THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 7, Issue 1 -- January/February 2006
==========================================================
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; thanks to generous donations, all issues are posted at
http://www.forlovingkindness.org. To join the network and receive
its newsletter, send $5.00 (annual dues for each calendar year)
to OCLS; please be sure to include your e-mail address with your
check, money order, or credit card information. (Supporting Memberships
are $15.00.) Donations to Lovingkindness are tax-deductible. **Payments
can now be made through Paypal if that's your preference (and
for members outside the U.S. that's the simplest method); our
Paypal account is ocls@madisoncounty.net.** For more information,
to request a free sample issue, or to cancel the newsletter, please
e-mail OCLS@madisoncounty.net.
==========================================================
IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; Quotes &
Comments; BookNotes; Cyberspace; Correction
EDITOR'S NOTE
I'm grateful to all of you who have renewed for 2006. I know that times are hard right now, and that it's not easy to find money for something like this newsletter. I also know that the newsletter is long, and that it takes time -- yet another limited resource -- to read. Thank you. And thank you for all the fine and useful materials that you've been sending me.
NETWORK INPUT
1. Patricia Mathews writes:
"Rereading an old Religion & Language newsletter of yours, I noticed that you refer to your 'hardshell Baptist' childhood. I've heard that term before but am having trouble figuring out where it came from and what it means. My only referent for the term 'Hardshell' is 'crabs', and the thought of any branch of religion opening itself up to 'you guys sure are crabby' jokes is almost beyond belief. Though - anything can happen. Could you explain, please?"
**I went googling for the term's origin myself, trying to find out where it came from so that I could answer your question -- and you would not believe the mess I found. Page after page of links. Saying that Hardshell (or Hard Shell) Baptists were against all missions. That they were a missionary church. That they were opposed to drinking alcohol. That they were far too liberal about drinking alcohol. That they were part of the Primitive Baptists, and that they weren't. And so on. And over and over again, that they turn up in really lame jokes of every variety. I think it's a term used loosely, to say the least.
I can tell you what it meant to my grandfather, however, in a way that should shed a certain amount of light on the matter at least as it relates to me personally. At one point when he was a young man with a wife and three children to support in very hard times, he had a job at a small-town drugstore. One day his boss gave him the task of setting up a display of playing cards in the store window. My grandfather explained that his religion didn't allow him to touch cards or any other gambling paraphrenalia, and he asked to be excused from the task on those grounds. When that request was refused, he quit the job immediately.
The only time I ever heard my grandfather say anything stronger than "Goodness' sakes!" was during World War II, when we were driving through Kansas on our way to Colorado in blazing heat, and we kept getting one tire puncture after another. You couldn't buy new tires during the war, which meant that we had to keep stopping at tiny gas stations and getting those tires patched. The seventh time it happened, all seven in a single day, my grandfather actually said, right out loud, "Damn." I couldn't believe my ears; his wife and daughters all went white. It was quite an occasion.
In the interests of full disclosure, I need to say that there was no Hardshell Baptist practice of that sort going on in the house where I lived as a child. But it was the term applied to the doctrine presented at the church where I was baptized at age nine and to the doctrine I heard at my grandparents' house. The idea of crabs in association with the term had never crossed my mind; that "shell" was always spoken about as if it were made of stone, not as something organic.
QUOTES & COMMENTS
1. The 11/05 issue of _Wired_ had an extraordinary story by Jim Lewis titled "Robots of Arabia," on pp. 188-195. It seems that four-year-old boys in Qatar have been having to serve as jockeys for wealthy men who enjoy camel racing as a sport, in horrible conditions. "The ideal camel jockey," Lewis writes on page 189, "is the size and weight of a starving 4-year-old boy." And then someone had the good idea of replacing the children with robots, which turned out to be easy enough if you're a wealthy camel owner from Qatar, but ran into a serious problem in terms of getting the _camel_ to accept the robot. So the company gave the robot jockeys "plastic heads that wear wraparound sunglasses and bicycle helmets" and are "vaguely childlike." And on page 195:
"An interesting problem: a simple solution. But Islam forbids representations of the human form: The robots could be considered graven images, inducements to idolatry. And while, as one trainer put it, 'it's not as if anyone is going to be tempted to _worship_ these things,' the Saudis, who take such matters more seriously, are right next door and watching. The forms of the robot camel jockeys have been judged too close to statuary for comfort, and word has come down from the prime minister... that the faces have to be removed before racing season begins."
You can read the entire article at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/ 13.11/camel.html . (I'll warn you in advance that the outcome of all this is itself problematical; the little boys are saved from a kind of slavery, but are then sent home into terrible conditions.)
2. My thanks to Hal Davis for "Scholars Scaling an Unclimbed Peak: Aramaic," by Malcolm W. Browne, in the 7/4/89 _New York Times_. Excerpt:
"In some cases, the meaning of biblical Aramaic phrases remain (sic) obscure. The ominous and supernatural 'handwriting on the wall' that appears in Belshazzar's feast reads: 'Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,' which is usually translated as 'Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.' But the Aramaic words could also mean 'Numbered, numbered, weighed and divisions,' or the names of weights, 'A mina, a mina, a shekel and half-shekels.' The Aramaic dictionary may help clear up such ambiguities...."
One would hope. I went to Google for an update on this project, which was projected to take twenty years to finish, and found that it's now called "The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon." Its website has a very interesting FAQ which -- infuriatingly -- cannot be either printed out or saved; either operation produces only blank pages. The URL is http://cal1.cn.huc.edu (and that "call" is C, A, L, numeral one). If that doesn't work, which wouldn't surprise me, you can get to it from the first link at the "What is CAL?" webpage at http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/info.html and then the FAQ link in the left margin.
There is no more paranoid group of presumably sane individuals on the face of this Earth than scholars working with ancient biblical texts; I suppose they're afraid that if people were allowed to print out pages at the website, they would immediately write scholarly articles on biblical Aramaic and rush them to press.
3. Thanks to Sally Lloyd and Nancy Burnett for sending "Linguistic Labor: After 26 years of work, Gullah Bible is finally finished," by Bruce Smith, an AP story in the 11/19/05 _Lansing State Journal_ about the recent publication of _De Nyew Testament_ (not the whole Bible, as the title suggests) by the American Bible Society. Smith provides an example with the translation of John 1:1 as "Fo God mek de wol, de Wod been dey. De Wod been dey wid God, an de Wod been God."
"Gullah," Smith writes, "is an oral language, so the translation was painstaking, beginning in 1979 with a team of Gullah speakers who worked with... translation consultants with Wycliffe Bible Translators."
4. From "Burn the Papers Please," on page 64 of _The Catholic World Report_, with a byline that says Diogenes wrote it:
"In his last will and spiritual testament, Pope John Paul II wrote, 'Let my personal notes be burned. I ask that Father Stanislaw [Dziwisz] see to this...' That's pretty clear, isn't it? ... Yet now Archbishop Dziwisz discloses that he has not, and will not, destroy the notes. 'Nothing has been burned,' he says. 'Nothing is fit for burning.' "
The writer goes on to discuss the various sides of this question. The possibility that Pope John Paul II ordered the papers burned because he himself realized that they might become "a source of confusion." The historical value of the papers, despite the fact that they "carry no teaching authority whatsoever," is of course obvious. But he ends by saying that "we _all_ know what the late Pope wanted. He wanted the notes burned." My thanks to Douglas Dee for the copy.
I find it horrifying that anyone -- even a Pope -- could leave specific instructions for his private papers to be destroyed after his death and have those instructions ignored. I see no way that such a decision can be justified.
5. Here's Bill Moyers, writing in "Reckoning with the God Squad," on pp. 28-29 of the 10/24/05 issue of _In These Times_ about General William Boykin's religious language:
"Boykin had taken up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose members apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto summoning warriors 'to the spiritual warfare for souls.' Boykin attended evangelical revivals preaching that America was in a holy war as 'a Christian nation' battling Satan... For such an hour, America surely needed a godly leader. ... President Bush, he said, "was not elected by a majority of the voters -- he was appointed by God." Boykin, Moyers notes, is now the Deputy Undersecretary for Intelligence.
6. "This really brilliant book [_The Screwtape Letters_, by C.S. Lewis] is not just about temptation, devils and fallen human nature; it contains some of the best teaching Lewis has left us... [S]peaking of prayer, the frustrated Screwtape complains: 'Wherever there is prayer, there is danger of His own immediate action. He is cynically indifferent to the dignity of His position, and our [devils] as pure spirits, and to human animals on their knees He pours out self-knowledge in a quite shameless fashion.' "
This is from Elise Brooke's interesting _Theology and Fantasy_, Clergy Book Service 1977 (ISBN 0-85342-523-X). Which includes a lengthy discussion of the Narnia Books, and of Tolkien's _The Lord of the Rings_, in the context of theology. _The Lord of the Rings_, Brooke says on page 74, "is an interesting and original treatise on grace."
7. "Christians believe in a pure messiah who redeems an impure world that cannot redeem itself; Jews believe in a messiah who can overcome his own family's history of sinfulness, who can inspire men to earn their own redemption. For Jews, belief in the messiah asserts the human capacity to become worthy of Him by rising above sin; for Christians, belief in the messiah asserts the human incapacity to become worthy of Him, the human need for the messiah to take our sins upon himself."
This is Joel Schwartz, in what seems to me to be an excellent review of David Klinghoffer's _Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History_, on pp. 72-73 of the Fall 2005 issue of _Claremont Review of Books_. The review's title is "A Blessing Unto the Nations," and the quote comes from page 73. Where Schwartz also notes that "Whatever their disagreements, the two religions share their central belief: a single, omnipotent, and just God who created the universe and assigned moral duties to man." And he suggests that Judaism and Christianity are "two religions divided by a common God."
He would of course say "assigned moral duties to man," the _Claremont Review of Books_ being the conservative publication that it is, and he being the conservative writer that he is. And I will try (and fail, you perceive) to resist the temptation to respond that women are grateful not to have been assigned moral duties because we already have enough to do. Highly recommended, all the same. I would be very interested in knowing what the Jewish members of this Network think about the arguments presented.
8. My thanks to Tia Johnson for sending "The Bible, Chapter and Every Other Verse," by Edward Wyatt, from the 11/6/05 _New York Times_. It discusses various issues in Bible translation, especially the question of whether "condensing or excerpting" are acceptable. And then it offers three examples of presentations of the Ten Commandments -- from the King James, from Leonard Budd's _The 100-Minute Bible_, and from the Bible Society in Australia's text-messaging version. Samples from the last one:
3. Do not worship NE god but me.
7. Do not misuse my name. I am da LORD ur God, & I will punish
ne1 who misuses my name.
17. Do not want NEtin dat belongs 2 sum1 else. Dun want ne1's
house, wife or hus&, slaves, bullocks, donkeys or NEtin else.
[Maybe that "hus&" is a typo and should be "husb&"?]
I was surprised to see in the article a note that the text-messaging version "uses the American Bible Society's Contemporary English Version, intended mostly for children, as its source for its 'SMS Bible' "; I believe the "mostly for children" bit would be equally surprising to the committee of translators for the CEV.
For a brief article about the SMS version, see "Bible Translated to SMS Lingo," at http://tinyurl.com/8u72u , which says that "all 31,173 verses of the Bible in text message, can be accessed free of charge from the SMSBible Setup program." [The reason the number of verses is so small is because the CEV version was used.]
9. The Fall 2005 issue of _Christian History & Biography_ is a complete issue on C.S. Lewis and his writings. I found it pretty shallow stuff, frankly, and so fawning that it got tiresome in a hurry. However, I'd like to quote from page 22 of the article titled "Hearts in Training" by Doris T. Meyers (pp. 19-22):
"Now that _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ has been made into a movie, it is being touted as "The Passion of the Christ for Kids," and there are numerous websites explaining the cognitive doctrines of Christianity in language worthy of the grammarian Pulverulentus Siccus (Full-of-Dust Dry) in _Prince Caspian_. The allegorical correspondence between events in the stories and cognitive doctrines may be what the Chronicles are _made_ of, but it is not what they _are_."
Two things caught my eye in this paragraph. First, I found the idea of the movie as "The Passion of the Christ for Kids" grotesque -- but that's a matter of taste, I suppose. More importantly, I was struck by the phrase "the cognitive doctrines of Christianity," and that sent me off to Google to find out what they were and who was teaching them or writing about them. The search took me to a lot of interesting places [including the "Believe" site at http://mb-soft.com/believe/indexaz.html , which has an index of links, in alphabetical order, to articles on 1300 religious topics ]. It found me an abundance of materials on Christianity-and-cognitive-dissonance, Christianity-and-relativism, and Christian Cognitive Therapy -- but nothing at all on "cognitive doctrines of Christianity." If any of you can shed some light on this question, I'd be very interested.
Meyers also notes on page 22 that Lewis' original intention with the Narnia stories was not at all to promote Christian ideas. It was only after he was already writing the first book that "he began to see how the stories could be used to get away from stained-glass boredom and cultivate Christian feelings...". And she says "To teach the Chronicles as Christian doctrine is to defeat Lewis's purpose in writing." I assume she means that the overt teaching of Christian doctrines is not an effective way to "cultivate Christian feelings."
10. The 12/12/05 issue of _Time_, page 92, had an essay by Andrew Sullivan titled "The Vatican's New Stereotype: Why its new rules barring gay priests turn Jesus' teaching on its head." Sullivan notes that until now, what mattered was that a priest keep his vow of celibacy. "If a priest kept his vows, it didn't really matter if he were refusing to have sex with a man or with a woman." Now, Sullivan says, the new rules issued by Pope Benedict XVI have changed that drastically. "Even if a gay priest remains completely celibate, his sexual orientation is now regarded.... as a threat to 'priestly life.' " A new group of people has been identified, and "regardless of how they behave or what they do, they are beneath serving God." They are he says, "the new Samaritans," and "they are all bad."
The Sullivan essay is a cry of pain and hurt; it's hard to read. I wonder whether because of that pain and hurt his perceptions of the new rules are distorted, or if the analysis is accurate. I'm far too ignorant of Catholic doctrine to make that judgment. Your input would be welcome.
11. "God didn't create the world to be a feast of carnage; he was more than happy to make our perfect human ancestors perfect vegetarians who would eat only the herbs from the ground and the fruits from the trees that God had provided. He didn't create the thorns and thistles until humans disobeyed his orders and he got angry. Then he cursed not only humans but all of creation itself. He changed the terms of creation -- henceforth, it's a bloodbath -- and yet he remains unsullied because sin originates exclusively in humanity, and therefore the blood is on humanity's hands, even wen it's drawn by the prick of God's own thorn."
This is Tom Junod, writing on page 187 of "The Case For Intelligent Design: It Can't Damage Science, But It Will Change Christianity," in the 11/05 issue of _Esquire_. And he goes on to say on page 188 that both Genesis and Darwin "manage to preserve the possibility of a loving God by declaring that God has nothing to do with the violence and pain of living on this planet. Intelligent design, on the other hand, takes the radical step of making God take the rap."
The Junod article (pp. 186-189 and page 218) sits in the midst
of an array of language and images that are about as far from
religious language as it's possible to get; this is characteristic
of _Esquire_. But the article itself is extraordinary, and I recommend
it.
BOOKNOTES
1. _The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and 'Women's Work'_, by Kathleen Norris; NY: Paulist Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8091-3801-8.
This little book (only 88 pages) is one I read over and over again. And as I get older, and the "daily" stuff seems to my elderly perceptions to come along every fifteen minutes instead of every day, it means even more to me than it used to. It's a lengthy discourse on the subject of those daily tasks that have to be done if a household is to function at all, linked to the perception that many of them are inherently "women's work," and are linked in her worldview to poetry and the making of poetry.
Norris asks on pp. 26-27: "Is it not a good joke that when God gave us work to do as punishment for our disobedience in Eden, it was work that can never be finished, but only repeated, day in and day out, season upon season, year after year?" On page 35 she says: "Whenever I am checking bags at an airport, I recall St. Teresa of Avila's wonderful prayer of praise, 'Thank God for the things I do not own.' "
And there's something I want to share with you one more time, while I'm here. From page 12: "Dylan Thomas, as he lay on his deathbed, is rumored to have said to the nun caring for him, 'God bless you, Sister, may all your sons be archbishops.' " The topic there is the daily caretaking, but Norris is never afraid to add a joke to her theology. Recommended.
2. _Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and The Practice of Medicine_, by Larry Dossey; HarperSanFrancisco 1993. ISBN 0-06-250252-2.
This book opens with a brief (and very interesting) autobiographical preface that tells us something about the path Dossey has followed from fundamentalist youngster to agnostic young adult to his current position. Chapter 1 takes up the broad question of what role, if any, religious practices play in health and illness and medical care. Chapters 2 and 4 tackle the thorny question of the "nonlocal" nature of prayer, something in which Dossey solidly believes, as well as the question of whether it's ethical to pray for someone without their permission. Chapter 5 considers the question of _how_ to pray, and discusses a body of research which seems to demonstrate that both "directed" prayer (asking for specific things) and "nondirected" prayer (asking that whatever happens may be for the best) have demonstrable results in healing, but that nondirected prayer appears to be more effective. There are chapters on the effects that doctors' beliefs about these matters have in medical care; there is a chapter on prayer when it's meant to harm rather than to help; there are chapters (and detailed appendixes) reviewing the existing research. Finally, the book has extensive notes, a bibliography, and an excellent index. Recommended. Here's a brief sample, from pp. 83-84:
"_But there is no evidence whatsoever in any of the experiments on prayer that anything is 'sent,' or that energy of any kind is involved._ If prayer were a conventional form of energy, it should weaken as distance is increased, and this does not happen. If it were energy, its effects could be shielded, but this has not proved possible. This strongly suggests that prayer does not involve any conventional form of energy or signal, that it does not travel from here to there, and that it may not 'go' anywhere at all. If prayer does not go anywhere, then it may be present everywhere, enveloping sender, object, and the Almighty all at once. Physicists have a word to describe a world in which information is not sent, but exists everywhere all at once: _nonlocal_." [Emphasis in the original.]
CYBERSPACE
1. From Heidi Schlumpf, in _Religion Bookline_ for 8/24/2005:
"Back in 1885, when Scottish jurist Adam Lord Gifford bequeathed
80,000 pounds in his will to establish a series of lectures on
natural theology, he would never have imagined that more than
100 years later all those lectures would be available to scholars
and the general public all over the world with the click of a
small device called a mouse." Schlumpf then reported that
the Templeton Foundation Press has launched an online database
of the lectures -- including William James' "The Varieties
of Religious Experience" -- at http://www.giffordlectures.org
. 48 of the 208 volumes were already online in August, and the
rest will be added over the next few years.
2. "Breaking Walls, Raising Fences: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Accountability among the Promise Keepers," by John P. Bartkowski, opens with:
"The Promise Keepers' desire to rejuvenate "godly manhood" has stimulated debate about this evangelical men's movement. This study addresses two key questions: (1) What do Promise Keeper luminaries understand to be godly manhood? (2) What is the impact of elite PK definitions of godly manhood on the gender identities and practices of this group's members? I begin by briefly sketching the contours of two competing gender discourses -- instrumentalist versus expressive masculinity -- advanced by Promise Keeper leaders. I then examine the ways in which these divergent discourses of masculinity are reproduced, negotiated, and creatively reformulated through accountability groups frequented by PK members in a Texas metropolitan area. ..." You can read the article online at http://www. shirr.hartsem.edu/sociology/sociology_online_articles.html .
3. _MDMA News & Views_ for 11/28/05 recommends reading "Future Bio-Shock?: Biohazards: Advances in Biological Science Raise Troubling Questions About What it Means to be Human," in the 11/6/05 _San Francisco Chronicle_, online at http://tinyurl.com/cfe7t . David G. Pauls then goes on to say:
"The definition of a person, in my opinion, is the most critical decision in bioethics. Everything else is grounded in this definition, whether it is abortion, euthanasia, assisted reproductive technology, or human enhancement. Once personhood and its characteristics are defined, the rest of the work is mostly downhill from there."
Once personhood and its characteristics are defined. That's a task I don't expect to see accomplished any time soon. And it gets worse; here's a quote from the the article that was recommended:
"Look out America: The trajectory of science is coming into conflict with venerable human values. ... The already simmering humanhood versus personhood controversy is going to boil over as our scientific and biotechnological capacities advance." Humanhood versus personhood?
[You can read _News & Views_ regularly by going to the Christian Medical & Dental Associations' website at http://www.cmda.org and clicking on the "News & Views" link under "Publications" at the bottom of the page. You might also want to look at the set of "Ethics Statements," including the "Christian Physician's Oath," at http://www.cmda.org/index.cgi?BISKIT=1750686400&CONTEXT=cat&cat=322 . And you can find an article by Dennis M. Sullivan titled "A thirty-year perspective on personhood: How has the debate changed?" (_Ethics & Medicine_ for Fall 2001) at http://www.24hourscholar.com/p/articles /mi_qa4004/is_200110/ai_n8959018?pi=scl .
4. From _Religion BookLine_ for 11/9/05. in a review of _The Goodly Spellbook: Olde Spells for Modern Problems_, by Lady Passion (Dixie Deerman) and Diuvei (Steven C. Rasmussen), published by Sterling:
"The authors, Gardnerian witches who are co-founders of Coven Oldenwilde, offer hundreds of spell recipes for healing, protection, discernment, concealment, repulsion of evil, and attraction of good ... Before they get to the spells, however, they lay a solid foundation for practice with an introductory essay on the history of spellcraft, followed by short sections on practical matters like gathering ingredients, creating a magical atmosphere, and living ethically. They also delve into specific magical techniques, such as geomancy, chanting, and kitchen witchery. ... Some spells are quotidian, even prosaic-such as a compress to heal computer eyestrain-while others are momentous and difficult, like a spell to prevent evil people from entering a home or workspace. Well-organized and comprehensively indexed, this reference book will be useful for beginners and experienced practitioners alike."
5. Two brief quotes from a review of Walpola Rahula's _What The Buddha Taught_ by Paul Blairon titled "Buddhism 101," online at http://www. calitreview.com/Reviews/whatthebuddhataught_027.htm:
"The most radical concept found in Buddhism is the denial of a soul or distinct self. A spirit of consciousness that is separate from matter does not exist."
"The concept of free will is incompatible with a Buddhist worldview of complete interdependence. There are merely actions and reactions. All well and good, but it brings up a whole host of questions. ... [T]he search is on for a book that explains how Buddhism answers these kinds of questions."
6. There's an extraordinary religious language resource at http://bibleresources.bible.com/bible_read.php , where you'll find links to the Bible "in as many languages as possible." Links take you to Bibles (sometimes only partial Bibles) in languages from Afrikaans to Vietnamese and languages in between -- including Esperanto, Gaelic, Maori, Polish, Tagalog, Thai, and many more. There are also links to various interlinear bibles, and a variety of different English translations.
Most surprising to me was the Polyglot Bible -- on a link from the page above, or you can go directly to http://davies_linguistics.byu.edu/polyglot for it. It's described as "A parallel corpus of the entire Gospel of Luke in 30 languages, allowing full text searching and side by side comparison of up to seven languages. Contains Middle and Old English versions of the Bible." I tried this to make certain that it worked, and was impressed; it's a bit complicated, but it works quickly and does everything promised. There is also a link on the page to the Polyglot Book of Mormon, which is set up the same way.
7. Another excellent resource is the site called "The Text This Week: Lectionary, Scripture Study and Worship Links and Resources." For example, the 23rd Psalm page at http://www.textweek.com/writings/psalm23.htm offers a very long list of links -- many annotated -- to 23rd Psalm materials online, in the following categories: Reading the Text; Historical References, Commentary and Comparative Texts; Contemporary Commentary, Studies and Exegesis; Articles & Background; Reviews; Sermons; With Children; Drama; Liturgy; Graphics & Bulletin Materials; Hymns and Music; Fine Arts Images... ; Movies... ; and Concordance: Study Links and Resources.
The homepage for this site -- http://www.textweek.com -- provides
links to an "Art Concordance" ("artwork indexed
by Biblical theme" and a "Movie Concordance" ("movies
indexed by spiritual theme").
8. From the NHV -- the New Hacker Version of the Bible -- here's
John 3:16:
"F0r G0d $0 l)v3d th3 w)rld, th@t h3 g@v3 hi$ 0nly b3g0tt3n $0n, th@t wh0$03vr b3li3v3th in hi/v/ $h0uld n0t p3ri$h, but h@v3 3v3rl@$ting lif3." [Note my e-mail software won't let me do the M in "him" -- it should be a lower case V flanked by two straight lines, not by two slashes.]
The page says that the NHV "is a transliteration and not a translation since L33T-speak can be approximated as a dialect of the English language and not a separate language in itself. Thus we preserve the integrity of the scriptures as translated in English since no linguistic interpretation needs to be perforrmed. Only a simple reversible character substitution algorithm is employed." The NHV will be completely free. There are links on the page to "Christ on a Disk" and the "Christ on a Disk Story" -- described as the technical details about the development of the necessary algorithms. All online at http://www.christianhacker.org/html/NHV.html .
9. I recommend to you the very interesting review article by Doug Bandow in the 11/05 _American Spectator_ (online at http://tinyurl.com/apld8 ) titled "The Religious Politics of Jim Wallis." Bandow identifies Wallis' goal in his book _God's Politics_ as a "worthwhile but not entirely successful attempt to get beyond a politics that pits faithless left against faithful right." He goes on to say that two things are getting in the way of that goal for Wallis -- "his assumption that there is an obvious third way between today's Republicans and Democrats" and the fact that Wallis also "politicizes the Gospel message, just in a different way from Robertson, Falwell, and others." And:
"Similarly flawed is Wallis's discussion of poverty, both domestic and international. No faithful Christian can ignore the enormity of the problem of poverty. But a requirement that one help the poor does not authorize one to force others to help the poor. You will search Scripture long and hard to find such an authorization."
Wallis, he says, "deserves praise," but "is better at issuing a challenge than providing an answer." Bandow does not add, as I would feel obligated to add, that Wallis's prose is often lamentably boring to read and that that doesn't help matters; it may be that Bandow wouldn't share my opinion in that regard, or he may just be excruciatingly polite.
10. My thanks to Anne Niven for directing me to the website
of _The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies_,
online at http://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/main.asp?jref=51
. The homepage identifies _The Pomegranate_ as "the first
international, peer-reviewed journal of Pagan studies. It provides
a forum for papers, essays and symposia on both ancient and contemporary
Pagan religious practices." It also publishes book reviews
in the field.
For four back issues, links to abstracts are provided, but none
of the articles are online in full. I think that's a marketing
error, frankly. A peer-reviewed journal of Pagan studies is needed,
and might be welcomed by readers, but they will want more information.
It would be helpful if one issue's contents -- or at least a sample
article or two -- could be read online, to give visitors to the
site a chance to evaluate the publication. (A link is available
for ordering a free sample copy.)
11. The White House steadfastly denies that George W. Bush ever said -- in a meeting with Palestinian leaders -- that he had been told by God to invade Iraq. That may well be true. You can read about the controversy in two articles published by Common Dreams: "God Told Me to Invade Iraq, Bush Tells Palestinian Ministers," at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1006-09.htm ; and "Bush: God Told Me to Invade Iraq," at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1007-03.htm .
12. _Religion BookLine_ for 10/12/05 had a brief review of Elliot N. Dorff's _The Way Into Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World)_, out in December from Jewish Lights. Excerpt:
"In this straightforward, inspiring book, Dorff introduces the Jewish practice of tikkun olam-healing or repairing the world. He opens with the history of tikkun olam, tracing the concept from the time of the Mishnah (circa 200 CE), showing that the imperative to repair the world is closely related to other Jewish values like justice and loving-kindness. After laying this theological and historical groundwork, Dorff moves on to practical considerations: what does repairing the world actually entail? Tikkun olam calls Jews to acts of social justice, but it also governs issues like speech; people interested in repairing the world shouldn't gossip or commit slander ..."
13. "Elder Care -- you will need to make sure that you always have a place for elders in your home so that they can live with honor in their last years, in a loving, fear-free environment. It will mean that nursing homes will have to be closed but we know you will find something else to do with them, like turn them into animal shelters."
This is from "Prepare for Assimilation by Friendly Native Americans," by Ray Levesque; it begins with "When the immigrants came to our shores," and goes on to explain that it's time for these immigrants to assimilate to the indigenous peoples. A set of useful suggestions for getting that done follows. To get to the article you have to go to http://tinyurl.com/937cp and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, then click on the story's title.
14. Posted on the Native Truth list in response to a request
for some information about "Native American Christmas customs":
"Every day is Christmas in Indian Country. Daily living is
centered around the spirit of giving and walking the Red Road.
Walking the Red Road means making everything you do a spiritual
act. If your neighbor, John Running Deer, needs a potato masher,
and you have one that you are not using, you offer him yours in
the spirit of giving. It doesn't matter if it is Christmas or
not."
[Source: "A Native American Christmas," by Floyd Looks for Buffalo and Sandie Lee, dated 12/7/05.]
15. You might want to look at Carl Zimmer's brief post excerpting the Dover ruling against intelligent design, titled "Dover: ID is Out!", at http://www.corante.com/ loom/archives/044460print.html . Zimmer provides a link to the 139-page decision, and he quotes from page 137 of the ruling as follows:
"Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator."
16. From "Once on the Fringe, This New Field is Rising," by Kimberly Winston, in the 12/21/05 issue of _Religion BookLine:
"Light the cigars and sent out the birth announcements; with the publication of a first textbook, contemporary pagan studies officially moves from a quirky, offbeat area of study to a full-fledged academic field. _Introduction to Pagan Studies_ by Barbara Davy releases from AltaMira Press next August, just in time for the academic year. Though not the first academic title on modern practitioners of Wicca and other pre-Christian religions, it is the first textbook at look at the subject from the religious studies perspective."
You can read the entire article -- which discusses some other academic works on contemporary paganism in addition to the one by Davy -- at http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6293077.html .
17. Cyberplaces to check out: "Wrathful Dispersion Theory" (a parody of "Intelligent Design" with references to "Babelism") at http://tinyurl.com/bqy81, suggested by Douglas Dee; an article on the collection of sacred manuscripts at St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/771/he1.htm [including materials from a Christian Arab community of 1000 years ago]; " "God bloggers' religious and political power," at http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/ 0,12271,1593857,00.html ; "Lost in Translation, Inexplicable Errors Uncovered in New Testament," at http://www.i-newswire.com/goprint51189.html (about a Spanish New Testament); the website of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, at http://hirr.hartsem.edu ; "Intent of 'jihad' missed in translation as 'holy war,' at http://tinyurl.com/86xp6 ; a sizable collection of articles online from back issues of _Gnosis_, at http://www.lumen.org/sample_articles_list/samples.html ; "Church stops believing in the Bible," by Stephen McGinty, at http://tinyurl.com/9al03 .
CORRECTION
1. I wrote that I was grateful to Douglas Dee for researching the literature on the idea that Baptists aren't Protestants, and noted that he had "also sent me some longer quotations from _The Trail of Blood_, including a statement that 'almost all early Baptists rejected a successionist view.' " And Douglas wrote:
"Oops, I think I was insufficiently clear. The quote 'almost all early Baptists rejected a successionist view' was from the Baptist web page that reflected a viewpoint opposed to the _The Trail of Blood_ , not from _The Trail of Blood_ itself."
Copyright © 2006 Suzette Haden Elgin
All rights reserved
TO JOIN A NETWORK AND RECEIVE ITS NEWSLETTER: Send newsletter title, your e-mail address, and your check, money order, or credit card information (for Visa or Mastercard) to OCLS, PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 USA. The newsletters are: _The Linguistics & Science Fiction Newsletter_; _The Religious Language Newsletter_; and _The Verbal Self-Defense Newsletter_. Each $5.00 a year ($15.00 Supporting) for the six issues of the calendar year, by e-mail only, advertising-free. **Payments can now be made through Paypal if that's your preference (and for members outside the U.S. that's the simplest method); our Paypal account is ocls@madisoncounty.net.** For more information or a free sample issue, or to cancel the newsletter, please e-mail OCLS@madisoncounty.net.