Tracey got a comic zine from me at a recent comic convention. Drawn and written by Sanika Phwade — who bills herself as “an illustrator, cartoonist, and reportage artist” — it tells about a minister who has fun with the signboard outside her church. The zine opens with the words: “Pastor Jamie Washam changes the sign outside the First Baptist Church in America every week.”
According to Phwade, by putting short aphorisms on the signboard, Rev. Washam is continuing the tradition of her predecessor: “He would call it The Wayside Pulpit — that preaches a sermon to whomever is passing by. I love that! But I also like having fun with these.”
As the keeper of the Wayside Pulpit outside our meetinghouse, I was jealous when I learned that people actually talk to Washam about the things she puts in her Wayside Pulpit. But then, her Wayside Pulpit is edgier than ours is. I put up sayings like “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.” No one comments on things like that. When Washam put up the phrase, “God Is Non-Binary,” sixteen people made comments:
“I have learned that it is the same signs that evoke both positive and negative reactions in people. Fifteen have said positive things about ‘God Is Non-Binary,’ and one person said, Hey what are you thinking? And I said well, let’s sit down and read genesis together. Because the text does support that. They thought I was just popping off politically, and yes I totally picked that up from Pride Fest. But it is completely substantiated by the text.”
Genesis 1:27 does in fact say, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” That is, both male and female are created in God’s image, which implies that God is (ahem) non-binary. Oh ye of little faith who try to place limits on God, limiting him to one gender (regardless of the pronouns we humans use to describe him).
