THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 4, Issue 2 -- March/April 2003
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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. For more information, or to request a free sample issue, contact OCLS.
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IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; That Warrior Metaphor Again; Booknotes; Quotes & Comments; Cyberspace; Announcement
EDITOR'S NOTE
The world is in such turbulence right now that I'm afraid to say
anything; too many words are flying around without any thought-structure
to keep them from crashing. I'll try to be very careful with my
own words. Thank you for all the letters and e-mails and materials
that you've been sending; I'm grateful for your help.
One logistics item: Please delete our old "Route 4, Box 192E"
address from your records; it's no longer a working address. Anything
that can't go to our PO box should go to me c/o Empire Gas, Hiway
412 West, Huntsville, AR 72740.
NETWORK INPUT
1. From Douglas Dee:
"I'd heard anecdotes about people who believed that Jesus
spoke English & that the Bible was first written in English,
but I had assumed they were all just jokes or rumors, like the
repeated claim that somebody or other was so dumb that (s)he was
surprised to learn that Latin Americans don't speak Latin. Are
you sure this is for real? How can anyone possibly believe such
a thing? I don't see how it's possible. Have they never heard
a sermon that touched on issues of translation? Have they never
opened an edition of the Bible that discussed translation issues?
Are they entirely ignorant of the disputes about translations
at the time of the Reformation?"
I assure you, it's all true (and I assure you that the majority
will have no idea what the Reformation was or is, so let's set
that aside). But it's not like being surprised to learn that Latin
Americans don't speak Latin. Religious language (at least for
native speakers of English) isn't handled like other language.
Much of what we learn in the form of religious language can't
be investigated, let alone verified, but is represented to us
as truth, even when two propositions in the set are mutually contradictory.
Religious language is, I believe, stored in the memory with all
sorts of semantic disclaimers that make it exempt from the logical
operations we apply to non-religious language. (I'm speaking metaphorically,
but I think my meaning is clear.) Frege said that the separate
propositions of a religious faith are like beads on a string --
all linked by the fact that they are strung on that one cord (that
is, are from a single faith), but not necessarily connected to
one another in any other way. For many people -- who have always
heard the Bible read aloud in English, and have always read it
themselves in English, and have always heard the words of Jesus
and of biblical personages read and quoted in English -- the idea
that English wasn't the original language of the Bible has simply
never crossed their mind. It's not some sort of profound ignorance,
it's just that the idea (along with many other ideas) can't get
through the semantic barrier. Once the issue is brought up, people
immediately understand, and are usually astonished that they hadn't
thought of it before; for some, however, the realization is a
source of serious cognitive dissonance -- serious mind-cramp.
2. From Claudia Camp, about "micrography":
"I'm not sure what the definitional boundaries of micrography
are, but what you give here would seem to include the vast wealth
of Islamic productions of Koran texts that, while never figurative,
often work the already beautiful Arabic script into gorgeous works
of art. Unless I've misunderstood what is included in the genre,
it's surprising to see it described as "exclusively Jewish."
Thank you for sending this, Claudia. Maybe someone in the Network
can shed some light on the matter and explain (or explain away)
the basis of the distinction; I've had no luck finding out anything
else about it at all.
3. From Fran Stallings:
"I just found this review in a Feb 1996 copy of U of Chicago
alumnae magazine which had been languishing in my dusty To Read
pile: 'Expectant mothers can seek medical advice from a flood
of pregnancy manuals. But there's a literary drought, says the
[U Chicago] Divinity School's Tikva Frymer-Kensky, when it comes
to childbearing's sacred dimension. That absence led the Hebrew-bible
scholar to create _Motherprayer: the Pregnant Woman's Spiritual
Companion_ (Riverhead Books). Freymer-Kensky found that Judeo-Christian
writings, with their mostly male authorship, ignore experiences
of the body like childbirth. _Motherprayer_ answers this silence
with what she calls 'recombinant theological engineering' -- mixing
biblical language with Babylonian and other ancient texts and
her own writings. Aiming to 'expand our religious traditions in
ways that [are] still faithful to them,' the book's prayers, poems,
and meditations explore the sacred in pregnancy: from fertility
and conception to a woman's hopes and fears about her unborn child,
impending delivery, and motherhood."
I agree with Freymer-Kensky that most Judeo-Christian religious
language ignores the experiences of pregnancy, from start to finish.
And that is not surprising, given the one scrap we have that was
addressed to poor Eve, and the fact that the entire experience
is closed to men.
4. From Doug Dee again:
"The Feb. 2-8 issue of _The National Catholic Register_ (citing
_The Independent_ in the U.K) reports that 'The Vatican has been
asked by a band of French chefs and culinary experts to decide
a linguistic debate . . . It seems the French word describing
the love of fine food, 'gourmandise', also means 'gluttonous'
in Church catechisms. In modern usage, these petitioners claim,
a better word is 'gloutonnerie.' . . . The intitiative began with
famous baker Lionel Poilane . . . Before his death, he wrote Vatican
officials, arguing that the words 'gourmand' and 'gourmandise'
no longer meant 'greedy' or 'glutton' but rather conveyed a simple
love of food -- something that in France, of all places, could
hardly be called a sin."
I'm not a trained theologian, nor do I play one on tv, so I say
this with some hesitation: My understanding of the sin of gluttony
is that it doesn't mean precisely "greed with regard to food,"
although that's the party line; rather, it means an excessive
and obsessive _focus of the attention_ on food. Which means that
voluntary dieting in which every morsel is weighed and measured
and calculated and plotted in advance -- or which is so severe
that food is all the dieter can think about from morning to night
-- would also be gluttony. (By "voluntary" I mean dieting
that hasn't been made obligatory by an illness, and I most emphatically
do not consider overweight to be an illness.) I'm more than willing
to be corrected if this is not accurate.
5, In the last issue I asked for opinions about how a system of
civil law based on the Bible could be written and enforced. Jim
White wrote to say:
"Thinking about writing a law to punish coveting got me to
thinking about the oddness of the ten commandments. Isn't it strange
that both stealing and coveting (which is just thinking about
stealing) are forbidden? I mean, you can think about killing all
you want, or bearing false witness, but just thinking about stealing
your neighbor's stuff is forbidden. On the other hand, you can
think about committing adultery only if you think about no particular
person -- once you focus on a particular partner, I suppose you'd
be coveting, at least if it's someone's wife. (Paul might not
approve, but we're just enforcing the ten commandments here, and
lusting after someone in your heart seems like a pretty minor
offense anyway, judging by Jimmy Carter.) It's clear that there'd
still be lots of work for the lawyers. ...."
I read this, and -- after agreeing that there'd be lots of work
for the lawyers -- I thought, "Are you _sure_?" I put
it away and thought about it, and read it again, and ran around
that loop a while. And I decided that I have to respectfully disagree.
It seems to me that when you covet something, you wish that you
_had_ it, whatever it is, but you could wish that you'd won it
or inherited it or found it in the street, without stealing ever
entering into it in any way. I can envy you your theology degree
without wanting to take it away from you; in fact, the chances
are that I wouldn't be interested in having _your_ theology degree
at all, I just want a theology degree of my own that's as good
as yours. (It reminds me of the Lizard Thing that linguistics
students tackle in the sentence "After we cut the lizard's
tail off, it grew back.") I'm also uneasy with the proposal
that thinking about sinning -- whatever the sin -- is acceptable.
Like I said, "Are you _sure_?"
THAT WARRIOR METAPHOR AGAIN
Rebecca Haden sent me an example of religious language, from a
church that I'll refer to as The [Anonymous] Christian Church,
for privacy's sake. Here's an excerpt:
"The [Anonymous] Christian Church is lighting a torch
today to be passed along to your e-mail friends... asking them
to pass it along.... and along.... and along. As the possibility
of war approaches with Hussein and Iraq, we are asking Christians
to step in first, ahead of our military. Let us be setting up
camp for our soldiers' entrance into the conflict. How? By prayer.
Let us be sending in "prayer missiles," "scud prayers"
to target enemy plans. "Patriot prayers" to shoot down
incoming threats.
We at [Anonymous] are praying for two things: (1) that the enemy
leaders become confused, disoriented, and distrustful of each
other; that their entire system of attack fall apart, and (2)
that in God's wildest ways, these enemies would become aware of
His deep love for them and the war Jesus has already fought for
them, personally, on the cross. ...
Please pray for God to set the stage for defeat of all those who
intend to do harm. When our men and women of uniform arrive on
the scene, may they be surprised at how God had camp set up before
they ever got there. ... May we build an e-mail army of over a
million in force... beginning with you."
This example will repay careful analysis. Two things strike me
most forcibly [puns intended]. First: Nowhere is it suggested
that this e-mail army should pray that there won't _be_ a war
and that all these warriors will just stay peacefully at home.
And second, praying "for God to set the stage for defeat
of all those who intend to do harm" relies on the Just War
Doctrine with extraordinary confidence: It presupposes that our
soldiers and those who send them have no intention of doing any
harm whatsoever, and that any killing or maiming that happens
is just an unfortunate and unintended consequence of the good
that they are doing by reluctantly and tenderly waging that just
war for the greater good. May the intentions of all the warriors
meet that standard.
BOOKNOTES
1. _Peace Like a River_, by Leif Enger; Atlantic Monthly Press,
NY, 2001; ISBN 0-87113-795-X.
On page 17 of this book, young Reuben Land is outside in the dark;
he is watching his father pacing the bed of a flatbed truck and
praying aloud. "Dad's hands were clenched and pressed to
his eyes," Reuben tells us, and "he wouldn't have seen
me had I flapped my arms and flown. His lips were moving. Though
he often comforted Swede and me by quoting from the gospel of
John, _Let not your hearts be troubled_, it was plain Dad himself
was suffering the labors of a troubled heart..... And then, as
I stood watching, Dad walked right off the edge of the truck.
... _And did not fall_. He went on pacing -- God my witness --
walking on air, praying relentlessly, a good yard of absolutely
nothing between the soles of his boots and the thistles below.
As he went, the moon threw his strangely separate shadow to the
earth... "
Unlike many best-selling novels (and most best-selling religious
novels), this one is well written. It's filled with compelling
characters that live and breathe and speak Real Human Language.
It's graced by a fine plot. When Leif Enger puts in anything extraneous
(like the long, long adventure ballad written by his little sister
Swede), he shapes it in such a way that you can safely skip it
if you prefer. He takes up big questions and offers interesting
proposed answers. He shows us a family of devoutly religious people
who seem perfectly normal and wouldn't be embarrassing to go places
with. I recommend this book without reservation.
2. _Bible Code II: The Countdown_, by Michael Drosnin; Viking
NY 2002; ISBN 0-670-03210-7.
And then there's this book... I can't claim to be writing a newsletter
focused on religious language and not at least bring up this book.
I'll tell you about it, and I'd welcome your input, but I'm not
going to try to comment.
First, there's the method. On page 11, Drosnin writes: "[Eliyahu]
Rips discovered the Bible code in the original Hebrew version
of the Old Testament, the Bible as it was first written... Rips
eliminated all the spaces between the words, and turned the entire
original Bible into one continuous letter strand, 304,805 letters
long. In doing that, he was actually restoring the Bible to what
ancient sages say was its original form. ... Rips wrote a computer
program that searched the strand of letters for new information
revealed by skipping any equal number of letters. ... Only a computer
can search fast enough to make the job possible." And on
page 242: "All of the Bible code printouts displayed in this
book have been proven by statistics to be encoded beyond chance.
The statistics are calculated automatically by the Rips-Rotenberg
computer program." [Example: For a skip of 7551 the computer
divides the strand of 304,805 letters into 40 rows of 7551 letters.]
Second, there are the claimed results of applying the method.
According to Drosnin, this method yields unambiguous predictions
of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and of the September 11th
attack on the World Trade Towers, and countless other historical
events -- including (on page 20) a prediction that "World
War," "atomic holocaust," and "End of Days"
will all arrive in the year 2006.
In addition, there are the charts of computer printouts of row
after row of Hebrew letters, with the letters that spell out the
alleged coded messages either circled or in little square boxes.
There is an appendix in which Drosnin reports the attacks on his
first "Bible Code" book by the scientific community
and claims that all those attacks were refuted in their entirety.
And there is the "exciting search in the deserts of Arabia
for the 'Code Key' -- an ancient object that may unlock the Bible
code completely" (quoted from the back cover flap), the utility
of which escapes me.
A search at Google will take you to an abundanceof reviews and
commentaries either marveling over the book as the greatest scientific
discovery of all time or marveling over its stupidity and the
fact that it could actually be published. There's a very informative
website, with lots of links, at http:// www.biblecodedigest.com/page.php/129.
QUOTES & COMMENTS
1. On pp. 523-524 of _Albion's Seed_ (Oxford University Press
1989), the author quotes a description of a 1750 Quaker meeting
("meeting" being the term used for church services in
Quakerism):
"One of the two... old men in the front pew rose, removed
his hat, turned hither and yon, and began to speak, but so softly
that even in the middle of the church, which was not large, it
was impossible to hear anything except the confused murmur of
the words. Later he began to talk a little louder, but so slowly
that four or five minutes elapsed between the sentences; finally
the words came both louder and faster. In the preaching the Quakers
have a peculiar mode of expression, which is half singing, with
a strange cadence and accent, and ending each cadence, as it were,
with a half or.... a full sob. Each cadence consists of two, three
or four syllables, but sometimes more, according to the demand
of the words and means... my friends/ put in your mind/ we/ do
nothing/ good of ourselves/ / without God's // help and assistance...
"
Would the Quakers in the Network let me know whether this form
of religious language is still used in meetings today?
2. "In the Middle Ages, historians tell us, the most refined
sense, the perceptive sense par excellence, the one that established
the richest contact with the world, was hearing: sight came in
only third, after touch. Then we have a reversal: the eye becomes
the prime organ of perception.... This change is of great religious
importance. The primacy of hearing, still very prevalent in the
sixteenth century, was theologically guaranteed: the Church bases
its authority on the word, faith is hearing... the ear, the ear
alone, Luther said, is the Christian organ. Thus the risk of a
contradiction arises between the new perception, led by sight,
and the ancient faith based on hearing."
(Page 65, _Sade/Fourier/Loyola_, by Roland Barthes, translated
by Richard Miller; John Hopkins 1976. Sent by Hal Davis.)
3. Jeremy Lott reports that (after he joined the attendees at
the evangelical Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) annual
convention in 2002) "What followed had all the trappings
of a religious service -- songs, testimonies, a sermon. Technically,
it _was_ a religious service. But it was overtly commercialized
to a greater extent than any religious gathering I've ever observed...
If the participants felt any shame about the nakedly commercial
nature of the events, they did a good job of hiding it. In his
invocation prayer, [CBA President Bill] Anderson addressed God
on behalf of 'a group of colleagues working together under Your
Lordship.' "
This is from pp. 41-42 of a very interesting article titled "Jesus
Sells: What the Christian culture industry tells us about secular
society," by Lott, in the 2/03 issue of _Reason_ (sent to
me by Pat Mathews). The contradiction between devotion to evangelical
Christian precepts and the rampant CBA profit motive made a lot
of people at the convention uneasy, apparently; some even expressed
concern about the lucrative runaway popularity of the _Left Behind_
series and its various knock-offs. On page 43 Lott reminds us
that most of the large Christian publishing houses are owned by
secular publishers -- Zondervan, for example, is owned by Random
House.
Because my literary agent decided last year that he's too busy
to handle anything but my nonfiction, I've had an opportunity
to interact with some of these publishers recently, and it has
been interesting. I've been circulating a new religious novel
to them on my own; that means that I've had the chance to read
their rejection letters myself, instead of having them filtered
through my agent. I'll let you know how it all turns out.
4. From "A Conversation with Barry Moser" (book designer,
author, illustrator), pp. 77-92, _Image_ for Fall 2002, on page
78:
"...[D]oing the Bible was like swimming in the open sea.
You don't know how deep the water is, you sure as hell can't find
the bottom, you don't know what's down there that might grab you
by the leg and drag you down and eat you. This to me is very exciting.."
And on page 81: "Religion in the South is different from
religion in the North, you know. William Faulkner said religion
in the south is in the air; it's everywhere. Flannery O'Connor
refers to the South as being Christ-haunted -- an accurate and
penetrating observation. "
And, on pp. 84-85: "I'm uncomfortable...having any kind of
discussion about God, because when I say _God_, I immediately
form an anthromorphism in my mind. Saying _God_ fixes the Supreme
into too convenient a little package for my taste. I tried and
tried for so many years to fix an image in my mind -- the Michelangelesque
image of God, say -- and I thought, it just can't be. I stand
looking up at the night sky, and I know my puny mind can't fathom
what I am seeing... and it's just one direction in an infinite
number of directions in which I could point. Now if I can't understand
that, how in the name of God am I going to get my mind around
the _creator_ of all that? I can't. And so, in a sense, I give
up and don't even want to deal with it. ...
Being a designer myself, I see the footprints of design everywhere.
I see all those principles of contrast everywhere, of simultaneous
contrasts, of rhythms and all that, so I'm just inclined to say,
yep, here I am, I respect it, and I am in awe of it, and I offer
my prayer to it in the form of my work. And that's what this Bible
business of mine is: a very long prayer. In a sense that's what
my work is all about, I guess."
5. The 6/02 issue of _Prospect_, page 15, had a page titled "Speculations,"
written by Jim Holt, reprinted from _Slate_, discussing "the
doctrine of double effect." The doctrine says that when an
act has both good and evil consequences, it's morally allowable
if (a) the person who does the act intends only the good effect,
and (b) the goodness achieved by the good effect is greater than
the evil that would be achieved by the evil effect. Holt opens
the piece by asking whether acts of terror are always evil, and
sets out two questions. "Can the use of terror in a good
cause, whether by a state or non-state, ever be morally justified?"
And how are we to identify "the class of evil acts that can
_never_ be justified by their good effects?"
I understand the first question; I don't understand the second.
Suppose we accept the doctrine of double effect, for the sake
of discussion. If it holds for "slightly evil" acts,
it has to hold for the entire universe of evil acts; otherwise,
it has no meaning at all.
6. The Winter 2003 issue of _PanGaia: Earthwise Spirituality_
is a special issue on "Healing Paths: Many Roads to Wellness."
It has an article by Phyllis Edgerly Ring titled "On a Wing
and a Prayer: Can Prayer Heal?", based on an interview with
Larry Dossey. It has a piece by Elizabeth Barrette titled "But
What Do We Do If It Works?" (subtitled "thoughts on
the ethics and practicality of studying therapeutic prayer"),
which includes an overview of the discussion we've been having
on the subject in this newsletter, as well as a useful list of
questions that need to be answered. [_PanGaia_ is a quarterly,
$18 a year, from PO Box 641, Point Arena, CA 95468-0641, e-mail
info@pangaia.com; the website is at http://www.pangaia.com.]
7. In "On a Script and a Prayer," (page 115, _Forbes_
for 3/03), Dorothy Pomerantz reports on Cloud Ten Pictures, "a
maker of direct-to-video films for entertainment-starved Christians"
that is making a nice profit with no need for outside capital
or an advertising budget. Filmmakers Peter and Paul Lalonde market
to churches which sponsor screenings; they feature famous evangelists
in cameos in their films; and they "trade e-mails with their
database of 200,000 Christian-movie buffs." "This,"
says Peter Lalonde, "is the biggest untapped niche in filmmaking
to come along in 100 years."
CYBERSPACE
1. Quoted in _PCA News_ for 1/23/03, with the title "Praying
in Jesus' Name in Public":
"The name of Jesus is set to replace the Ten Commandments
as the new focal point for church-state clashes at city halls.
While public displays of God's laws on civic property have been
the center of constitutional disputes for the last couple of years,
attention seems set to switch to local authorities' pre-meeting
public prayers. The debate has been sparked in California, where
city councils have been trying to figure out how to ensure the
name of Jesus is not invoked, following a state appeals court
ruling that lets stand a ban on sectarian comments. Several cities
are set to back the city of Burbank, should it decide to go to
the U.S. Supreme Court over a ruling that has barred prayers in
the name of Jesus, on the grounds that it violated the constitutionally
required separation of church and state. Burbank mayor David Laurell
told "The Orange County Register" the lawsuit "has
already had statewide impact and could have nationwide impact."
He added: "I'm all for invocations that are all-inclusive,
but I don't want me or anybody else to tell people that it has
to be that way."
2. From _Religion Bookline_ for 1/7/03:
"Also announced in December was the winner of the 2003 Louisville
Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Given jointly by Louisville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville, the Grawemeyer
Award comes with a cash prize of $200,000. The winner was Mark
Juergensmeyer for "Terror in the Mind of God" (University
of California Press, 2000), a study of the rise of violence carried
out in the name of religion. ... Juergensmeyer... plans to use
the funds to continue his research on the topic."
I'm delighted by this news, and by the news that Juergensmeyer
intends to do more work on this topic; if you haven't yet read
_Terror in the Mind of God_ , I urge you to do so. The title is
misleading, and unsuitable for work of this quality; it can safely
be ignored.
4. The 1/7/03 _Religion Bookline_ also had a brief review note
for a book about Zoroastrianism, a religious faith that I don't
think I've mentioned before in this newsletter: Paul Kriwaczek's
_In Search of Zarathustra: The First Prophet and the Ideas That
Changed the World_ (Knopf) "Hidden by the looming shadows
of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Zoroastrianism is largely
forgotten today. Yet this ancient religion so powerfully influenced
these other three faith groups that they would not exist in their
present state if not for the teachings of Zarathustra, the prophet
of Zoroastrianism. .... Kriwaczek [examines] the significance
of Zarathustra for Nietzsche in the 19th century, the Cathars
of the Middle Ages and Hellenistic and Jewish thought from the
third through the first centuries B.C. This is the best and most
thorough survey of Zoroastrianism and its prophet Zarathustra
to date."
5. _PCA News_ for 11/26/02 quotes Vern Pythress ("Systematic
Pattern in the TNIV," _Westminster Theological Journal_ 64:1;185-192):
"[T]he central problem with Today's New International Version
(TNIV) does not lie in this or that verse that has been translated
in less than an ideal way. It lies in a pattern, a systematic
policy, namely that it avoids using a male representative or example
to communicate a general truth" ...
Whatever your position may be on gender-inclusive language in
biblical translation, this is clearly a new and strange way to
attack it. Unless one or more of the TNIV translators has explicity
stated the "systematic policy" described, I see no way
that this claim can be supported. The word "systematic"
presupposes that the TNIV translators deliberately sat down and
identified all the "general truths" in the Bible (or
some reliable mechanism for identifying them as they went along),
and then worked out ways to avoid using a "male representative
or example" for them. If anyone in the Network has information
about this, I'd be very interested.
6. _Religion Bookline_ for 2/4/03 reported that Philip Gulley's
"forthcoming nonfiction title on the
sure-to-be-controversial topic of universal salvation"
will be coming out in July from Harper SanFrancisco. The book's
title will be _If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person_.
According to _Religion Bookline_, Gulley's former publisher Multnomah
"released him from his contract over the issue, and his views
are proving controversial even in the Society of Friends, the
liberal denomination in which he is a minister. Gulley will defend
himself in March at a hearing to decide whether his ministerial
credentials should be rescinded."
7. _K-12 Newsletters_ for 2/7/03 offered a "new Ten Comandments
of Education," constructed by David B. Ackerman:
"Thou shalt teach that which is of deepest value; Thou shalt
teach with rigor; Thou shalt uphold standards of excellence; Thou
shalt not kill time; Remember the disciplines and keep them holy
(even though they are partial); Remember that children are whole
people, not deficient adults; Thou shalt not try to make one standard
fit all; Thou shalt not treat the mind of a child as though it
were a receptacle; Honor what children bring to the text; and
Thou shalt honor the student's search for holistic knowledge."
Except that I'm not sure what's meant here by "even though
they are partial" and "holistic knowledge," that
all seems eminently sensible to me. A good start, certainly, and
a good example of secular use of religious language. The URL is
http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0301ack.htm.
8. Internet items to check out: Abstract of a dissertation titled
"AIDS and American Apocalypticism," at http://users.visi.net/~longt/diss.htm;
account of the ongoing search for a patron saint for the Internet,
at http://www.cnn.com/ 2003/TECH/internet/01/31/internet.saint/index.html
(sent by Douglas Dee); material on the ongoing controversy about
whether many concepts from religion are "only" neurological
phenomena, at http://www.dendrites.com/essays/ cortical.htm (sent
by Hal Davis); the _Left Behind_ marketing website at http://www.leftbehind.com
ANNOUNCEMENT
1. _Peacetalk 101_ (the basic Gentle Art of Verbal Self-defense
system in the form of an extended parable) is now in print from
Lethe Press, at a reasonable $8.00; there's a homepage for the
book at http://www.sfwa.org/members/ elgin/Peacetalk101/Index.html.
The homepage has a mini-workbook suitable for individuals, groups,
or classes, as well as the usual excerpt, FAQ, and discussion
questions. I'd welcome input from Network members ... comments,
criticisms, complaints, suggestions, whatever you're willing to
share with me. I've also set up a public _Peacetalk 101_ blog
at http://peacetalk101.blogspot.com, so that people will have
a place to exchange views and stay in touch. I hope you'll find
it useful.
Copyright © 2003 Suzette Haden Elgin
All rights reserved
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card information (for Visa or Mastercard) to OCLS, PO Box 1137,
Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 USA. E-mail newsletters by Suzette Haden
Elgin for 2003 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.
For more information or a free sample issue, e-mail OCLS@madisoncounty.net.