May/June 2002 Newsletter

THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 3, Issue 3 -- May/June 2002
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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 a generous donation, all issues are posted at http://www.forlovingkindness.org. To join the Lovingkindness Network, 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 LK 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; The "Gender-Neutral" Bible That's No Such Thing; Medical Viewpoints; Booknotes; Quotes & Comments; The Christian Media

EDITOR'S NOTE

I've had lots of letters from people saying "Please don't make the newsletters shorter -- the problem is that they're not long enough." That's pleasing to read, and I'm grateful. But nobody has yet taken the opposite position. Is that because there's a consensus, do you suppose, or do those who would vote for shorter newsletters consider their position so obviously correct that it goes without saying or writing?? This is your chance, friends; if you want less material, please tell me so. This particular issue is so crowded, and so long, that I couldn't make room for a "Cyberstuff" section, but there are a number of Internet items in other sections.

Many thanks to all of you for the excellent materials you've been sending. As always, everything you send is put to good use, whether I can fit it into a newsletter or not.

NETWORK INPUT

1. Douglas Dee writes: "You mentioned a while back that you were reading the whole Bible and
noticing things you'd been unaware of (eg, the use of 'pisseth against a wall' in the KJV). In a similar vein: I had read the New Testament more than once, but until it was pointed out to me (by our pastor, in a homily), I had never noticed that Joseph does not speak any lines at all in the NT. Mary says stuff like 'your father and I have been looking for you' while Joseph never utters a word. Odd."

Odd indeed. I could have _sworn_ I remembered Joseph saying a few words here and there! But I looked hard, and the pastor is right; Joseph says nothing at all. So I went looking in some of the noncanonical and "lost" books, where I did find him speaking. As in the rather scary _First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ_, 5:6, "Joseph answered, He will come after us." And 20:16, "Then said Joseph to St. Mary, henceforth we will not allow him to go out of the house; for every one who displeases him is killed."

2. From a long and excellent letter by Margaret L. Carter, as part of our ongoing discussion about the ethics of doing medical experiments on the effects of prayer : "C. S. Lewis addresses this very situation, in an essay entitled 'The Efficacy of Prayer' ... His first remark on the topic is that no Christian could take part in such a test, because we are commanded, 'You must not try experiments on God, your Master." (I.e., in the language of the King James version, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.") He then goes on to explain why he considers the experiment impossible anyway. The research conditions require that the prayer team pray for the recovery of one set of patients but not another set. There can be no rational motive for desiring the recovery of one group and not the other group. Therefore, the professed object of the prayer -- to promote healing -- is not its true object; its true object is "to find out what happens." So it isn't genuine prayer at all. ... He also points out that the whole question of whether prayer 'works' is, from the Christian point of view, framed wrongly. If prayer could be shown to "work" with 100% reliability, that result wouldn't prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would, instead, prove something like magic. Christians believe in prayer as, not a form of manipulation of reality, but a form of communication between imperfect, finite persons and the one wholly real Person (Who, of course, will sometimes have to refuse our requests for our own long-term welfare) ..."

This is where Christianity is going to differ drastically with a number of other religions, for whom prayer is a part of magic and magic is an integral part of the faith itself. I am not at all sure, however, that the distinction is always clear in the current popular literature on prayer -- the Prayer of Jabez literature (and coffee mugs, and bumper stickers, vamp till ready) -- for example. It also seems to me that the many double binds medical researchers are dumped into by Christian doctrine are a self-referential paradox that borders on the perverse, and that the problem therefore _has_ to be in the language being used to frame it.

THE "GENDER-NEUTRAL" BIBLE THAT'S NO SUCH THING

My thanks to all of you who have been sending stories and sources regarding the new TNIV (_Today's New International Version_) Bible. It's an interesting tale, if only for the amazing amount of confusion and obfuscation involved.

Diana Cook sent a copy of "The His-and-Hers Bible," by Emily Nussbaum (_NY Times Magazine_, 2/10/02, pp. 15-16). Nussbaum says -- accurately -- that many conservatives are upset about this. Then she says, on page 15: "Like any Brown semiotics major, conservative Christians know that symbols matter; they affect the way we view the world. A gender-neutral Bible is one step closer to a gender-neutral society." The website of the Concerned Women for America (http://www.cwfa.org) has a press release titled " 'Gender-Neutral' Bible Causes Uproar" which asks, "Whatever the motives behind the TNIV, the event of its publication raises legitimate questions: Was it necessary to go _this_ far to achieve readability?" _The Washington Times_ online's "Groups pan gender-neutral Bible," by Ellen Sorokin (1/29/02), quotes Rev. Restine T. Jackson III saying, "By changing the language, you're removing all the great symbolisms the Bible is trying to portray."

This is truly a mini-tempest in a micro-teapot. All that happened in the TNIV with regard to gender is that when the original language clearly had a word or phrase that was intended to refer to both men and women -- but the earlier translation used a masculine word of English -- an "inclusive" English item has been substituted for the masculine one. Thus, "a man is justified by faith" becomes "a person is justified by faith," and the TNIV website notes that "While the word _man_ once functioned as a term for human beings, today it is used almost exclusively of males."

The publishers and translators insist resolutely that the TNIV is not gender-neutral; rather, it is "gender-accurate." But this leads to the following statement at the TNIV website: "Without exception, the TNIV retains gender-accurate, masculine terminology for references to God. This is a theological understanding and commitment that the Committee on Bible Translation, standing in concert with the Church throughout the ages, considers inviolable."

This would be funny if it weren't so awful. The "Church throughout the ages" has most certainly insisted that only masculine words and imagery are suitable for God, but calling that insistence "a theological understanding" and "gender-accurate" can only represent a claim that God has gender and that that gender is male. Let's don't go there.

For an overview of the controversy, just go to Google and type in "TNIV Bible." I recommend the TNIV site itself (http://www.tniv.info) as the best place to start. It has lots of brief excerpts, with explanations.

MEDICAL VIEWPOINTS

1. "Q: What specific improved health outcomes have you observed in religious patients?"
"A: We looked at 542 patients aged 60 or older who were admitted to neurology, cardiology, and general medicine services at Duke University Hospital. The average stay for those with no affiliation with a religious community was 25 days, compared with 11 days for those who had a religious affiliation. ... "

This is from "Should doctors prescribe religion?," a debate/interview by Anita J. Slomski, pp. 145-159 of the 1/10/2000 issue of _Medical Economics_. The quotation above (from page 46) is from Harold G. Koenig MD. On the opposing side -- convinced that research like that described by Koenig shows only correlation, no causation -- is Richard P. Sloan Ph.D. Sloan also claims that the studies which seem to support Koenig's ideas are seriously flawed and fail to control properly for important variables.

Koenig makes one crucial point. Still on page 146, he says that "religious people feel that they have a certain amount of control over their illness." It's important because we have substantial medical research (noncontroversial research) demonstrating that what genuinely helpful modalities have in common is that they provide a perception of control, as opposed to a perception of helplessness. We also know that a perception of helplessness is one of the worst dangers a sick person can face; people who perceive themselves as helpless victims are all too likely to give up, making even the best healing efforts ineffective.

Sloan also raises an ethical problem. Koenig has said that he doesn't believe doctors should prescribe religion, only that they should take steps to support it where it's already part of the context; he believes doctors should add "Do you use religion to cope with health problems?" to the routine medical interview so that they'll _know_ when it's part of the context. Sloan's response on page 156 is: "If he believes that there is strong evidence associating religion with better health outcomes -- and I'm sure he does -- he would be derelict in his duty as a physician if he didn't advocate religion. Physicians who believe the evidence is overwhelming that antibiotics are the appropriate treatment for penumonia don't ask whether the patient likes antibiotics -- they simply prescribe them."

I recommend reading this piece. It raises a number of other issues I don't have space to examine here -- like Sloan's claims that (a) exposure to religious language is dangerous to nonreligious patients, and (b) it is literally impossible to do a valid "intervention study" of the health effects of religion. I'd welcome your input. [My thanks to the Kinast-Porters for the copy.]

2. The 10/9/00 issue of _Medical Economics_, pp. 160-166, had an article titled "Physicians are true believers," by Anne L. Finger. Finger reports that 86 percent of physicians "believe in a supreme being." And she adds some interesting statistics. The highest percentage of believers is found among the _youngest_ physicians; the most skeptical specialties are radiologists and psychiatrists; and the group that considers religion to have the least importance in their daily lives is orthopedic surgeons. Given Richard Sloan's ethical stipulations in item #1, you have to wonder what the prevailing attitude is among the believers. There is a God, but that has nothing at all to do with healing? There is a God, but God's intervention toward human wellness was to create physicians and pharmaceutical companies? There is a God, and belief in that God could help heal people, but I'd get thrown out of the medical profession if I told my patients so? Heaven only knows.

3. From the National Institute of Healthcare Research (website, http://www.nihr.org), an acronym for taking a spiritual history as part of the medical interview, developed by Todd Maugans MD:

"SPIRIT: S = Spiritual belief system; P = Personal spirituality; I = Integration with a spiritual community; R = Ritualized practices and restrictions; I = Implications for medical care; T = Terminal events planning."

[Source: "Special Report: Are Faith & Healthcare Compatible?", by Don Foster MD; _Today's Christian Doctor_, Fall 2000, pp. 26-29. Website for the journal is http://www.cmdahome.org.]

4. Two Templeton grants that are either just completed or nearing completion are relevant here. One is the "Empirical Study of Forgiveness Education with Cardiac Patients," under Robert D. Enright; the other is "Study of the therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer: A Replication and Expansion Study," under Herbert Benson. For information, see the websites: http://www.forgiveness-institute.org and http://www.mbmi.org. [Source: _Research New & Opportunities in Science and Theology_ for 3/02, page 11.]

BOOKNOTES

1. I have a lot of respect for the Templeton Foundation, which has placed the muscle of a one-million-dollar award for religious writing squarely against the resistance of a mainstream culture that places very little value on such writing. Prestige is all very well, but in the U.S. a million-dollar prize carries the kind of clout that makes people say, "Well, if it's worth a million dollars maybe there's more to it than I thought." I therefore looked forward to reading _God For the 21st Century_, edited by Russell Stannard and published by Templeton Foundation Press 2000. I was encouraged by this paragraph on the opening page:

"In the light of our present scientific knowledge and of subsequent events in history, perhaps the writers of Genesis, inspired by God's continuing revelation of himself, would have written something like this: In the beginning, God said 'Let there be...' and he created the unified forces of physics, with perfect symmetry and prescient precision. And out of nothing, and into nothing, God, by a free decision, set up the spontaneous production of particles, in newborn space and time, producing a silent, seething sphere, infinitesimally small and unimaginably hot. There was onset and evolution, the first stage of creation."

However, the other 193 pages of the book were a great disappointment. There are wonderful selection titles: "Why Does the Universe Work?" ... "Did Darwin Kill God?" ... "Medical Aspects of Belief" ... "Whatever Became of the Soul?" ... "Robot: Child of God" ... "Einstein's View of God" ... "Theistic Science." But the selections are slim and shallow, in my opinion. I think all the authors in the collection should be given a D and told to write their pieces over again from scratch.

2. I get complaints from time to time, telling me that I neglect the religious language of faiths outside the mainstream, and perhaps especially the religious language of what is called "New Age spirituality." I know that's true. I don't think it's due to bias; my own radical Christianity is too far from the mainstream to allow me that kind of bias. (If there _is_ bias, it's not theological, it's a bias against sloppy writing.) I think the imbalance in the newsletter is the result of two factors: (a) I hesitate to comment on material about which I'm not well informed; and (b) most of the usable material that comes my way is about, or from, the mainstream faiths. With those disclaimers in place, I want to tell you about Bear & Company's new _Sacred Geometry: _, by Francene Hart. I feel competent to discuss it because I've spent years using Bear & Company's earlier deck called _Medicine Cards_, by Jamie Sams and Angela C. Werneke.

When _Medicine Cards_ came out in 1988, the set offered as beautiful a deck of cards as I've ever had the privilege to see, it had a beautifully-printed and handsomely-produced 244-page hardcover book, and it was all in a fine sturdy slipcase. The whole thing was not only a pleasure to the eye but felt good in the hand. I've treasured that set, and have frequently recommended it; I still do recommend it. I find it a useful tool for settling and focusing the mind and for letting me get at things that my Head Nanny (left brain, if you prefer) is working hard to keep me from noticing. Despite frequent use over all these years, it's almost like new. My only problem has been deciding which one of my grandchildren I'll be passing it on to.

Times have changed, and publishing practices have changed. The _Sacred Geometry_ set isn't as well made as _Medicine Cards_ was, and there's no point in trying to conceal that fact. The book is a 128-page paperback, and its pages don't lie flat; the slipcase isn't as sturdy and is hard to use; both book and slipcase strike me as fragile. But let's consider the set not as "product" but as religious language.

The book sets out briefly a religious theory -- that there is a vocabulary of sacred _shapes_ which can have specific spiritual effects. The intention is that the cards, not the book, will carry most of the weight of teaching the theory. On pp. 2-3: "The joining of art and Sacred Geometry offers a bridge between right and left brain, between intuition and hard science, between the dimensions of time and space and a view of the universe as a multidimensional interconnected whole. ... From microcosm to macrocosm, from the first cell to the incomprehensible depths of the universe, patterns gather and repeat in confirmation of our connectedness. When we recognize these geometric archetypes and their relationship to the underlying structure of the universe, we see clearly that there is no separation. We are physically and spiritually ONE. Sacred Geometry has reemerged as a tool to aid in our movement toward conscious evolution." The 64 cards themselves are beautiful, in full color, and cover a very wide range; I find most of them a great pleasure to look at. They include circle, mandala, triangle, tetrahedron, medicine wheel, golden spiral, pentagon, labyrinth, and many more, from many different traditions; they are entirely coherent with the statements of the theory.

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1. Thanks to Tia Johnson for "Waiting for the Watchmaker," by Kevin Padlan, a review of (editor) Robert T. Pennock's _Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics_, MIT Press 2001; it appeared in the 3/29/02 issue of _Science_, pp. 2373-2374. Padlan writes on page 2373:

"Intelligent Design (ID) is the cryptoscientific arm of a sociopolitical movement of conservative Christians who are upset about the displacement of their concept of God from institutional life in the United States and are determined to do something about it. .... ID Creationism is more or less the brainchild of Phillip E. Johnson... who in the early 1990s set out a 'wedge strategy' for destroying materialism and reinstating Christian values in education and society." ID's "wedge strategy" has three parts, Padlan says: scientific research and publication (where he says ID has done nothing, since none of its writings has yet made it into a peer-reviewed journal ); publicity and opinion-making, and "cultural confrontation and renewal."

I understand the annoyance the scientific establishment feels toward the Creationists. I agree with the objections to the current effort to make the U.S. officially a "Christian nation," which, like the "English only" movement, threatens not only science but the Constitution. All the claptrap about campaign reform threatening free speech -- while at the same time thrashing about trying to install a single official U.S. religion and language -- demonstrates a level of confusion that is almost awe-inspiring. However, Padlan's blatant elitism and badmouthing isn't useful as a remedy. The scientific establishment can't have it both ways. They can't carry on at the top of their lungs about the primitive barbarism of those who believe God created the universe and then call it "cryptoscience" when the people they're shrieking at do their best to move from "we know because we know" to "we know because of the following arguments." There is no science that doesn't have to rest on some minimum set of untestable a priori assumptions.

I recommend the review as a perfect example of highly-skilled sarcasm; if you'd like to learn how to write in that mode, follow Padlan's lead. As in: "Pennock's book is an invaluable compilation for anyone who wants to learn about the scientific and philosophical failures of intelligent design..." (page 2374) It will serve Padlan right if the Christian media start plastering "Pennock's book is an invaluable compilation.... Kevin Padlan, _Science_" all over the place. Tsk.

2. "How different the Scriptures must have been for Christians when they were...a set of scrolls kept in a pigeonholed cabinet, rather than being bound into a sewn codex as the Bible (singular). Indeed, the use of scrolls militated so strongly against the meerging commitment of the early church to the unity of all Scripture that scrolls were quickly abandoned...

This is Alan Jacobs, in "Revenge of the Scroll: Reading, virtual and otherwise," in _Books & Culture_ for 1-2/98. He goes on to propose that we've now gone _back_ to the scroll because electronic Bibles divide up the text exactly as scrolls did and require us to "scroll upwards or downwards." It makes the text more manageable, he says, but "what price easy access? If our system of verse division has caused generations of Christians to think of the Bible as a box of bite-sized spiritual nuggets, any one of which can be consumed without disturbing its immediate neighbors... should we not be wary about making use of an electronic version of the scroll cabinets firmly rejected by the early church? There is a Law of Unintended Theological Consequences to be considered here."

This is McLuhanism -- the-medium-is-the-message-ism. It's interesting, and I suppose there must be a large literature on the subject out there somewhere that I've been unaware of. It never occurred to me that there might be varying theological consequences linked to whether religious language was read from a scroll or a book or a computer screen or a Palm Pilot or... et cetera. You can read the article online at http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/8b1026.html#top.

3. Pat Mathews sent me a copy of the 9/94 issue of _The Journal of Communication and Religion_, which includes on pp. 17-31 an article with an awful title and interesting -- but frustrating -- contents. The article is by Andrew J. Burgess; the awful title is "Kierkegaard on Homiletics and the Genre of the Sermon"; and the frustration comes from the fact that after all those pages the reader still doesn't have a workable definition of "the sermon." However, look at this bit from pp. 23-24 and page 25....

"In Kierkegaard's view the sermon is mainly an ethical discourse, and thus the speaker has little message to deliver. The ethical and religious speaker reminds the listeners of what they implicitly know. For the most part it is the listener's responsibility to make the communication work. The responsiblity for successful religious communication thus rests primarily with the listener, not the speaker." [And on page 25]: "The purpose of such a discourse, as of all ethical and religious communication, is primarily transformation of the listener rather than delivery of information."

Now that's amazing. The _purpose_ of the sermon (and "all ethical and religious communication") is to transform the listener, but the responsibility for that transformation is the listener's, not the speaker's. If this makes sense to any of you I'd be pleased to have an explanation. (I realize that the fault here doesn't necessarily rest with Kierkegaard, yes.)

If you want to read something about "the sermon," I suggest you get the Winter 2002 issue of the _Oxford American_, and read page 29 of Gary Hawkins' "Chicken House Cinema." Here's a sample -- some dialogue from _The Apostle_, and then comment, and then a scrap from some real world preaching:

" '[Sonny] Duvall: I'm preachin' like I'm goin' to war this morning. I tell you, I'm a genuine, Holy Ghost, Jesus-filled preachin' machine here this mornin.' Now if God be for us, who can be against us? He's God here at this radio station. He's God in Georgia. He's God in Tennessee. He's God in the pulpit. He's God at the front door. .... And yea though I walk, I say yea though I walk, I say yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. And why, why, why do I say this? Oh why, why? Because I've got Holy Ghost power here today.'

Not bad for a layman, but it feels a liitle like the Old Testament's Greatest Hits to me. When you compare Sonny with a real Southern preacher -- a preacher like, say, my cousin John Byerly -- he comes off a little unfocused. ... Duvall is selling himself as a good preacher without preaching good. Here's Cuz.

'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. You say, 'Preacher, what does that mean?' Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. You say, 'Preacher break it down into the Greek tonight, and tell us what that means.' Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. ... Go out there, look at the world, and anything that's out there, don't love it.' ... "

4. I've been holding on to this next item because it made me so angry that I didn't trust myself. I kept thinking I ought to give it more time to perk, and that maybe I'd then perceive it differently. But I think I've waited long enough. On September 16, 2001, I watched Bill Bennett -- our ever-pontificating Virtues Czar -- on CNN, as he declared that there is _no_ religious or moral code that doesn't permit us to take revenge on the terrorists of September 11th. (The emphasis is his; that's exactly how he said it.) Apparently he's never read the New Testament.

[Full disclosure: That phrase back there, "our ever-pontificating Virtues Czar," is just exactly the same kind of nasty rhetoric as Padlan's "the cryptoscientific arm of a sociopolitical movement of conservative Christians." It's packed with tricky presuppositions and openly spitting contempt. It accurately reflects the effect that William Bennett's body language has on me. If all he did was read a telephone book aloud, I suppose it would make me angry.]

5. I've often complained in this newsletter about the black/white split in so much religious language, where all things evil are black and all things good are white. It has always seemed to me that the saturation of religious language with that construct and all its associated metaphors has to have negative effects on people who _aren't_ white. I was therefore pleased by the following quote:

"The preferred language of both the Christian and the Muslim mystics is the language of darkness. They are more at home in the realm of not knowing. Often, therefore, it was called 'luminous darkness.' In such darkness, things are more spacious, freer, and more open to creative response. God has a much better chance of getting in. ... This is most difficult to teach after centuries of a Catholic and Protestant spirituality of 'light' ." [Source: "Grieving as Sacred Space," by Richard Rohr OFM, pp. 21-24, _Sojourners_ for 1-2/02; on page 24. My thanks to Sally Lloyd for the copy.]

6. I recommend "In the Beginning, There Were the Holy Books," by Kenneth L. Woodward, pp. 50-57 in the 2/11/02 issue of _Newsweek_. It offers so much that's worthwhile that it's hard to choose what to quote, and it's complex enough to make it hard to take chunks out of context. Here's a long sample from pp. 53-54:

"Like the Bible, the Qur'an asserts its own divine authority. But whereas Jews and Christians regard the Biblical text as the words of divinely inspired human authors, Muslims regard the Qur'an, which means 'The Recitation,' as the eternal words of Allah himself. Thus, Muhammad is the conduit for God's words, not their composer. Moreover, since Muhammad heard God in Arabic, translations of the Qur'an are considered mere 'interpretations' of the language of God's original revelation. 'In this very important sense,' says Roy Mottahedeh..., 'the Quor'an is _not_ the Bible of the Muslims.' Rather, he says, it is like the oral Torah first revealed to Moses that was later written down. ... In short, if Christ is the word made flesh, the Qur'an is the word made book. ... [F]or every Muslim, the presence of Allah can be experienced here and now through the very sounds and syllables of the Arabic Qur'an. Thus, only the original Arabic is used in prayer -- even though the vast majority of Muslims do not understand the language."

Muhammad heard God in Arabic... Reading that, I remembered being a Baptist child in a tiny town, long long ago. We children were taught -- very explicitly taught -- that God wrote every single word of the Bible personally; the human "authors," we were taught, were only a kind of channel that the language flowed through. We were taught that this was true for the Old Testament as well as the New, and my image of the process was a sort of divine flow of words down through the arm of the writer and onto the page, like electricity flowing through a wire. (We were never told that the channels for much of the Old Testament could neither read nor write.) I believed this absolutely, and it catapulted me right straight out of that church -- when my Sunday School teacher, trying to explain to me why we always skipped the Song of Solomon, told me that we skipped it because it was "a dirty book." I was absolutely furious. I said, "Are YOU saying that GOD wrote a dirty BOOK?", and I got sent to the pastor, who flatly refused to discuss it and ordered me to apologize to the teacher. When I refused, I was told not to come back until I changed my mind.

7. Several Network members sent me copies or excerpts of "Oh, Gods!," by Toby Lester (on pp. 37-45 of the 2/02 _Atlantic Monthly_, and online at the magazine's website); thank you one and all. It's a piece about the coming "theodiversity," and I don't have space to discuss it here -- plus, I'd like input from you readers before I try such a thing. I'll just quote something from the beginning and something from the end and recommend that you read it and send me your comments.

Here's the introductory blurb: "Religion didn't begin to wither away during the twentieth century, as some academic experts had prophesied. Far from it. And the new century will probably see religion explode in both intensity and variety. New religions are springing up everywhere. Old ones are mutating with Darwinian restlessness. And the big 'problem religion' of the twenty-first century may not be the one you think." And here's religious studies professor Philip Jenkins, quoted on page 45: "I think that the big 'problem cult' of the twenty-first century will be Christianity."

THE CHRISTIAN MEDIA

1. " 'Are you ready to rip the face off this place?" screams the lead singer of Pillar. A hyped-up crowd of teens -- 6,000 strong -- goes nuts. The aggressive rap-rock band launches into a pummeling kickoff number, the surly singer pounding the stage with his steel-toed boot... ... It's time to wreak havoc and give praise at Festival Con Dios, the first Christian alternative-rock tour." According to Lorraine Ali ("The Glorious Rise of Christian Pop," pp. 36-43, _Newsweek_ for 7/16/01, page 41, "Alternative rock is just one pillar in the gigantic cathedral of Christian entertainment" which includes the _Left Behind_ novels (sales 30 million and climbing), the $22 million a year in sales for the children's "Veggie's Tales" videos, a Christian Wrestling Federation.... it goes on and on. Contemporary Christian music outsells every other music genre, from songs dedicated directly to God (called "verticals") to songs ambiguous enough to sell as crossover music. Lead singer Mark Stuart of the Australian group Audio Adrenaline says the rock/Christianity link is to be expected, that rebellion and Christianity go together naturally. Singing about sex and drugs is old hat. "The most rebellious rock-and-roll person you can be is a Christian rock frontman, because you get people from every side trying to shut you down," he says. (Page 45)

2. _Religion Bookline_ for 3/13/02 reports that for the first time in the roughly one-hundred year history of Publishers Weekly's annual bestseller charts, both the #1 fiction and #1 nonfiction titles are Christian titles. The top fiction title is _Desecration_ (ninth in the _Left Behind_ series), with more than 2.9 million copies sold. The top nonfiction title was publisher Multnomah's _ The Prayer of Jabez_; RB claims that its eight million copies sold in 2001 is the highest figure ever recorded on a PW annual chart. And three of the top fifteen 2001 titles were Jabez-related, also a first.

3. I've been following another story about Multnomah and author Philip Gulley. Multnomah 's president Don Jacobson said that the company couldn't continue with Gulley in spite of the company's affection for him and for his previous books. Why? Because of his belief that all humankind -- not just that portion of humankind that has accepted Jesus Christ as its savior -- will ultimately be saved. Gulley's new book _If Grace Is True_ devotes much space to his views on salvation; it will be coming out from Harper San Francisco, not Multnomah.

This is a sad situation, it seems to me, and an unusual consequence of religious languag; I don't really understand it. No publisher is assumed to endorse the views of its authors in more than the most general fashion. If Multnomah was concerned that its customer list might object to Gulley's position, all they had to do was bring the book out with a press release starting with something like "Although Multnomah is in profound disagreement with the idea that salvation can happen in any other way than through faith in Jesus Christ....." I might be able to understand Multnomah turning down a first book from an unknown author who was taking a position they found objectionable, but Gulley has been one of their authors a long time, and his books have been successful for them. Well; Multnomah's loss is Harper San Francisco's gain.

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