Putting aside the critics for a moment, the change in the UCC constitution raises an important theological issue that mainline churches have been wrestling with for some fifty years. How do we speak about the First Person of the Trinity? Traditionally, of course, "he" is God the "Father." In the wake of the feminist movement and the continuing almost tectonic shift in the place of women in American society, however, it has become more problematic to continue to chain the First Person of the Trinity to human male images. There is a justice issue here as well as a fundamental issue concerning how we image God. It can be argued that imaging the First Person as male is or borders on being idolatrous, that is treating God as if "he" was created in the image of a human male. The biblical doctrine is, of course, that all of us male and female are images of God and not God images of half of us, the traditionally socially dominant half at that.Now, we can come down on different sides of the question of how we image and speak of the First Person of the Trinity especially because referring to "the [genderless] First Person of the Trinity" is rather awkward. The image of God as father, furthermore, captures important facts about God and has biblical precedence. At the same time, imaging The First Person as either gender traps us into actually thinking of God as a person in the way we are persons. Indeed, even using the word "person" in English to describe the three aspects or faces of God is itself problematic. My point is that the UCC has good reason to change its constitutional reference to God, and those who disagree have good reasons for opposing the change. We could do without the demonizing rhetoric, that's all.
