I neutered God in my family’s dinner prayer. It’s the same prayer I recited growing up as a Lutheran, but now that I’m raising two girls, I switched out the “father in heaven we thank thee” to “we thank thee.” I want my daughters to be grateful, but I don’t want to assign a gender to a God before they’re old enough to form their own conclusions about him. Or her. Or if one exists. It’s not about making a theological argument; it’s about perpetuating patriarchy in the minutest of ways when, by virtue of being girls, they’ll face enough disparities later. Plus, I had noticed I was guilty of using “he” as my de-facto pronoun. Over the coming days, I caught myself as I regularly referred to turtles, ants and bees as “he’s.” As did my eldest, who is 5.

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