THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 4, Issue 6 -- November/December 2003
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The Religious Language Newsletter is written and published every other month by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D. (linguistics), from the Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS), PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 USA; e-mail OCLS@madisoncounty.net. It's available by e-mail only, in plain text, and is free to members of the Lovingkindness Network; thanks to generous donations, all issues are posted at http://www.forlovingkindness.org. To join the network and receive its newsletter, send $5.00 (annual dues for each calendar year) to OCLS; please be sure to include your e-mail address with your check, money order, or credit card information. (Supporting Memberships are $15.00.) Donations to Lovingkindness are tax-deductible. For more information, or to request a free sample issue, e-mail OCLS.
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IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; Booknotes; Software Recommendation; Quotes & Comments; Cyberspace; Revolving....

EDITOR'S NOTE

Thank you for all the materials that you've been sending; I'm grateful, and I'll put everything to good use. My thanks to all of you who have sent me your membership renewals. Thanks to all who have sent donations to Lovingkindness; those donations help us keep the Lovingkindness website alive. Renewals are due before December 31, please. [Note: Early renewals are welcome, and helpful. Having hundreds of renewals to deal with all at once right around Christmas is a major challenge -- I have twelve grandchildren, but no secretaries, clerks, accountants, or assistants.]

Anyone who wants to send holiday gift memberships should send me their list by November 15th; I'll be glad to send gift cards either by e-mail or snailmail, as you like, well in advance of the holiday you specify. Please remember to include the e-mail addresses for your gifts.

I wish you the happiest of holiday seasons, and may the New Year treat you gently.... Suzette

NETWORK INPUT

1. From Stephen Marsh...
"Right now I'm reading _The Color of Water_ (from "God is the color of water," which was a Jewish mother's response to her half-Black/half-Jewish child when he asked her "What color is God?"). It is interesting. I thought you would like the image of God being the color of water. ... But what would happen if our metaphor for the color of God was the color of water? If the Black/white in the scriptures was replaced with Clear/obscured? (Hmm, reminds me of the use of the color white in the New Testament in the context of whited wall -- white among other things being used to signify the greatest possible corruption mixed with hypocrisy)."

2. My thanks to Elizabeth Barrette for forwarding the news that someone had submitted a chunk of Chapter Seven of the book of Jeremiah to the Gender Genie. According to the Gender Genie, the author of that text was a woman. You can interact with Gender Genie at http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html.

3. From a Network member who prefers to remain anonymous:

"What's your opinion about this so-called miracle they're using to fast-track Mother Teresa's saint status?"

I'm not qualified to say what is and isn't a miracle, but I did a Net search. Sources turned up by Google say that the medical treatment received by Monica Besra was treatment for tubercular meningitis, and that that treatment (which was successful) could not have brought about a cure of Besra's large ovarian tumor. The Science and Rationalist Association of India (also called the Indian Rationalist Association) disputes that and claims "obvious fraud." The same association puts forward as evidence of fraud the fact that Besra's testimony -- a statement written in fluent English -- could not have been written by Besra, who is illiterate and does not speak English. However, the Missionaries of Charity have always said openly that one of their nuns wrote that statement for her. The discussion pro and con is extraordinarily heated. Almost none of it is about whether Mother Teresa should be designated as a saint or not -- people seem to have no objection to that; their objection relates to their perception that she has been given special treatment. And of course there are those who object on principle, because they don't believe in miracles and feel that any "official" endorsement of an alleged miracle is a threat to science.

BOOKNOTES

1. _Coyote Healing: Miracles in Native Medicine_, by Lewis Mehl-Madrona (MD/Ph.D); Bear & Company/Inner Traditions International 2003; ISBN 159143010-0.

This is a wonderful book. It's beautifully produced and printed, and very well written; Chapter 3 ("Finding the Inner Healer") alone is worth more than the modest $16.00 price. If you are sick, or might get sick one of these days, or plan to spend time interacting with someone who is sick, you need this book; it's indispensable. Prescribe it for yourself, please. Here are two samples....

"_Every thought is a prayer, and every prayer is answered._ ... The saying 'every thought is a prayer' means that our thoughts, which come from our beliefs, are constantly rising toward the Creator. Every prayer is answered by our collective thoughts, which shape the world in which we live. ... As one medicine man said, 'You got what you prayed for. Look around you. What you see is what most of you have prayed for. If you don't like it, change your prayers.' ... For my scientific friends, I joke that this Native American koan... means that the Creator must function like a neural network computer. Prayers must be assigned weights and conflicting requests managed. How does this work? Does the emotional fervor of a prayer determine its strength? Are prayers answered according to which ones are the most frequent, like votes in a presidential election? ... Is the selfless prayer for the healing of another more powerful than the prayer to heal oneself? ... Prayer is serious business with consequences."
[Pp. 195-196]

"Faith is built when the expectations of hope are fulfilled. When we see that we are going in the right direction we have more faith. ... This is why traditional healers keep their prayers small, for events that can readily occur and be recognized. Instead of praying that Millicent is cured of diabetes, we pray that she requires less insulin next month. Since miracles can come slowly, we need the small successes to build faith. The more faith and hope, the more likely a miracle." [Page 221]

Even if you disagree with every word Mehl-Madrona says, you will enjoy reading this book and profit from the reading. Chapter titles are: "What Is a Miracle?; The Miracle of Peacefulness; Finding the Inner Healer; The Healing Journey: Medicine Wheel; The East: Discovering Spirit; The South: Discovering Emotion; The West: Discovering the Body; The North: Discovering Mind and Community; The Power of Ceremony; Hearing Stories, Changing Stories." Recommended.

2. _Sensual Orthodoxy: Glory Doesn't Shine, It Bleeds_, by Debbie Blue; Cathedral Hill Press 2004; ISBN 0-9742986-0-3. (My thanks to Diana Cook for the copy.)

I like this book; it has a flaw or two, but I like it. It's a collection that sounds like sermons to my mind's ear, but may not be; it may be commentaries, or homilies. In any case, Blue takes up fifteen selections from the Bible and wrestles with them, letting us watch the process. For example...

"It's incredible, really, that this extraordinary metaphor, 'to be born again,' could ever get so depleted that it's become equated with a one time, clean little, rational decision somebody makes (or doesn't make) in altar calls, or church camps, or whever. I mean c'mon. We're talking about _birthing_ .... Perhaps my awareness, because I'm a woman who has given birth, is a little more on the side of the birther, but how did we ever take this metaphor and make it all about something the one being born does? I mean, who does the most work to get something born?" [Pp. 34-35]

"Betty has a manger scene collection that's staggering. ... A couple of years ago Betty displayed a scene where Mary and Joseph appeared to be made out of shellacked marshmallows. But although I find the record of tacky craft show circuit fads fascinating, the really most remarkable thing to me is that all these items (marshmallows, clothespins, sea shells) can be so easily recognized as the Holy Family on Christmas Eve. Just put a beard on a pine cone or a staff in the hands of some rigatoni and we know who it is. ... We have the scene so thoroughly memorized. ... I've been thinking maybe someone should start a small group of guerilla activists whose task it would be to plant shocking figures in manger scenes." [And then she goes on to suggest that maybe that's been done, with the Magi turning up as three kings. Page 17.]

3. I've started reading the first of the Mitford books (_At Home in Mitford_, by Jan Karon), after putting that off for a long time. I haven't read far enough yet to be ready to review the book, but I do want to comment. A major problem with contemporary "Christian fiction," even when it might be otherwise reasonably well written, is the way that people burst into religious language for no reason at all -- like the way people used to burst into song in musical comedies out of nowhere and with no supporting motivation. In Karon's book there's a lot of religious language, but it's not of the "Well, Bob, I'm sure you're aware of what Jesus said about X" variety (the Christian-fiction equivalent of science fiction's "Well, Bob, I'm sure you know that the way the warp drive works is like this: X"). So far, all the religious language has fit seamlessly into the book without calling attention to itself. For just one example, the main character discovers accidentally that an otherwise lovable but undisciplined dog will lie down and be quiet if you fling a Bible verse at him. This device is not only made believable, it's made genuinely funny, and it offers abundant opportunities for inserting Bible verses in the narrative. Very ingenious. I don't know yet whether I'm going to find _At Home in Mitford_ unsufferably Sweet & Cosy; I'll let you know. I never felt that way about _Peace Like a River_; I'd be delighted to discover that the Karon book could go on the shelf beside that one. We'll see.

SOFTWARE RECOMMENDATION

I now have two complete Bibles (KJV and NIV) on my Palm m125. The software package (_MyBible_™; ISBN 0-9702900-0-4) comes from Laridian, and I recommend it without reservation. I tried several other Bibles allegedly for the Palm and had nothing but trouble with them -- crashes, "Fatal Alert" warnings, chaos galore -- and had to get rid of them. The Laridian package works beautifully, very quickly, and without a single glitch. It will run on any Palm Os compatible handheld that has at least 2 MG of RAM plus 1.5 MB of memory per Bible. Other translations are available; information at http://www.laridian.com.

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1. "Indeed, what I most treasure about the Judaic tradition, or, to speak more concretely, what I find most _usable_ in both my daily actions and interactions and my critical and literary judgments, is the ethical imperative that ever bears down upon humankind, the conviction I have absorbed somewhere along the way during my upbringing that every act brings us one step closer or one step farther away from _tikkun olam_, the reparation of the world. ... Jews are taught to behave as if the good and evil of the world are in perfect balance and that their every next act will tip the scale. .... It is the _personal_ element of this responsibility that resonates most strongly for me."

That's Andrew Furman, on page 87 of "The Academy and My Jewish Problem" (_Image_, Summer 2003, pp. 85-91). He is struggling with an ancient Talmudic puzzle and controversy: Two men are traveling through a desert; only one has a water jug, and there's only enough water to get one man safely home. Should they both drink, and therefore both die? Should only one drink, to preserve that one life? And I think, as always, of the Ethiopian woman who has three children too weak from hunger to walk, and who is strong enough to carry only one to the aid station, knowing that if she doesn't set out with that one child they will _all_ die, and her as well. What is her most moral choice? What is the right thing to do? I don't know any problem harder than that, and I don't know any answer to the question. Theoretically and formally the two problems are identical and the answer is -- presumably -- some one principle of great wisdom. In practice, and in the real world, the woman has a far harder puzzle to solve.

2. "This past summer... the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, in a survey on the impact of religion on American politics, found that 63 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe that the state of Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the Second Coming of Jesus, compared with just 21 percent of white mainline Protestants. ... 'Religion,' the report observed, 'is a critical factor these days in the public's thinking about contentious policy issues and political matters.' "

This is Michael Massing, in "A Kinder, Gentler Fundamentalism," a review of Alan Wolfe's _The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith_ (_The Nation_ for 10/6/03, pp. 32-34; on page 34). Massing considers Wolfe's book a "whitewashing," and says so flat out.

3. Sent by Pat Matthews: "When you consider that God could have commanded anything he wanted -- anything! -- the Ten have got to rank as one of the great missed moral opportunities of all time. How different history would have been had he clearly and unmistakably forbidden war, tyranny, taking over other people's countries, slavery, exploitation of workers, cruelty to children, wife-beating, stoning, treating women -- or anyone -- as chattel or inferior beings."

This is Katha Politt, in "Stacked Decalogue," on page 9 of the 9/22/03 issue of _The Nation_. (Her context is the controversy in Alabama over that boulder carved with the Ten Commandments.) It's clever, but I do have a comment. I don't see any reason to believe that history would have been different if the Commandments had included "Thou shalt not make war," "Thou shalt not keep slaves," and the rest of that list. "How different history would have been" presupposes that obedience to Politt's proposed list of commandments would have been far higher than obedience to the current list, and we can't make that preupposition.

So far as I know, there's no religious faith that doesn't include some version of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That commandment _does_ forbid tyranny and slavery and exploitation of workers and wife-beating and all the rest of Politt's list. I don't see anyone clamoring to put a monument bearing that text in our courthouses. [In my opinion, the Golden Rule also forbids war (see "Love your enemies" and "Return good for evil"); those who believe in just wars would of course disagree with me.]

4. The 9-10/02 issue of _Books & Culture_, page 27, had a terrific review by Ben Patterson of Eugene Peterson's _The Message_. Here are some samples; I recommend reading the whole review.

"At first I didn't like the way Eugene Peterson paraphrased John 1:14 in _The Message_: 'The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.' It was catchy..., but I thought it bordered on cutesy. I thought Peterson should have stayed with something like the more traditional 'dwelling'. ... Also, I still think there are way too many hyphens in the book. .... OK, those are my complaints. That's as tough as I can get with Eugene Peterson's wonderful paraphrase."

"A friend of mine likes _The Message_, but with some reservations. 'It just doesn't sound like the Bible,' he says. I agree. And maybe that is just the point: that the Bible as it was written didn't sound like the Bible either."

And on pp. 28-29 of the same issue, from William Griffin's "In Praise of Paraphrase":

"Here's a sampling of the questions that paraphrasal translators face every working day. May a single Latin adverb be rendered by 50 English words and vice versa? ... When a work has a 500-word Latin vocabulary, may a Paraphrasist with a 500,000-word English vocabulary employ as many of those words as he or she likes? ... When literal translations of the same passsage by different translators appear to be the same, is plagiarism the first thing that comes to mind? May paraphrasal translations of the same passage by different paraphrasal translators appear widely, even wildly, different and still, contrary to the principle of contradiction, be quite correct?"

[_Books & Culture_ is $24.95 a year for six issues, from PO Box 37060, Boone, IA 50037-0060, or 1-800-523-7964; I recommend it. It's not restricted to commentary on Christian or Judeochristian literature and topics.]

5. My thanks to Nancy Burnett for sending "Defender of the Faith," by Jay Tolson (pp. 36-38, _U.S. News & World Report for 4/15/02), a "portrait" of Muslim scholar and law professor Abou El Fadl. Tolson writes on page 36 that El Fadl's six books "go to the heart of the question facing modern Islam: What is the place of Muslim religious law in everyday life? " and quotes historian Roy Mottahedeh saying that "Abou El Fadl is asking the question that people are interested in: how can you get from a divine Scripture to a principle that creates law according to the spirit of the Scripture rather than the literal legal meanings."

The texts from which these principles would be derived are called _hadiths_, and there are tens of thousands of them, all to be analyzed and studied and evaluated for reliability of source and consistency "with the moral vision of the God who speaks in and through the Koran." (Page 37) After outlining El Fadl's caveats about a particular hadith, Tolson says "...Abou El Fadl knows how hard it is to make such an argument with what he calls 'the hadith-hurlers,' who are on the rise in the Muslim world as well as in the pulpits of American mosques and Islamic centers. For one thing, he says, they dismiss both knowledge and reason as sinful, irrelevant, and even an impediment to the faith. About El Fadl understands the young puritans: 'I was once one of those hadith-hurlers myself.' " (Page 37)

I'd like to have an all-English equivalent for the useful term "hadith-hurler" that would be equally euphonious and apt. Or perhaps we could just borrow it as is...

6. The _Arkansas Democrat-Gazette_ for 3/29/03 had a very interesting Religious News Service article by Amy Ellis Nutt titled "Born to believe?." The article discusses the work of neuroscientist Rhawn Joseph, whose theory is that human beings have "evolved the capacity to experience God primarily through the amygdala" and that experiences of religious ecstasy "are the result of hyper-stimulation of the amygdala, which releases large quantities of natural opiates." Nutt writes: "Many religious people might view the cause and effect in reverse -- it is the divine inspiration that activates those areas of the brain, instead of the other way around -- but to Joseph, the order is irrelevant. For him, the more important question is 'Why?' ... 'You don't develop a brain structure to help you experience something that doesn't exist.' We are hard-wired for God, in other words, because there is a real God to experience."

CYBERSPACE

1. _Religion Bookline_ for 6/24/03 had a brief article by Marcia Ford titled "Harry Potter the Opposite of Anti-Christian, Asserts New Book." Ford writes that John Granger, author of _The Hidden Key to Harry Potter_ (Zossima Press), "first approached the Potter books with the typical skepticism of a concerned parent, but found that Rowling's use of classical literary devices and Christian symbols resonated with his own background as a classicist. In _The Hidden Key_, Granger exhaustively examines Rowling's multi-layered Christian message in the first four books and plans an updated edition to address similar concepts he says are replete in the fifth book." And he goes on: "Rowling's books are an attack on modernity and materialism... ...[H]er books are textbooks in how to live the virtuous life, but she can't be that upfront with it. Literature can have a profound effect on a profane culture, and Rowling has created a world that is comfortable with the supernatural. She's taken our capacity to be spiritual and made it user-friendly."

2. In _SoJo Mail_ for 7/03, from a piece by Amy Sullivan titled "Do the Democrats have a prayer?" [online at http://www.washington monthly.com/features/2003/0306.sullivan.html]:

"Those who hope to challenge Bush in 2004 have uttered scarcely a word about religion -- or how faith informs their stances on issues... But it is telling that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the only Democratic nominees to have won the White House since 1964, both went out of their way to discuss issues of faith and to speak before congregations early during their respective campaigns. Whereas Republicans seem almost obligated to campaign with Jesus as their running mate during the primary season, Democratic candidates today feel they must keep a lid on religious talk in order to win."

3. _Religion Bookline_ for 8/12/03 had an interesting review by Jana Riess of Thomas Merton's _Seeking Paradise: The Spirit of the Shakers_ (Orbis). It begins with a really fine Merton quotation: "The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it." And then....

"Merton never completed his planned book on the Shakers, but he did write two brief essays and several letters on the subject, and he spoke to his fellow Cistercian monks about what they could learn from the Shakers' quasi-monastic approach to faith and work. All of these brief reflections are included in this simple, meditative compilation on Merton and the Shakers. ... Some of Merton's own black-and-white photographs of Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Kentucky are included here."

4. _Religion Bookline_ for 5/6/03 had a brief review of Reynolds Price's _A Serious Way of Wondering: The Ethics of Jesus Imagined_ (Scribner). Excerpt: "What captures Price's attention most are those ethical questions that modern society confronts daily but that Jesus never addresses. Thus, in three brilliant and moving apocryphal gospel stories, Price's Jesus engages in conversations about homosexuality, suicide, and the plight of women in male-dominated societies. Since Jesus did not talk at all about either homosexuality or suicide during his life, Price imagines the resurrected Jesus discussing these issues with a disciple in whose life they may have figured largely--Judas. Elegant and passionate, Price's provocative parables provide no simple answers to the saccharine question 'What would Jesus do?' Rather, they compel us to imagine creatively our engagements with Jesus' teachings and the impact of those teachings on our lives."

5. According to the 10/10/03 Scout Report, the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society is "dedicated to producing and disseminating cutting-edge empirical knowledge about the role of religion in contemporary urban America." Scout Report says the Center's focus is "on five major thematic areas, including crime and religion, religion and survey research and civic engagement and spiritual capital." Information and research reports are at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/crrucs.

6. Here's the abstract from a recent book notice on Linguist List, for Eugene A. Nida's _Fascinated by Languages_ (John Benjamins):

"In this unique account of 60 years of Bible translation, Eugene Nida sets out his journey with a personal touch. On the way, he reveals the importance of a solid knowledge of Greek and Hebrew as well as of the historical settings in which the Bible was created, in order to render effective translations. Through his story we get to know Nida's views on translations through the ages, in different cultures and narrative traditions, right through to the 21st Century. This book is in the first place a study in anthropological linguistics that tells the rich history of Bible translation, the Bible Societies, translator training, and cultural translation problems."

REVOLVING....

Thanks to all of you who have been sending me materials about the new _Revolve_ New Testament (soon to be joined by the Old Testament) from Thomas Nelson. (I haven't seen _Revolve_ yet; I've been waiting for it to turn up at one of the book clubs I belong to.) Here is an assortment of sources and quotes......

1. "CosmoGirl meets Christ: New Bible appeals to the teen set with splash cover, tips" by Jim Remsen, in the 9/6/03 _Lansing State Journal_: "In teen-zine guise, _Revolve: The Complete New Testament_ dishes up beaming models, a pastel palette, and more uplift than platform sandals. ... Its tips are wholesome but perky." Remsen tells us that this new item from Thomas Nelson -- $15.00 -- has shipped 30,000 copies between July and September, and is one of the five top-selling Bibles. [Sent by Sally Lloyd.]

2. "New Testament gets stylish makeover," by Alexandra Alter, Religion News Service release on 8/31/03: "_Revolve_ ... offers the complete New Testament in a fashion magazine format, replete with images of stylish, smiling young women, quizzes and celebrity birthdays (sorry, no horoscopes)." Alter quotes teenager Brooke Nichols: "My friends, they don't like to read the Bible, but once they saw it, they were like 'I'm going to have to get me one of those'." [Sent by Douglas Dee.]

3. David Crumm ("Magazine version of the Bible draws young female readers", _Detroit Free Press_ online for 7/30/03) reports that "An edition designed to look like a guy's magazine is set for next year." [Online at http://www.freep.com/news/religion/crumm30_20030730.htm.]

4. "Accessible new Bible offers Christian Teens a trendy alternative" (no byline) describes the "features" in _Revolve_: "Guys Speak Out -- Guys give their opinions on everything from the ideal girl to your focus in life. Beauty Tips -- How to achieve stunning inner beauty. Calendar -- Fun activities throughout the year, as well as 'Pray for a Person of Influence' days on celebrities' birthdays. Blab -- Revolve staffers answer actual questions from readers. Bible Bios -- Brief summaries of famous women through the Bible. Bible Basics... Everything a seeker or new believer needs to know." This piece is followed by a very long succession of energetic postings from readers, both pro and con; the site is an evangelical news forum. [Online at http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/973736/posts.]

Copyright © 2003 Suzette Haden Elgin
All rights reserved

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