Article March 16, 1992 Issue

"We can no longer think of God as a male, patriarchal...

Harvey Cox

From an interview on the television program Monitor Forum with Baptist theologian Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School.

"We can no longer think of God as a male, patriarchal figure. The feminine side of God has now been introduced, not just by some esoteric theology but actually in the living experience of countless people in churches and synagogues ... seeing [male and female] as a complementary set of qualities and characteristics ....

"It's high time that we understand that the reality of God includes qualities and characteristics that we associate with the feminine. Father and Mother ... there are many churches now that are using this language in liturgies. It used to be that only very few did that, but now many of them do.

"I think we have only begun to sense how enormous the impact will be. ... I think it's a turning point in religious awareness, maybe one of the most important of our whole century."

Reprinted with permission. Harvey Cox, Professor of Divinity at Harvard University, is the author of Many Mansions: A Christian's Encounters with Other Faiths.

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