Gender and Religion - Gender of Deities

Gender of Deities

The earliest documented religions, and some contemporary animist religions, involve deification of characteristics of the natural world. These spirits are typically, but not always, gendered. It has been proposed, since the 19th century, that polytheism arose out of animism, as religious epic provided personalities to autochthonous animist spirits in various parts of the world, notably in the development of ancient near eastern and Indo-European literature. Polytheistic gods are also typically gendered. The earliest evidence of monotheism is the worship of the goddess Eurynome, Aten in Egypt, the teaching of Moses in the Hebrew Bible and Zoroastrianism in Persia. Aten, Yahweh and Ahura Mazda are all masculine deities, embodied only in metaphor, so masculine rather than reproductively male.

Some scholars suggest that ancient religious Goddesses have been reinterpreted to follow specific gender roles. For example, the Nordic goddess Freya first represented war and love, but after centuries, she was transformed into only representing love and a sexual behaviour. The Hindu goddess Kali is interesting because she breaks the typical gendered role of women representing love, sex, fertility and beauty because she is simultaneously the goddess of the life cycle as well as destructive war. An example of the typical female goddess is Aphrodite, who is shown as vain, simple, and beautiful.

Various 19th century scholars of comparative religion proposed that prehistoric animism worshipped nature viewed predominantly as matriarchal religion, a feature notable also within neopaganism. However, anthropological research of the early 20th century, among many pre-literate cultures, established a consensus against this theory.

In Christianity, one entity of the Trinity, the Son, is believed to have become incarnate as a human male. Christians believe that the other two entities in the Trinity, the Father and the Holy Spirit, have never been incarnated, hence having masculine gender rather than male sex. Islam, on the other hand, has a tradition that the name Allah, like its referent, can be allocated neither grammatical nor natural gender. Masculine pronouns for Allah in the Qur'an are interpreted as generic.

The gender or genderlessness of God is a controversial issue in many monotheistic and some henotheistic religions. While God has traditionally been portrayed as a masculine figure, this deity is also called Mother, and there has been an increasing view that God is synonymous with mother nature, and is feminine.