THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 2, Issue 1 -- January/February 2001

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The Religious Language Newsletter is written and published every other month by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D. (linguistics), from the Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS), PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 USA; e-mail OCLS@madisoncounty.net. It's available by e-mail only, in plain text, and is free to members of the Lovingkindness Network. To join the network, send $5.00 (annual dues) to OCLS; please be sure to include your e-mail address with your check, money order, or credit card information. For more information, contact OCLS; thanks to a generous donation, all issues are posted at http://www.forlovingkindness.org.
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IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; Booknotes; Cyberstuff; About the Seven Deadly Sins; More About "Openness" Theology; Quotes & Comments

EDITOR'S NOTE

I am of the opinion that the election mess was an example of divine intervention, like the Flood. God had been growing more and more disgusted by the garbage and drivel that has in recent years been served up to the American public labeled as "debate"; Bush and Gore's dismal efforts were the last straw, exhausting the divine patience. The election mess was therefore sent our way, to make certain that humankind would hear many many hours of _real_ debate and be enlightened thereby. We should be grateful right down to our toes.

NETWORK INPUT

1. Stephen Marsh sent me something interesting in the context of my remarks in the November/December issue about the problem of religious language that equates white with goodness and black with evil. The quotation comes from Travis Clark, who writes that "In Ethiopia, where some of the earliest Christians made their own brand of art, the depictions of Christ always show him with African features, dark eyes, and afro. ... Interestingly, in Ethiopian art, black is a sign of health and fertility since good soil is black...white is a sign of disease and death, since corpses and leprosy are white. In some Ethiopian depictions we see a black Jesus healing the ten lepers of their 'whiteness,' whereupon they turn black."

2. My thanks to Ken Rolph for letting me know that when Prince Charles decided to complain about the retirement of Cranmer's 1662 _Book of Common Prayer_ by the Church of England, he asked this question: "(W)hoever decided that for people who aren't very good at reading the best things to read are those written by people who aren't very good at writing?" (The source was a story in the 23/11/00 _Sydney Morning Herald_, in a story titled "Future Defender of the Faith defends language of history.")

3. Thanks to Jim White for directing me to an online story for 11/2/00 titled "Have studies proven that prayer can help heal the sick?" It's an interesting story; the author (who is identified only as a staff member named David) discusses a number of research studies on this topic and presents his criticisms of those studies. What he does not discuss -- does not mention, in fact -- are the studies in which the living things affected by prayer are plants, proteins, enzymes, and the like. We have no reason whatsoever to believe that plants, proteins, enzymes, etc. are subject to the placebo effect. The URL for the story is http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msciprayer.html.

BOOKNOTES

1. I recommend _My Grandfather's Blessings_, by Rachel Naomi Remen MD (Riverhead/Penguin 2000; ISBN 0-965-035267); I bought this instantly, because I had so loved Remen's previous book, _Kitchen Table Wisdom_. This one isn't quite as spectacularly good as _Kitchen Table Wisdom_ was, to my mind; nevertheless, I wouldn't want to have missed reading it . A few samples, to show you why...

(On page 17) "One of my patients once told me that she has an image of us all being circled by our blessings, sometimes for years, like airplanes in a holding pattern at an airport, stacked up with no place to land. Waiting for a moment of our time, our attention."

(On page 116) "I sometimes suggest to people...that they review the events of their day for fifteen minutes every evening, asking themselves three questions and writing down the answers to these questions in a journal. The three questions are: What surprised me today? What moved me or touched me today? What inspired me today?" [Note: This turns out to be _hard_. Suppose that day after day your answers are "Nothing," "Nothing," and "Nothing"; that's a clue. You'll find that this is an excellent way to make yourself pay more attention.]

(On page 197) "Such qualities as self-reliance, self-determination, and self-sufficiency are so deeply admired among us that needing someone is often seen as a personal failing. A hundred years after the end of the frontier we still inhabit its culture. Self-sufficiency was critically important when you lived a hundred hostile miles away from your nearest neighbor. But we live in this way still, three thousand to a city block. Needing others has come to require an act of courage. Is it surprising that so many people are secretly lonely and afraid to grow old?"

2. I bought Kevin Sharpe's _Sleuthing the Divine_ (Augsburg Fortress 2000) with high hopes, after reading the blurbs and reviews. It starts out very well. On page 7: "University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg have described a neuropsychological model to help us understand mystical happenings, from a simple sense of awe to the sublime states of altered consciousness that follow years of meditation. They isolate the segments of the brain that yield spiritual, mystical, ritual, and mythic experiences. But the question remains: as my experience of the chair I sit on connects with a real chair outside my brain, does a spiritual experience connect with a real divinity, or is it something the brain concocts?" He then proposes to use contemporary science -- quantum physics (especially the work of David Bohm), genetics, astronomy, sociobiology, and more -- to answer that excellent question and explain the answer. For quite a while he continues to do well, carefully setting out (in very short and well-organized chapters) concepts of contemporary science and linking them to the theology he wants to construct. But as he gets farther and farther into the book his presentation grows weaker and weaker, until in the end it seems to me to just dwindle away. Nevertheless, what he accomplishes _before_ the dwindling begins is interesting and impressive, and well worth reading. The book is handsomely printed and produced; the ISBN is 0-8006-3236-2.

3. I haven't reviewed James Kugel's book _The Bible As It Was_ (Harvard University Press 1997) here, not because I don't recommend it but because I felt that it was too specialized and too technical for this newsletter. I do want to mention it briefly, however, because it has just received the Louisville Grawmeyer Award in Religion -- all $200,000.00 of it. It's the first book by a Jewish scholar (in this case, an Orthodox Jew) ever to receive that award, which comes from the University of Louisville and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. If you are fascinated by nitpicking biblical matters, as I am, you would enjoy this book; if that's not your sort of thing, you'd almost certainly find it tedious. I suggest looking at a copy at your library if you're not sure about it.

CYBERSTUFF

1. There's a useful class handout on religious language posted at http://www.baylor.edu/~Scott_Moore/handouts/language.html. It offers brief statements of eight theories on religious language -- for example, "7. Religious language is metaphorical and symbolic" -- with a brief note of explanation for each one. The introductory note at the top of the page says "Question: How reliable is human language when used to refer to the realm of infinite existence? (Metaphor of the window -- how clear is the glass?)"

2. Like the medical websites, religious ones have been fading away lately. One that seems to be thriving, and that you might take a look at, is BeliefNet, at http://www.beliefnet.com. It's eclectic and ecumenical and has a sort of half-grown puppy personality at the moment -- that is, it has tremendous energy and enthusiasm and potential, and not a great deal of discipline. (Example: When you sign up for the BeliefNet newsletter, they send it to you in three parts -- one plain text, and then the same thing in HTML divided into two parts because it's so cottonpicking long in that format. I'm sure there's a way to put a stop to the HTML, but that shouldn't be my responsibility.)

If BeliefNet survives the current shakeup, I expect it to improve greatly as time goes by. Some of the things you can explore at the site include: Information and special features on a number of religions; a spiritual quiz to learn your spiritual type; reviews of books and media; prayer circles; dialogue groups; Web Start Kits (a service for "churches, synagogues, mosques, spiritual communities, practice centers, and individual groups," with templates and free e-mail); a "Memorials" section for building an online memorial; and "Celebration Kits" for commemorating weddings, births, confirmations, and the like. Recommended, despite the growing pains.

3. See item #8, in the Quotes & Comments section.

ABOUT THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS

First I saw a note reporting that Tom Vander Ark had made a speech titled "The Seven Deadly Sins of Education." I'm always looking for good examples of the use of religious language outside religious contexts; I went to http://www.publiceducation.org/news/sevensins.html to see what he'd had to say. I was genuinely interested in learning what the seven deadly sins of education might be, since choosing those seven is a task that I feel would require either revelation or at least six months' work by an expert panel. Unfortunately, Vander Ark had used the phrase to label the following seven items: anonymity (as in large impersonal systems and bureaucracies); imprudent use of standardized tests; timidity (in dealing with chronic failure); injustice (in funding levels); interference from school boards and unions; obsolescence; and complacency ("while half of our urban students of color fail to finish high school"). Hold those up beside the original seven -- pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, covetousness, and sloth -- and compare. Very disappointing; very careless; very slothful. Enough so to provoke me into a quick Googlesearch for "the seven deadly sins." Ten pages of references came up instantly; I looked at just page one.

The first link took me to the Seven Deadly Sins website (http://deadlysins.com), which does turn out to be about the original set and has quite a bit of information -- plus a Seven Deadly Sins teeshirt offered as a "great gift idea." It's followed by links to "the Seven Deadly Web Site Sins (and why you must avoid them)"; a Seven Deadly Sins role-playing game; a speech on "Narnia and the Seven Deadly Sins"; "the Seven Sins of Deadly Meetings"; "the Seven Deadly Sins of E-commerce"; the "Seven Deadly Sins of Information Design"; "The Seven Deadly Copy Editing Sins"; and a Seven Deadly Sins DVD.

I'm grateful to the Seven Deadly Sins website for the page that lists _Ghandi's_ choice of Seven Deadly Sins. Ghandi's seven are: wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; science without humanity; knowledge without character; politics without principle; commerce without morality; worship without sacrifice. Seven clear nouns, each modified by "without" plus another clear noun, in a perfectly matched set. There; that's how it should be done. Not because of grammar rules or usage fashions but because when it's done that way it _works_; when it's done by choosing any old motley assortment of seven negatives worded any old way, it doesn't. (When using electricity, insert the plugs in the sockets or you're wasting your time.) I will resist the temptation to list the seven deadly sins of proposing sets of seven deadly sins.

MORE ABOUT "OPENNESS" THEOLOGY

1. From Karen Stroup: "Like my colleague Claudia Camp, I have never heard the term 'openness theology,' but rather 'process theology,' which may just be a distant cousin. ... All through my theological education I have learned about process theology as an answer to the conundrum: God is all-powerful; God is all good; yet evil exists in the world. How to explain the problem? The theologians I read want to discard God's omnipotence precisely to save God's omnibenevolence. ... Here's the way I finally put it to myself: God is definitely all good, but that goodness may be very foreign-looking from the human perspective. The process theologians want to keep God from being blamed for all the suffering in the world to maintain God's goodness _as defined by the human view of goodness_."

2. And then there is the story about the views of Ligon Duncan, a Presbyterian minister who spoke on the subject to the Southern Baptist Founders Conference in September. He denounced openness theology in the strongest terms, which isn't surprising. But then we're told that he went on to say that "openness theology takes unbiblical liberty in attempting to acquit God of having connection with evil. He said the Bible does not evidence the slightest concern regarding the problem of evil within the scope of God's sovereignty and that Scripture does not limit his providence to that which is good." Duncan says, "We are told through the prophet Micaiah that the God of heaven and earth had enticed Ahab to go up to Ramoth-Gilead and be destroyed by putting a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. From beginning to end, the Bible is unapologetic in its assertion of God's sovereignty in his providence even over evil." And Duncan points to God's role in the crucifixion of Jesus as proof of his position. [You can read this in full at http://www.pcanews. com/news/stories/print.taf?story_id=312, at the website of _PCANEWS.COM_, described as the online magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America. The story has no byline.]

3. My thanks to Frances Green for a review of Gregory A. Boyd's _God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God_ (Baker 2000, ISBN 0-8010-6290-X), on page 86 of the 4/24/2000 _Publishers Weekly_. It says:

"This exceptionally engaging and biblically centered text defends a theological claim that is generating heated controversy among evangelicals: that from God's perspective, the future is partly open, a realm of possibilities as well as certainties. ... [The] classical tradition interprets God's perfection as eternal changelessness, ruling out the possiblity that God could learn new information, or that God's intentions could change. Boyd sidesteps the more abstruse theological debates surrounding this issue in favor of a patient, but not pedantic, exposition of a 'motif of future openness' in biblical narrative and prophecies. These biblical texts repeatedly portray God as changing plans in response to human decisions, viewing future events as contingent, and even being disappointed at how events turn out."

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1. _PEN Weekly Newsblast_ for 12/11/00 reported that (in the wake of the Supreme Court's June ruling against organized prayer during high school football games) religious groups are calling on fans to "spontaneously" recite the Lord's Prayer after the National Anthem is played at high school football games. Spontaneously. [Sources are http://www.hendersonvillenewscom/news/stories/ 000826n1.html and http://www.westillpray.org. You can subscribe to _Newsblast_ at http://www.PublicEducation.org/news/signup.htm.]

2. "The world today seems to be divided into two kinds of people -- those who read the Bible and don't read literature, and those who read literature and don't read the Bible." Margaret Atwood, quoted in _PW Religion Online_ on 10/24/00.

3. My thanks to Ken Rolph for forwarding information about a story by Jonathan Petre that appeared in the _London Telegraph_ in February 2000. Petre reported on an academic research project (by Emma Heathcote) on attitudes and beliefs about angels. Heathcote found 800 Britons who claimed that they had had encounters with angels, with a third of them reporting that they had seen an angel having the standard traditional form. (That would be the white gown, the wings, the halo, and so on.) Another twenty-one percent said their angel had appeared to them in human form. Heathcote claims to have reports of angel visits from atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Muslims, as well as Christians.

4. "Evil is laziness, carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme. As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness. ... Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Some ordinary lazy people may not lift a finger to extend themselves unless they are compelled to do so. Their being is a manifestation of nonlove; still, they are not evil. Truly evil people, on the other hand, actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves. They will take any action in their power to protect their own laziness, to preserve the integrity of their sick self. ... Ordinary laziness is nonlove; evil is antilove." [That's M. Scott Peck, on page 278 of _The Road Less Traveled_ (Simon & Schuster 1978). I'm reasonably certain that every one of you has read this book, but I could be wrong. I recommend it.]

5. My thanks to Robert Layton for a story about hymnal reform by Leslie Scrivener, from the 2/25/95 _Calgary Herald_, titled "Outward! -- Christian Soldiers." In which we find a minister (unnamed) demanding, "What is wrong with Onward! Christian Soldiers? ... I like to think of God the Father as our general." I'd have thought God the Father would be Commander-in-Chief rather than only a general, but I understand what the minister is getting at. And of course I don't know the Canadian equivalent of Commander-in-Chief.

6. You all know how I feel about the metaphor of the "Spiritual" Warrior (as in "Dear General God, we come before you this day..."); I'm always watching for indications that the grip of that metaphor may be loosening. I was therefore pleased to see in the current Crossings Book Club flyer an ad for a book proposing a different metaphor. It's called _Watchman Prayer: How to Stand Guard and Protect Your Family, Home and Community_, and is written by Dutch Sheets.

The blurb in the flyer is not felicitously worded. It says, "We are in great need of people to serve as _watchmen_ -- prayer warriors who will watch and pray for our families, homes, communities and nation. In _Watchman Prayer_, Dutch sheets explains the watchman's vital role and how you can enter into it."

There's that Warrior again, despite the fact that in war the term would be "sentry" or "sentinel" or "guard" rather than "watchman." There's the fact that _nobody_ is going to perceive "watchman" as a generic masculine term, and both "watchwoman" and "watchperson" are truly silly. I especially liked the idea of the non-elitist quality of "watchman" -- until I read the blurb and realized that it may have been accidental. I've ordered the book for the LK library, and will review it in a later issue; if any of you have read it, I'd be pleased to have your input.

7. Pat Mathews sent me something interesting from the 11/11/00 _Albuquerque Journal_. It's a story titled "Wall will bring freedom," written by Lisa Lipman. It's about a group of families, Orthodox Jews, who have for eight years been "working to build a wall of wires and other existing boundaries around their communities...to form an _eruv_ -- a giant, symbolic household." Lipman writes that their lives are greatly complicated by the fact that Jewish law forbids them to do many things on the Sabbath that are hard to avoid, such as carrying children, pushing strollers and wheelchairs, and carrying prayer books to religious services. "However, Jewish law allows them to carry items within their own household. So unifying the neighborhood into a symbolic household...makes it permissible to do those things within the boundary. ... An eruv's 'walls' usually consist of a piece of wire, twine or pre-existing boundaries such as fences and sea walls. But it can take years of planning and thousands of dollars for one to be constructed." Eruvim (one eruv, two eruvim) already exist in many large cities like Atlanta, St. Louis, and Miami; some cover areas as large as twenty miles.

8. Here I had wanted to quote from "Spiritual concord as a crop rotation cycle," a section of "Towards an Ecology of Spiritual Traditions as Articulated by a Dynamic System of Metaphors," by Anthony J. N. Judge. It's been out a while, so I checked the URL (at the website of the Union of International Associations) and found that the paper is no longer available. That's unfortunate. However, serendipitously, that led me to a document titled "Facilitation in a Cross-Cultural Environment," which I strongly recommend to you, especially for its focus on communication between and among different faiths. The document is at http://www.uia.org/uiadocs/conftran/xfacil.htm. First warning: It's possible to go to the UIA website after some small item and end up spending the whole day there, because there is such an abundance of irresistible content; it's one of my favorite sites. Second warning: The site is horrendously difficult to navigate -- which, given its emphasis on making communication easier, is both infuriating and hilarious. If you've discovered a simple way to get around this enormous site, please send instructions so that I can share them with the network.

9. "God is a necessary lie, because it's very frightening to think this is all there is. There's nothing but this little span of life, and then it ends and it's over forever -- our consciousness is not reborn. It doesn't become a cow or a tree, it doesn't go to heaven and play a harp, it's just over. That's a terrifying concept. The idea that we transcend death is always there. Even with the most outspoken atheists, if a friend dies, they'll use a phrase like 'Well, if he's anywhere,' or 'I hope he's smiling down.' It comes out, this need to think our loved ones and our friends are there." [This is George R.R. Martin, in "George R.R. Martin: Necessary Lies," (_Locus_ for 12/00, pp. 6-7 and page 80).]

Copyright © 2001 Suzette Haden Elgin
All rights reserved
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E-mail newsletters by Suzette Haden Elgin for 2001 are: _The Linguistics & Science Fiction Newsletter_; _The Religious Language Newsletter_; and _The Verbal Self-Defense Newsletter_. Each $5.00 a year for six issues, by e-mail, advertising-free. Information and a free sample issue from OCLS@madisoncounty.net.