January/February issue

THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 1, Issue 1 -- January/February 2000
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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. It is available by e-mail only, in plain text, and is free to members of the Lovingkindness Network (annual dues, $5.00). For more information send an e-mail to OCLS@madisoncounty.net.
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IN THIS ISSUE: "Spiritual" Warfare; My Neurochemicals Made Me Do It;
Cyberspace; Quotes & Comments

"SPIRITUAL" WARFARE

1. Here's an example of religious language -- quite typical religious language, these days -- that I'd like you to consider. It's from "Praying with Persistence," by Alice Smith, in the 8-9/98 issue of *Spirited Woman* (pages 26-28; on page 28): "Christ the Mighty Warrior has given us not only defensive armor but also offensive weapons (see Eph. 6:11-17, 2 Cor. 10:4). These weapons are spiritual, not earthly, and they have but one purpose: winning spiritual war. Yet even the most powerful gun is harmless until someone pulls the trigger. We must be willing to pray until the target is in sight. Then we must continue to pray until the target is destroyed!"

You'll see the illogic of saying that a gun is harmless until someone pulls the trigger; anyone held at gunpoint can explain to you how false that is, as can anyone who has carried out a crime with an unloaded gun. (Not to mention the fact that many guns are very effective implements for bashing people over the head with.) But that's not the real problem in this quotation, and has nothing to do with religious language. The problem here is the idea that combat language can be used in English without bringing along the semantic content of the English words "warrior" and "war" (backed up here by "gun" and "trigger" and "target" and "destroyed"). We all know what warriors do; their task is to maim and kill and lay waste.The warriors' task is to WIN, no matter what has to be done to achieve that
goal. Our image of the warrior comes from the Rambo movies and it dominates U.S. culture today. However, the Christ who is called a "Mighty Warrior" in the quotation above gave us absolutely unambiguous instructions: We are to return good for evil; we are to turn the other cheek to the attacker's hand when it's raised to strike us again. That's quite clear -- but that's not what warriors do. Not in English.

The idea that native speakers of English can use and understand the vocabulary of war without including its presuppositions of returning *evil* for evil turns up everywhere. Here's Michael Novak, writing in an article on pp. 25-32 of *First Things* for 4/93 titled "Women, Ordination, and Angels" (available online at http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9304/novak. html). Referring to the difficulty people have interpreting words like "man" to mean both men and women, Novak says: "Intelligent people ought to be able to follow basic laws of language without artificial crutches, and to judge from context how broad a range of applications is intended, without turning linguistic somersaults." Perhaps they ought to be, but in the real world they aren't. And the *most* basic law of language is that people can't use words from their native language without using their meanings at the same time, no matter how well they may understand that task intellectually. The idea that they can is pernicious, and so are its effects. For example, here's something written in the aftermath of the 9/15/99 Fort Worth shootings in which gunman Larry Ashbrook killed 7 people. It comes from *The New American* for 10/25/99, on page 7 (no byline). It says: "Texas law allows persons holding CHLs [concealed handgun licenses] to carry firearms in churches unless specifically notified to the contrary by churches that opt to ban guns. None of the Fort Worth congregants was armed. Ashbrook was apparently confident that such would be the case, and as a result he was in complete control of the situation... ... That would not have been the case had one or more adults in attendance been armed; some lives could have been saved and injuries avoided. In fact, Ashbrook might not even have targeted the church if he believed guns were present." (My thanks to Robert Kingsbury for the copy of *The New American.*)

The message here is equally unambiguous: The good Christian should go armed to church. Fitting that idea into the context of the commandment to return good for evil is impossible. You could argue that the reason for carrying the gun to church is not that you intend to shoot the gun but in order to be sure that people like Ashbrook won't dare start shooting there. But that argument contradicts itself. People like Ashbrook are only going to be deterred if they have every reason to believe that you *will* shoot.

MY NEUROCHEMICALS MADE ME DO IT

1. Dan Seligman begins "Ethics at the Molecular Level" by talking about the days when our grandmothers believed that you improved your character by deciding that you would, and then following through -- that is, you did it by using your willpower. He goes on to say that experts now claim Grandmother was wrong, and he quotes psychologist Michael R. Lowe: "Willpower as an independent cause of behavior is a myth." Seligman doesn't like this a bit, and he comes down firmly on Grandmother's side. (*Forbes* for 11/29/99, pp. 81-82.) I sympathize, but it's not that simple. Every scientific journal you pick up today reports more new evidence for the hypothesis that human behavior is primarily the result of genetics and chemicals, with human intent being largely irrelevant.

When I was a child, there was a phrase grandmothers used, one that would come floating into conversation when people were being discussed. That phrase was "bad blood." There were people with bad blood, who had no willpower because they were born without it, the grandmothers said; the rest of us had no such excuse. The discoveries today's scientists are making -- to their genuine and freely-expressed horror -- strongly suggest that matters are even worse than the grandmothers' version of things. They appear to mean that "the rest of us" have no willpower either. These discoveries give a spectacular new force to the word "grace"; if they can't be disproved, they'll require a whole new definition for the word "sin."

CYBERSPACE

1. My thanks to Sally Lloyd for sending "Computer-assisted confession may catch on," by George R. Plagenz, from the 6/25/96 *Oakland Tribune.* Plagenz went to an exhibition of the Automatic Confession Machine (ACM) invented by Greg Garvey, a design professor. You kneel on a red cushion and press a button; the machine asks when you last confessed, and you type that in; a list of the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments appears on the screen and you're asked which ones apply to you, and you type that in; your assigned penances appear on the screen. Plagenz says that the priests he asked whether the machine would ever be used by the Catholic Church found the question ridiculous, except for one who said that if it were, it might increase the numbers going to confession. And he quotes "a nurse-homemaker" who says, "I resent priests who make me feel my sins are a waste of their time." [I don't know if this machine was intended as a joke, or a political/religious statement, or something else entirely. However, experiments with Computers-As-Therapists have been very successful, with people reporting that they prefer them to live therapists -- plus some early studies showing that improvement is just as likely with the e-therapist as with a live one.]

2. At http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/ 2003/tower.html you can find an article by Mark Tank that offers the following hypothesis: The Y2K phenomenon is a repeat of the Tower of Babel phenomenon. He begin by noting that when humankind tried to build a tower that would reach the sky, God put an end to that display of arrogance by turning their one language into many languages, so that they could no longer work together on their building project. (That's in Genesis 11.) Today, Tank says, courtesy of the computer, humankind has "begun to manipulate the very fabric of life itself, the genetic coding that provides the blueprint for life on this world." And he proposes that God is on the point of smacking us down once again, by shutting down our computers.

I don't share Mark Tank's orientation in religious matters. However, he writes well, and the parallel he draws is interesting. And any quick surveyof scientific articles on current genetics research will turn up one quotation after another from researchers who are deeply worried about how society will deal with the ethical and moral problems that flow from their discoveries. The phrase they use to refer to the process is, most of the time, "playing God."

3. Some sites that I haven't checked personally but that look as if they might be interesting: (a) "Red, White, Blue & Brimstone: New World Literature and the American Millennium," recommended in a Scout Report, which is at http://www. lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/brimstone. This one is a University of Virginia Library exhibit on "the role and impact of the Book of Revelation and millenarian thought on American culture." (b) Also from Scout Reports, "Documenting the American South: The Church in the Southern Black Community," located at http://metalab.unc.edu/docsouth/church/index.html. This is an archive of documents from the University of North Carolina libraries. (c) A number of sources mention the government site called "Project Megiddo," at http://www.fbi.gov/ library/megiddo/public.megiddo.pdf. This one is about the potential for extremist activity in the U.S. by groups with apocalyptic religious orientations. Pdf format only. (d) At http://www.ccel.org, you can find full texts of Christian classics in public domain.... works by Aquinas, John Bunyan, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther, and so on. It's called "The Christian Classics Ethereal Library." (e) More on the Apocalypse and apocalyptic beliefs at the "Apocalypse!" site: http://www.homeworkcentral.com/knowledge/vsl_files.htp? fileid _127279&flt=CAB.

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1. My thanks to Sally Lloyd for a copy of "Roots & Branches," by Dee Dee Riser, on page 54 of the 11-12/99 issue of *The Other Side.* Risher talks about birth and death, and offers a concept that *really* got my attention. I would never have thought of it; I'm glad that she did. Writing about the birth of her son, she says: "Had there been a companion watching my child's journey from the womb side, he would certainly have seen that process as death, not life. Only when viwed from this side do we recognize and name it as birth." And "We see death from this side -- and it is terrifying. But our faith allows us to claim the promise: What appears to be death is a portal to a life transformed." Extraordinary. I suspect that Risher is the first person ever to use the phrase "from the womb side."

2. I don't often look to *Forbes* for religious language, or religious commentary of any kind (although occasionally one of the megachurches is analyzed there as a business). But the 10/4/99 issue of *Forbes ASAP* was an exception. On pages 110-112, it had an article by Keith Ward titled "Binding Faiths: Global forces are squeezing out religious differences." The illustration on page 110 showed a figure seated in a field of clouds.... with the head of Jesus, the posture of Zen (and other meditation systems done crosslegged), and the hand configuration of Buddha. However, Ward writes that what's happening in religion isn't a matter of all religions merging into a single "world religion" (as the illustration might suggest). Rather, on page 111, "It is a matter of each accepting the others as partners rather than competitors in the human quest for truth and liberation." And then, on page 112: "...Those who accept the scientific worldview will be led to interpret religious narratives as largely metaphorical accounts...of the relation of human lives to a transcendent spiritual reality. ... When other religious traditions are interpreted as largely metaphorical, conflicts about literal facts loom less large. For metaphors do not contradict one another." Highly recommended.

3. One of the most interesting "interface" phenomena in religious language is that associated with icons (or sometimes ikons). As in: "They call it writing, though they write with horse-hair brushes and prepare their paper with linseed oil and pressed gold-leaf." This is the opening sentence of "GTU Ikonographer 'Writes' Theology," on pages 1 and 4 of the Spring 1995 *GTU Currents*; no byline. The ikonagrapher in question is Thomas Doolan. On page 4: "Doolan says that when a painter writes an ikon, he or she produces 'what amounts to a statement of Christian faith.' " And "For Professor Doolan, traditional ikons perform many of the same functions as the writings of theologians." I don't pretend to understand this icon-language; I don't pretend even to be able to appreciate the icons identified for me as great, many of which I perceive as ugly rather than beautiful. That's ignorance on my part, and is the sort of ignorance typical of people in an age of theological illiteracy like ours. I have a wistful desire to study the subject and repair my ignorance, much like my wistful desire to study quantum physics -- and equally improbable.

4. One of my most treasured sources of religious language is the books of Stephen Gaskin. Much neglected; hard to find; definitely not Mainstream. All my copies have been read to tatters. I'll close this issue with a few samples from his *Mind At Play* (1980; the Book Publishing Company)...

"Each of us is like a little corner off the holograph film. It contains the Totality, aand maybe the resolution isn't that fine and it's a little small, but it contains the Totality. ... Here we sit inside here, very mortal -- a semi-hard jelly, you can poke a hole in us with a sharp stick, we're not really very heavy stuff on this end, vulnerable to mosquitoes, lightning, rattlers, staph, herpes, *vulnerable* -- and on the other end, we contain this whole manifestation. And we *are* the lightning." (Page 26)

[And on the same page, talking about Gary Snyder] "Snyder said that if you're going to set up for a lifetime of ten-hour *sesshins,*you're setting up for a lifetime of somebody else supporting you... Everybody ought to meditate for themselves. He recommends an hour a day. But he says we ought to get used to the idea that we're not going to have those long time *sesshins* very much, and what we have to do is *learn to make the work we do be our meditation.*"

"There is law, and there is Grace. Grace is best, but Law works good if you happen to be temporarily out of Grace. You can figure out by the rules how to get back again." (Page 90)

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