Following the selection of the first women bishops in the Church of England, support is now growing for it to rewrite its official liturgy to refer to God as female. This is no small task. According to my colleague John Bingham, calls for a full overhaul of liturgy to recognise the equal status of women have already been discussed informally at a senior level.So how would it work? In 2007, a novel called The Shack went straight to the top of The New York Times best-sellers list. Written from a Christian perspective, it is about a man who meets God face to face. It caused a storm of controversy among Christians around the world, not least because God is depicted as an African-American woman called "Papa".Yet, despite the outrage, it is a view backed up by scripture - on more than one occasion the deity of the Old and New Testaments is decidedly womanly: "As a mother comforts her child," says God, "so I will comfort you" (Isaiah 66:13).Gender assignment is simply a trick the ancient writers used to make God more understandable, for all the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) agree that God transcends gender. "God is spirit" explains the Apostle John. Muslims even say it is blasphemy to ascribe any human characteristics, including gender, to Allah.But these gender-neutral references are a fart against thunder compared with the vast number of times that men have fashioned God in their own image - as "Father" and as "Lord".Ask anyone to draw a picture of God and what do you get? An old man in the sky.I have wondered recently whether this is one of the (many) reasons that traditional forms of religion are declining so drastically in the UK. The idea of paying homage to "Him", the great patriarch, just does not sit well with modern sensibilities.The notion put forward by some religious people, that men and women are different and designed by God to fulfil the tasks that the other cannot, is radically questioned by our increasing knowledge of genetics.The fact that some people are born with a mixture of male and female chromosomes presents a huge challenge to a traditional binary understanding of gender.This development in society's attitudes has led many liberal-minded people of faith to introduce gender-neutral versions of scripture. The Torah, the Bible and the Koran have all been translated to be more inclusive - some simply replace words such as "mankind" with "humanity", others go further so that the divine being is only ever known by titles such as God and Spirit, never Him or He.Admittedly, this can make for rather tortuous reading - "God wraps Godself in light as with a garment" (Psalm 104:2) does not exactly roll off the tongue.I confess it feels quite peculiar, and sometimes impersonal, but perhaps this inaccessibility is simply due to lack of practice. The more time we invest in using a more inclusive language for God, the more it will begin to take on the intimacy we seek. And perhaps in generations to come, children will not be drawing an old man in the sky, nor a woman, but something we have not even imagined yet. ..