THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 6, Issue 6 -- November/December 2005
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The Religious Language Newsletter is written and published
every other month by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D. (linguistics),
from the Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS), PO Box 1137,
Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 USA; e-mail OCLS@madisoncounty.net.
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IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; Quotes &
Comments; Book Review; Cyberspace; Correction
EDITOR'S NOTE
Many thanks to all of you who've sent early renewals for the newsletter for 2006; my special thanks to all who've sent Supporting renewals. I'm grateful. My thanks to all who've been sending materials for the newsletter; without your help, I couldn't possibly get it written. And I send you, one and all, my warmest wishes for a splendid holiday season and for a New Year that treats all of us more gently than 2005 has.
I started writing this issue in the middle of the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with an overwhelming sorrow in my heart, and before the terrible earthquake and Hurricane Wilma; what may have happened by the time you start reading the newsletter, I cannot know. Which is a blessing; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Mohawk speakers on a Native American listserv I belong to are saying that "Kateri" is Mohawk for "Katrina" and that it means "she puts things in order." We shall see.
NETWORK INPUT
1. From Margaret Carter....
"RE Joyce Salisbury's comment that 'it is the resulting peace that will determine the justice of the battle,' I don't read the statement the way you did. As you imply, if it means only 'if peace follows a war we can be certain that war was just,' the remark would verge on nonsense. I thought she meant that the QUALITY of the resulting peace lets us judge whether the battle to achieve that peace was just. E.g., if the situation after the war is better than before the war, for most of the groups that participated in it. The obvious example (for a non-pacifist, it goes without saying) would be WW II. Despite all the suffering caused by the years of combat, most people (including me) believe this was a just war because it delivered Europe from a horrible regime that we can be almost certain would have continued to cause terrible suffering to millions of innocents, had it not been overthrown."
**And Cindy Payant wrote, in response to the same item...
"I think by definition there is always a peace after a war; that's how you know the war is over. So I took this to mean the justice of the battle is determined not by _whether_ there was peace but by what _kind_ of peace."
**I'm sure Margaret and Cindy are right. Salisbury must have meant that you can only tell if the war was just by _evaluating_ "the resulting peace."
2. From Karen Stroup...
"I was tickled to learn that 'pounding' someone was new to you. I've always heard it used as in 'pounding the preacher.' The Appalachians are filled with tiny Methodist churches since the circuit riders were about the only ones who'd waste their time up there (I'm not sure there's one Lutheran church in all of the Southern Appalachians). So when the Methodist preachers changed churches every summer, the congregation would fill the pantry of the parsonage with pounds of staples. This is still in use in rural congregations; I was 'pounded' when I started a ministry in Springfield, TN, a small town 30 miles north of Nashville, though most of the younger members brought things like pies ...."
3. From me.....
I've at last been able to start indexing my LiveJournal blog into large general categories -- like "Medical language" and "Linguistics" and "Religious language" and "Verbal self-defense" and "Eldering." Suppose you wanted to see only the items I've posted about religious language. You would go to http://www.livejournal.com/ tools/memories.bml?user=ozarque -- which is the index -- and click on the "Religious language" link. That would take you to a list of religious-language-post links, with enough of each title shown to let you determine whether you'd be interested. I don't have everything indexed, by any means, but I'm working at it steadily.
4. I had written in the last issue that when I was a child we Baptist kids were told that "Baptists aren't and never have been Protestants. Protestants belong to denominations that broke away from the Catholic Church. Baptists were the first 'real' Christian church, founded by Saint Peter himself in person in accordance with the instructions of Jesus.." And Douglas Dee wrote:
"This view was promoted by a 19th century booklet, _The Trail of Blood_, written by one J. Carroll. If you Google for 'Trail of Blood' you'll get more links than you can follow. This one appears to give the text: http://www.baptistpage.org/ Distinctives/Trail_of_Blood.html . (I have made no attempt to verify its completeness or accuracy. Caveat lector.)
"Here's a Baptist page arguing against Carroll's view -- http://www.reformedreader.org/history/bprimer.htm -- which it calls the 'successionist' view of Baptist history. It says 'This hard-core position arose in a time (1800's) of intense denominational competition. . ' "
**I'm grateful to Douglas for researching this and sending the information along. He also sent some longer quotations from _The Trail of Blood_, including a statement that "almost all early Baptists rejected a successionist view." And almost all later Baptists have now done so as well, I suspect.
QUOTES & COMMENTS
1. The 11/05 _Atlantic Monthly_ has an interesting and thorough article by Joshua Green titled "Roy and His Rock" (pp. 70-82), about the recent altercation in Alabama when the chief justice of its Supreme Court, Roy Moore, refused to comply with an order to remove a granite monument displaying the Ten Commandments from the supreme-court building. On pp. 74-75:
"Put simply, Moore believes that the law vindicates him, and he has plundered texts from the Bible to Blackstone's _Commentaries on the Laws of England_ to build an elaborate case that God is the basis of American government. Where Moore parts company with others who share this historical view is in his assertion that the government therefore falls under the sovereignty of God. His position goes far beyond the notion of a civil religion and beyond even the views of most conservative judicial scholars. It amounts to theocracy."
And on page 81:
"Moore is not just eyeing the governor's office but putting together an entire slate of candidates to run under his auspices in the Republican primary. ... Moore has in effect established a splinter sect of religious conservatives bent on taking over the Republican party, and his reach extends to every corner of the state."
I continue to be baffled by the concept of a theocracy based on the Bible. I'm not a scholar of any of the sacred books of other faiths and cannot say how internally consistent they may be; I do know, however, that the Bible contains an array of contradictions. How, then, would a biblical theocracy decide which one of the mutually contradictory biblical statements was to be perceived as the law of the land? And how would that choice be explained, especially by those who insist on the inerrancy of the Bible? I suppose there'd have to be a Supreme Court with the authority to rule on these matters, but I cannot imagine how their rulings would be worded. "Because it is clear to this court that God did not really mean X, we are ruling in favor of Y?" If any one of you can shed some light on this matter, I'll be pleased to hear from you. My thanks to Patricia Mathews for the copy.
2. "When writing his hymn texts, Luther would count off the syllables with his fingers and pound the table with each syllable. He was not concerned with alternating light and heavy accents. Every syllable received a strong accent, and the number of syllables per line could vary. He was also very free in his rhyme schemes -- in fact, half of his hymns have no end rhyme at all. ... He originated the concept of setting texts to melodies on the principle of 'one syllable, one note,' in contrast to the chant style of many notes to one syllable."
This is from "When You Sing Next Sunday, Thank Luther," by Richard D. Dinwiddie, on pp. 18-21 of the 11/21/83 _Christianity Today_; the quote is from page 19. Dinwiddie tells of talking to a woman who was complaining that their church choir should have sung a hymn "like Luther wrote it" instead of jazzing it up. He tried to explain that the jazzy version _was_ the way Luther wrote it; he says his explanation "was not received with any abundance of grace". Laypeople in Luther's day, he says, "were more sophisticated rhythmically than are modern churchgoers." That was in 1983, almost a quarter of a century ago; perhaps their rhythmic sophistication is less limited today.
3. In "The Warring Visions of the Religious Right" (pp. 59-69, _Atlantic Monthly_ for 11/95), Harvey Cox offers a set of useful definitions on page 62, as follows:
"Born-again ... includes the 39 percent of the American
population who claim they have had a personal experience of Christ.
"Evangelical ... describes a theological position, one recognizing
not only the need for such a personal experience with God but
also the unique religious authority of Scripture and an obligation
to share one's faith with others.
"Fundamentalists, though they share many of the evangelicals'
beliefs, also fiercely insist on the 'verbal inerrancy' of the
Bible...
"Pentecostals ... share most evangelical beliefs, but for
them all theology is secondary. What is most important is an immediate
encounter with the Holy Spirit in a style of worship that is exuberant
and even ecstatic.
"Charismatics ... are people who practice a Pentecostal form
of worship but remain in their own Catholic or Protestant churches."
The article is primarily about Regent University, which Cox says on page 59 "is the intellectual and theological center of the Christian Coalition."
4. From Jack Hitt's "On Earth As It Is In Heaven: Field trips with the apostles of creation science," pp. 51-60 of the 11/96 _Harper's_; on pp. 52-53:
"Drawn from the ancient philosophical position known as 'argument from design,' ID theory is today's gloss on the position that this intricate universe couldn't have 'just happened.' It rejects evolutionary science with a commonsense variation on probability theory, arguing that the odds of natural selection producing a world as wondrous and magical as ours are about as likely, as the evolutionary critic Fred Hoyle has put it, as 'a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and spontaneously having the luck to put together a Boeing 747'."
Fitt tells us on page 58 that the term "baraminology" has been launched by creationism to "reclassify every living thing," in terms of separately-created discrete kinds. He quotes creationist academic Kurt Wise, who says "I intend to replace the evolutionary tree with the creationist orchard, separately created, separately planted by God."
I went googling for a definition of "baraminology" -- with an accidental detour caused by my having spelled it "bariminology," which made Google keep asking me if I was sure I wasn't really looking for "criminology." I eventually found this, at http://www.stormloader.com/users/mesk/KindDef.html :
"One of the primary creationist arguments against the theory of evolution revolves around the postulation of discrete categories of organisms, known variously as _kinds_ (from the term used in Genesis 1) or _baramins_ (from the Hebrew word 'bara', which means 'created', and 'min', which is generally translated as 'kinds'). According to creationists all extant organisms are derived from a small number of originally created organisms, and evolutionary change is limited to 'variation within kind'."
And, quoted in the same article, "The concept of _baramin_ is related to the concept of discontinuities that exist between groups of organisms. For instance, the dog, the wolf, the coyote, are clearly in the same _baramin_."
5. From "Do Inclusive Language Bibles Distort Scripture? No.," by Grant R. Osborne, pp. 33-38, _Christianity Today_ for 10/27/97, on page 33:
"Whether or not to use inclusive language in Bible translation is not a gender issue but a matter of translation theory. ... The true question is whether formal equivalence or functional equivalence, as Bible translation theories, produces the best translation for our day. Formal equivalence... believes that the original wording, grammar, and syntax should be retained so long as the resulting translation is understandable (KJV, NASB, and RSV are examples). Functional equivalence (also called 'dynamic translation') believes that the text should have the same impact on the modern reader that the original had on the ancient reader. ... ([T]he Good News Bible and NLT are examples...) ... The first is a 'word-for-word' translation and the second a 'thought-for-thought' translation."
Notice how clever it is to reframe the inclusive language debate as "not a gender issue but a matter of translation theory." I am impressed.
6. From _Religion BookLine_ for 9/21/05, in "The Book Of Controversy: Teaching the Bible in Public Schools Raises Hackles, Inspires Curriculum," by Juli Cragg Hilliard [online at http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6258653.html ]:
"The Bible Literacy Project, with the motto that 'an educated person is familiar with the Bible,' debuts tomorrow (Sept. 22); it is being described as the first student textbook for academic study of the Bible in nearly 30 years. ... The new text will go head to head with the curriculum of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which says its elective course material has been adopted by 300 public school districts in 37 states."
According to First Amendment scholar Charles C. Haynes, the new textbook "meets constitutional standards by being both objective and respectful, and by putting the Bible in historical and cultural context through an academically sound approach."
7. I usually agree with much of what Lewis H. Lapham writes in his "Notebook" feature for _Harper's_, although I often wish he'd restrain himself a tad. But his "Civil obedience" piece for 9/05 (pp. 7-9) on the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts is a particularly offensive example. He chose religious language as a rhetorical device and then used it so excessively that the result is a self-defeating parody.
He starts by mentioning the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, and then, "within a matter of hours the several armies of the imperial right -- conservative and neoconservative, libertarian and evangelical -- were on the move... " So far, so reasoned. But then he leaps off the rhetorical cliff: "Here at last was the final battle in America's thirty-year culture war, the heaven-sent chance to restructure the Supreme Court as an office of the Holy Inquisition, to redeem the multitudes...." and so on, and so intemperately on. On the same page, he says "In time for the Washington television talk shows on Sunday, July 3, the ranks of conservative seraphim and libertarian cherubim had been joined by The National Association of Manufacturers...." On page 8, we get "the avenging angels of the spiritual counterreformation". And the final paragraph, on page 9 is just inexcusable. It goes like this:
"If the hearings fail to provoke an argument about the salvation of the nation's soul sufficiently venomous to merit the blessing of the Prophet Isaiah, the apostles of the radical and reactionary right can always relieve their frustrations by the staging of religious festivals on Capitol Hill -- medieval jugglers throwing balls for the Virgin Mary, Christian morality plays and performing bears, excited women holding aloft the papier-mache head of the sainted Bork... " and more in the same tacky vein. The excess cancels any respect the reader might have for the argument.
There are many good uses for religious language; this isn't one of them.
8. In "Does Prayer Change God?" (pp. 8-10, _Books & Culture_ for 9-10/05), Philip Yancy writes of C.S. Lewis on page 9:
"Lewis sums up the drama of human history as one 'in which the scene and the general outline of the story is fixed by the author, but certain minor details are left for the actors to improvise. It may be a mystery why He should have allowed us to cause real events at all; but it is no odder that He should allow us to cause them by praying than by any other method.' Prayer is a designated instrument of God's power, as real and as 'natural' as the power of gravitation or electromagnetic force." And he quotes theologian Karl Barth: "The fact that God yields to man's petitions, changing his intentions in response to man's prayer, is not a sign of weakness. He himself, in the glory of his majesty and power, has so willed it."
And on page 10, Yancy says:
"By using prayer rather than other, more direct means, God once again chooses the most freedom-enhancing style of acting in the world. God waits to be asked, in some mysterious way making God's activity on earth contingent on us."
9. I was surprised by this paragraph on page 180 of the 10/05 _Esquire_, and surprised that the information in "Catholic Priests & Their Wives" hasn't gotten more more publicity:
"In 1980, the pope issued a special dispensation allowing Episcopal priests who were theologically simpatico with Rome to 'come home' -- i.e., convert to Catholicism -- and bring their families with them. Today there are seventy-nine such priests in America and at least a score more who've converted from other Christian denominations (Lutheran, Methodist, et cetera). Here are five of these men with their wives, children, and grandchildren." And on page 183, under a photograph of Father Bob McElwee and his wife seated on a motorcyle: "Father McElwee doesn't think Catholic priests should be married. He didn't think so before he became one; he doesn't think so now. The Lord, however, had other ideas. Two days after resigning as an Episcopal priest in 1980, McElwee was in his car, 'talking out loud to Jesus, asking what I'm supposed to do next,' when he heard a report announcing the pope's provision for married Episcopal converts. 'And I still didn't want to do it,' he said. 'It was my wife who said, "Well, God opened this door. Give it a try." That was 22 years ago, 19 of which have been spent in southeast Kansas."
10. "We cannot be absolutely certain that we are dealing with only one god. The fact that monotheism is logically pleasing does not mean that it is an accurate description of reality. The universe, being somewhat discontinuous in other respects, may also conceivably be discontinuous with respect to divinity. Wotan appears to have amazing resiliency; Yahweh's rainbow still shines in the sky; ghosts prowl the British isles; the picture of Jesus is appearing more frequently in unexpected places -- and the Hopi have rain."
That's Vine Deloria, Jr., on page 292 of _God Is Red_ (Delta/Dell 1973).
11. Thanks to Douglas Dee for a copy of "Books reveal Gospel connections to Harry Potter series," by Jean Gonzalez, from _The Catholic Spirit_ for 6/16/05. It's a review of three books on the subject: _Looking For God In Harry Potter_, by John Granger; Imagining Faith With Kids: Unearthing Seeds Of The Gospel In Children's Stories From Peter Rabbit To Harry Potter_, by Mary Margaret Keaton; and _Hour of the Witch: Harry Potter, Wicca Witchcraft And The Bible_, by Steve Wohlberg. Of Granger's book, the reviewer says:
"Granger finds it significant that Potter, like the characters in _The Chronicles of Narnia_ by C.S. Lewis, uses incantational, not invocational, magic. 'Incantational magic is about harmonizing with God's word by imitation,' Granger explains. 'Invocational magic is about calling in evil spirits for power or advantage -- always a tragic mistake.' It is invocational magic that is contrary to Scripture, he says. Thus, concern that the books might lay a foundation for occult practices is 'misplaced' because Potter magic is not 'demonic'. "
This distinction is far outside my area of expertise. Your
input would be welcome.
BOOK REVIEW
_Saints and Madmen: Psychiatry Opens Its Doors to Religion_, by Russell Short; NY: Henry Holt 1999. ISBN 0-8050-5902-4 .
I've mentioned this book before (in a BookNote in the 1/02 issue), and have recommended it; but in the current overheated religious language environment I think it would be worthwhile to come back to it -- and recommend it -- once again.
Russell Short presents a careful and detailed history of the changing attitudes that psychology and psychiatry have had toward "religiousness" (almost always diagnosed on the basis of language, both verbal and nonverbal) over the years. From 1976 -- when the professionals defined it as "a regression, an escape, a projection upon the world of a primitive infantile state" and it was taken for granted that "religiosity" was a primary symptom of mental illness -- to the present day, when there is a thriving branch of therapy that recognizes spiritual/religious problems as a diagnostic category, incorporates religious language into treatment, and is actively engaged in trying to establish rigorous criteria for the difference between a religious experience and a psychotic episode.
He discusses the problems that therapists have convincing patients to stay on their medications when those patients perceive their mental state during psychotic episodes as a state of religious/mystical rapture too precious to give up. For example, there's patient Neil Wolf, who told his therapist "of the joy he experienced in psychosis, and also of the spiritual emptiness he felt when he was normal. Staying on the medication, keeping the psychosis at bay, kept him shut off from the bliss that his illness brought, which he had come to cherish." (pp. 99-100) And patient Marion Davis, who says (on page 163), "I feel God's presence when I'm ill. It is an exhilarating experience to feel that I'm following, every minute of the day, what God wants me to do and be. It's hard for me to want to get better because it is this miraculous thing." For Neil Wolf the therapist prescribes the medications, plus prayer three times daily, and Wolf follows that regimen, praying to Saint Dymphna, the patron saint of the mentally ill. "It steadies me," he says.
This is the perennial and inherent problem with all religious language: No mechanism exists for validating it. If I tell you that I have just spoken with an angel and have been given a message for all humankind, you may think I've lost my mind, but no mechanism exists for proving either my claim or your assessment. On page 71, Short notes that "One of the tip-offs to psychotic delusion, which has been known since William James's time, is grandiosity: a mystic is humbled by his experience, a psychotic inflated." But how, exactly, do you recognize grandiosity? It's a subjective judgment; until very recently that was all it could be. Today we have psychotropic drugs to experiment with, and sophisticated medical procedures like fMRI scans that let us directly observe the brain during religious language and religious practices. It may be that those technological advances are going to be a help, and it may be that they're only going to make things worse; it's too soon to tell.
On page 195, Short writes: "There is reason to suspect that some psychotic experiences and some religious experiences are identical. ... This overlap suggests a biochemical factor in religious experience. However, it may be premature to conclude that the biochemical factors are the real underlying explanation of the experience. Spirituality, then, has a real biological component but should not be reduced to mere biology. It, like psychosis, may be far stranger than our current imaginings allow. In other words, we may be wise to reserve for religious experience the dignity of mystery -- we may not want to reduce it to the level of brain chemistry."
And on page 222, Short writes about linguist Steven Pinker,
who has no patience with the current tolerance. "Human beings,
he writes in _How the Mind Works_, 'are organisms, not angels,
and our minds are organs, not pipelines to truth.' Our brains
are not wired for the purpose of communing with nonearthly entities
and perceiving the universe as an All, but 'evolved by natural
selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to
our ancestors.' 'Problem-solving' is the all-purpose tool the
brain developed in its Darwinian struggle to survive; religion
is basically a massive misapplication of that tool to areas that
are outside the brain's natural field."
Short calls Pinker a "medical materialist"; I would
add that Pinker is afflicted with hubris, since there is no scientific
way to establish that finding a way to a mystical experience is
not a problem that was a life-and-death matter to our ancestors
and remains a life-and-death matter today.
CYBERSPACE
1. Religion BookLine for 9/21/05 had a review excerpt for Adele Ahlberg Calhoun's _Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us_, coming out in November from InterVarsity:
"This discussion of spiritual practices that have defined Christians over the centuries certainly lives up to its name. There are 62 spiritual disciplines or practices explained and outlined here, grouped in seven themes, including worship, prayer, sharing life with others, hearing God's word and listening to God's voice. Calhoun, a pastor of spiritual formation at Christ Church in Oak Brook, Ill., writes as one who has lovingly studied, appreciated and collected some of the most influential Christian spiritual material over many years. Her language and style are respectful to Christians from many traditions-Orthodox, Catholic, Reformed and evangelical. This handbook is a treasure of tried and true spiritual practices written well enough for everyone from the novice to the master to use."
2. The 9/23/05 issue of CMDA's _News & Views_ discussed a Hurricane Katrina story that I had then nowhere else; the source cited is _The Daily Telegraph_ for 9/12/05. It claims that doctors working in New Orleans during the hurricane gave a number of critically ill patients "massive overdoses of morphine" when their only other choice was leaving them to die in agony while they were being evacuated. [The URL for the original news story is http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/ story/0,20281,16566858-5001022,00.html .] Robert Orr MD, a CMDA Trustee and ethicist had this to say about the report:
"Discussion by Monday morning quarterbacks, regarding decisions made and actions taken during the horror of Katrina will attempt to pass judgment. I am unwilling to do that, especially based on second or third hand reports. I am also unwilling to predict what I would do if faced with a similarly impossible dilemma. ... It is morally impermissible to perform an action which intentionally causes death. Compassion remains a moral obligation, but we must be wary of the politically charged term 'death with dignity.' It is morally permissible to perform an action to relieve human suffering, even if such action unintentionally hastens death. Giving morphine and/or sedation to ameliorate or prevent agony in an imminently dying person, even to the point of rendering that person unconscious, is not only morally defensible, but most would say is part of the noble calling of medicine. ... Perhaps this is a good time to recall the words of Jesus: 'Do not judge, and you will not be judged.' ... (Luke 6:37)"
3. From "The Hopi Way may vanish so skiers can play," by Wayne Taylor (Hopi tribal chairman), at azcentral.com [URL: www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/ opinions/articles/0923taylor,wayne.html ]:
"Since ancient times Hopi people have regarded the San Francisco Peaks as 'Nuvatukyaovi,' which in the Hopi language means 'place of snow on the peaks.' Nuvatukyaovi is central to Hopi culture and religion. It is the home of Katsina spirits who, in the growing season, drift as clouds from the Peaks and descend on my homeland, bringing rain, hope and guidance to the Hopi people. Hopi children are initiated into Katsina societies, which teach them to live humble, respectful lives, in balance with all living and non-living things; values at the heart of a life path known as the Hopi Way."
The U.S. Forest Service has decided to pipe wastewater to the Peaks to make artificial snow; the Hopi are going to court to ask whether it's right for the federal government "to sacrifice the religious and spiritual beliefs of 300,000 Native Americans so 20,000 people can ski."
The story quotes Majol Honanie, who says: "When the Katsinas come to our villages, we say our prayers to them and they carry them to the Peaks. ... Snowmaking will pollute the land and water and will affect the birds, animals and people. The Katsinam may abandon their home. Our clan roles will vanish. So, too, will our way of life."
4. The _NY Times_ for 9/13/05 had a story by Jonathan Miller that I found surprising, titled "March of the Conservatives: Penguin Film as Political Fodder," about the conservative religious reaction to the movie "March of the Penguins." It starts with...
"On the conservative Web site _WorldNetDaily.com_, an opponent of abortion wrote that the movie 'verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it.' At a conference for young conservatives, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie because it promoted monogamy. A widely circulated Christian magazine said it made 'a strong case for intelligent design.' ... [C]onservative groups have turned its stirring depiction of the mating ordeals of emperor penguins into an unexpected anthem in the culture wars."
You can read the story at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/science/ 13peng.html?ex=1128052800&en=63ce388136433532&ei=5070 . My thanks to Douglas Dee for sending it my way.
5. Language Log for 9/16/05 had an interesting religious language piece by Mark Liberman titled "The Noses of Wrath," on the subject of the many passages in the bible that link anger with noses (as well as with eyes and faces, and moving on to contemporary English "in your face." Liberman cites _Strong's Hebrew Bible Dictionary_, which defines word #639 as "properly, the nose or nostril; hence, the face, and occasionally a person; also (from the rapid breathing in passion) ire ..... wrath."
I recommended the piece at my blog, and back came a comment from LJ blogger richardf8 pointing out Liberman's failure to mention that the Hebrew word usually translated as "in front of" literally means "in the face of," and adding that in Numbers the Israelites are frequently stirring up God's anger with their muttering and grumbling "before (lit. 'in the face of') the Lord."
[The article is at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002477.html . And I should mention that you might find the language in some of Liberman's examples offensive.]
6. I want to show you two quotes from the last page of a fine and careful article by David James Duncan, online at http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-4om/Duncan.html :
"America's spiritual vocabulary -- with its huge defining terms such as 'God,' 'soul,' 'sacrifice,' 'mysticism,' 'faith,' 'salvation,' 'grace,' 'redemption' -- has been enduring a series of abuses so constricting that the damage may last for centuries. Too many of us have tried to sidestep this damage by simply rejecting the terminology. But the defamation of a religious vocabulary cannot be undone by turning away; the harm is undone when we work to reopen each word's true history, nuance and depth. Holy words need stewardship as surely as do gardens, orchards or ecosystems."
and...
"The God of politically-organized fundamentalism, as advertised daily by a vast array of media, is a Supramundane Caucasian Male as furious with humanity's failure to live by a few lines from Leviticus as He is oblivious to the 'Christian' right's failure to live the compassion of the gospeals and earth-stewardship of both testaments."
The title of the article is "What Fundamentalists Need for Their Salvation: 'Outing' the Right on the fundamentals of Christian stewardship." I recommend it.
And in this context I also recommend Kathleen Norris's _Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith_ (Riverhead Books 1998). Not quite as good, in my opinion as her _Cloister Walk_ or _Dakota_, but very good all the same. Here, for example, is Norris discussing the word "perfection," on page 57:
"Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others. Whatever we have, no matter how little it seems, is something that can be shared with those who are poorer. This sort of perfection demands that we become fully ourselves as God would have us: mature, ripe, full, ready for what befalls us, for whatever is to come. When I think of perfection in this sense, I am far from Martha Stewart land. I am thinking of an acquaintance, Catherine LaCugna, a professor of systematic theology who, when doctors informed her that there was nothing more that they could do for her, and that cancer would kill her within a few months, did not run away to nurse her wounds but continued teacherg. ... She was able to teach until a few days before she died. I can scarcely imagine what it meant to her students, when they found out what she had done. ... Now, whenever I recite the prayer that ends the church's liturgical day, 'May the Lord grant us a peaceful night, and a perfect death,' it is her death that I think of. A perfect death, fully acknowledged and fully realized, offered for others."
7. From _PCA News_ for 9/30/05:
"Christians are confused about their beliefs" relates a current study as reported by Religion Journal (http://www.religionjournal.com/showarticle.asp?id=3035). The Barna Group (http://www.barna.org/), a Christian research organization, reveals recent trends in morality choices and absolute moral truth in light of a biblical worldview. Barna says, 'Very few adults base their moral decisions on the Bible, and surprisingly few believe that absolute moral truth exists. These are among the findings from a new national survey conducted by The Barna Group among a representative sample of 1,002 adults.' "
8. The Apologetics Index website offers this description:
"Apologetics Index provides 15,360 pages of research resources on world religions, religious cults, sects, new religious movements, alternative religions, apologetics, anticult, and countercult organizations, doctrines, religious practices and world views. These resources reflect a variety of theological and/or sociological perspectives."
This site's focus is on religious controversy and disputation; there's something here to offend _everybody_. There is also a great deal of interesting material on various aspects of religious language. For example, these three items:
"Re: Debate on inclusive language Bible translations," by Becky Groothuis, at http://www.apologeticsindex.org/cpoint1-3.hyml , and, by the same author, "A Response to Thomas R. Schreiner's review of _Good News for Women_," at http://www.apologeticsindex.org/cpoint9-1.html . (Groothius is the author of _Good News for Women_; she mentions that papers summarizing the main points in her book are online at http://www.gospelcom.net/ivpress/groothuis .)
"Women in Christian Perspective: A Bibliography," by Robert M. Bowman, Jr., at http://www.apologeticsindex.org/cpoint1-6.htm . Bowman begins by defining three positions on this issue -- "Traditional or Complementarian; Egalitarian; Developing Egalitarianism" -- and then lists works from the differing positions under the headings "General Works" and "Women in Ministry"; he also provides references on "Paul and Women" and links to two relevant organizations. His definition of "Egalitarian View" reads: "Men and women should be regarded as equals in authority in the home and given equal access to all positions of leadership in the church. Held by some evangelicals." In the brief bibliography itself his classifications are labeled "Traditional/complementarian" and "Egalitarian/feminist."
9. An alliance called "the Epic partnership" is now working "with churches and people worldwide to focus on getting the word out through storytelling, a time-honored method of relaying historical information in many cultures without written language. ... Today, field workers are training storytellers how to relay 30 or 40 stories from the Bible. Stories are chosen that are the easiest to relate to in terms of the culture's worldview. Other new approaches include setting up workshops to train mother-tongue translators, helping to produce cassette tapes of Scripture in other languages and helping to produce minority language scripts for the_Jesus_ film, a movie that presents the story of Jesus as told in the Gospel of Luke."
This is from "Bible translator wants words to speak to individual's heart," at http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/organge/orl-ororwycliffe2508250aug25,0,916635,print.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-orange .
10. From "Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible," by Ruth Gledhill, at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-13090-1811332-13090,00.html :
"Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin's theory of evolution in schools, believing 'intelligent design' to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began. But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country's Catholic bishops insist cannot be 'historical.' At most, they say, they may contain 'historical traces'."
(The reference here is to a document recently published by "the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church." Gledhill writes that discussion and debate are online at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/debate .)
11. Cybersites and pages to visit: for those of you who write religious poetry and/or music, an interesting rhyming dictionary at http://www.rhymezone.com (suggested by one of the commenters at my blog); links to 28 "open access" religious journals online, at http://www.doaj.org/ljbs?cpid=16 ; an article on the extraordinarily complicated subject of phylacteries, at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/ view.jsp?artid=290&letter=P ; an article about Brad Stine, an evangelical stand-up comedian who has performed at every Promise Keeper event since 2003, at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/17/arts/17comi.html (suggested by Douglas Dee); "Grooming Politicians for Christ: Evangelical programs on Capitol Hill seek to mold a new generation of leaders who will answer not to voters, but to God," by Stephanie Simon, at http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/ GroomingPoliticiansForChrist.html ; the "13 Principles as set by the Council of American Witches," at http://www.terranika.com/2005/09/30/the-13-principles ; Native American sacred texts, at http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/index.htm ; an SMS (short text messages) version of the Bible, from Australia, at http://www.biblesociety.com.au/smsbible ; "Subject: Does God Speak to Bush?" at http://www.commondreams.org/ views05/1008-29.htm .
CORRECTION
1. From Stephen Marsh; the URL for "19th Century Mormonism and Radical Feminism" should be http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2005/07/ 19th_century_mo.html ; I had it as dot-com instead of dot-org.
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