March/April Newsletter

THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 6, Issue 2 -- March/April 2005
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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, 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; Note on the Language of Just Warfare; Cyberspace

EDITOR'S NOTE

Much of January and February have been Almost Too Much for my household. We brought home a brand new puppy -- a Maltese male just twelve weeks old, to be a companion for Sheba, our resident Maltese female -- and we humans all got the flu. At the same time. A new puppy is a lot like a new baby -- sleep becomes extremely scarce, for example -- except that you're dealing with a baby that doesn't wear diapers and is already able to walk and run and climb and tear things up. We had the puppy just long enough to learn to love him dearly -- and then had to face the fact that he had to be returned to the breeder, because he was making the life of our Maltese female an absolute hell, and it was never going to get better, and she was here first -- and that was horrible and heart-breaking. [I lost eight pounds; I'm planning to write a book called _The New Puppy Plus The Flu Diet_ and make my fortune.] Meanwhile, outside our place, the world continued on its utterly crazy course....

Through the fog I thank you all the same, for all the renewals and donations and the wonderful materials that you've been sending. I am most grateful.

And I want to ask you: Is anyone else offended by the "NBA League Pass" commercial on CNN where a bunch of young males in a squalid bachelor apartment, all watching football, are suddenly sucked upward into the sky [as in "raptured," yes] and end up in an equally squalid bachelor apartment watching football -- and we're told that this is Heaven? I find the idea that Heaven -- any faith's version of Heaven -- would be littered with old food containers and spilled Chinese takeout genuinely repulsive, and I'm not sure I'm tolerant enough to go along with the idea that Heaven will include football. Mercy.

NETWORK INPUT

1. From Rebecca Haden....

"I had an interesting conversation about religious language recently. A friend was telling us all about a guy who says to her, "How is your walk with God?" The humor in the telling was the fact that it's such a conversation-stopper. She did the deer-in-the-headlights response and everyone understood it and laughed. However, we also had with us a guy who had grown up with that conversation. He told us how the answer is supposed to go -- you respond with what religious books you have been reading, or spiritual issues you have been struggling with. Of course, that knowledge made it immediately possible for all of us to respond to the question. But I would say that before knowing this, I would have found that question somewhat threatening ... "

**I've never heard that question in my life, even in the Hardshell Baptist environment of my childhood; like Rebecca's friend, I would have been startled if someone had posed it to me. And it's truly interesting to know that it's the first line in the script described above. I would have thought it meant something along the lines of "How are you and God getting along these days?" Based, I suppose, on the many thousands of times I've sung the hymn (called "In the Garden," if my memory isn't failing me), the chorus of which begins with "And He walks with me, and He talks with me....".

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1. The 1/05 _Harper's_, pp. 75-81, had an absolutely astonishing and fascinating article by Frederick Kaufman titled "The Secret Ingredient: Keeping the world kosher." On page 80:

"In order for the packaged yogurt or marinade or baby food to be certified kosher, all its ingredients must be certified kosher; likewise, in order for the ingredients to be certified kosher, the enzymes that have mediated the creation of said ingredients must also be certified kosher. ... In order for an enzyme to be certified kosher, the feed media for that enzyme must be 'kosherish.' And what about the feed media for the feed media? It is a food chain of microscopic yet divine reticulation, leading back to the mother-of-all proteins, keeping kosherish in an aerated flask." Difficult decisions about a given organism are made by "specialists in the ethereal" called _Mashgichim_. (Singular: _Mashgiach_.)

This all came as a surprise to me. I suppose it should have been obvious, and once pointed out it _is_ obvious, but it had never crossed my mind that the definition of "kosher" went all the way back to the beginning of every food product.

2. The 2/7/05 issue of _Time_ did an excellent job with an overview of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America?" and what George Bush owes them (and owes evangelicals generally). Recommended. From "What Does Bush Owe the Religious Right?", on page 29:

"His campaign barely had time to sweep up the confetti last Nov. 3 before the victorious President got a congratulatory bouquet of praise, threats, warnings and demands. 'In your re-election, God has graciously granted America -- though she doesn't deserve it -- a reprieve from the agenda of paganism,' wrote Bob Jones III... 'Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing.' " The Bob Jones warble was balanced by a message from Chuck Colson: "Sad to say, the church has managed to shoot itself in the foot almost every time it has achieved power in society. So what we need right now is a bracing dose of humility."

[From _Religion BookLine_ for 2/9/05: "CBA, the association of Christian retailers, met Feb.1-Feb. 3, returning to Nashville after three years in Indianapolis. As George W. Bush enters his second term, this is evangelicalism's moment, and the mood at the show was relentlessly cheerful." ... I believe this is the first time I've ever encountered the phrase "relentlessly cheerful."]

3. In the same issue of _Time_ there was a line that I found odd. Talking of John Stott (on page 45), the writer said that Stott "practices a pious austerity that, were he Catholic, might be called saintly. He plunges the rich royalties from his more than 40 unassumingly brilliant books into a fund to educate pastors in the developing word. [sic] He lives in a two-room flat..."

I'm deeply impressed by the austerity, especially in this time of all-encompassing greed. But I'm baffled by the idea that the behavior could only be called saintly if Stott were a Catholic. Since when is Catholicism a requirement for saintliness? I'd welcome your input.

4. _Forbes_ magazine is forever surprising me. This time, the surprise was an article on page 35 of the 2/14/05 issue titled "Irrational Act," written by Rich Karlgaard, on the subject of tithing. He tells us about a friend who started tithing after hearing a sermon claiming that "Tithing will liberate the tither from financial worry. You might be 10% poorer, but you'll stop worrying about it." And what happened? "Almost immediately a mysterious transformation took place." His friend was able to save 10% of his income, and was able to retire his house mortgage ahead of time; in an industry where growth is flat, his income went up. Karlgaard also tells us about Greg Gianforte, head of RightNow Technologies, another tither for whom tithing has brought prosperity. Gianforte says: "When you tithe, you begin to see your role as a steward of resources. You don't engage in wasteful spending. You learn to become a bootstrapper." The piece ends with "Why does tithing work? Nobody knows. Only that it does for many," and a request to send our thoughts on tithing to publisher@forbes.com.

This is one of those "Don't think about a purple elephant" items. Karlgaard says that "One must never tithe with expectations of divine reward." But then he tells us that for many, "it works." We're left to figure out for ourselves whether "it works" means that it lets us stop worrying about money, or that the divine rewards we're being careful not to think about will start pouring in.

5. The 9-10/04 issue of _Books & Culture_, pp. 29-30, had a fine article by Emily Jorjorian Lowe about religious icons. On page 29:

"Iconography, or the 'writing' of icons -- as any iconographer will be sure to tell you, they are not considered paintings but rather tools for religious instruction -- is gaining popularity in the United States among converts to the Orthodox faith, and although there will always be those who alarm the establishment with ridiculously modern techniques and ideas ... the trend is toward following the ancient rules." Icons, she tells us on page 30, "are neither art nor prayer, but somewhere between the two."

I am very fond of the Native American icons done by Fr. J. Guiliani; one hangs on my bedroom wall. I hope his work isn't part of the "ridiculously modern techniques and ideas" class Lowe is writing about. And I admit to having a hard time appreciating some of the very old icons, the ones of which Lowe says on page 29 that they are "a window into heaven: a screen through which we are allowed to see, as much as we can abide it, the true world that is invisibly present with us. We forget where we are, and even who we are, in the power of the presence of the Almighty God."

[_Books & Culture_ is $24.95 a year for six issues (foreign postage extra), from PO Box 37060, Boone, IA 50037-0060, or from 1-800-523-7964; there's a website at http://www.booksandculture.com .]

6. From Rabbi Malka Drucker, on page 34 of _The Eldorado Sun_, sent by Patricia Mathews: "We must not become so afraid that we give up, nor fall into such anger that we wind up hating each other. We need to look for the prophet and the hero within ourselves, and remember that God put us here for a reason and that each of us has work to do in the world."

Second the motion. Clear, simple, concise, and memorable.

7. From "Let Someone Else Do It," by Cullen Murphy (pp. 173-174, _Atlantic Monthly_ for 11/04; on page 174):

"The shortage of Catholic priests in America has resulted in a grave backlog of prayers and masses. When the devout request special prayers of thanksgiving or remembrance, often to be said for years at a time, the requests ... are increasingly outsourced to India, whose Catholic priests are giving the notion of service expediter a whole new dimension." A church spokesman commented, in response to a query from the _New York Times_: "The prayer is heartfelt, and every prayer is treated as the same whether it is paid for in dollars, euros, or rupees."

8. The 1-2/05 issue of _Books & Culture_ (pp. 10-11) had an interesting interview with Christian Smith titled "What American Teenagers Believe," conducted by Michael Cromartie. [Smith is the author of _Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers_ (by which he means youngsters 13-17).] Smith claims that:

"[T]he de facto religious faith of the majority of American teens is 'Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.' God exists. God created the world. God set up some kind of moral structure. God wants me to be nice. He wants me to be pleasant, wants me to get along with people. That's teen morality. The purpose of life is to be happy and feel good, and good people go to heaven. And nearly everyone's good."

Smith says that the God of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is "something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist." And, on page 11: "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is not just an inadequate version of Christianity. It's a different religion."

9. Thanks to all who've been sending me material on the Intelligent Design movement, an example of "reframing" that's becoming a hot media item. (You may have heard the feature about ID in Kansas on National Public Radio recently.) Kathe Rauch sent me a copy of "The Crusade Against Evolution," by Evan Ratliff, on pp. 157-161 and 202-203 of the 10/04 issued of _Wired_. The article begins with an account of a panel appearing before a State Board of Education, on which the two representatives of ID were Stephen Meyer and Jonathan Wells -- both involved with the Discovery Institute conservative think tank. Here's a quote from page 158:

"Meyer and Wells took the typical intelligent design line: Biological life contains elements so complex ... that they cannot be explained by natural selection. And so, the theory goes, we must be products of an intelligent designer. Creationists call that creator God, but proponents of intelligent design studiously avoid the G-word -- and never point to the Bible for answers. Instead, ID believers speak the language of science... "

I'm a little puzzled by the way scientists who support evolution have been handling the Intelligent Design movement. I don't know why they feel that standing around (in person and in print and online) bellowing that ID is nonsense -- all the while allowing the ID proponents to maintain their lofty attitude of dignity and detachment -- is an effective strategy. If ID is nonsense, it's not worth the waste of the scientists' time and effort; if it's not nonsense, it should be refuted like any other competing theory. Bellowing won't do it. It's interesting, however, to see scientific language being used as a method for furthering religious language.

[From _PEN Weekly NewsBlast_ for 1/28/05, on this same topic:
"The intellectual underpinnings of the latest assault on Darwin's theory come not from Bible-wielding Fundamentalists but from well-funded think tanks promoting a theory they call intelligent design, or I.D. for short. Their basic argument is that the origin of life, the diversity of species and even the structure of organs like the eye are so bewilderingly complex that they can only be the handiwork of a higher intelligence (name and nature unspecified). ... But the mainstream scientific community contends that this seemingly innocuous agenda is actually a stealthy way of promoting religion." See http://www.time.com/ time/magazine/article/0,9171,1019856-1,00.html .]

10. "Forget all that sentimental gibberish about blessed peacemakers, turning the other cheek, and loving your enemies. If there are references to the Sermon on the Mount among Left Behind's roughly 1 million words, I failed to find them. ... [T]he books portray midwestern suburbanites and born-again Israeli converts as Warrior Jesus' allies in an apocalyptic struggle against a U.N.-anointed 'World Potentate.' ... Yet the media's response to all of this nonsense has been remarkably polite. In America, of course, with commercial success comes a degree of cultural respectability."

This is Gene Lyons, reviewing four of the titles in Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkin's _Left Behind_ series, and Barbara R. Rossing's _The Rapture Exposed_, on pp. 85-90 of the 11/04 _Harper's_. As will be obvious from the quotation above (on page 85), Lyons does not subscribe to the idea that the series has cultural respectability.

And on page 90: "While daydreaming about Armageddon, most readers, I'm guessing, are also signing off on thirty-year mortgage notes and keeping their life insurance up to date."

I'm sure that's true. Just as religious people who leave their umbrellas at home because they've prayed for sunshine are exceedingly rare.

11. "Hillel Ha-Babli, in the thirty-first book of _The Sabbath_ in 30 B.C.E., raised the Golden Rule to the ultimate moral principle: 'Whatsoever thou wouldst that men should not do to thee, do not do that to them. This is the whole Law. The rest is only explanation.' "

[In _The Science of Good and Evil_, by Michael Shermer (Henry Holt 2004), on page 26; my thanks to Diana Cook for the copy.]

12. "On the assumption that the ways of life advocated by Christianity and by Buddhism are essentially the same, it will be the fact that the intention to follow this way of life is associated in the mind of a Christian with thinking of one set of stories (the Christian stories) while it is associated in the mind of a Buddhist with thinking of another set of stories (the Buddhist stories) which enables a Christian assertion to be distinguished from a Buddhist one. A religious assertion will, therefore, have a propositional element which is lacking in a purely moral assertion, in that it will refer to a story as well as to an intention."
That's R.B. Braithwaite, in "An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief," pp. 333-347, in editor Ronald E. Santoni's book _Religious Language and the Problem of Religious Knowledge_, on page 341. And in the same source, on page 345:

"A moral belief is an intention to behave in a certain way; a religious belief is an intention to behave in a certain way (a moral belief) together with the entertainment of certain stories associated with the intention in the mind of the believer."

Braithwaite does not write gracefully, but he writes useful things.

13. Here is Alan Watts, speaking disrespectfully about people who belong to the Church of England, on page 55 of _In My Own Way: An Autobiography_ (Vintage Books 1973):

"They tell God what he ought and ought not to do, and inform him of things of which he is already well aware, such as that they are miserable sinners, and proceed then to admonish one another to feel guilt and regret about abominable behavior which they have not the least intention of changing. If God were the sort of being most Christians suppose him to be, he would be beside himself with boredom listening to their whinings and flatteries, their redundant requests and admonitions, not to mention the asinine poems set to indifferent tunes which are solemnly addressed to him as hymns."

If you have never read this book, you've missed something; I recommend it. Here's one more quote, from pp. 210-211:

"Thus if a flower had a God it would not be a transcendental flower but a field -- moreover a field as discussed in physics, an integrated pattern of energy, a field which would not only be flowering, but also earthing, raining, shining, birding, worming, and beeing. A sensitive flower would, through its roots and membranes, feel out into this entire pattern and so discover itself as a particular exultation of the whole field."

NOTE ON THE LANGUAGE OF JUST WARFARE

During a panel discussion on 2/1/05 in San Diego, Lt. Gen. James Mattis (leader of Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Division in Iraq, and the man in charge of Marine Corps combat development) made the following remark: "Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. I like brawling." He then topped that by saying: "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for 5 years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

Which seems to me to be an excellent lead-in to a few selected quotes from "In Praise of Attrition," by Ralph Peters, published in summer 2004 in _Parameters_ (a U.S. Army War College quarterly publication) and then excerpted on page 19 of the 1/05 _Harper's_. Peters writes.

"A soldier's job is to kill the enemy. All else is secondary. ... There is no substitute for shedding the enemy's blood."

"Focus on killing the enemy. With fires. With maneuvers. With sticks and stones and polyunsaturated fats. It's difficult to persuade leaders schooled in caution that their mission is not to keep an entire corps' tanks on line but to rip the enemy's heart out."

"With hard-core terrorists, it's not about psychological operations or jobs or deploying dental teams. It's about killing them. The only solution is to kill them and keep on killing them. .... It cannot be repeated often enough: Whatever else you aim to do in wartime, never lose your focus on killing the enemy."

[And I was shocked to hear CNN's Lou Dobbs defending Lt. General Mattis and wondering what this world is coming to when a military leader is subject to criticism for saying publicly that it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot people.]

Many on the Right appear to be comfortable both with the sentiments expressed by Mattis and Peters and Dobbs, and with Jesus' unambiguous statement that we are commanded to return good for evil. I will never figure out how that's done. The Judeo-Christian doctrine of the just war -- the only form of war permitted -- says specifically that killing must _never_ be the soldier's intention, that killing in combat must always be only the unfortunate and deeply regretted accidental byproduct of taking action that is the last resort against a greater evil and that cannot be avoided.

It's one thing to claim that wars in the Middle East are acceptable because the Bible predicts them; it's quite another to claim that enjoying the slaughter as a participant in those wars is also acceptable. As Augustine Regan writes on page 26 of _Thou Shalt Not Kill_: "The right to defend human life does not stop because one cannot do so without killing another. The important thing is that one is intending only what he has the right to intend; killing another is a resultant side-effect."

My thanks to Patricia Mathews for the _Harper's_ material.

CYBERSPACE

1. From _The Quaker Economist Letter_ for 1/20/05, this from Loren Cobb:

"In Pakistan, as in all Muslim countries, beggars are almost everywhere. This is quite a shock to newly arrived Americans; in fact it is usually harder to adjust to the beggars than to any other feature of life in Pakistan -- harder than the poverty, harder than the smells, harder even than the heat and flies and lizards and exotic foods. But giving to beggars is sacred in Islam, and realizing this fact is essential for every foreigner. When an American is seen refusing a beggar, and shooing him away, it is understood to be a sign of spiritual emptiness within the American, not as humiliation for the beggar."

More online at http://tqe.quaker.org/2005/TQE115-EN-GotAway.html . My thanks to Sally Lloyd.

2. From the 1/05 issue of _Ansible_:

"Philip Pullman is much annoyed by another _Times_ story (8 December), headlined 'God is cut from film of Dark Materials' and alleging that New Line Cinema plans 'to remove anti-religious overtones [...] because of fears of a backlash from the Christian Right in the United States.' ... "

You can read Pullman's response to this charge -- which I found somewhat unclear -- online at http://www.philip-pullman.com/pages/ content/index.asp?PageID=102 .

3. Jim Wallis, in _SojoMail_ for 1/26/05:

"It's only the second week of the book tour for God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, but already I'm convinced that the country is ready for a new discussion of faith and politics...."

Relevant links:
Jim Wallis on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart + Comedy Central [streaming video], at http://go.sojo.net/ct/871Te0Y1KmSX ; Jim Wallis on NPR's Fresh Air + NPR [streaming audio], at http://go.sojo.net/ct/ip1Te0Y1KmS5 ; Jim Wallis interview with Barnes & Noble.com + B&N.com , at http://go.sojo.net/ ct/nd1Te0Y1KmS3

If you've read _God's Politics_, I'd be interested in your input.

4. Two items from Religious BookLine for 1/25/05...

"The February release of _Let Us Break Bread Together: A Passover Haggadah for Christians_ marks the launch of a new line of trade religion books from ecumenical Christian publisher Paraclete Press, and the company's first foray into other faiths. While maintaining a thoroughly Christian perspective, books in the Many Mansions line will look at practices and traditions of other faiths, most notably Judaism and Islam, that Christians can draw from to enhance their own spirituality."

[and]

"Until recently, the Talmud was a locked book. For all that the 5,500-page work is central to Judaism's understanding of the Bible, law, philosophy, God, and the meaning of life, the densely cryptic text was not composed for easy reading. Artscroll/Mesorah Publications changed all that. To be completed in early February after 15 years of work, the 73-volume Schottenstein Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, not only a translation but an elucidation and an illumination, runs to 35,000 pages."

5. Thanks to Douglas Dee for alerting me to the book _Esperanto -- The New Latin for the Church and for Ecumenism_, by Ulrich Matthias, translated from Esperanto by Mike Leon and Maire Mullarney, online at http://home.t-online.de/home/Ulrich.Matthias/latin_en.htm . The entire text of the book is available at the site.

6. From the Internet Scout Report for 2/11/05, the following description of the Tertullian Project website, at http://www.tertullian.org :

"Despite the fact that he did not write a systematic theology, Tertullian remains one of the most studied early Christian theologians .... Tertullian neophytes will want to read the brief overview of his life provided here, and then perhaps continue on to one of the full-text translations of his many works provided here. The site also contains a fine set of bibliographies, translations, and the 'wit and wisdom' of Tertullian."

7. The 3/05 issue of _The Progressive_ carried an article by Barbara Ehrenreich titled "God Owes Us an Apology," with the following opening sentence: "The tsunami of sea water was followed instantly by a tsunami of spittle as the religious sputtered to rationalize God's latest felony."

It would be hard to pack more outrageousness into a single sentence; it would be hard to do it more skillfully. The sentence is structured more as poem than as prose; note also the presuppositions of "rationalized" and "felony." We need to give up the idea of a god who is both all-powerful and all-good, Ehrenreich says, and go back to the old bad gods; that would at least make sense. She writes: "As many have noted before me: If God cares about our puny species, then disasters prove that he is not all-powerful; and if he _is_ all-powerful, then clearly he doesn't give a damn."

8. Pages and sites to check out: Three review articles on Stephen E. Robinson and Craig L. Blomberg's book _How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation_ -- at http://www.aml-online.org/reviews/b/B199723.html , http://www.mrm.org/multimedia/text/divide.html , and http://www.lds-mormon.com/hwtd.shtml [Warning -- printing out the last of the three, a very interesting article titled "Truth-Telling and Shifting Theologies: An Analytical look at _How Wide the Divide?_ gets you an 18-page document all in very large, very bold type]; "Ear-Ripping-Off Battles With Satan," a "spiritual warfare" interview with Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, at http://www.beliefnet.com/story/159/story_15983_l.html , suggested by Laura Mallard; John Dear's article "Pharisee Nation," claiming -- as a Jesuit Priest -- that we are not Christians but Pharisees, online at http://www.commondreams.org/ views05/0215-21.htm ; a blogpost and discussion by feminist Mormon housewives, at http://feministmormonhousewives. blogspot.com/2005/02/welcome-gaia-mens-nightmare-plan-of.html#comments .

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