Wearing God

Lauren F. Winner—a leading writer at the crossroads of culture and spirituality and author of Still and Girl Meets God—joins the ranks of luminaries such as Anne Lamott and Barbara Brown Taylor with this exploration of little known—and, so, little used—biblical metaphors for God, metaphors which can open new doorways for our lives and spiritualities.

There are hundreds of metaphors for God, but the church only uses a few familiar images: creator, judge, savior, father. In Wearing God, Lauren Winner gathers a number of lesser-known tropes, reflecting on how they work biblically and culturally, and reveals how they can deepen our spiritual lives.

Exploring the notion of God as clothing, Winner reflects on how we are “clothed with Christ” or how “God fits us like a garment.” She then analyzes how clothing functions culturally to shape our ideals and identify our community, and ruminates on how this new metaphor can function to create new possibilities for our lives. For each biblical metaphor—God as the vine/vintner who animates life; the lactation consultant; and the comedian, showing us our follies, for example—Winner surveys the historical, literary, and cultural landscapes in order to revive and heal our souls.

Winner invites you to expand your spiritual imagination with fresh, startling, and deeply biblical pictures of God:

• Biblical Metaphors for God: Move beyond familiar images like Father and Judge to explore God as clothing, a laboring woman, fire, and even a comedian.
• Expanding Your Spiritual Imagination: Winner blends history, cultural analysis, and personal reflection to show how these forgotten tropes can open new pathways in your own prayer and spiritual life.
• Theology for Everyday Life: Discover how ordinary parts of your world—what you wear, what you eat, how you laugh—can become profound encounters with the divine.
• Gender and Language for God: A thoughtful and accessible look at how the Bible itself uses both masculine and feminine imagery for God, and what that means for our worship today.