Why We Need Mama God

A simple child’s prayer book is hardly revolutionary. And Dear Mama God is primarily a gentle child’s prayer of wonder and thanks with luminous and expansive artwork.

However, in our current cultural context, a prayer addressed to the divine as Mama is also revolutionary because so many of us—whether religious or not—have only heard God-talk in exclusively masculine terms. So why do we need explicitly feminine God-language? Why do we need God as Mama and She?

In Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd asks what’s the bother with feminine pronouns and imagery if the divine is ultimately formless and genderless?  In short? It’s because symbols are the language of the soul. She writes:

“The bother is because we have no other way of speaking about the Absolute. We need forms and images. Without them we have no way of relating to the divine. Symbol and image create a universal spiritual language. It’s the language the soul understands. And yet...the images that have pervaded our speech, thought, and feeling about the Divine have told us the Divine is exclusively male.” 

Our God-language Matters

Our God-language matters because it is how we symbolize that which we hold as ideal. And while metaphor is all we ever get for the Mystery we call God, we have a big problem with stuck metaphors. Due to a combination of tradition, sexism, and the limitations of language, our God-language and metaphors are almost exclusively masculine. This harms all of us. 

Thinking of divinity only in masculine terms has enormous implications for how children of all genders grow up. It has contributed to a world in which girls, women, and anyone not traditionally male-bodied remain marginalized and seen as less than. Plus, the feminine qualities in all genders are undervalued. 

Feminine God-language is liberating for us all. As Cindy Wang Brandt, author of Parenting Forward says, “When God is woman, girls see the divine in themselves and boys embrace their feminine traits as holy.” 

An Ongoing Conversation

This is not a new movement—for decades, womanist and feminist scholars have pointed out the harm done by male-centric God talk for decades (see the recommended reading list below). Feminine images and language for God are found in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, which include references to God as a compassionate mother, a midwife, a woman in labor, and many more. She bakes bread to feed the hungry, shelters Her baby chicks, and nurses Her babies.

Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century female theologian and saint wrote: “As truly as God is our Father, so truly God is our Mother.” In the 20th century, Pope John Paul I echoed Julian when he said, “God is our Father; even more God is our Mother.” 

But the patriarchal systems and traditions eventually gained so much dominance that most of us grew up only ever hearing divinity referenced or imagined as “He.” In fact, many of us were directly or indirectly taught that God is actually masculine and male. Our world remains sexist in no small part due to our cultural and religious scripts that have told us maleness and the masculine are the only available metaphors for divinity. But this isn’t the full story. 

She Is Already in Our Sacred Texts

God our Mother is not a new concept, and scripture has our backs on this—really. Many early Christian texts refer to the Holy Spirit in particular as She. Many of the early church fathers (including Clement and Augustine) spoke of God’s compassion in maternal terms.

For those who need biblical affirmation that God is also our loving Mother, there are actually abundant scriptural references to the maternal, feminine aspects of divinity—we’ve just repressed them or overlooked them. Here are just a few: 

• Genesis says that God created earthlings/humans in God’s image, “male and female, God created them.” (Gen. 1:27)

• God is said to gather Her people like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings (Matt 23:37)

• God is the rock that bore us (Dt. 32:18)

• God is a woman in labor bringing forth a new creation (Is 42:14)

• God is a compassionate mother (Jer 31:20)

• God gives birth and nurses us at Her breast (Hosea 11:3–4 and Isaiah 49:15). In fact, one of the titles for God is “El Shaddai,” which can be translated as, “The Many- Breasted One,” a reference to God nourishing and sustaining Her people like a mother nursing her baby.

• The spirit of God that resides with the children of Israel in the tabernacle in the wilderness is called Shekinah; She-Who-Dwells. She is feminine.

• The Greek word for God’s Wisdom or Spirit is Sophia. Many early Christians spoke of the Holy Spirit as feminine and as our Mother.

• The Hebrew word for compassion, rechem, is the same root word as womb. So whenever we read of God’s compassionate love, we should read this as God’s womb-love. 

• Wisdom, the main character in the book of Proverbs, is clearly a clearly feminine persona who is said to have been at the creation of the world (many scholars believe Wisdom is simply the Holy Spirit’s other name). In Greek, Wisdom is Sophia (which we still use as a feminine name).

• In Syriac Christianity, one of the very early communities of Jesus-followers, the Spirit is depicted as a mother bird. This connects with the hovering, pulsing presence of the Spirit depicted in Genesis 1:2.

• And in the very grammar of the texts so many hold as Scripture itself, God is also She. (More on this below…)

A Conspiracy of Translation

One of the incredible womanist scholars doing crucial work today is Dr. Rev. Wil Gafney, professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School and an Episcopal priest. Rev. Gafney teaches that the feminine aspects of the divine were repressed in the translations; but, in the very grammar of the original languages, God is also "She." She believes that it’s high time we recovered God in feminine form in our texts and metaphors for the sake of all genders. “As long as a masculine God remains at the top of the pyramid,” Rev. Gafney says, “nothing else we do matters.”

God is already She right in our texts, but the suppression of God in the feminine gender has been a “conspiracy in biblical translation,” according to Rev. Dr. Gafney.  (This TheoEd lecture by Dr. Gafney is a marvelous introduction to this scholarship.)

One way in which biblical translators (almost certainly all men given who was allowed to learn to read and write) kept the feminine gender for God out of our sacred texts is by using a proper noun instead of a pronoun. But when we read or hear about the Spirit of God, if a pronoun would have been used, that pronoun should be feminine. (This isn’t a biological assertion, of course, but then, neither were the “He/Hims,” but we forgot that along the way. A mix of divine pronouns would have helped remind us that Ultimate Reality is both/and while also transcendent of our binary gender constructs.)

Rev. Gafney explains that the word for God’s Spirit in Hebrew is ruach, and it is always a feminine noun. In many languages, nouns have a feminine or masculine gender, but English grammar does not have gendered nouns. Centuries of all-male translators left out the feminine from the language about God by simply removing pronouns.

Because Rev. Gafney goes back to the original languages and finds the feminine grammar that has been overlooked for centuries, she sometimes calls herself a literalist. She writes: “Feminine language for God occurs in the text repeatedly. This means that feminists and womanists advocating for inclusive and explicit feminine God-language are not changing but restoring the text and could be considered biblical literalists.” 

Rev. Gafney asks us to imagine hearing scripture with the feminine gender of God’s Spirit still present in the words. Some examples include, “She rested on them” and “She made me.”

This last phrase is in the Hebrew Scriptures more than 30 times, usually when describing God’s Spirit urging someone to take action. This is why Dear Mama God opens with Rev. Gafney’s translation of Job 33:4 with the feminine grammar restored. It reads: “The Spirit of God, She has made me, and the breath of the nursing God, She gives me life.” Job 33:4

Art credits: “Feminine Divine” by Annelie Solis; “Creation” by Sergio Velasquez; “Mother God Holding the Universe” by Lily Akers Eyer (age 9); (untitled) byTim Okamura; “Mosaic of Hen and Chicks” altar of Dominus Flevit church, Jerusalem; “Madonna and Child” by Harmonia Rosales; “Sophia with Dove” by Sue Ellen Parkinson; “Mama God Holding the Universe” by Lucy Akers Eyer (age 6).

Why Gender-neutral Titles Are Not Enough

In She Who Is (now in its 25th anniversary addition), Dr. Elizabeth Johnson says we must have female symbols for God even though many people would like to move directly to a neutral term such as simply “God.” But Dr. Johnson says this is “not ultimately satisfactory.” Besides not doing enough to disrupt the ingrained god-concepts centuries of patriarchy have taught all of us, she also says we need the insights that would follow should female symbols and metaphors be freed to describe “holy mystery.” 

She writes: “Besides employing uncritically a term long associated with the patriarchal ordering of the world, its consistent use causes the personal or transpersonal character of holy mystery to recede. It prevents the insight into holy mystery that might occur were female symbols set free to give rise to thought. Most serious of all, it papers over the problem of the implied inadequacy of women’s reality to represent God.” 

We Need to Disrupt the Learned Gender Patterns

Dr. Gafney also writes in the introductory materials to A Woman’s Lectionary for the Whole Church that explicitly feminine language is preferable to gender-neutral language for her lectionary’s goals because neutral language does not disrupt our learned gender patterns—we’ll just hear them as male because that’s what we’ve already absorbed.

She writes: “Explicitly feminine language is preferable to inclusive and neuter language which obscures and erases woman and girls. In addition, singular neuter gender and inclusive plurals do not disrupt the learned gender patters, as many readers and hearers interpret them through their previously learned gender pattern and experience them as male.” 

In short, “God” just lands in our bodies and souls as male due to a few thousand years of stuck metaphors (undergirded by patriarchal power systems).

This does not mean that non-binary titles for God and the experience of non-binary people do not also matter. They do. However, it does mean we cannot skip over explicitly feminine God-language though in our move to inclusive and expansive God-language. (I do also enjoy the recent “God is Trans”movement too, which does also helps disrupt our learned gender patterns. God can use She/They pronouns in our household for a few millennia as we work on some equity for the feminine divine!)

But, didn’t Jesus say to pray to God as Father?

One of the biggest pushbacks those of us call God Mother face is the argument that Jesus prayed to God as a father, so doesn’t that mean God is masculine? But Jesus’s reference to God as a father isn’t meant to be a physical or biological description. Father is Jesus’s metaphor. And for his time, it’s a radically intimate metaphor. For some, a father metaphor is a comforting one, but for others, it’s a barrier.

Like all of the metaphors and symbols we have for God, a father metaphor isn’t the entirety of the mystery—it’s just one image. But over time, this one paternal metaphor has become the only valid one for many people.

In actuality, the Gospels show Jesus using rich and varied metaphors for God, but we’ve minimized the others as church tradition and doctrine got more cemented. Dr. Johnson addresses this extensively in She Who Is. She says that Jesus’ language about God is “diverse and colorful,” but only the male parent one became the lasting one, and that is likely a political choice.

Dr. Johnson points out that there are many other motifs Jesus used in the Gospels that have not gotten stuck as literally in our thinking about God metaphors. Jesus also says that God is a woman searching for lost coins, a shepherd looking for a lost sheep, a baker-woman kneading dough, a generous employer, a wind that blows freely, a mother birthing new life, but those metaphors have not gotten stuck, probably because they didn’t coincide with the growing patriarchy and tradition in the emerging Christian church as the New Testament texts were being written.

Herb Montgomery writes extensively about the economic implications of the upside-down, the-last-shall-be-first kind of society Jesus taught about and says that we also have to be cautious in applying our modern-day concepts of a father to a text that is 2,000 years old. At that time and context, a father was first a provider. He writes:

“The term ‘Father’ was about the provider in that culture making sure everyone in the family had enough. It was a patriarchal culture. It was an economic statement. It wasn’t a definitive statement on the gender of God but on God being the householder to make sure there was enough daily bread for everyone.”

Note: If the metaphor of God as a father is a life-giving one for you, please be blessed with it; just don’t insist it be the only valid metaphor available for others.

Back to Dear Mama God

While this scholarship fascinates me and has helped me lean into the practice of praying to the divine in feminine form with my children, what really compelled me to write the Dear Mama God book is how deeply life-giving and heart-expanding praying with my children to Mama God has been. Hearing my children pray to Mama God and Mother God has been healing and transformative—it’s given me back a spiritual landscape that I hadn’t even realized I’d deeply missed. And I simply want to share this spiritual practice with others with a beautiful and simple book as an entry point.

Not only is feminine God language liberating—it’s also heart-expanding. When God is our Mother, a profoundly good shift happens. She has enough love enough for all, and Her lap is spacious enough for all. This is the space and the hope of this book. And, I can’t wait for you to get to share it with the children in your life.

More about the new book, Dear Mama God: Endorsements, book trailer, artwork, buy.

Further reading recommendations:

Akers, D. (2019). Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints. Watchfire Media. (See especially chapters on Rev. Wil Gafney, Leslie Foster, and Kate Christensen-Martin.)

Cleveland, Chistena (2022). God is a Black Woman. Harper One.

Doyle, Glennon (2020). Untamed. Random House. (Especially the “girl gods” chapter)

Gafney, Wilda (2021). A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church (series) Church Publishing.

Gafney, Wilda (2017). Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne. Westminster John Knox Press.

Johnson, E. A. (2017). She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. (3rd ed.). Herder & Herder.

Monk Kidd, S. (2016). Dance of the Dissident Daughter (2nd ed.). HarperOne.

Rae Rothus, Kyndall. (2021). Thy Queendom Come. Broadleaf Books.

Starr, Mirabai. (2019) Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics. Sounds True 

Wyckoff, Mallory (2021). God Is. Eerdmans.

Children’s Books

Akers, Daneen (author) and Gamble, Gillian (illustrator). Dear Mama God. 2023. Watchfire Media.

Held Evans, Rachel & Turner, Matthew Paul (authors) and Tan, Ying Hui (illustrator). What is God Like? 2021. Convergent Books.

Meehan, Bridget Mary (author) and Susan Sawyer (illustrator). (1995) Heart Talks with Mother God. Liturgical Press.

Pecinovsky, Teresa Kim (author) and Khoa Le (illustrator). (2022). Mother God. Beaming Books.

Sasso, Sandy (author) and Phoebe Stone (illustrator.) (2004). In God’s Name. Jewish Lights.

Weiss, David. (2015). When God Was a Little Girl. St. Mary’s Press.

Other:

Christianity Today: “A New Lectionary that Centers Women” 

Catholic News Agency: “Even More God is our Mother” 

Christian Feminism Today: “My Life Was Transformed by a Children’s Book: Heart Talks with Mother God”

Rev. Jacquie Lewis: “She Is Love”

Richard Rohr: “God Is Our True Mother” 

TheoEd Talk by Dr. Wil Gafney: “Biblical Language for a God who Transcends Gender”

Washington Post: “Is God male?”

Daneen Akers is the author of Dear Mama God, a new picture book with a child’s wonder-filled prayer of gratitude addressed to God as a Mother. She’s also the author of Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, an illustrated children’s storybook about people of diverse faiths who rocked the religious boat on behalf of love and justice.