The Religious Language Newsletter
Volume 9, Issue 2 -- March/April 2008
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The Religious Language Newsletter (available by e-mail only) is
written and published every other month by Suzette Haden Elgin,
Ph.D. (linguistics), from the Ozark Center for Language Studies
(OCLS), at PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137. For additional
information, or to unsubscribe, please e-mail ocls@madisoncounty.net.
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In This Issue: Editor's Note; Network Input; Quotes &
Comments; Cyberspace
#Editor's Note
Many thanks for all the excellent and useful materials that you've been sending me; I'm grateful.
#Network Input
1. Sally Lloyd wrote:
"I was interested in Karen Stroup's response to your comments about Mother Theresa. She has a very good point, and Mother Theresa's life is surely an example of proceeding 'on faith' or even 'on faith alone' and to be respected.
As a Quaker, however, I am aware that loss of a sense of connection to 'the Light within' can mean what we call 'getting ahead of your leading' or 'mistaking your leading' and when that happens, we call a Clearness Committee of our peers to help in discernment. Sometimes the decision is to carry on, but sometimes looking deeper leads to discovering that our ego has gotten caught up in the mission, or that the leading is different than we thought. Many of us have had the experience of 'following a leading into a brick wall' and finding that the leading was not toward worldly effectiveness at, say, social justice or stopping the war in Iraq, but had a deeper purpose we would not have thought of on our own.
Discernment is a difficult process, and I am sorry Mother Theresa did not have a committee of peers to support her. Her earlier spiritual directors don't sound like they were very much help, and the value her tradition puts on obedience to human representatives of God rather than obedience to God just confused the issue. I am sad for her and her long suffering in isolation."
**Thank you for sending this, Sally. I am so taken with the idea of being able to "call a Clearness Committee of our peers to help in discernment." That, it seems to me, is a wholesome and comforting and valuable practice. Scary, too.
#Quotes & Comments
1. On page 42 of "Everything Is on Fire: Tibetan Buddhism inside out," by John B. Buescher, pp. 40-43, _Books & Culture_ for 1-2/2008, Buescher quotes Fr. Laurence Freeman, from the introduction to the Dalai Lama's _The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus":
"When a Buddhist, perhaps especially a Western Buddhist, says that all religions are compatible because they represent the different personal or psychological needs of individuals, many may add or think 'at different stages of their development.' Behind this may be the feeling -- which I never sensed at all in the Dalai Lama in either private or public discussion -- that the notion of a personal God is acceptable, but that it represents a more immature, perhaps an earlier, stage of spiritual development, a kind of balancing third wheel on a child's bicycle."
Buescher then goes on to say: "The Dalai Lama, a good man, would not beat his hosts over the head with it, but that is indeed how Buddhists understand theism... Such teachings, they believe, are potentially helpful to those who are not yet highly gifted but who will eventually, perhaps in a future lifetime, be able to comprehend and profit from the highest Buddhist teachings."
I wonder about this. Not because I have any reason to doubt Freeman, who surely is a reliable source or the Dalai Lama wouldn't have accepted him as author of the introduction to the book. It just seems to me to have a faint hint of elitism that I don't associate with the theology of Buddhism. I wonder how the Dalai Lama would state that premise in his native language, if he were willing to do such a thing. It also seems to me to be instructive that Buescher never sensed that feeling "in the Dalai Lama in either private or public discussion." Your input would be welcome.
[The Buescher essay discusses ten books on Buddhism, from various publishers.]
2. The 11/26-12/3/2007 issue of _U.S. News & World Report_ had an excellent section (pp. 36-72) on "Sacred Places." I'm going to offer just a few quotes here, and recommend that you read more online at http://www.usnews.com/ usnews/issue/071126 .
On page 56, in "Regarding Simplicity as a Virtue," by Adam Volland, about the Shinto shrines at Ise, Japan:
Volland writes that many of the shrines there are unpainted, that you get to them on plain gravel pathways, that they "flout the notion that a sacred space must be richly or intricately decorated. However, it's the very simplicity, the fact that its unspoiled forest envelops the shrine, that makes the shrines at Ise... sublime. 'When I go there, I feel like I'm back in an ancient world,' says Nobuyo Otagaki, a Shinto priestess who visits Ise twice each year. At Ise, she says, she can best connect to the kami, the spirits, gods, and goddesses of Shinto beliefs."
On page 72, in "The Sanctity of Personal Places: Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary," by Winifred Gallagher: "Recently, I've been amazed by how many everyday places now incorporate little informal shrines. A bedroom corner becomes a meditation center; one end of a mantelpiece turns into an altar; a garden grows up around a stone Buddha or Francis of Assisi. The most moving of these homemade sacred places are the roadside memorials that mark accidental deaths. No New Yorker will forget the flowers, candles, and signs that spontaneously sanctified the city's firehouses after 9/11."
Photos and essays in this section include the Sanctuary of Chimayo, the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, Australia's Uluru monolith (aka Ayers Rock), Bolivia's Tiwanacu, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, Ethiopia's Church of St. Mary of Zion, the mosque at Cordoba in Spain, the holy city of Varanasi on the River Ganges, the Bodhi Tree, and more. Highly recommended, and filled with useful information.
3. From a document titled "The 8 Points," published by The Center for Progressive Christianity, here is the first of the eight points, and a sample from the discussion:
"Point 1: By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus."
"No 'Point' drew more input or fostered more discussion, more debates and on occasion, more emotions, than the revision of this first 'Point.' ... [M]any people were uncomfortable with the word 'gate' in the first published version. However, trying to find the appropriate replacement proved to be challenging. ... Clearly some have argued that the words, 'an approach,' do not indicate a strong enough 'commitment' or 'discipleship' to be a serious faith journey. Others desired more biblical language. They would have preferred language like 'found a path'... One respondent claims that the word was so 'weak' that we must no longer be Christians. Other have expressed an appreciation for the openness of the word 'approach,' pointing out that it makes no judgment on other religious experiences."
I like that wording -- "we are Christians who have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus" -- very much, myself. Saying "a path to God" or "a gate to God" presupposes that following that path or going through that gate can be counted on to take you to God. "An approach to God" doesn't carry that presupposition; it presupposes only that you will do your best to head in God's direction.
All 8 points are online at http://www.tcpc.org/about/8points.cfm . To get to the discussion of each point, click on its "Study Guide" link.
4. _USA Today_ had a very strange article on page 13A of its 12/10/07 issue, written by Kathleen Parker. First there was its title: "Romney's cult of religious liberty." The word "cult" is inexcusably rude in this instance. My guess is that the title was chosen not by Kathleen Parker, but by an editor who was suffering from an advanced case of Tin Ear Syndrome. Next, after "In a big-tent speech clearly aimed at inclusiveness, Romney left himself open to criticism by leaving out non-believers," Parker wrote: "A single sentence recognizing that tolerance for all faiths also includes tolerance for the faithless seems an unwise oversight." "Non-believers" is one thing; "faithless" is quite another. That you are someone who does not believe in any established religious faith does not have to mean that you are without any faith in anything at all.
And then there's the section in which she tries to justify Romney's sentence, "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Like this:
"Although empirically problematic, the phrase [sic] makes more sense when considered within the historical context of the nation's forefathers, as Romney intended." People "govern themselves within a framework of individual freedom," she says, by "voluntary virtue," and "America's forefathers -- though clear in their intent that there be no state religion -- depended on religious folk to manage freedom responsibly."
I am not persuaded that there is any context in which "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom" can be defended. My thanks to Patricia Mathews for sending me the copy and pointing out its headline. You can read the essay online at blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/12/romneys-cult-of.html .
5. From "Why sportswriters ignore athlete's God talk," by Terry Mattingly, in the 1/5/08 _Albuquerque Tribune_:
"So what are journalists supposed to do when gridiron giants start holding hands and forming prayer circles at midfield? It's one thing to point in thanksgiving toward heaven after a touchdown. Most journalists think it's something else to mention Jesus Christ a dozen times a minute on live TV. Take, for example, Heisman Trophy-winner Tim Tebow of Florida. The first words he uttered in his nervous acceptance speech was [sic]: 'I'd just like to first start off by thanking my lord and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave me the ability to play football." This quotation didn't appear in any mainstream news reports, wrote sportswriter Kathy Orton... "
I wasn't aware that this form of "God talk" had become an identifying characteristic of the English sports register, nor did I know that journalists had been taking it upon themselves to censor that variety of speech out of their stories. It's certainly a new wrinkle.
6. I very rarely see a print ad in religious language (except, of course, in religious publications). This one from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation -- on page 62 of the 10/15/07 issue of _Time_ -- caught my eye. Its main feature, in a square block of huge type that (oddly, it seems to me) is black and blue, says: "is God Keeping You From Going To Church?" "God" and "Church" and the question mark are the largest items, are blue, and are in all capital letters; "keeping you from going to" is black, and also in all caps. And then there's "is" -- in black, and in lower case letters. This has to have been designed by a committee.
[The rest of the text of the ad says that UUC offers a loving spiritual community without insisting on "the idea of God." They have a website at http://www.uua.org .]
7. The Winter 2007-2008 issue of _Image_ [website at http://imagejournal.org ], has a wonderful interview with Mary Karr, conducted by Brennan O'Donnell, on the relationship between Karr's religious faith and her writing; it's on pages 83-95. On pp. 91-92, talking about her prayer life, Karr says:
"Within a couple of years I made the prayer of Saint Francis a regular prayer: 'Make me an instrument of your peace...' I was making decisions based on prayer, like whether or not to get a divorce -- that was something I had prayed about for years. I didn't have a sense of what to do, but I did pray about it. I prayed about what to write, and I prayed about what job to take. My life got a lot better. That's what I tell people when they say they don't believe but they want to believe. I say, 'Pray every day for thirty days and see if your life gets better.' It's ironic how people will argue with you about that, as though it will cost them something, as though you're trying to trick them into something. I say, 'No, just do it and see if you feel like I do. Maybe you won't.' "
And on page 92...
"I had not been baptized when _Liar's Club_ came out, but I did have a sense of having been spiritually snatched out of the fire. Prayer had become a place I could go. I was single, I had a kid, I had nine jobs, I had no money -- but I could go to that place and feel that there was something there that was not me, that was going to help me pick the next right thing to do."
_Image_ is expensive ($39.95 a year for four issues), and I am often puzzled by some of the things it chooses to print -- especially the fiction -- and by some of the art that it offers to its readers. On the other hand, it always has at least two or three items that I would have been _very_ sorry not to have read or not to have seen. And it's always beautifully produced; it's not a journal that's going to fall apart on you. I understand why it has to be so expensive; if you can fit it into your budget, I recommend it wholeheartedly. You can sample a very small part of its archived contents by going to http://imagejournal.org/page/artist-of-the-month and clicking on the links in the "Artist of the Month" box.
8. My thanks to Kathe Rauch for sending an interesting article about Reynolds Price titled "Fertile ground," by J. Peder Zane, in the 1/27/08 _News & Observer_. It begins with a description of his home, ordinary-looking from the outside, and saying "But its doors open to a magnificent world: Sculptures of angels float along walls that are covered with works of fine art, including exquisite golden paintings of Jesus and the Virgin Mary." Zane goes on to tell about the time in 1984 when Price, then suffering with spinal cancer, "saw himself lying by a lake that he recognized as the Sea of Galilee. A man he knew to be Jesus began pouring water over Price's surgical scar. 'Your sins are forgiven,' Jesus told him. Price wanted more. 'Am I also healed?' he asked. 'That, too,' Jesus answered." Price, Zane says, insists on the "literal truth of these events."
"Price, who said he has never had a moment of serious doubt in his entire life, is surprised by the way many nonbelievers casually dismiss a notion that about '80 percent of the greatest minds of Western civilizations have devoted themselves to trying to understand.' "
9. The 1-2/08 _Books & Culture_ had a very satisfying memorial essay for Madelein L'Engle, by Luci Shaw, on page 8. Here's a part of the opening paragraph:
"Tall and queenly, she physically embodied her mental and spiritual attributes. I remember occasions when, in church during Advent, she would rise to full height, spread her arms wide like the Angel of the Annunciation, and declare, 'Fear not!' in a tone that allowed no gainsaying. It was a challenge impossible to ignore."
And a bit farther on...
"In the continuum of God's Love and Righteousness she came down squarely on the Love End of things. She also prayed that eventually... 'no-one will finally be excluded from the party.' She hoped that 'no human being's rebellion could outlive the love of God,' brought to this hope by her reading of George MacDonald's theology. We discussed this endlessly... I guess I came to think: 'Well, if universalism is a heresy, it's one I wish were true!' "
This last quote sent me to Google looking for more information about George MacDonald and his theology; I'd suggest looking at the Wikipedia article on the subject at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_MacDonald , where there's a great deal of information, plus many links to additional sources.
10. One of my Christmas gifts this year was a copy of Hector Tobar's wonderful _Translation Nation: Defining A New American Identity In The Spanish-Speaking United States_ (Riverhead/Penguin 2005). Pages 312-315 of that book describe the "Via Crucis del Immigrante" ("the Stations of the Cross of the Immigrant") and the creation, by Jesuit brother Joel Magallan, of the "Asociacion Tepeyac, named for the hill outside Mexico City where the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to the Indian Juan Diego..." And here is one quote, from page 315:
"...[T]he members of the Asociacion Tepeyac each year carry a torch from Mexico City to New York, hundreds of runners following a route overland from the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in what is the northern reaches of Mexico City's sprawl, to the border at Brownsville, and up through Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and other states to New York City, where thousands of Mexicans await its arrival at a mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral."
#Cyperspace
1. PW Religion BookLine for 1/2/08 had a brief review of _ The New Christians: Dispatches From the Emergent Frontier_, by Tony Jones (Jossey-Bass 2008):
Jones... provides the single best introduction to the Emergent Church movement, of which he is a prominent leader. The mainline denominations are dying and the hyper-individualism of evangelicalism is unsatisfying, so many young evangelicals, Jones explains, have decided to recreate church for post-modern times. ... He passionately defends the emergent movement from criticism. In particular, critics are wrong to claim that emergents don't really believe in the Bible; emergents passionately love the Bible, says Jones, but also know that finite human beings cannot definitively articulate truth. The strongest sections put flesh on these theoretical bones by taking readers into actual emergent churches... ... Jones's writing is brisk and conversational, but the book gets poor marks for design. ..."
You can read the entire review at http://tinyurl.com/3yqwtg .
2. Powell's daily book review on 12/15/07, at http://tinyurl.com/37hkbp , was a review by Chris Faatz titled "Culture of Forgiveness," for Donald B. Kraybill's book _Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy_. I strongly recommend it. Samples...
"The Amish readiness to forgive the murderer of their children is one of the most interesting and compelling parts of this book. It will come as no surprise that this willingness to forgive is deeply rooted in their faith. It may come as something of a surprise to the secular or nominally religious reader as to how deeply rooted that faith is. In fact, forgiveness is much more than simply a commandment that is blindly obeyed. It is part and parcel of every facet of Amish life, rooted in their prayers, in their customs, and in their history. ... As Kraybill, et al., point out, the scriptures -- and particularly the Gospel of Matthew -- are rife with examples of the call to forgive, ranging from scriptural admonitions to Jesus' example on the cross. One of the most central is the prayer that Jesus taught his followers as being perfect, what we today call the Lord's Prayer. In it are the lines "and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." This, in turn, is followed in the next two verses (Matthew 6:14-15) with: "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." As the book makes abundantly clear, the Amish are not only aware of these verses, but they integrate them faithfully into every aspect of their lives."
3. Recently, at my LiveJournal blog, under the "Eldering" heading, we've been discussing "what it's like to be 70," and in that context we came across a remarkable prayer, called "17 Century Nun's Prayer." It begins like this...
"Lord, thou knowest better than I know myself that I am
growing older
And someday will be old.
Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something
On every subject on every occasion.
Release me from craving to straighten out everybody's affairs.
...
And it goes on like that for a while. It's a lovely prayer, and instructive; I recommend it. You'll find it (among many other places) at http://www.stlouisparish.org/ html/praynun.htm.
4. I'd like to recommend a review (from the _New York Review of Books_) by Bill McKibben titled "Taking the Gospels Seriously," at http:/tinyurl.com/2jsu5v . It reviews two books: Peter J. Gomes' _The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good about the Good News?_, and _unChristian: What the New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity ... and Why It Matters_, a book based on research by the Barna Group (identified as "a kind of Gallup" for evangelicals). McKibben tells us that Peter J. Gomes is a superstar preacher who draws standing-room-only crowds, and then says, of his new book:
"... [I]t is a daring and subversive book, taking Gomes and his readers further out on a limb than they've been before. There's nothing conventional about it, mostly because of its intense concentration on those most hazardous of texts, the four gospels. The gospels have always been a difficult foundation on which to build a movement, in that they call on Christians to do thing they might rather not: voluntarily right the balance between rich and poor, for instance, or turn the other cheek. 'It is very difficult to preach the gospel as Jesus did without giving offense,' Gomes writes..."
I haven't yet read the Gomes book, but I most certainly _will_ read it. (HarperOne is its publisher.) Here's just one more quote from the review...
"So much of the modern evangelical phenomenon lacks real content -- to judge by many of its books and star preachers, the faith is mostly about bringing people to Christ and then, when they've arrived, making them feel good about the decision, with a consumerist faith that bears little resemblance to the gospels."
My thanks to Cindy Brown for alerting me to this review.
5. I don't know enough about the history of Roman Catholicism to say anything sensible about this next item, and the research I've done [thank you, Google] hasn't made me feel any more qualified to comment. The item is an article by Jennifer Green from the 1/21/08 _Ottawa Citizen_ titled "The lost history of women as priests," at http://tinyurl.com/2k8jcm . Green is reviewing a book by Gary Macy titled _The Hidden History of Women's Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West_, published by Oxford University Press. Macy claims that women were ordained by the Catholic Church "for the first 1,200 years of Christianity" but that it subsequently "rewrote its own history to excise clerical women."
Input from those of you who are more knowledgeable about this matter would of course be welcome.
6. My thanks to Hillevi Wyman for an article about the "generation gap" in the language environment of the church congregation -- " 'Intergenerational' as a Way of Seeing," by Gil Rendle, at http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=5544 . Rendle writes:
"The lessons each generation has learned, the values it has adopted, and its way of seeing serve as a lens or a filter through which the world is experienced and understood. Such generational filters lead to a natural conclusion, arrived at by each successive generation, that there is a 'right way' to be in the culture. It is this assumption of a 'right way' that leads to so much tension and misunderstanding between generations. Older generations quite naturally but mistakenly assume that the difference between them and younger generations (their children and grandchildren) is an issue of maturity. The assumption is that once the younger people 'grow up,' they will behave more appropriately -- that is, they will dress better for worship, they will more readily sign on for committee and board responsibilities to help with the work load, they will sign a pledge card, they will.... ... However, these are not issues of maturity but of differences. ... In too many congregations intergenerational worship is simply a search for those compromises that will be most palatable or least offensive to the participants."
"Being intergenerational," Rendle says, is one of the hardest things for a congregation to work out, because leaders can't fall back on "speaking in familiar and safe language that is already embedded in the congregation."
And in his final paragraph: "Among the questions congregations struggle to address are these: Should we try to hold the generations together when we worship? Is it even possible?"
Only a few years ago, I would have been surprised to read that this issue is a serious problem for our churches. However, my LiveJournal blog has made me vividly aware -- through one stumble after another -- of how excruciatingly difficult it is to communicate across the generation gaps. I would have assumed that it surely must be easier to do in speech than it is in written language, but perhaps I am as wrong about that as I was about the gravity of the whole issue. I would not be surprised.
7. There's something interesting at http://www.selectsmart.com/ RELIGION/description.htm . It's the sort of thing that would set off a firestorm of outrage and complaining and carrying on about oversimplification and definitions of terms -- but it's a brave try, and it's extremely interesting. It's titled "Belief System Descriptions & Links"; it starts with "Atheists/Agnostics" and ends with "Neo-Pagan," and (not being in alphabetical order) visits a long list of faiths in between. Under each heading is a brief paragraph identifying the faith in question, followed by a brief statement of that faith's position [when it has one] on a set of categories, including: "Belief in Deity"; "Incarnation"; "Origin of universe and life"; "Why evil?"; "Salvation"; "Undeserved Suffering"; "Contemporary Issues." Finally, each entry ends with links to additional resources.
Here's a sample from the entry for "Liberal Christian/Protestant":
"Origin of universe and life: The Bible's account is symbolic. God created and controls the processes that account for the universe and life (e.g. evolution), as continually revealed by modern science."
8. One of the most astonishing religious-language events I've ever heard of took place in late summer 2007, when the Chinese government passed legislation forbidding Tibetan Buddhist monks to reincarnate without government permission. [See, for example, "Permission To Reincarnate, Sir?", at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/ ~myl/languagelog/archives/005300.html#more .] I would like very much to see a discussion of this legislation with a morpheme-by-morpheme translation of the actual Chinese text -- or even a general discussion of the translation -- and have had no luck whatever finding anything of that kind. If anyone among you could suggest a resource, I'd be grateful for the information.
9. I am saddened to read that some churches in the U.S. are bringing back the practice called "shunning," and are even backing it up by calling in law enforcement to remove expelled members whose presence in the church is referred to by church officials as "trespassing." For example, there's the case of Karolyn Caskey, a member of Allen Baptist Church in Allen, Michigan for nearly 50 years and a generous donor to the church. Her pastor called the police, and "Half an hour later [she] was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff's officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs. The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey's real offense, in her pastor's view was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he'd charged her with spreading 'a spirit of cancer and discord' and expelled her from the congregation."
You can read the entire article -- "Banned From Church: Reviving an ancient practice, churches are exposing sinners and shunning those who won't repent," by Alexandra Alter -- at http://tinyurl.com/217pdf . My thanks to Cindy Brown for the copy.
10. On a lighter note, some of you may be interested in the "Religion in Literature" database, at http://www.adherents.com/lit/index.html . There are many categories; just a sampling would include: "Quaker Science Fiction"; "Sikhs in Science Fiction"; "Hugo Award-winning novels"; "Nebula Award-winning novels"; "Star Trek: Voyager novels"; "Over 350 other novels and anthologies"; "SF/F Writers of Various Faiths." And there's interesting text as well. For example:
"Certain archetypes or stereotypes are commonly found among religious characters in mainstream science fiction. There is the academically and philosophically talented Catholic priest who surprises those around him with his open-minded self-effacing manner. While there is an abundance of priests and nuns among science fiction characters, practicing lay Catholics are rarely used. Protestantism is all too frequently represented by a hate-mongering or greedy conservative preacher who is more caricature than character. The speech, ideas, and characteristics of these Protestant preachers (often Baptist or Baptist-like) usually seem drawn from televangelists."
And...
"Interestingly, alien races described in depth in science fiction nearly always have a distinctive religion, but they are rarely described as having more than one. 'One religion per species' seems to be the rather un-Earthlike rule, although there are exceptions."
11. "As the church's Welfare Services Handbook says, 'No true Latter-day Saint, while physically or emotionally able, will voluntarily shift the burden of his own or his family's well-being to someone else.' To that end, the church coaches members to stockpile a year's worth of food and drinking water, along with other provisions, and most do. ... [T]he church went into high gear during Hurricane Katrina in a performance that put the federal government to shame. ... Two days before the storm made landfall, while FEMA was floundering, the church dispatched 10 trucks full of tents, sleeping bags, tarps to cover wrecked roofs, bottled water, and 50 gallon drums of gas from its warehouses to New Orleans and other hard-hit areas. The supplies were distributed in an orderly fashion to people who desperately needed them."
This comes from a _Mother Jones_ story -- "Mormons to the Rescue," by Stephanie Mencimer -- at http://tinyurl.com/yqzqpt , sent by Cindy Brown. The header poses this question: "Latter-day Saints are like the superheroes of Christianity: When disaster strikes, they spring into action. So why isn't Mitt Romney bragging?"
Good question, that.
[Note: There is a transcript of Mitt Romney's speech on religious faith at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16981132 ; you can also _listen_ to the speech at this URL, if you prefer.]
12. Brian McLaren, in "In Search of a Label?", at http://tinyurl.com/2rou4k , complains about a lexical gap -- the lack of an adequate and appropriate name for Christians who are not part of the Religious Right. He mentions a list of terms that the media have been using -- "Religious Left," "Progressive Christians," "Purple Christians," and says that none of those will do. The first two carry unacceptable baggage with them; the last one makes him think of "bug-eyed believers who have held their breath too long." "Red Letter Christians" has promise, he says, but it's too opaque. "So," he says, "something as-yet-unnamed is emerging and deserves attention, especially in 2008, when these hard-to-label people of faith may play a key role in the outcome of our presidential election," and he asks for suggestions.
13. The linguistics blog Language Log has recently had four posts, variously titled, under the rubric of "The Science and Theology of Global Language Change," all by Mark Liberman, with an interesting discussion of the "Tower of Babel" story in Genesis 11. Here's a quote from the 12/30/07 post, at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/ ~myl/languagelog/archives/005270.html#more :
"The international movement to teach this history in the public schools is known as 'Wrathful Dispersion Theory.' Or, rather, it might be known by that name, if it existed -- the status of linguistic instruction in our schools is so anomalously low that no one has felt the need to create a movement. This all leaves me uncertain what the theology of linguistic diversity might be, for those people to whom such things matter. On the one hand, the creation of diverse languages was a punishment, not a reward or an example of divine bounty, so eliminating all the world's languages in favor of English might be seen as a good thing, restoring the world to a state closer to the creator's original plan. On the other hand, linguistic diversity is a divine punishment for human technological presumption, and who are we to interfere?"
The other three posts end with /archives/005273.html#more , /archives/005285. html#more , and archives/005286.html#more .
14. There's an interesting article on the religious ritual aspects of Navajo sandpaintings, at http://www.handsville.org/voyage/navajo/sandpaintings.php3 . Sample [with the Navajo terms deleted because my e-mail software can't provide the proper diacritics]:
"Sandpaintings ... are an essential part of Navajo ceremonials and, as such, are sacred. They are created to aid in the restoration of health and harmony in the life of the patient, the one sung over. ... The sandpainting derives its power to heal from the coexistence within the image of multiple layers of time, space, and meaning. The layers of time derive from the presence of the Holy People (in their images and their presence which is presumed); the layers of space derive from the careful construction of the back and front images of the Holy People; the layers of meaning come from the myths and stories associated with these sandpaintings especially chosen for the situation at hand... "
Recommended.
15. Thanks to Powell's Review-a-Day service -- which I heartily recommend, by the way -- I can recommend to you a review by Michael Dirda titled "Though I Walk in the Vale of Death's Shadow," for Robert Alters _The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary_. "Given the power and pervasiveness of the Psalms in Renaissance English," Dirda writes, "it is almost inevitable that Robert Alter's new translation is going to sound somewhat lackluster. But his goals are admirable. ... In addition, he provides detailed commentary, usually focused on linguistic difficulties in the Hebrew or on explanations for his plain English diction and imagery."
We have Alter's earlier translation/commentary for the Five Books of Moses -- the first five books of the Old Testament -- in the Lovingkindness Library, and I have a great admiration for that volume. But I know what Dirda means when he says that Alter's "The heavens tell God's glory/And His handiwork sky declares," though a more faithful translation, "just doesn't measure up" to "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork."
16. From "Women's Torah Commentary to Debut," by Marcia Z. Nelson, at _Religion BookLine_ for 11/28/07:
"Almost like a long-awaited child, a unique commentary debuts to an expectant audience in December. _The Torah: A Women's Commentary_ (URJ Press) will be unveiled during the Women of Reform Judaism's 46th Assembly to be held Dec. 12-16 in San Diego. ... With emphasis on the roles of women in the Torah, the Commentary contains five interpretive 'layers' that allow readers to see a variety of perspectives on the text, including traditional rabbinic, contemporary, scholarly and poetic views. The work of 100 commissioned contributors is included, as well as more than 100 poets."
10,000 copies of this book -- which has been in progress since 1993 -- had been pre-sold by the 11/28/07 date.
17. My thanks to Patricia Mathews for sending me " 'Ave Maria' Becomes 'Be of Good Cheer Maria' As Bishops Change Liturgy," English translation by Giles Watson, at http://www.corriere.it/english/articoli/2007/11_Novembre/13/ave_maria.shtml . The account reports that more than one hundred thousand modifications have now been made in the Roman Catholic _Liturgical Lectionary_. For example:
"One phrase -- 'Ave Maria' -- is now in its third translation. Left unchanged in the first Italian version, it later became 'Hail (Mary), full of grace' and is now 'Be of good cheer (Mary), full of grace'. 'Lead us not into temptation' has become 'do not abandon us to temptation.' "
18. Cyberplaces to visit: A very negative article from the 5/97 _Adoremus Bulletin_ titled " 'Femonics': Legitimate Dialect or Linguistic Dictatorship?", by Susan J. Benofy and Helen Hull Hitchcock, at http://www.adoremus.org/597-Femonics.html ; "Malaysian row over word for 'God' ", at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/ 7163391.stm and "Malaysia says Herald not allowed to use 'Allah' in its publication," at http://tinyurl.com/2xpsqq ; GodTube [who knew?], at http:// www.godtube.com ; and the "Religion Gateway" webpage at http://www.academicinfo.net/religindex.html , suggested by Susan Sparling.
Copyright © 2008 Suzette Haden Elgin
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Contact: ocls@madisoncounty.net