Posted on 06/12/2018 11:40:41 AM PDT by Gamecock
The Minnesota Conference of the United Methodist Church has removed the term, ‘Father,’ from the Apostle’s Creed in an attempt to be more gender inclusive to God.
The ancient creed of the Christian Church reads:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.
However, United Methodists in the Minnesota Conference decided that referring to God as “Father” wasn’t inclusive enough for the 21st century United Methodist Church. At the conference, held May 30 through June 1, conference organizers omitted reference to God the Father. Instead, they changed the phrase “God the Father Almighty” to “God the Creator Almighty.” The creed passed out to attendees also removed the phrase, “Jesus Christ, His only Son” to “Jesus Christ, God’s only Son.”
One attendee, Keith Mcilwain, posted a screenshot of their newly revised creed via social media:
McIlwain is currently the pastor of Slippery Rock United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania. Mcilwain said, “No United Methodist individual or body has the authority to edit those creeds which were formulated by the early Church and have helped define orthodox Christianity for the better part of 2000 years.”
The United Methodist Church has repeatedly become more egalitarian in the early twenty-first and latter twentieth century, beginning with the ordaining of female clergy with full ordination rights in 1956. The roots of the egalitarian movement among Methodists began, however, with the 18th century female preacher, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, convincing John Wesley that some women should be given limited preaching abilities. In most recent days, the United Methodist Church has been drained of male clergy, with more than 10,300 female clergy members nationwide.
A United Methodist Church website provides a blog explaining the concept behind removing the “Father” understanding of God (taught by Jesus and the rest of Scripture). In the following quotiation, their use of the term, “God language,” means language used by people to refer to God:
Leaders need to establish the ground rules: Everybody’s God language is appropriate. People’s God language signifies a relationship that you can’t interfere with. You can raise questions and offer additional perspectives, but you can’t dictate. You can’t prohibit anybody from using any language about God. Whether they want to call God “Jehovah” or “Big Dog,” you can’t judge the validity of how that name connects them with God. People just need to get used to that.
Pastors and other leaders should give attention to teaching people what the church’s traditional images mean and what they don’t mean. For instance, the “fatherhood” of God is about relationship, not biology. Our people won’t know how to reflect theologically about these things — instead of just reacting emotionally — unless we give them the tools.
Pastors and other worship leaders should expose people to a variety of images of God, both familiar and new, both comforting and provocative. People should regularly hear God referred to in public worship with images that are male, female, and gender neutral. In a worship service the choir may sing an anthem with thickly sexist, male-dominated language, while the prayers are full of feminine imagery. People can sing their own words, with their personal substitutions, if they wish. People should be encouraged to take responsibility for their own faith.
In the meantime, Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father, who art in Heaven…”
My congregation hasn’t adopted this, nor will they.
I'm not seeing many referring to Him solely as Creator. The arrow to scroll to each next page is at the bottom on the right, in a darker gray stripe above the red stripe:
So, when Paul the Apostle referred to “traditions” received from Paul in 2 Thessalonians 3:6, where they 140 years old, or a much shorter period of time?
A better translation for ‘traditions’ in that passage is ‘teaching’.
2 Peter 3:16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Interesting. I don’t doubt you, but do you have a source for that? I like it for future reference.
This page has a collection of different translations. Most say tradition. I think this is more a following of a ‘traditional’ King James translation than anything else. But you will see the use of the words command, teaching and instruction any which I think is more proper considering that Christian teaching was only a few decades old.
You can find commentary that explains that 2 Thessalonians 3:6 speaks to Paul’s previous letter that had spoken against idleness and disruptive individuals and so here wrote more forcefully and the ‘traditions’ is a reference to the previous ‘teaching’ after the words in the previous letter went unheeded.
No wonder the Methodist Church on my mother’s street got down to a congregation of 13 and then closed.
Thanks!
In a broad sense, perhaps. The correct sense for paradoses is "oral precepts" that are given face-to-face in discipling. When inspired sayings these become codified by writing them down, they become effective to the reader as God-given scripture.
Strong's G3862; see 1 Thess. 2:15 as used here. Occurs 12 times in the NT overall context.
The internet has a wealth of information you could have a great time researching it.
I know about them - problem is the interpretation from the old written parchments and how scribes had reinterpreted what those parchments said. Question: Who is the Word, the Logos?
Question: Who is the Logos? Who was talking from the burning bush? Who said “let there be light”?
“
Yes, but - what is the interpretation behind that word (pater)?
God. The Blessed Trinity.
Question: Who is the I Am?
The “I AM”? God.
There is only one God. The Blessed Trinity.
So then Yeshua is God since He said he was the I Am when questioned.
And because He said "the Father and I are One."
God must have been wrong and a terrible bigot to refer to Himself as masculine. Not to mention that Jesus calls the Father Father... someone needs to straighten God out and tell Him to get with the times.......
Do I really need a /s
I highly doubt God is amused
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