"As the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God," says Psalm 123. "I am like a weaned child with its mother," echoes Psalm 131, of David's contentment with God.

If these Psalms had been written today, their authors would likely be sprawled out across the Daily Mail's frontpage. "Now even God could be going gender neutral," its headline cried out yesterday. "The Church of England is considering whether God is an enbyA non-binary gender identity. ," another site responded.

The backlash came as bishops announced that a project will be launched to review the use of gendered pronouns in Church of EnglandThe main or official church in England, also known as the Anglican Church. The supreme head of the church is the monarch. services. The outcome may be that priests will no longer be allowed to refer to God with the masculine pronouns "He" and "Him" in some services.

This would signal a radical break from centuries-old tradition, but would have to be approved by the entire General Synod - the Church's governing body - and is likely to come up against keen opposition from traditionalists.

But its supporters are equally passionate. The group Women and the Church stated that "we believe that a theological misreading of God as exclusively male is a driver of much continuing discrimination and sexism against women".

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Church of England pointed out that Christians have long acknowledged that God is "neither male nor female" and transcends gender altogether. Scottish denominations have already moved away from using masculine pronouns to refer to God.

But if God transcends gender, why can't He be a She? Female Gods have been considered hereticalAn opinion against established or usual beliefs, especially relating to religion. for centuries. In the 20th Century, feminists argued ardently that the use of masculine pronouns to describe deities was a patriarchal hangover - as per feminist theologian Mary Daly, who famously proclaimed in 1973 "if God is male, then male is God".

In fact, archaeologists consider that God was a woman for the first 200,000 years of humanity's existence. Worship of female deities can be traced back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages, where the very earliest evidence of religion shows widespread belief in a supreme Goddess.¹

In the ancient world, worship of a supreme female Creator spanned across Egypt, Crete, Ethiopia, India, Libya, Babylon, Anatolia, Ireland, Israel and MesopotamiaA historical region of the Middle East, mostly centred on modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Syria and Turkey. The name "Mesopotamia" in Greek means "between rivers" because of the Tigris and Euphrates that run through it.. The demise of the female God came around 1500BC, when Indo-European invaders conquered indigenous cultures and brought patriarchal and monotheisticBelieving that there is only one God. ideas with them.

Some think it is about time we brought the divine feminine back. But others claim the more inclusive and accurate option is gender neutrality - and inclusivity is increasingly important for the Church, which issued an apology last month for its historic exclusion of the LGBTQ+ community.²

Cynics claim that the debate around God's pronouns is merely a flagship designed at bringing young people into the Church's rapidly-declining congregations. "God [...] has made clear what his preferred pronouns are," stated one rector. "I just don't think we should be misgendering [Him]."

Yes: A female God has been worshipped even longer than a male God, so maybe it is time to return to some of humanity's oldest traditions. Besides, in the Bible God is often referred to using feminine imagery.

No: Regardless of how you feel about God's default pronouns being masculine, God does not have a gender and is incapable of "being a woman". And Jesus tells his followers to worship the Father, not the Mother.

Or... We should use gender-neutral pronouns for God to acknowledge the fact that a supreme deity does not belong to the gender binaryThe classification of gender into two distinct and separate categories: male and female. . But in other ways, we need to do as much as we can to remove patriarchy from organised religion, so that women can be equal in the eyes of the Church.