"God is a boy. God is a boy's name. God is not a girl." – Michael, age 4. 

   This is what one of ten children I interviewed at a nursery years ago told me. I might have answered the same at his age when, looking around, I saw a church dominated by males.

   God is "He," not she. The Pope is male (as are Catholic priests.) The Old Testament prophets are men. The New Testament disciples are males. 

  For Jews & many others, of course, the Messiah, male or female, has never arrived. For Christians, He appeared two thousand years ago.

   Across an uneven history, Jesus's radical new message, God IS Love, has endured. The evidence shows, however, that Christianity in the western world has been losing followers for decades.

   Is it time for a new Messiah – one who brings God's Love through a spiritual descendent of Jesus? The long-sought Daughter of God? That question is posed by an exhibit planned at Vanderbilt Divinity School's Art Gallery this September.  

   As the featured artist (who proposed the topic & will give the opening talk) I will not be there to answer but to pose the questions.

   Do we need a new Messiah? What gender & race, what message, how presented?

   Would a female Messiah need to perform miracles for her message to be heard? What would be the difference, if any, in a woman's version of God's word presented in today's world?

   Do America's faith-based hospitals, offering care beneath the cross, need a new Messiah to reawaken Jesus' message of Love in an environment where money may be crushing mission?

   In what is now acknowledged to be a Post-Christian Era, can Christianity survive with Jesus as the solitary savior?

   Please let me know your thoughts.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Painting – Transfiguration, Raffaello

Photoart – "New Messiah?"- Erie Chapman (2019)