God Is a Woman and The Future’s Female
by John O’Connell
Oak Grove Books, £6.99
MENTION politics and religion in the same breath in Ireland and you could have a controversial recipe for disaster. Enter Derry author and self-proclaimed Christian mystic John O’Connell with his deceptively compelling new work, the full title of which is, would you believe, God Is a Woman and The Future’s Female: Why Our Lady is Really God and Mark Durkan Knows It, the Unionists Deny It but Gerry Adams Just Doesn’t Get It At All!
O’Connell has already penned 11 books on various spiritual topics in Ireland, but in this latest work he attempts to reveal that the battle of the sexes is the key to understanding God and Christianity.
For O’Connell, God is saying She rejects the threat or use of violence in achieving change. Masculine values are the real enemy as they were in the time of Jesus of Nazareth when the Jews were emasculated by the Romans as part of their preparation to receive an emasculated Christ.
Furthermore, O’Connell contends that Irish nationalists have also been emasculated in preparation for receiving a new emasculated Jesus. And this is why O’Connell subtitles this controversial new book: “For the conversion of Sinn Fein to Christianity.”
The role of women in the Christian church in Ireland is a particularly thorny issue, especially among sections of fundamentalist Protestantism and conservative Catholicism. For O’Connell, “this can only mean that God has a special place in her heart and in her plan for female values.” Targeting the male leaders of the Unionist and nationalist parties in Northern Ireland, O’Connell pursues this highly contentious and unorthodox notion that God is a woman.
Whatever your view of O’Connell’s contentions, and whether you think they are credible or he’s just another crank, his work is rapidly becoming one of the most hotly discussed topics in church circles over here.
The book’s front cover adds to the mystery and the message with photos of Our Lady of Medjugorje – one of the most revered figures in Irish Catholicism – alongside SDLP leader Mark Durkan and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.
There are also some equally controversial chapters on former First Minister Ian Paisley senior of the DUP and current Ulster Unionist Party leader Reg Empey. Weird or wonderful, O’Connell is at, the very least, a highly entertaining writer.
John Coulter
