Rep. Eric Swalwell says 'God herself' in interview
A Democratic congressman and House impeachment manager for the unsuccessful effort to impeach former President Donald Trump a second time suggested that God is female during an MSNBC interview over the weekend.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., spoke with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace Saturday, shortly after the Senate acquitted the former president. Swalwell complained that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had decided against voting to convict Trump regardless of the case presented by the impeachment managers, citing his claim that the United States Senate did not have the jurisdiction to try the former president now that he has left office.
"We could have called God herself and the Republicans weren't going to be willing to convict," he said. While impeachment failed to secure the support of two-thirds of the senators, which is required for conviction, seven Republicans joined all Senate Democrats in voting to convict Trump as guilty on the charge of inciting an insurrection.
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Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Bill Cassidy, R-La., Susan Collins, R-Me., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and Pat Toomey, R-Penn., were the Republicans who voted to convict Trump, who became the first president to be impeached twice and the first president to face impeachment after leaving office. The final vote was 57-43 in favor of conviction.
The website GotQuestions.org explains that "Scripture contains approximately 170 references to God as the 'Father.' By necessity, one cannot be a father unless one is male. If God had chosen to be revealed to man in female form, then the word 'mother' would have occurred in these places, not 'father.'
"[A]ll the evidence contained in scripture agrees that God revealed Himself to mankind in a male form."
This is not the first time a Democrat in the United States House of Representatives has faced criticism for assigning female pronouns to male religious figures or gender-neutral religious phrases. As the 117th Congress was sworn in last month, Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., concluded a prayer by saying "Amen and awoman" instead of simply "amen." The word "amen" simply means "so be it."
After experiencing backlash for his "amen and awoman" remark, Cleaver insisted that his use of the nonexistent word "awoman" amounted to nothing more than a "light-hearted pun in recognition of the record number of women who will be representing the American people in Congress during this term." According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, the 117th Congress consists of a record 143 women serving in the Senate and House of Representatives as voting members and non-voting delegates.
Democrats are increasingly embracing the idea that there are more than two genders and have worked to increase the use of gender-neutral terminology. The rules for the 117th Congress eliminated the use of gender-specific terms such as mother and father, son and daughter and aunt and uncle as part of a purported effort to "honor all gender identities."
The Rev. Franklin Graham, a prominent evangelist and CEO of Samaritan's Purse, argued that by pushing to eliminate gender-specific terms, the Democratic leadership in the House was "shaking a fist in the Creator's face" and "trying to deny his authority." He warned that "If those claiming the name progressive are allowed to have their way, we won't even recognize this nation in a very short time."
