wing section of it, anyway.

It's funny how upset they are by something that doesn't affect them at all.  But this occurs as the internet has become the rage machine of choice, so these clowns have to respond to it without knowing they are 20 years behind the times.  I think I will amend the remarks of Chris Milk and dub the internet the "ultimate outrage machine." Seems to be what it's best at.

*This is, by the way, perfectly in keeping with Sophia (Wisdom), which is always personified as female in the Hebrew Scriptures, being an agent of the Creation and so part  of our "essential being."