By Mike Miner
The United Church is swinging a sabre of couched words and obliterating gender in its new book of prayer in an effort to accomplish . . . . Who knows what they’re trying to accomplish.
The new, “modern” book of prayer is the religious equivalent of Y2K debugging. It seems the United Church is terrified that some poor minister will come to the end of the wedding vows, look from the freshly shaven face of the groom to the freshly shaven face of the other groom, and grind to an abrupt halt at “I now pronounce you husband and . . . .”
The minister’s inability to continue would no doubt be firmly rooted in the year 1900.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with altering a prayer so it won’t be ridiculous in a given situation (members of the same sex shouldn’t be expected to flip a coin to determine who is the husband and who is the wife). But it’s not surprising that the new book of prayer has stuck in the craw of many parishioners across the land.
A re-evaluation of the meaning and intent of certain passages is fine, but this isn’t a case of a re-translation, it’s revision. It’s reasonable to assume the rock on which the church is founded is based on faith, and the Bible is considered, well, sacred.
So changing a word here and there is fine, but rewriting the book of prayer is ludicrous. Even more ludicrous is the treatment the Man upstairs has received.
For starters, we can’t call him the Man upstairs anymore. He’s no longer the father, but has become a gender-bending mix of the generic “God,” a more p.c. “Mother and Father” (apparently He/She/It has become two people in the past couple of millennia) or “Mother God.”
Why this is necessary is anyone’s guess. If the debate as to God’s existence had gotten a little insipid over time, how trite is the debate over God’s gender?
It’s hard to see how declaring God female, or gender free will be a boon to any group, and any less than a slap in the face to people who want to maintain the scripture with which they were born and raised.
To draw an illustration, the Bible can be viewed as a script and the minister the director. In practice, there’s no reason not to make any changes to get the message and the point across. But when the director has rewritten the script, it’s no longer the same play.
If they’re going to go this far out of their way to please people, they might as well add a few car chases and some big name stars.