Keven Barney's new Dialogue article is provocative enough
 

just by its title.

How to worship our mother in heaven without getting excoummunicated.

Is this article available online or something? I just got the Fall 2008 Dialogue and it's not in there.

Check again, my newest came today.

Yeah, I'll be reading this one.

Wife made me read the book The Shack, a short little popular Christian inspiriational fiction book about a man meeting God. God presents himself as a middle aged fat black woman that cooks comforting food and likes soul music. God then presented himself as a father figure at another appropriate time. A pony tailed goatee nature lover. The explanation was that the man needed a father to do what God was going to lead him to do next. I like the idea of imagining one God through both genders. I don't particulary like the borderline polytheistic doctrine of Mother in Heaven and it is more confusing spiritually to imagine a family of Gods. You don't hear much at all about Mother in Heaven anymore, and I wonder if it's going to go the direction of "we don't know much about that, we don't talk much about it". And in 100 years it will be buried along with Blood Atonement and Adam-God.

It has several interesting articles, focusing upon European membership by Mauss, Modernism and Mormons, including Talmage and McConkie and the article on worshiping a Mother in Heaven. Barney focuses upon the Asherah image from Hebrew Bible in arguing for recognition of female Deity and even worship of her.

Barney's article is well done and enjoyable.

It discusses how the Israelites were thought to be indigenous peoples to the land of Canaan, and that they were ante-reforms, a polytheistic people, worshiping Elohim, Yaweh, Asherah and Baal. That the reformers sought to eradicate Asherah, which is translated in KJV as "grove" and that the "tree of life" is an homage to the Mother Goddess. Planting a tree in Tanakh times represented a residual worship of the Mother Goddess. Fascinating.

But can you do it--worship a mother in heaven without getting excommunicated, that is?

He makes suggestions. Read the article.

He describes himself as a moderate, neither liberal nor conservative.

I don't subscribe to Dialogue, and the website tells me I can buy the article for $10. yeah, right.