The Holy Spirit, She

We sang a setting of the hymn "Come Down, O Love Divine" (also in The United Methodist Hymnal, no. 475) in my Nashville church choir last Sunday, Pentecost Day 2004. The closing line of the choral arrangement, "wherein the Holy Spirit makes its dwelling," differs from the hymnal's "wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling." [Emphasis added.] It caused me to once again consider the issue of gender in referring to God — particularly the Holy Spirit — and the problems posed for hymn writers and hymnal editors.

The church has long been comfortable with referring to God in mostly male terms, and is increasingly using feminine images and metaphors, even pronouns. Our hymnal and Book of Worship are filled with examples of this. But this is not the case with the Holy Spirit, which is most often seen as a genderless, incorporeal spirit. That is why we so often use images like wind, breath, and fire to refer to the Holy Spirit. However, the demands and conventions of most languages, including English, require us to use pronouns. In most languages these pronouns also carry gender identity — he, she — or gender neutrality — it. These are all that are available to us, other than their plural form — they.

So, what is a hymn writer or hymnal editor to do in pronoun selection when referring to the Holy Spirit? In our choral anthem, we sang "its dwelling," while the hymnal uses "a dwelling." Both sources seemingly sought to avoid the use of his or her and the gender that these words bring. The Holy Spirit, after all, is neither male nor female. But is the Holy Spirit ever an "it"? Is it ever proper to refer to God in any form as "it"? It seems clear to me that God is always personal, never impersonal. Yet our language forces us to choose between a gendered Spirit or an impersonal Spirit.

Writers have taken different paths out of the dilemma. "Spirit of God," by Steve Garmaas-Holmes, no. 2117 in The Faith We Sing, is an example of one solution. The author skillfully presents five stanzas that avoid all references to gender by speaking directly to God the Spirit as "you" and "your." Gordon Light, author of "She Comes Sailing on the Wind," no. 2122 in The Faith We Sing, chooses another path that unapologetically trumpets the use of feminine pronouns to refer to the Spirit. I confess my preference for both of these solutions over the use of the depersonalized "it" in our choir anthem. I further prefer the use of both male and female pronouns to refer to the Spirit over any badly written text that has been mangled simply to avoid use of gendered pronouns. Interestingly, some non-English speakers don't have the problem we do with divine gender. French, for instance, always refers to the Holy Spirit with the feminine form of the article and pronoun.

They seem like such a small thing, those little two- and three-letter pronouns. Yet the theological, political, and social implications they bring to the act of singing a hymn or anthem or reading a scripture text are so huge that we continue to disagree over how, when, or whether to use them.