A Response to Emanuel Cleaver's Prayer (Pt.1) | Amen...A-Woman?

A Response to Emanuel Cleaver’s Prayer

On January 3, 2021, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, Representative of the 5th District of Missouri, concluded his invocation for the 117th United States Congress with the following remarks…

"...We ask (this) in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and God known by many different names and many different faiths. Amen...and a–woman.”

This will be the first of a two-part response in which my concerns, as a Christian living in the United States, will be shared.

Congressman Cleaver, a master of the Methodist seminary St. Paul’s School of Theology, oddly chose to finish his prayer with, “amen…and a woman.” I realize that the Congressman has issued a statement following the initial criticism of his invocation in which he says he was, “misconstrued…to fit a narrative,” and that his statement of, “a-woman,” was a, “pun.”

I will do my best to be gracious and respectful in my comments, but I felt that this issue needed to be specifically addressed. This is not merely an issue of political narratives; it is one of the proper understanding of language and culture and not misleading people with regards to such connotations – whether intentionally or unintentionally.

The word, "amen," comes from the Hebrew אָמֵן, transliterated into Greek as ἀμὴν. It means, "let it be," but is also often translated as, "truly," or "verily." For example, the phrase, ”Ἀμὴν, ἀμὴν, λέγω ὑμῖν..." translates as "Truly, truly, I say to you…” a phrase used often by Jesus Himself throughout His ministry. The important thing to point out with regards to the Congressman’s remarks is that this word has nothing to do with gender association.

Hebrew and Greek possess multiple words for man or men. The predominant words in Hebrew are אָדָם or אִישׁ, while in Greek they are ἄνθρωπος and ανήρ. The predominant words for woman or women are in אִשָׁה Hebrew and γυνή in Greek. As you can see, these words have pretty much nothing in common in form with the English words they correspond to.

To say, "a woman," as if, "amen," was a masculine gender reference is incredibly ignorant of not only the Bible, but also the Hebrew & Greek languages as a whole. Such an understanding would demand that one assign the modern meaning of the English word, “men,” back through time to the Hebrew word, “אָמֵן.” Doing this with even the most remote amount of frequency would fail you out of any basic language class. Being that he possesses a master’s degree from a Methodist seminary, Congressman Cleaver should know better than this.

To make this kind of a remark on such a public stage as the floor of the United States House of Representatives is not only anachronistic, it is also misleading to those who are not familiar with the original languages of the Bible, as it presents a stumbling block in the form of a false bias towards men over women.

Moreover, this remark also completely disregards every Hebrew or Greek–speaking person that has ever lived or that currently lives today, in that it does not allow for Hebrew or Greek, as languages, to be self-defining. Instead, it forces languages that we, in the United States, don’t natively speak to be subject to our cultural assumptions.

My prayer is that Congressman Cleaver will realize the error of his remarks and will make a meaningful attempt at restitution towards his fellow Representatives. Until then, we, in the Church, must guard against these kinds of baseless attacks on the Biblical witness and continue to call our nation to repentance and true faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ.