PLGRM

This summer at Westminster, we are spending time in worship talking about the Holy Spirit.

It’s been great, so far. We’re currently in a series on the Fruit of the Spirit, but we spent June learning some basics about this third person of the Trinity. We learned of how God the Holy Spirit comforts us, advocates for us, and works in and through the church. Again, it’s been great, especially since Presbyterians don’t usually talk about the Holy Spirit all that much.

We’ve had a good time. It’s allowed me to get super Bible nerdy, and I’ve been reminiscing about my theological education. When I was in systematic theology class in seminary, one of the weeks when we studied the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was titled: “Two Men and a Bird.”

What we were after was: “How do we talk about the Holy Spirit?”

All of us understood that God has no gender. God’s very self is beyond all gender distinctions. However, part of our theological language talks about “God the Father” so, while we know God is not a male, we understand using that language.

Likewise, Jesus of Nazareth was a male. So using “he” to refer to the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, makes all sorts of sense.

But how do we talk about the Holy Spirit? I mean, the Holy Spirit is a SPIRIT. It’s literally in the name! The Spirit isn’t (theologically) a “ghost,” not the remnants of someone who died. So gender doesn’t even make sense here.

How do we talk about the Spirit?

If we use “she,” what does that imply about the Spirit? Some argue that using “she” is a good option to counter the male language of “the Father and the Son.” And, of course, is it better to talk about the Spirit as a bird? A dove? I don’t think so, personally.

And, then – and this is a BIG one – how do we talk about the Trinity, collectively? The hymn we sing has it right: “God in three persons.” God is – officially, technically, accurately – a community of persons.

So here’s what I decided way back then:

• Jesus is a “he.” There’s no getting around it and no benefit to making a big thing about it. Besides, nobody is disputing that Jesus of Nazareth was a male. 🙂 However, I steadfastly refuse to capitalize “He.” That’s just silly. That makes it a proper noun, which defeats the point of a pronoun.
• When I talk of the First Person of the Trinity, I’m going to use both male and female language. God is spoken of in both ways in the Bible, so I think it behooves us to follow suit in our liturgy and theology. My weekly benediction concludes with me saying: “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; One God and Mother of us All.” I like it. It’s clean, I believe it’s accurate, and it’s life-giving to a lot of people. So: “he” and “she.”
• When I talk about God (generally) and the Spirit (specifically), I use “They.” God is, properly understood, a community. The Spirit is a person but not a gendered one. They/Them, it is.

This kind of thinking is fun for me. Members at Westminster know I have a penchant for digging into the nerdy side of theology, etc. I had thought about “Two Men and a Bird” as I was getting ready for Pentecost this year, and even though I like exploring language I probably wouldn’t have given any of this more than a passing thought if it had not been for the fact that our friends at Calvary Presbyterian Church (where my good friend Rev. Marci Glass is pastor) in San Francisco were recently threatened for (among other things) putting up a banner declaring that we can talk about God using “They/Them.”

Gender “neutral” language is a hot topic right now and a lot of people have fairly strong feelings about it. I’m positive there are folks in the congregation I serve who have opinions about this use of language (but I’m glad that I can’t think of one single person who thinks the way to resolve a disagreement like this is through threats of violence), but what I want to say, here, in this post is that how we talk about God and people is a very important discussion.

Part of that discussion has to be the fact that the lack of a third pronoun is thorny for English in a way it’s not for other languages. I suspect a lot of our problem as western, American Christians has more to do with the limitations of our language than whether we want to restrict God’s gender.

John McWhorter, a Columbia University linguist who explores how race and language shape our politics and culture, recently offered some helpful thoughts on the search for a gender neutral pronoun in Standard English:

But in language varieties less policed, language change can happen the way it wants to, and new pronouns can come from the darnedest places. In the Black English of younger Black people in Baltimore, for instance, a new gender-neutral pronoun arose in the 2000s, as reported in an article by Elaine Stotko and Margaret Troyer. Of all things, the pronoun is “yo.”

Not “you,” but “yo.”

Not “yo” in place of “your,” as in “yo books.” Not “yo” as in “Yo! I’m over here!” And not “yo” as in the one appended after a sentence to solicit agreement: “That sure was loud, yo!”

This “yo” is a straightforward, gender-neutral third-person pronoun — basically “heesh,” but not as ridiculous sounding. “Yo was tuckin’ in his shirt!” is an example Stotko and Troyer documented. This “yo” did not mean “you,” because the reference was certainly not to someone tucking in someone else’s shirt. A female teacher was handing out papers, and someone remarked — not to the teacher herself — “Yo handin’ out papers.” Someone else used “Yo is a clown” to describe a third party.

Wrap your head around it, and you can see this pronoun is pretty awesome. The interjection “Yo!” has been retooled, so that what started as a way of calling someone has become a way of calling out — i.e., pointing out — someone. The new “yo” means, in its way, “the one whom one ‘yo’s.” And it applies to no gender in particular. Baltimore Black English achieved what mainstream English never has: a gender-neutral pronoun that doesn’t force some other pronoun to moonlight in a new role.

I’m not going to assume you’ve given much thought to how to talk about the Holy Spirit before now, but let me ask: What are you going to test out? What sounds comfortable for you to say? What gives you a little thrill?