As the father of two girls (now also grandfather of three), I have cringed listening to some preachers and teachers in the church make perfectly good points while using solely male pronouns during their exposition…

There are, indeed, “hidden figures” in our language, and the church is diminished because of it…

It is entirely possible that the dominant use of male gender pronouns in churches is inadvertent; it is just the type of language we use in every other setting.

That does not mean, however, that it is without spiritual effect or not worth our efforts to change. What do the girls who are listening hear about their importance in the life of the body of Christ when their pastor never presents generic portraits of believers as “she” and only as “he”? How much are they weighed down by a lifetime of accumulated losses of appropriate recognition, by being consistently overlooked or mis-identified? Again, many males are completely clueless about this concept because they have been in the congregational mainstream since their birth…

The remedy for this must be mixed, as usual, with love…

If we believe in the priesthood of all believers, we must look for ways to help our sisters in Christ elevate their voices. This involves calling their names and using female pronouns…

With our tongues we can curse or edify, degrade or uplift. We might be tempted to argue that a discussion of pronouns is simply a matter of personal choice and not something of anyone else’s business. If that’s what you find yourself thinking, I will simply leave you with Frederick Buechner’s wisdom in Wishful Thinking, “The Christian position is that there’s no such thing as your own business.”           

from “Where Are All the Women? Hidden Words and How They Affect the Church”