Spirited Book Club: Mary J. Streufert's Language for God

Join author Mary J. Streufert for a Spirited Book Club discussion of her book, Language for God: A Lutheran Perspective. Discussion of the January book selection is Thursday, 1/5/2023 at 2pm MST, 1pm PST, and is facilitated by Sheri Brown. Register to receive Zoom link.

Language for God draws readers into the necessity of language and images for God that are expansive and inclusive of all genders. Using Lutheran perspectives as a compass, Mary J. Streufert offers scriptural, theological, and historical insights that advance Christianity’s ongoing reformation of androcentric images and language for God.

This book is for those who are unsure of why language and images for God matter; those who need assurance that language and images for God include all genders, including people who identify as queer; and those who want language for God to be faithful to the Scriptures and to the witness of the Christian theological tradition. It is also for people who need convincing that God is Mother as much as Father, pregnant Christ as much as crucified Christ, and Godhead beyond all gendered appellations.

Language for God is pastoral in that it explores the deeply personal, communal, and social ways language and images influence who we are and how we live. It takes seriously the hunger for more—for God beyond the Father. This book is also intellectual in that it challenges contemporary arguments for Father and Son as exclusive names for the first two persons of the Trinity by exploring historical developments in the ways people define sex, gender, and sexuality. Without a rigorous assessment of how these views affect Christianity, Christian language and images for God will remain androcentric. Insights from the Reformation, most pointedly from Martin Luther and the Lutheran tradition, offer points on a compass toward the reformation of Christian language and images for God in our day.

Dr. Mary J. Streufert serves as director for Gender Justice and Women’s Empowerment in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Teaching and facilitating widely, she works to empower a variety of leaders to think and act theologically for gender justice from an intersectional perspective. Streufert also directs a donor-funded initiative, ELCA Quality of Call for Women in Ministry. She co-directed the seven year process to develop the ELCA’s social statement Faith, Sexism, and Justice: A Call to Action (2019), which shapes teaching, programming, and policies within the church. More about Dr. Streufert.