I don’t respect God’s pronouns, but maybe I should?
Growing up, I was taught the pronouns of God are He/Him, and are always capitalized, at least by Christians, by people who believe. This is called reverential capitalization, and it’s not as old as I was led to think, only dating back to the 19th century. The King James Bible, which I consider the gold standard English translation, doesn’t capitalize God’s pronouns; I never noticed that before.
I still use he/him when talking about Christian God, even though I believe he has to be every gender to have made all of humanity in his image. As you can see from the previous sentence, though, I don’t usually capitalize the pronouns. I capitalize God, because we’re talking about a name, a proper noun. But I use lowercase g to talk about other gods, such as Thor or Aphrodite. And I wouldn’t capitalize Thor’s pronouns, that’s why I don’t feel like capitalizing monotheistic God’s pronouns. I want to be consistent across religions, not give one special treatment, even if it is the one I now believe in.
This is one of the things I am open to changing, though. I update my vocabulary pretty often as times change and meanings and connotations evolve. And I am fairly new to Christianity, so it could be something I just don’t understand yet.
I think I might go in a different direction and start using capital They/Them pronouns for God instead, though. What do you think? As in, “God has to be every gender because They created all of humanity in Their image.” I kind of like it.