This from CNN.com:


I would have said this was an error or even a faux pas on the part of CNN, but here is an excerpt from a letter by the Pope:


So when did the practice of capitalizing a "holy pronoun" come to an end? Just curious.

Alex, I quite agree. The shift is done out of laziness. When writing at sustained clip it is easy to forget the cap and thus the new trend simply serves the laziness of the writers

What, you didn't get the memo? It was last July. July 17th at 2:36 PM Vatican time to be precise.

To be accurate, (the judeochristianoislamo) God should not be referred to as "He" or "he"; Genesis clearly states: "In God's image God made them [Adam and Eve]; male and female God created them". The laziness started a LONG time ago in deferring to a patriarchal society and suppressing the feminine nature of God. Perhaps removing the capital is a way of toning down the masculinity, who knows? I have seen many writings, including in my own church, that do not use a capital. In fact, "he" is only used in reference to Jesus, not God, except in the Lord's prayer, which they are loathe to PCize...

Back when gender meant something in English, the word God was masculine and would take the masculine pronoun. The word that gave us MnE woman was also masculine but I don't know whether they used the masculine pronoun for it.

the word G-d [un-sicced]

!װאס איז דאס? א שאנדע, א גרױסע עבירה, פע (vos iz dos? a shande, a groyse aveyre, fe!) And on Peysakh, too.

Is it possible that CNN went with he in an effort not to be accused of endorsing religious doctrine?

The capitalization issue could get more controversial if many readers conclude that not keeping He upper case drops the antecedent to the level of a mortal's proper name such as Henry. Avoiding using God and a corresponding pronoun might be easy enough in most news reporting, but quotations containing both necessitate a style choice for hard copy and web text reporting.

How will CNN and others in news reporting handle the capitalization issue? Web searchers will keep a vigil.

In the original Judeo-Christian scriptures there was no capitalisation of personal pronouns, including that of God, for the simple reason that there was no capitalisation at all. The real question is not when did it cease but when did it begin? It is a custom or tradition of church history, or even of the wider culture of 'Christendom' and not of the foundation documents of Christianity or Judaism. Surely what you say about God is more important than whether you say it about Him or him?

The real question is not when did it cease but when did it begin?

So true. It's simply a stylistic convention. Here's an image of a 14th century MS of the John Wycliffe (d.1384) translation of the Gospel of St John (link). The only capital visible is the one that starts the first chapter of the book. That was the style then. Interestingly enough, in the few transcribed versions of this passage which I consulted, the capitalization usage of today is used (link).

Moving along to the Early Modern English period, looking at the William Tyndale (ca.1494–1536) translation (1526) of the same book (link) shows no capitalization for the word god either. By the time (1539) of the Great Bible by Myles Cloverdale (1488–1568), we find capitalization (link).

There are other English translations of the Bible to investigate, but I leave that as an exercise to the reader. So, the answer is probably sometime in the early 16th century.

I rather agree with morphememedley -- it's a religious issue, not a grammatical one.

Henry had no problem with the decapitatelization of wives and wayward subjects.

As the one who originally started the thread, I should point out that I don't ask out of any sort of offended religiosity. I was simply curious. Nor do I need any sort of politically-correct re-education on matters of theology, although I am thankful to at least receive such lectures without having to pay tuition.

hahahaha - very droll (hmmm...is that short for headroll?)

That's very interesting history, thanks for that excellent detective work. I wonder where it came into English from? Was it a renaissance invention? Was it applied first to Latin? Did Coverdale invent it himself? Or did it come from German? Did Luther's German translation have capitals? Unfortunately I have no time to investigate these fascinating footnotes in history further at the present moment!