God/ess as Cultural Diversity Advocate…
February 19, 2005
Genesis 11.1-9, the story of the Tower of Babel. A story of pride and punishment. A story of a people who wanted to be like God, and so built a huge tower, reaching high into the heavens, trying to bridge the gap between Heaven and earth. A people whose natures were so tainted from the original sin of Adam & Eve in the garden that they thought they too could attempt to become like God. And so they built the tower…a simple and evident symbol of their pride. And God comes to earth, and punishes them by creating different languages and scattering them all over the earth. This is their punishment…
…or was it?
For my Sin & Salvation course, we read an article by Ted Hiebert entitled Cultural Diversity: Punishment or Plan? (you can read the .pdf here). Hiebert writes:
"According to this alternative approach, the story is not about pride and punishment at all. Rather, it is about one culture and many cultures. It describes the human inclination to create a single culture with a single language in a single place coming into conflict with God’s plan to create a world of many cultures with many languages in many places. The cultural diversity with which the story ends, and which the story was in fact told to explain, is thus presented not as a punishment on the human race for their sin or pride, but as the way God intended the world to look in the age following the great flood, the age in which the story teller, the Yahwist, and we, his most recent audience, both live."
It was interesting to take a look at specific verses in Gen 11 and see whether it was clear that they promoted the more traditional understanding of the text, or this new alternative reading. I think both have fairly good support from Scripture, but I am leaning toward this newer interpretation. In the alternative reading, the sin of the LORD’s people is homogeny - the attempt to stay together, to stay the ’same’ to keep one united language, etc. Whereas it appears that God truly desires diversity, God desires difference. What does everyone think? Do we lose anything in this new interpretation? What do we gain?
**The God/ess in the title is Rosemary Radford Ruether’s take on how we should "name" God. In a reaction against the patriarchal use of God the Father, and against a total swing back the other way to only call God Mother, Ruether finds that God/ess is the way that works best for her to name God.
Posted in Theology
Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
February 19th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
Well, I like your reading of the Tower of Babel story…I don’t see why it isn’t a possible interpretation of the text (though there are certainly grounds for the traditional reading).
But about this “God/ess” business I’m not so sure. You know me — I read Ruether as charitably as the next wo(man), but I’m not so sure about talking about an androgynous Deity. Ruether’s project is rooted in a concern against the patriarchal, a project that is completely justified, but her reference to God as both male and female seems to me self-defeating.
God is not male, nor is God female.
The reference to Deity as God/ess makes God’s sexuality an explicit attribute, whereas the term “God” or “G-d” does not convey any sexuality at all. I prefer to speak of God with metaphor and simile, but in my opinion (which, admittedly, is still in infantile stages of development), I prefer to keep calling God “God.”
[There's a fairly strong argument against God/ess language provided by Charles Talbert, "The Church and Inclusive Language for God?" (Perspectives in Religious Studies, 19): 421-439.]
February 19th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
Bob Jone University likes Hiebert’s interpretation as well. Until quite recently, it served as a justification for banning inter-racial dating.
February 19th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Goddess language can be all part of the patriarchy, too. Just ask the Greeks.
February 20th, 2005 at 12:07 am
eh, this strikes me as an interesting, yet not very accurate way to read this story. the whole story of Genesis 1-11 is that things fall apart, people are divided, and sub-divided, not in the name of cultural diversity, but because they war against one another, plot against one another. the church is the reconstituting of creation in a way that globalization and cultural diversity attempt, but do not realize, by either minimizing or maximizing difference alternately.
as for reuther’s god/ess, i’m with anastasia. gender can be its own “patriarchy”, feminine or masculine. i just got back from the Vagina Monologues, and while some of it was great, some of it was emphasizing the non-necessity of males, which if you’re looking to reunify the genders in a healthy way, isn’t the most productive tack to take.
February 20th, 2005 at 12:19 am
That’s precisely what I meant to say with my post. That Godess worship does not guarantee matriarchal or egalitarian society was the lynchpin of Talbert’s argument, which I referenced, against making God’s sexual personhood THE issue.
February 20th, 2005 at 8:31 am
I like Hiebert’s interpretation. I know there is support for the traditional reading as well, and probably for other readings we haven’t seen yet, but I think this is an important reading of the text to hear today in the midst of our attempts at Western culture hegemony. The McDonaldization and Wal-Mart-ization of the world and of our country is dangerous - we stand to lose a lot by trying to make everyone look like us. And yet, there is this huge fear that if they are not like us we will not be able to control them or predict how they will treat us. At any rate . . .
Out of curiousity, what happens to the people’s attempt to build a tower in this new interpretation - how does Hiebert make sense of that?
I also am not a fan of Ruether’s God/ess language. All I see when that is typed out is Godess. I would rather either use all neutral language or be equal in using gendered language (my preference because we lose a relational quality to God when we are unable to refer to God as male or female).
February 20th, 2005 at 5:24 pm
While diversity is surely a good thing, I tend to view this story neither from a pride/punishment, nor from a diversity-for-diversity’s-sake standpoint.
Diversity in and of itself is not the magic potion we have been led to believe. Rather, the god-figure in this story clearly states that the reason that lingual confusion was necessary was to counteract the real threat that through the synergy of a homogenous culture, man decides he no longer needs a god. God knows that man cannot survive alone, but the struggle of the ages has been to convince man of said need.
February 20th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
While I’m open to thinking differently about this passage, I guess my concern is how it would deal with verse 4, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
August 5th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Well, Go-o-d. God/ess was my idea a minute gone, and i find you all 3 years ahead. GREAT. I’d go to the party naked, as “G” made me ??
God (Ess) name is noBody.
As in “Nobody Knows.” Of COURSE “IT” does!!! K-no-(w)-Body IS omniscient and omni-present. “nowHere” eternally. Blessed Be, B.