The Church of Sweden which is the largest church in the country has taken the decision to stop using the masculine terms ‘Him’ or ‘Lord’ when referring to God in a bid to make God gender neutral.
The move is one of several taken by the national Evangelical Lutheran church in updating a 31-year-old handbook setting out how services should be conducted in terms of language, liturgy, hymns and other aspects.
This decision was reached after eight days of deliberations by the church’s 251-member decision-making body on Thursday and will come into play in May next year on the Christian holiday of Pentecost which is on the 20th.
The Swedish church which was formerly state-owned is headquartered in Uppsala, some 37 miles north of Stockholm with a whopping 6.1 million baptised members in a country of 10 million. It is headed by a woman, Archbishop Antje Jackelén.
Speaking on the issue, Jackelén said it had been on the table since 1986; “Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human,”
The move has of course been met with some criticism with Christer Pahlmblad, an associate theology professor at Sweden’s Lund University saying that it was a decision that was “undermining the doctrine of the Trinity and the community with the other Christian churches”
“It really isn’t smart if the Church of Sweden becomes known as a church that does not respect the common theology heritage,” he said.