The singer’s new music video is far from the first example of the maker being imagined in non-masculine terms
Bạn đang xem: Ariana grande god is a woman eau de parfum
On Friday, Ariana Grande released God is a Woman, the third track previewed from her forthcoming album Sweetener. The music clip features a feminist reimagining of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, starring Grande as God.
There’s also a memorable cameo halfway through the video clip when Madonna’s disembodied voice appears, like the voice of God, reciting a gender-flipped version Samuel L Jackson’s Ezekiel 25:17 speech from Pulp Fiction: “I will strike down upon thee, with great vengeance & furious anger, those who attempt khổng lồ poison & destroy my sisters, & you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon you.”
God is a Woman has a lot of Grande fans singing “Hallelujah!”. However referring khổng lồ the Christian God in female rather than male terms has long been considered by many lớn be borderline blasphemous. God is still very much gendered male in religious discourse and most versions of the Bible. The Catechism of the Catholic church pretty much says it all with the proclamation “God is neither man nor woman: he is God”. Grande’s song, then, is sure lớn touch a misogynist nerve.
Alanis Morissette as God in the 1999 film Dogma. Photograph: HandoutWhile some may consider Grande referring khổng lồ God in female terms to lớn be a heresy, it’s one with a very long history, và one that hasn’t always been controversial. St Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109, talked of “Christ, my mother”, for example. Và in her 14th-century Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich, a medieval mystic, says: “Just as God is our father, so God is also our mother.”
While history is peppered with occasional references to lớn God as a woman, there has been more of a concerted effort in recent years lớn ensure religious language is more inclusive. In 2015, for example, a group of female bishops within the Church of England campaigned for more “expansive language và imagery about God” that would encompass feminine pronouns. The Rev Emma Percy, the chaplain of Trinity College Oxford và a thành viên of Women & the Church (Watch), a group that successfully campaigned for the ordination of female bishops, said that using more inclusive language khổng lồ describe God would help dispel “the notion that God is some kind of old man in the sky”.
We’re also seeing more và more instances of God as a woman in popular culture including Lars von Trier’s 1996 movie Breaking the Waves and Kevin Smith’s 1999 film Dogma.
Xem thêm: Top 14 Cách Nhiệt Chống Nóng Tường Nhà Hướng Tây Hiệu Quả, Chống Nóng Cho Nhà Hướng Tây
This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies & other technologies. Khổng lồ view this content, click "Allow and continue".
If portraying God as a woman upsets some people, portraying the Lord as a đen woman, as she is in the 2011 romcom A Little Bit of Heaven (she is played by Whoopi Goldberg) and The Shack, a 2017 Christian drama based on a 2007 book of the same name, sends religious racists into a conniption fit. Joe Schimmel, a California pastor and host of the documentary Hollywood’s War on God, for example, told Christian News Network that The Shack’s “pretentious caricature of God as a heavy set, cushy, non-judgmental, African American woman called ‘Papa’ ... And his depiction of the Holy Spirit as a frail Asian woman with the Hindu name, Sarayu, lends itself to lớn a dangerous and false image of God & idolatry.”
Nevertheless, despite the predictable criticism, plenty of people are persisting in trying to lớn overturn the idea that God is an old, white man. Last year, for example, Harmonia Rosales, an artist from Chicago, painted a version of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, reimagining both God và the first man as black women – & it went viral.
Rosales explained khổng lồ the Guardian that she made God a woman in the painting because, first of all, it just makes sense: “We all come from the womb.” Also, she says, “I made it a black woman because there are so many images as white male figures in power”. Rosales wanted to both illuminate và challenge the way we’re conditioned to lớn think about who gets elevated in culture và show đen women, “who are least represented as powerful & godly in any kind of way”, in an empowering light.