July/August 2006 Issue

THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 7, Issue 4 -- July/August 2006
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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; 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.
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IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; Quotes & Comments; Notes on _The Gospel of Judas_ Controversy; Cyberspace; The _Left Behind: Eternal Forces_ Fandango

EDITOR'S NOTE

Thank you for all the excellent materials and resources that you've been sending; I'm grateful.

I'm about to lose one resource that I've found very valuable. As of July 1, 2006, the Inttranews "daily news service for the language industry" at http://inttranews.inttra.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi -- a site where I find many items about religious language, translations of religious documents, and the like -- will become a subscription-only service. Its subscription price is beyond our budget here. If any of you have access to it, perhaps through your university libraries, and will forward me the URLs for any stories that you feel I should read for this newsletter, I'll follow through.

NETWORK INPUT

1. So far, all responses to my question about the ratio of commentary to items in the newsletter have been the same: They agree with Diana Cook and vote for an ample amount of commentary. That's a compliment, and comes as a surprise to me; thank you one and all.

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1. About John Walker Lindh, who now calls himself Hamza Walker Lindh....

"And so it is that now he is imprisoned in America for twenty years, and part of his sentence is that America will not allow him to speak Arabic. He cannot teach; he cannot even pray with an open mouth. It is forbidden. And yet the brothers in the prison speak Arabic to him.... And one day in late 2003, when he is on line for chow and one of the brothers says to him, 'Assalamu alaikum,' he has a decision to make. _Assalamu alaikum_ is the traditional Muslim greetings. It means 'Peace be upon you,' and when a Muslim hears it, it is customary for him to respond not only in kind but in _excess_ of the original greeting.... But the language is Arabic. And Hamza is standing within earshot of a guard. And he, with his pinioned tongue, knows that to speak is to be punished. ... '_Walaikum assalam_,' Hamza says, loud enough for the brother -- and the guard -- to hear. ... And when [he] returns to his cell... he is led away to the Special Housing Unit -- also known as the hole. ... And there Hamza settles into his cell, with the Arabic singing in his head, where no one can stop it."

This is from "Innocent," by Tom Junod, on pp. 106-113 and 134-136 of the 7/06 issue of _Esquire_; the quote is from pages 108 and 110. According to Junod, Lindh spends a lot of his time in the hole. Also according to Junod, on page 108:

"There is only one God, giving one specifically Arabic Koran to his final Prophet. ... And so it is that the Holy Koran cannot exist in translation. There are many translations of the Koran, but they are not the true Koran itself... And so it is that every Muslim must try to master Arabic. It is not necessary that every Muslim succeed in his effort, for God made every man with different capabilities. But it is necessary for every man to try, once he becomes a Muslim."

This is an extraordinary article -- not available online to people who don't subscribe to the print version of the magazine, unfortunately -- and I recommend it to you. But when I first read it, I just could not bring myself to believe that part of John Walker Lindh's sentence is a prohibition against speaking Arabic; that made no sense at all. A little investigation clarified it. It's not a prohibition against speaking Arabic, but a stipulation that he speak only English. (As if English-speaking terrorists aren't capable of saying "We had oranges for breakfast" with the meaning "The plastic explosives are under my mattress.")

There are a number of accounts on line; one that seems reasonably thorough and non-polemic, titled "The apotheosis of John Walker Lindh is beginning," is at http://jihadwatch.org/archives/010947.php .
2. "To read the Gospel of Matthew or Luke is to be dazzled by one miracle after another. In that context, the actual teachings seem almost mundane. But to read [Thomas] Jefferson's version (what Beacon Press now publishes as _The Jefferson Bible_) is to face the relentless demand that we be much better people -- inside and out -- than most of us are."

This is on page 35 of "Jesus Without The Miracles," by Erik Reece (pp. 33-41 of the 12/05 _Harper's_). On the same page, Reece provides us with the following list of what he claims that Jefferson -- who "took a pair of scissors to the King James Bible" -- considered to be Jesus' teachings:

"Be just; justice comes from virtue, which comes from the heart.
Treat people the way we want them to treat us.
Always work for peaceful resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with compassion. (sic)
Consider valuable the things that have no material value.
Do not judge others.
Do not bear grudges.
Be modest and unpretentious.
Give out of true generosity, not because we expect to be repaid."

(I think there must be an editorial or clerical error in the third line; my guess is that it should be "even to the point of returning compassion for violence" or "even to the point of responding to violence with compassion.")

3. My thanks to Douglas Dee for a copy of "The Columbia University 'Miracle' Study: Flawed and Fraud," by Bruce Flamm, on pp. 25-31 of the 9-10/05 _Skeptical Inquirer_.

The study in question, published in the _Journal of Reproductive Medicine_ in 2001, is the one which claimed that "infertile women who were prayed for by Christian prayer groups became pregnant twice as often as those who did not have people praying for them." (Very badly put; on page 26.) Flamm's short list of the problems with the study, on page 27, can be summed up as follows: including prayers asking that God's will be done muddles things completely, since there's no way of knowing what God's will may be and therefore the results can't be measured; no attempt was made to find out how much "background prayer" -- and how much non-Christian prayer -- was going on in addition to the prayers stipulated by the study; and the principle of Occam's razor ( that the simplest possible explanation should always be the one accepted) was violated. He then goes on to provide a list of difficulties that's truly astonishing -- that the report's lead author did not in fact conduct the study, that it was conducted by a man named Daniel Wirth whose academic credentials are a law degree and an M.A. in parapsychology, that one of the alleged co-authors of the article didn't even learn of its existence until at least six months after its completion, that one co-author was on the way to prison in December 2005, and that -- on page 31 -- "in light of all the shocking information presented above, one must consider the sad possibility that the Columbia prayer study may never have been conducted at all."

Finally, on page 29:

"Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this entire sordid saga can be summed up in one question: How did a bizarre study claiming extraordinarily unlikely and apparently supernatural results end up in a peer-reviewed medical journal?" We may never know, Flamm says, adding that "for two years the editors of the _Journal of Reproductive Medicine_ (JRM) refused to answer my calls or respond to letters about this study."

I found Flamm's tone so vicious, and so polemic, that it made me uneasy. I went to Google and did a brief search, and it appears that even if he has exaggerated some of the details, his facts are essentially accurate.

[Note: For an overview of medical studies involving intercessory prayer, I suggest going to the Religious Tolerance website's page on the topic at http://www.religioustolerance.org/medical6.htm ; if you scroll down a bit, you'll come to their account of the Columbia study.]

4. The 5-6/2006 issue of _Books & Culture_ (in a special section on "The State of the Ministry") had a very interesting review article by Jason Byassee titled "Preaching Is Hard," on pp. 38-39. I'm sure he's right that preaching is hard, and the task he undertakes in the article -- reviewing six books of and about sermons -- is also hard; he manages it very well. I recommend the review, and I want to show you two quotes. In the first, Byassee comments briefly, and then he quotes Barbara Brown Taylor, one of my favorite authors of sermons:

"... [T]he preacherly tendency to let hearers off the hook by softening Jesus' demands may be, in fact, right: 'along the way they found a third way to live with his high call to discipleship -- neither turning away from it nor lowering it but allowing it to shimmer high over their heads -- where it provoked them, disturbed them, inspired and strangely reassured them.' " [On page 38]

In the second quote, on page 39, Byassee writes that Martin Niemoller "must've floored his hearers when he recounted his time in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau," and then quotes Niemoller:

"Every day the idea arose: If these people will pull me out of my place here to that gallows, I shall shout to them, 'You criminals, you murderers, wait and see -- there is a God in heaven and he will show you!' And then the torturing question: What would have happened if Jesus, when they nailed him to his gallows, to the cross, had spoken like this and cursed his enemies? Nothing would have happened, only there would be no gospel, no Christian Church, for there would be no message of great joy."

5. The same issue of _Books & Culture_ has an article by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson reviewing Eldon Jay Epp's book _Junia: The First Woman Apostle_ (Fortress 2005), on pp.8-9. It deals with the controversy over whether a reference by Paul to an apostle (Roman 16:7) referred to a male (Junias) or a female (Junia). Until about a hundred years ago the name was assumed to be a woman's -- but then the church changed its mind. On page 8:

"The switcheroo from female to male was possible, in the first place, because the apostle's name appears only once, in the accusative form 'Junian.' (Exegetes need to be not only text critics, but first-rate grammarians as well.)"

There was a punctuation difference that would have clarified the gender of the name: Both masculine and feminine nouns took the "-n" ending as direct objects, but the presence of an acute accent would have marked the name as feminine. However, "there are no accent marks in the oldest extant scriptural texts. There are no puncutation marks or spaces between words, either; such niceties are later developments."

The conclusion in the article (and in the book reviewed) is that there is unambiguous evidence that the name was Junia. (For just one example, there are 250 instances of the female name Junia in Greek and Latin inscriptions found in ancient Rome, but not a single instance of the male name Junias.) On page 9: "The early church thought that Junia the woman was an apostle, yet remained indifferent to the implications of her status. The modern church disbelieved the apostolicity of any woman, and so ignored the hard evidence."

6. The 5/1/06 issue of _USA Today_ had an article by Rabbi Gerald L. Zelizer titled "A rabbi's struggle: To allow gay clergy or not?" In the introductory blurb, Zelizer says "Fourteen years ago, my answer was no. Today, I see things differently." He briefly discusses the history of the issue in Conservative Judaism, which he says is "embroiled in an internal dispute about whether homosexuals should be allowed to become rabbis."

And he writes this:

"I have asked myself why God would design some people with a trait -- for which there is paltry evidence that it can be reversed -- and then designate individuals with that characteristic as 'sinners'?" [Thanks to Patricia Mathews for the copy.]

7. The 6/06 issue of _Sojourners_ (pp. 38-43) featured an interview with Marilynne Robinson, author of the Pulitzer-winning religion-focused novel _Gilead_. On page 38:

"Robinson suggests that for both the minister and the artist/writer, the essential part of faith is the creative courage it takes to _see_ the holy in the everyday world, and then to respond."

This I understand, I believe, and I agree with. But then on page 42 Robinson says something that perhaps I don't understand at all:

"One popular definition of religion has been as an opiate, that its purpose was to make people comfortable in the world. Some still acept this as the true definition and have tried to re-create it, to use religion to make themselves comfortable. But any of the major religions, seriously understood, clearly makes you uncomfortable in the world."

I spent some time thinking this over. I can follow it after a fashion, to the point where Robinson would be telling the reader that every faith, taken seriously, is going to make you abruptly aware of how far short you yourself -- and for that matter, all of humankind -- are of living up to its standards. That's going to make you uncomfortable, certainly. But then it seems to me that every faith, taken seriously, is also going to make you aware that there's something you can _do_ about this shortfall, if you're willing to try. The only exceptions, it seems to me, would be for those who believe that before you're ever born you may have been condemned to eternal damnation with no hope for changing that, and those who believe that _all_ of humankind is wicked beyond any hope of redemption; fortunately, those two items aren't part of most faiths, taken seriously. Perhaps I'm missing Robinson's point; I'm willing to have that explained to me.

8. Thanks to Patricia Mathews for sending something that surprised me -- a story by Ann Oldenburg from the 5/11/06 _USA Today_ titled "The divine Miss Winfrey?" and with an intro blurb that reads "Many see Oprah as spiritual leader; others don't believe." Here's a sample:

" 'She's a really hip and materialistic Mother Teresa,' says Kathryn Lofton, a professor at Reed College... who has written two papers analyzing the religious aspects of Winfrey. 'Oprah has emerged as a symbolic figurehead of spirituality.' "

[A Google search didn't find either of the Lofton papers online, but I did find a citation: "Practicing Oprah; Or, The Prescriptive Compulsion of a Spiritual Capitalism,"_The Journal of Popular Culture_, 39:4 (Summer 2006).]

NOTES ON _THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS_ CONTROVERSY

Since the first news story broke about this document, I've been following the reports in every one of the media that I have access to, hoping I would come across something that would justify the commotion associated with it, something that would justify the alarms being raised by various religious groups, and something that would justify the amount of money the National Geographic Association was spending. I have been dogged, and I have been thorough -- and I have failed. I understand and readily acknowledge that the discovery of an ancient document of this kind is a major event in various fields of science, but I simply cannot see what all the fuss is about as it has been framed in _religious_ terms. I agree with Cornel Bonca, who says in his very irreverent article "Judas: So Hot Right Now!" [at http://www.ocweekly.com/news/news/judas-so-hot-right-now/25219 ]: "The Judas-as-pal-helping-Jesus-to-the-cross stuff? Say it with me: lame. But the Gnostic cosmology thing going on here: fascinating. That's what all the fuss ought to be about."

If anyone had shown the slightest tendency to consider that cosmology a threat to today's Christianity, that would be news, and there would indeed be some reason for a fuss, but that hasn't happened. [For an overview of the cosmology, see "Gospel of Judas: Authentic Fraud," by Jon Christian Ryter, at http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon131.htm ]. All the focus of the brouhaha has been on these two lines from the English translation:

a. [Jesus speaking to Judas]: ".... "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom."

b. [And again, Jesus speaking to Judas]: "... you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."

I was raised in as straitlaced and rigid a Baptist church as you're likely to find anywhere. But I can remember, from as early as age seven, hearing debates in Sunday School over whether it was fair to blame Judas for what he had done, since unless someone betrayed Jesus the prophecies could not be fulfilled and humankind could not be redeemed according to God's plan. " 'Gospel of Judas' translated anew," (_Arkansas Democrat-Gazette_ for 4/7/06, no byline) notes that "the New Testament Gospels of John and Mark both contained passages that suggest that Jesus not only picked Judas to betray him, but actually encouraged Judas to hand him over to those he knew would crucify him." [Source mentioned: Coptic studies professor James M. Robinson.]

This is not, in my opinion, news. The only conclusion I am able to come to, to my sorrow, is that the entire mass media commotion is just one more cynical and greedy chase after money and ratings.

CYBERSPACE

1. Thanks to Cindy Brown for sending "And if it's a boy, will it be Lleh?," by Jennifer Lee, in the 5/18/06 _NY Times_, online at http://tinyurl.com/jm9um , about the popularity of "Nevaeh" as a name for newborn girls. Sample:

"In 1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the 70th-most-popular name for baby girls... The spectacular rise of Nevaeh (commonly pronounced nah-VAY-uh) has little precedent, name experts say .... having made the fastest climb among all names in more than a century, the entire period for which the Social Security Administration has such records. ... The surge of Nevaeh can be traced to a single event: the appearance of a Christian rock star, Sonny Sandoval of P.O.D., on MTV in 2000 with his baby daughter, Nevaeh. 'Heaven spelled backwards,' he said."

I find this a little strange. In the past, Christians who concerned themselves about such things considered words spelled or spoken backward to be tinged with evil. Perhaps times have changed.

2. I'd like to recommend three articles -- long, but well worth the time they take to read, from the Mixing Memory Blog:

"The Schematicity of Religious Thought" at http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/ 2005/01/schematicity-of-religious-thought.html

"A Comprehensive Theory of Religious Cognition" at http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2005/01/comprehensive-theory-of-religious.html

"Do Children Attribute False Beliefs to God?" at http:// mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2005/01/do-children-attribute-false-beliefs-to.html

3. Here's Jim Wallis, writing in _SojoMail_ for 3/22/06:

"In places such as the U.K., Christians are rallying around the call to "Make Poverty History." Many are comparing that call to the cry of British Parliamentarian William Wilberforce and an earlier generation of evangelical revivalists in the 18th and 19th centuries who changed history in England and America by their steadfast commitment to end slavery. For many, poverty is the new slavery."
I don't know what Wallis means by "places such as the U.K" .... that strikes me as an odd choice of words. But I'm impressed by the two very well-crafted slogans, "Make Poverty History" and "Poverty is the New Slavery." They're short; they're clear ( even if the reference to the Christian abolitionists in the second one is missed); they're easy to remember; they take advantage of the serendipitous three-syllable word-set, "poverty/history/slavery". They should be effective.

I went googling for their sources, and for "Make Poverty History" I found a Wikipedia article that says: "The Make Poverty History campaign (which is written as MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY) was a British and Irish coalition of charities, religious groups, trade unions, campaigning groups and celebrities who mobilized around the UK's prominence in world politics in 2005 to increase awareness and pressure governments into taking actions towards relieving absolute poverty. The symbol of the campaign was a white wristband made of cotton or silicone. A 'virtual' white band was also available to be displayed on websites." A single source for "Poverty is the New Slavery" is a different matter; if you set up "[X] is the New Slavery" as a metaphor, you find a variety of different candidates for [X], including today's _literal_ slavery trade.

4. From a brief review in _Religion BookLine_ for 10/5/05 of Faranak Margolese's _Off the Derech: Why Observant Jews Leave Judaism_ (Devora 2006):

"Baffled by her own experience as well as those of friends, Margolese explores the phenomenon of yeshiva-educated children from observant homes abandoning their tradition, or 'going off the derech [path]'. Interviews with formerly observant Jews, as well as rabbis, educators, therapists and program directors uncover the emotional and intellectual complexity behind the phenomenon. 'Most observant Jews seem to have left, not because the outside world pulled them in, but rather because the observant one pushed them out,' she concludes. 'They experienced Judaism as a source of pain rather than joy.' Margolese, who returned to a religious lifestyle, views her findings as a wake-up call to reshape the observant world so it remains inspiring and inviting. ... She advocates focusing on meaning instead of on rules, and placing a child's emotional needs above his Torah observance. ..."

5. My thanks to Patricia Mathews for pointing me to a book -- literally, an entire book -- by Rob McAlpine, on the subject of "Post-Charismatic Christianity," starting at http://www.robbymac.org/charismatic . It's beautifully laid out and easy to navigate, with each chapter on a separate link; it's well written, and if there are any typographical errors I didn't spot them. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the information -- historical, biographical, or theological; it's far outside my field. I can say, however, that unless there are factual errors I'm unaware of this is an extremely thorough and interesting and useful body of material. With that caveat, recommended.

Here's one sample, specifically on religious language, to give you an idea of the style and flavor, under the heading "Word of Faith Teachings" ("Word of Faith" or "Word Faith" being perhaps more familiar under the label of "Prosperity" theology):

"A key approach to the Scriptures that shows the hermeneutical principles that Word Faith operates under is their concept of the Greek words _rhema_ and _logos_. Simply put, they define _logos_ to be the written Word of God, and _rhema_ is the "living Word" or the "now" word of God. ... Many Christians are familiar with the concept of a '_rhema_ word' from Scripture, even if they have not used that term to describe it. From across the denominational spectrum, stories are told of reading a well-known passage of Scripture, when suddenly a certain verse or phrase seems to jump off the page, and the reader knows beyond a doubt that the Holy Spirit is speaking through that verse or phrase." [At http:// www.robbymac.org/charismatic/word_faith/rhema.html .]

6. Here is the final paragraph of Bill Moyers' "Pass the Bread," speaking to the graduating class at Hamilton College in May; I've read it a dozen times now, and it makes me cry every time.

"Civilization sustains and supports us. The core of its value is bread. But bread is its great metaphor. All my life I've prayed the Lord's Prayer, and I've never prayed, 'Give me this day my daily bread.' It is always, 'Give us this day our daily bread.' Bread and life are shared realities. They do not happen in isolation. Civilization is an unnatural act. We have to make it happen, you and I, together with all the other strangers. And because we and strangers have to agree on the difference between a horse thief and a horse trader, the distinction is ethical. Without it, a society becomes a war against all, and a market for the wolves becomes a slaughter for the lambs. My generation hasn't done the best job of honoring this ethical bargain, and our failure explains the mess we're handing over to you. You may be our last chance to get it right. So good luck, Godspeed, enjoy these last few hours together, and don't forget to pass the bread."

You can read the entire speech at http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0522-35.htm .

7. When the U.S. Catholic bishops met on 6/15-17/06, they voted to approve numerous changes in a new translation of the Mass based on "new Vatican translation rules that call for liturgical translations to adhere more closely to the original Latin text than was done in the past." (The changes still have to be approved by the Pope.) Some of the changes:

When the priest says 'The Lord be with you,' the people will respond, 'And with your spirit,' instead of the current response, 'And also with you.' The Nicene Creed will begin with "I believe" instead of "We believe." And the Sanctus, which now begins with "Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might," will now open with "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of hosts."

[For more information, go to http://www.the-tidings.com/2006/0609/bishopsmeet. html .]

8. This item, from the 6/7/06 _Religion BookLine -- shocked me. It's by Juli Cragg Hilliard, and titled "If We're Still Here, It Didn't Happen." It opens with this sentence: "Yesterday -- June 6, 2006, or 6-06-06 -- some booksellers laid out empty clothes on the floors of their shops." They were, according to Cheryl Kerwin, who is marketing manager for the _Left Behind_ franchise at Tyndale House, "just having a little fun."

I don't think "having a little fun" fits here; I think it's disgracefully bad taste. Imagine coming home from work and finding not your spouse and your children but just their empty clothes on the floor, meaning that they'd been "raptured" and you hadn't. That's not one bit funny.

9. You'd think that the Pope's own religious language would be safe from editorial insertions, but that appears not to be true. During his recent visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, his official Polish translator decided to add a few words. He transcribed the Pope's words as "I've come here to seek reconciliation -- first of all with God, because only He can open and purify the hearts of men, but also from those who suffered here." The difficulty with this translation is that the Pope did not say "but also from those who suffered here"; the translator added those words on his own.

My source for this is the paragraph at http://inttranews.inttra.net/cgi-bin/news.cgi?action=aff_art&art_id=12072 which is supposed to take you to the full story, but the story link took me only to a blank page; may you have better luck. (I did try a Google search with a variety of search phrases, but found nothing that way either.)

10. From an interview by Donna Freitas (_Religion BookLine_ for 6/7/06) with Rabbi David Aaron about his book _Inviting God In: Celebrating the Soul-Meaning of the Jewish Holy Days_:

RBL: "In the 'Author's Note' you mention that, in referencing God, you 'reluctantly acceded to using the pronoun He, even though it can be very misleading and does not convey the full truth about God.' Can you explain?"

Aaron: "Unfortunately, many people actually believe that God is male. ...."
No comment. The complete interview is at http://www. publishersweekly.com/index.asp?layout=articleprint&articleid=CA6341564 .

11. From a brief review in _Religion BookLine_ for 5/17/06 of Obery M Hendricks, Jr.'s _The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of What Jesus Believed and How It Was Corrupted_ (Doubleday):

"Thundering like a biblical prophet against social and economic injustice, racism, and political deceit, Hendricks... proclaims Jesus as a political revolutionary who overturned the unjust social policies of his day. Rather unoriginally, Hendricks suggests that Jesus employed seven political strategies (e.g., 'treat people's needs as holy,' 'give a voice to the voiceless,' and 'expose the workings of oppression') in his challenge to the status quo. With cunning insight, however, Hendricks fervently examines the politics of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush -- two U.S. Presients who have professed to be following the politics of Jesus -- and argues that these leaders fall woefully short of living out Jesus' message of justice, righteousness and love." [Online at http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6335262.html .]

12. From "The Risks of Religious Rhetoric in Politics," maybe by Gail Short (billed as "Media Contact"), at http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=92843:

"Politicians engaging in religious rhetoric risk being called hypocrites, according to a new study by University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers. The phenomenon is called the Pharisee Effect and is based on biblical refrences to Jesus' rebuke of religious leaders, known as the Pharisees, for using public prayers to enhance their own image."

The authors of the research paper (which appeared in _The Journal of Communication and Religion_) are Larry Powell and Eduardo Neiva. They propose that the politician who goes over the edge risks provoking one of five negative reactions: "self-serving motivations or intentionality"; deception or hypocrisy; inappropriateness; fanaticism; and the holier-than-thou attitude."

I very much like that term "Pharisee Effect." And I agree -- there's a fine line between enough religious rhetoric and too much. I wince every time I hear George Bush say "And may God continue to bless America."

13. Thanks to Douglas Dee for an interesting story from the 6/13/06 _NY Times_ by Lynette Clemetson, titled "U.S. Muslims Confront Taboo on Nursing Homes." Clemetson writes that Muslims in the U.S. are struggling to come to terms with the clash between the nursing home chunk of "American culture" and their conviction that their faith requires them "to care for parents as they were cared for as infants," which has always been interpreted to mean caring for them at home.
This is _hard_, whatever your faith. You can read the story at http://tinyurl.com/ mq2sj .

14. "The Episcopal Church chose Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as its leader yesterday, making her the first woman to head any denomination in the Anglican Communion worldwide."

This is Juliet Eilperin, in "Episcopal Church Chooses First Female Leader," online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/ 18/AR2006061800079_pf.html ; a Google search will find you many more articles on the same topic. For one more example, there's "US church elects first woman leader," by Stephen Bates, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329508342-103602,00.html .

So far, just news stories. But I'd like to call your attention to some other things they say. In the Elperin article: "The historic vote shocked many delegates who had gathered at the convention..." And in the Bates story, as its opening line: "The US Episcopal church stunned Christians across the world last night by unexpectedly electing the first woman primate in the Anglican church." Bates goes on to say that Schori's election "creates a new headache for the Archbishop of Canterbury," and to say that although there were some "gasps of joy" at the announcement, not everyone was rejoicing. In fact, he writes, "There were rumours that some conservative bishops had voted for bishop Schori as a means of accelerating the disintegration of the church."

One of the most widespread effects of religious language is the shock and pain many girlchildren feel when they first become aware that the churches and temples and mosques they love are never going to allow them to be priests or rabbis or pastors or imams. No matter how wise they might become, no matter how devout, no matter how eloquent, no matter how loving, no matter how holy -- just because they are female, they are never going to be considered "qualified" for those roles. And they will go on all their lives reading and hearing religious language that reinforces that shock and pain. It's all very well for theologians to give such language a clever spin, and to couch it in elaborate metaphors; for many (perhaps most) girls and women, the language is always going to be understood as meaning only one thing: that they are less worthy in God's eyes than are boys and men. I'm not at all sure that men spend enough time thinking about how they would feel if it were the other way around.

15. Cyberplaces to visit: "Are we evil?", by David Kaiser, at http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2006/06/are-we-evil.html -- suggested by Patricia Mathews; "NFSF: Talking to God," a review by Greg Beatty of two books discussing religion in the fiction of Philip K. Dick and Madeleine L'Engle, at http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10232 ; "Euphony and Usefulness," a discussion by Mark Liberman of various items of religious language, including "Christianity" and "Christendom" and "Islamism" and more, at http:// itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003176.html#more ; "Fighting Terrorism One Word At a Time," at http://tinyurl.com/fgbkk -- suggested by Cindy Brown; an entertaining blogpost composed of mildly irreverent definitions of terms like "Premillenialism," at http://holyoffice.livejournal.com/80073.html , suggested by Liz Ditz; "Ministering to the Upwardly Mobile Muslim," by Samantha M. Shapiro, at http://tinyurl.com/nvthem , suggested by Douglas Dee .

THE _LEFT BEHIND: ETERNAL FORCES_ FANDANGO

Thanks to all of you who've been sending me materials about the violent "spiritual warfare" videogame called _Left Behind: Eternal Forces_ -- the one in which the killings are followed by shouts of "Praise the Lord!" -- reported to be coming out from Left Behind Games this fall. I also owe thanks to commenters at my blog who pointed me toward additional resources when I posted a brief (and positive) review of Rick Warren's _The Purpose-Driven Life_ there.

I've now read five lengthy installments of Jonathan Hutson's (a) attack on the game itself, (b) discussion of Rick Warren's alleged business connection with the game, and (c) claim that Warren is a "stealth" dominionist, all at the Talk2Action blog, and have been trying to find a way to determine what is actually going on with this tangled mess. It hasn't been made easier by the fact that each time I try to do a Google search for other sources, I end up at one site after another that freezes my computer -- to the point that at the moment I'm not willing to risk clicking on even one more URL related to this topic.

I'm completely baffled. For the moment, I give up. Suppose I just sum up the situation as I perceive it now -- which won't take long -- and admit that I don't intend to research it any further until the furor that's causing all the computer crashes dies down. Like this:

1. The very idea of a Christian first-person shooter videogame turns my stomach; no matter how the game developers spin their descriptions, the entire premise of the game is the antithesis of Christianity as I understand it. I doubt that Hutson or anyone else could say anything against the game itself that was so negative that I would not agree with it. (And I am of the optimistic opinion that the backlash against the game -- from people of every faith and persuasion -- has been so massively negative that the product either will not be released at all, or will be watered down to a pale nonviolent shadow of its former self before release.)

2. I have no idea whether Rick Warren supports the game, in a business or any other sense, or not. Some of the alleged facts strike me as evidence that he does; some of the alleged facts strike me as evidence that he doesn't. My personal inclination is to believe that he has better PR sense than to support it, no matter what his theological convictions on the matter might be; on the other hand, he has made no public statement explicitly stating that he is opposed to it, and heaven knows he has enough public forums available to him to let him make a statement like that half a dozen times a day.

3. I find it very difficult to believe that Rick Warren is a "stealth" Dominionist -- with his support for the game being just one more feature of his alleged nefarious covert activities. On the other hand, the fact that there are Dominionists _at all_ is something I find difficult to believe, so perhaps that's not relevant.

If you want to try to wend your way through all this, here are the five URLs to Jonathan Hutson's opus, where you will find an abundance of links to additional resources of every kind. They are:

Part 1 -- http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959
Part 2 -- http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/1/82458/92817
Part 3 -- http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/6/7/41835/37829
Part 4 -- http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/6/9/32014/83270
Part 5 -- http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/6/12/31011/1474

Now... the obvious question is why you should bother, and why I should care. The reason I don't perceive the existence of this game as a trivial matter is because of the extraordinary power of videogames; I don't think a first-person-shooter "Christian" videogame is something that can just be ignored. The reason I don't perceive as trivial the question of whether Rick Warren has the dissemination of the game as one of _his_ purposes is because of the extraordinary power he now has in our culture, especially our religious culture; if it weren't for that, I'd have roughly the same interest in the issue as I have in the pregnancies of movie stars. Taken together, those two factors compel me to take it all seriously; it's a prime example of the effects of religious language that worry me most. If any of you can shed light on it, please do; I'll welcome your input.

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