The gender identity of God—and Jesus
Amy Peeler offers a great resource for Christians who have struggled to understand God’s call to women.
In Review
Women and the Gender of God
Because I was raised in a conservative evangelical church and now work alongside women in pastoral roles at an ecumenical nonprofit, I have consumed a plethora of books about the role of women in traditional ministry. Even with all of this book knowledge and hands-on experience, Amy Peeler’s new book still rocked me.
Women and the Gender of God is an intensely footnoted study of all things women, the church, and who God is. “Theology has consequences,” writes Peeler, a New Testament professor at Wheaton College. “It is easier to devalue and then mistreat those humans who are believed to be less like God.” Peeler dives into biblical depictions of the gender of God—not to argue against his maleness, but rather to show how he is not fully male. “To think of God as beyond gender in the sense that God . . . is Parent or Mother and not only Father, helps to work against the ‘phallacy’ that God is male.”
In a chapter called “God Is Not Masculine,” Peeler argues that seeing God as masculine hurts believers’ relationship with themselves, each other, and God:
