Each day before meals or bed, my 5-year-old son, when called upon to pray, recites a simple prayer he learned during a short-lived stint at an Evangelical preschool:

God our Father … God our Father …

The prayer is simple and short, and every time I hear him pray it, I am simultaneously so grateful that my 5-year-old knows how to pray, and also chiding myself that I should teach him that God is not exclusively male.

Such are the complications of an over-studied faith life.

Whatever my own misgivings about how popular culture continues to depict God, the truth is that God as Father remains the most predominant motif for God in American Christianity - and beyond. Many a camp counselor or worship leader has begun a prayer in this way: Father God … we just …

Almost every Sunday, church leaders across America begin worship with an invocation: in the name of the Father …

I wonder this year, as Father’s Day 2021 emerges out of the shadow of a global pandemic and national unrest, reckoning with racism and ongoing sexual abuse crises in the American church, if we should begin not by dismantling the language or gender of the Trinity itself but simply by reclaiming what it means that the masculinity of God is defined by the relational role of Father, and not by the cowboy, gun-toting masculinity popularized by many an American Christian leader or politician.

I’ve been thinking about this idea this week as Father’s Day approaches, because I’ve noticed a certain discrepancy in how the American Church approaches Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Each year that I’ve spent in pastoral ministry, coming up on 10, I’ve been inundated by a horde of think-pieces and conversations about how the church ought to approach the secular holiday of Mother’s Day.

Some churches overdo: with chrysanthemums and applause and photo booths; other churches decide not to mention mothers at all. There is important and needed conversation about approaching Mother’s Day in church for all women: those struggling with infertility, those who are childless by choice; those who have recently lost their mothers; those who have a complicated or difficult relationship with their mothers.

As a mom myself, almost coming up on 10 years as well, even I found it a little bit exhausting. There didn’t seem to be a right way to do Mother’s Day in the church. Every approach seemed over-studied and under-practiced. I did my best to pray an inclusive prayer this year and left it at that.

Now, it is just a few days before Father’s Day, and I’ve heard almost nothing about how churches and church leaders plan to address Father’s Day in the church, save for perhaps singing Chris Tomlin’s Good, Good Father, if your worship is led by guitars; or Faith of Our Fathers; if you rely on an organ. There is no hand-wringing about honoring fathers but leaving out men who aren’t dads, by circumstance or by choice. There is no exchange of prayers and litanies, or discussions about how much or how little to honor dads on Father’s Day. 

What little conversation there is about Father’s Day too often seems limited to beer and barbecue, if the cards I saw at Trader Joe’s are any indication. And this in itself is a sad commentary, for the ways it isolates and ignores the reality of alcoholism among American dads and families.

This vast discrepancy between over-conversation in the church regarding Mother’s Day and utter silence on Father’s Day reveals to me the very different ways that men and women have their identity constructed in much of American Christianity and American culture in general.

Women are almost always identified relationally: by our roles and relationships to others. We are valued for being kind, considerate, communicative and cooperative. In the church, we are too often viewed as analogous to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Motherhood has been called a Christian woman’s greatest calling, which does a great disservice to the broad and long history of female prophets, preachers and teachers, many of whom were never married.

For American Christian men, on the other hand, identity is constructed individually. The cult of rugged individualism does its greatest disservice to American men, who are encouraged to aspire to be the “strong, silent type.” After all, “there’s no crying in baseball.” The ideal American man needs nothing but his muscles, his pick-up truck, and his guns. If he is defined relationally, it is of a hierarchical sort, where he is the head of his wife and his children and his house, rather than coexisting in a symbiotic relationship.

Here’s where we must consider God the Father, however.

The idea that the Christian God has always been defined only in relationship strikes a mortal wound to the idea that the ideal Christian man must be an island, entire of himself.

After all, defining God predominately as God the Father means that the God who Christians worship is defined by God’s relationships, and as such, can exist only in relationship to God the Son and God the Holy Spirit: God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

What does this all have to do with Father’s Day in the church? Well, I’m not suggesting pinning flowers to the breast of each man in attendance, though it might be a fun idea and a good photo op. Instead, what I am suggesting first for American churches and church leaders is to simply imagine the transformative power of a witness for American masculinity that is rooted in relationship and family. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11 notwithstanding (and these words in context depict a familial mutuality rather than hierarchical headship), the Biblical view of fatherhood is one of quiet gentleness, forgiveness, and strength rooted in what often appears to be weakness.

This Father’s Day, if you think about or pray about or preach about fatherhood in your church, I encourage you to wonder about how differently Americans might view God if we constructed an image of God based on the father of the Prodigal Son, one of Jesus’ most powerful parables.

This father gave freely to his son what he had not earned, and then after his son abandoned him and his work, when the son returned to his father, contrite and penniless, his father did not kick him when he was down, demand restitution with interest, or spew hateful words about freeloaders and those who do not work hard enough. Instead, this gentle, forgiving, and relational father instantly forgives his son, and throws him a welcome party. Because more important than his money or his honor, this father, acting in the image of God the Father, valued love, and the dignity of each individual human life in relationship to his own.