We have been talking throughout the semester about the gender of God and how a woman can relate to the traditional imagery of a dominant, male God. Many of us in class agreed that God does not have to be viewed as male and that metaphors can help us to relate to God. But what about the gender of Jesus? It seems that many different churches and denominations, many of which have a difficult time seeing God as non-male, would have extreme difficulties claiming that Jesus was not male.

In the Bible, Jesus is continuously refered to as the male "Son of God." However, many feminist theologians have begun to have difficutly with this association. In Kelly Brown Doublas' article "A Womanist Approach to the Black Christ" she (much like McFague) claims that no one symbol or icon can capture the essence of the meaning of the divine. She and McFague agree that symbols must change with the times in order to be applicable. This theory is echoed in Rosemary Radford Ruether's "Can A Male Savior Save Women?". For me, it was extremely easy to remove God from all gender labels and apply metaphors to God such as mother, lover, friend, and nature. When it comes to Jesus however, this becomes much more difficult. Because Jesus was and is considered to be completely divine AND completely human, it is hard to remove Jesus from the gender barrier. Jesus had a tangible, earthly body.

For me, in order to have a relationship with the divine I need a concrete image to relate to. This image is not always one of a male. Before this class, I never really questioned the gender or sexuality of Jesus. Now, I have started to look at Jesus as androgynous in an attempt to find a way to make Jesus more relatable.