Ok, so in the past I’ve mentioned my religious ancestry a couple of times — the missionaries, the street preachers, the circuit-riding preachers, and the great-grandfather who helped found Christian Fundamentalism. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the inviolate morning ritual where after breakfast at my grandparents where everyone who could read even a little bit was obliged to sit together around the breakfast table reading in turn from the Bible. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that the roots of my liberal/progressivism come from lessons I learned in Sunday schools and vacation Bible school — lessons about forgiveness, about charity, about tolerance, about equality, and especially about the significance of every living human being and the importance of discounting no one. I’ve mentioned how shocked I am that modern conservative “Christians” appear to want to outright repeal of the Sermon on the Mount (the “blessed are the meek” one) and the Sermon at Gethsemane (the “hypocrites” one) and pretty much everything else I ever learned were the point of being religious.

Point being that while I, um, grew away from my religious upbringing I’m still pretty informed by it. And pretty familiar with it.

So a couple of minutes ago two conservative-missionary-looking young women rang my doorbell. And because I was raised to be polite even to obnoxious strangers I started composing a polite way to wish them luck with whoever they talked to next.

But then they said something that I really, completely, absolutely hadn’t expected: they were enrolled in a nearby seminary and were learning to spread the word about God the Mother.

God the Mother?

And I thought, woah, maybe they’re from one of the other Goddess-worshiping groups that go around. But no, they’re Christian all right, right down to the well-thumbed and highlighted NKJV Bibles. But they were still talking about God the Mother and citing chapter and verse in all the familiar ways with the difference being how if you want to get to Heaven you needed to understand that there’s a God the Mother.

I don’t buy it. Not anymore than I would any other doorbelling missionaries. And I have to say that based on what it actually says in the old and new testaments they’re really grasping at straws.

But no more so than anyone else trying to dig interpretations out of the world’s most Rorschach-ian tome.

After about 15 minutes I thanked them politely, and wished them luck with whoever they talked to next.

But wow.

Just wow.

They were dead earnest. They weren’t fooling. They weren’t particularly feminist in any of the meaningful senses of the word. They certainly seemed comfortable with the rest of patriarchal thinking — for instance I didn’t get any traction when I asked about some of the classic bugaboos of feminist theology. They didn’t sound like they’d heard of any of it nor did they seem at all interested.

But they’re convinced, using chapter and verse, that Jesus had a heavenly mother, and that the Book of Revelations says when he comes back he’ll come back with an equally-divine “bride.” And that if you don’t believe in these mothers and brides as much as you believe in the more traditional fathers and sons you won’t go to heaven.

Which, if true, would be an extremely rude shock to all my myriad, utterly Patriarchal ancestors. And the other roughly 99.99999% of Christianity through the ages.

Still, I’m willing to bet their denomination (I think they might have roots in a Korean branch of the Church of God?) wouldn’t be opposed to the ordination of women priests the way, say, Catholics are (assuming they even have priests, which Protestants usually don’t.) Nor might they be so dead set on women staying home barefoot, pregnant, ignorant, and utterly dependent on their “lord and master” husbands the way, say, the Southern Baptist Convention is. Or maybe they do, I dunno, but at least they let women go proselytizing independently, which I only remember seeing Seventh Day Adventists do.

Not much else to say about them except maybe they call themselves Elohims based on a plural, multi-gender ending on one of the original Hebrew words for God.

Anyone else ever heard of this?

Not much else to