Should We Use Male Pronouns For God--Or When Referring To Both Women and Men?

Here is the poster my daughter made to show the results of her seventh grade science fair project many years ago.

There's been a significant increase in the use of inclusive language when referring to people in general, as in choosing terms like " human" or "humankind" rather than "man" or "mankind." And many have come to avoid or limit using male pronouns for God in order to not give the impression that God is somehow a masculine being, and in light of both male and female humans being created in God's very image and likeness, according to the Genesis account.

Norms for how we use and understand language are always changing, of course, which is why we no longer use terms like "thee," "thou" or "thy," but is our use of terms and choice of masculine, feminine or generic pronouns really that important? Doesn't everyone understand that referring to "brothers," "he" or "him" when addressing a group of people isn't at all meant to exclude or ignore women?

I'm not an authority on grammar, but I recently ran across an interesting science fair project my daughter did back when she was a seventh grader. She prepared two general descriptions of qualities of an effective teacher, identical except the one used the generic plural pronouns "they" and "them" throughout and the other used male pronouns like "he" or "him" in exactly the same description. She then gave one group of seventh graders the first statement and another the second, and had each visualize this imaginary teacher, write a brief description of their own, and assign a name to the real or imaginary person who came to their mind.

The result was that all but one of the students in the first group chose a male name while in the second group 46% chose male names and 54% female ones.

Even though she didn't win a prize for her exhibit, I was impressed. But I'll let you each draw your own conclusions about the results.