The philosophy of Lovingkindness

LOVINGKINDNESS

Mission Statement and Philosophy

Lovingkindness is a nonprofit organization created in 1982 for the purpose of
analyzing, investigating, and disseminating information about the effects of reli-
gious language (in particular, religious language in English).

The philosophy of Lovingkindness is based on five concepts:

1. That the effects of language on human beings are powerful, with
great potential both for help and for harm.

2. That religious language -- because it is so tightly linked in human
minds with good and evil, reward and punishment, ecstasy and
agony -- has especially potent effects on human beings.

3. That the effects of religious language are in many ways
independent of whether affected individuals consider
themselves to be religious or not.

4. That the effects a sequence of English religious language has are those
created in the mind of the listener or reader (or thinker) in ordinary En-
glish -- regardless of what they might have meant in other languages if
they are translations, and regardless of what scholars and specialists of
such language may consider them "really" to mean.

5. That given all of the above, religious language must be taken very
seriously and used with scrupulous care and full awareness of
responsibility for its effects.

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