THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 7, Issue 6 -- November/December 2006
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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. **Payments can now be made through Paypal if that's your preference (and for members outside the U.S. that's the simplest method); our Paypal account is ocls@madisoncounty.net.** For more information, to request a free sample issue, or to cancel the newsletter, please e-mail ocls@madisoncounty.net.
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IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; BookNotes; Quotes & Comments; Cyberspace; An Example To Us All: The Amish Response

EDITOR'S NOTE

Many thanks to all of you who have renewed your memberships early; many thanks to those who've joined with Supporting Memberships. I'm grateful. Membership renewals not yet sent should reach me by December 29, 2006, so that I can add you to the mailing list for the January/February 2007 issue.

Thanks also to all who've been sending me materials for the newsletter. In return, and in the spirit of the season, you could take a look at my recipes for bread, flatbread, fruitcake, and Frugal Cheescake -- all tested many many times and proved reliable; you'll find them online at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/ memories.bml?user=ozarque&keyword=Recipes&filter=all .

My best wishes to all of you for the happiest of holiday seasons; may the coming New Year treat you gently.

NETWORK INPUT

1. From Cindy Payant, on the Golden Rule...
"My earlier comment with regard to the Golden Rule would have been fleshing out the Jewish story, which, as I remember it, is as follows:

A heathen approached both Shammai and Hillel (2 great Jewish sages who had opposite opinions on many things, with Shammai usually being the more strict and Hillel the more liberal. I might add that in most cases the 'official' Jewish law follows the school of Hillel) and offered to convert to Judaism if the sage could teach it to him while he stood on one foot. Shammai just dismissed him. Hillel told him to stand on one foot and said ( I don't have access to the Hebrew --or possibly Aramaic -- here, so I'm giving what I remember as a common version): 'What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Law. Go and study.'

I'm sure that in my previous email, my point would have been the addition of 'Go and study.' "

**On page 33 of "Confucian Hermeneutics" (_Books & Culture_ for 9-10/06), Kelly James Clark mentions what he calls "the converse Golden Rule," and quotes it as "Do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you." In the Confucian canon, he says, this falls under the heading of "reciprocity."

2. I had quoted Rabbi David Aaron, because [in response to a question about why, in his new book he 'reluctantly acceded to using the pronoun He, even though it can be very misleading and does not convey the full truth about God] said, "Unfortunately, many people actually believe that God is male. ... " (The interview is at http://www.publishersweekly.com/index.asp?layout=articleprint&articleid=CA6341564 .) My only comment was "No comment"; and Meg Umans wrote:

"I was amused and disappointed by your 'No comment' to 'Unfortunately some people actually believe God is male'. "

**It seems to me that if Rabbi Aaron thinks this belief is an error -- and the "actually" indicates that he does -- he shouldn't encourage his readers to continue in that error by using only masculine pronouns for God in his book. (It is of course just as irrational to use female pronouns as male ones; it's as irrational to refer to God as "male" or "female" as it would be to refer to God as "paginated," or "accordion-pleated.") If nothing else, I felt, he could have used the _interview_ to make this point. His response to the question sounded to me like, "Well, since some people actually believe God is male, I'd hate to bother them by suggesting otherwise." In Aaron's defense, however, English _forces_ writers to go through this exercise in bad theology whenever they're writing more than a few sentences referring to God in a single document.

BOOKNOTES

1. _Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God [and the unlikely people who help you]_, by Jim Palmer; W Publishing Group/Thomas Nelson 2006; ISBN 0-8499-1398-5. My thanks to Diana Cook for the copy.

This book -- like a number of the books I've seen from Thomas Nelson in the past few years -- is a bit odd. It starts with two introductions -- one called "Pseudo-Introduction," one called "Real Introduction." The introductions are there to introduce the author. In an unabashedly confessional style, he tells us about his miserable childhood, his obsessive-compulsive disorder and clinical depression, his fears and flaws and failures, his wife and child and cat, his checkered job history, and his checkered history as a Christian. All this as prologue to a book of profiles of the people he believes have helped him on his spiritual journey -- including "the Waffle House waitress, the tire salesman, the hip-hop artist, the swim teacher...' (Page xxiii)

He tells us in the introductions that what he _really_ wanted to do was write a novel. And perhaps that's what he should have done, because although he writes competently -- and has a graduate degree in Divinity -- he often seems to me to be more focused on writing flashy sentences than on considering what they might mean, and where they might lead his readers, in religious terms. Here's a sample from pp. 30-31, from the chapter about the hip-hop artist, to give you an idea of the flavor of the book:

"The only accurate depiction of the world is a round model called a globe, because the earth itself is round. A flat map is deceiving and makes certain places seem more distant from one another than they truly are. A flat map shows North America and Russia as farthest apart, but on a round globe, they are practically touching at Alaska. Likewise, if your geography of God is based on keeping a religious checklist and maintaining proper external behavior, hip-hoppers are about as far as one can get from God. The truth is, our real proximity to God isn't a matter of degrees based on what we do or don't do, but a matter of depending on the reality of wholeness his presence provides."

I was with him until he got to that last sentence. I can recommend this book as interesting reading, but I can't recommend its theology.

2. _Quantum Grace: Lenten Reflections on Creation and Connectedness_, by Judy Cannato (Ave Maria Press 2003); ISBN 0-87793-984-5, suggested by Rebecca Haden.

This book's introduction caught my interest when Judy Cannato, referring to "spiritual writers who use the new physics as a framework," said on pp. 13-14:
"According to these authors, the emergent theories seem to confirm what mystics have been telling us all along -- that we are one, not just all human beings, but all creation, the entire universe. As much as we may imagine and act to the contrary, human beings are not the center of the universe -- even though we are a vital part of it. Nor are we completely separate from others, but live only in and through a complex set of relationships we hardly notice. Interdependent and mutual connections are integral to all life." The book, she goes on to say, is the result of having asked herself "What if these insights were the framework from which we look at the scriptures during Lent?"

That's an important question, a slightly radical question, and one deserving intense attention. I was disappointed, however. The rest of the book is composed of devotional materials for each day of Lent. They're interesting and competent and well written, but in my opinion Cannato makes no effort in them to answer that "What if?" question.

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1. From "Confucian Hermeneutics," by Kelly James Clark, pp. 33-35 in the 9-10/06 _Books & Culture_; on page 35:

"Like Confucians, Christians share a commitment to some core beliefs. Beyond that common core, the texts require so much human judgment that disagreement on theological matters (infant vs. adult baptism, Calvinism vs. Arminianism, classical vs. open theism, etc., etc.) seems inevitable. Yet commentators, Confucian and Christian alike, persist in the belief that they have found (or will find) that elusive one thread, the central meaning of their Holy Writ, which once discerned clarifies (or will clarify) definitively the rest of a multi-colored, richly textured textual cloth."

This article, billed as a review of three commentaries on the Confucian _Analects_, suffers from a severe case of congestion of the syntax; nevertheless, Clark has a lot to say that's worth reading. He complains on page 35 that contemporary commentators on Confucianism are of only two kinds: "conservatives who attempt to be faithful to the original teachings... even if they seem antiquated; and liberals who pick up a few themes to their liking (humaneness, for example, or sympathy) and build a 'Confucianism' around those themes."

In the September/October issue of this newsletter I briefly reviewed Bart D. Ehrman's _Misquoting Jesus_, another book that takes up the problems of "antiquated" texts, and I recommended it in spite of the very negative reviews it's been getting. This issue of _Book & Culture_ (on pp. 8-9) has one more mostly negative review -- "Post-Mortem: Death by hardening of the categories," by Robert H. Gundry. Gundry struggles throughout the review to be a Christian counterpart of the "conservatives who attempt to be faithful to the original teachings," but keeps slipping off that platform, admitting in the end that "Despite the foregoing criticisms, my sympathies often lie with Ehrman." He explains his title this way, on page 9: "[Ehrman's] evangelical faith died by way of a hardening of the categories; and his self-reported post-mortem stands as a warning to evangelicals, from whom he inherited some of that hardening of categories."

2. Thanks to Sally Lloyd and Douglas Dee for sending me "Does God Want You To Be Rich?", by David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, on pp. 47-56 of the 9/18/06 issue of _Time_. I would have to admit right up front that I find the whole "prosperity theology" concept repugnant; I'm biased. And I am apparently not entirely alone in this. From page 52:

"...[T]he Bible leaves plenty of room for a discussion on the role, positive or negative, that money should play in the lives of believers. 'Jesus' words about money don't make us very comfortable, and people don't want to hear about it,' notes Collin Hansen, an editor at the evangelical monthly _Christianity Today_. Pastors are happy to discuss from the pulpit hot-button topics like sex and even politics. But the relative absence of sermons about money -- which the Bible mentions several thousand times -- is one of the more stunning omissions in American religion, especially among its white middle-class precincts."

**I agree that it's a stunning omission; it's the Third Rail of Christian preaching.

3. "The coping benefits of religious and spiritual beliefs are the focus of this column, in contrast to claims about the possible therapeutic or preventive health benefits of such beliefs. By coping I refer to the constructive impact that religious and spiritual beliefs can have on a patient's ability to accept illness, participate in treatment, and experience personal growth in the midst of illness. The ability to cope is crucial because serious illness is a threat to our wholeness as persons -- causing fear, social disruption, loss, suffering, or death."

This is from an excellent brief article by Lauris C. Kaldjian titled "Spiritual and Religious Needs In Patient Care," pp. 207-208, in _Johns Hopkins Advanced Studies in Medicine_ for 4/05; the quote is on page 207. Kaldjian proposes on the same page that these needs "can be summarized by 4 domains: (1) meaning and purpose; (2) hope; (3) forgiveness; and (4) relationship with God (if belief in God is present." My thanks to the Kinast-Porters for the copy.

It seems to me that Kaldjian has hit on something useful when he frames what he writes as a focus on "the coping benefits" of beliefs about religion and spirituality, since this should constitute a less confrontational approach than claiming that such beliefs maintain wellness, or that they heal illness and/or injury.
4. "The September 11 attacks have... prompted more sober theological reflection on the relationship between Christianity and Islam, the shared beliefs of the faiths, and their essential theological differences. Some of this reflection came in response to George W. Bush's assertion in late 2003 that Muslims and Christians 'worship the same God.' Dudley Woodberry... argued that the Muslim Allah and the Christian God do refer to the same being, the 'God of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, and Jacob.' Muslims and Christians hold very different understandings of that God's attributes, however... "

This is Thomas S. Kidd, writing on page 41 of "Islam in American Protestant Thought (pp. 39-41, _Books & Culture_, 9-10/06).

5. Thanks to all of you who've been sending me updates on the controversy about a Wiccan religious symbol -- a five-pointed star inside a circle, called a pentacle -- for the memorial plaque for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart, killed in combat in Iraq and posthumously awarded both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. According to Alan Cooperman ("VA allows no Wiccan symbol on war hero's plaque," _Washington Post_ for 7/9/06), the Veteran's Administration has approved 38 other symbols, including "the Jewish Star of David, the Muslim crescent, the Buddhist wheel, the Mormon angel, the nine-pointed star of Bahai (sic) and something that looks like an atomic symbol for atheists" but has refused to approve the pentacle. This despite the fact that the Pentagon says there are at least 1800 Wiccans on active duty in the military.

Now the state of Nevada has agreed to add a memorial plaque for Patrick Stewart -- with the pentacle -- to the Veterans' Memorial Wall in Fernley, Nevada. (The decision was made after receiving a legal opinion from the state's attorney general that federal officials don't control state cemeteries.) See "Nevada OKs Wiccan Sign for Soldier's Plaque" (no byline) at http://tinyurl.com/rhmx5 .

6. In "Is the Catholic Church pro-immigrant? You Bet."(_USA Today_ for 8/21/06), Paulette Chu Miniter begins by noting that the Catholic Church has been accused of supporting the cause of illegal immigration for political reasons, and in order to enlarge its membership. Miniter disagrees, writing that:

"For the church, the migrant's plight is a universal one tracing back to the Holy Family. Pope Pius XII, in 1952, declared the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph to be the archetype of every refugee family. He based this on their flight into Egypt, calling them 'the models and protectors of every migrant, alien and refugee of whatever kind who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil."

Also...

"The church has emphasized the duty of Christians to 'welcome the stranger,' citing the commandment in the book of Leviticus that 'you shall treat the stranger no differently than the natives born among you.' "

The immigration problem in the U.S. is one of those problems that has no right answer. It has never been possible to make Christian doctrine conform with the idea that children on one side of a hypothetical line on the ground called a "border" should have only flimsy clothing in wintertime while children on the other side of that line -- maybe only ten feet away -- have a coat and a parka and a warm jacket and boots and mittens. On the other hand, it has never been possible to make Christian doctrine conform with the idea that an American citizen should go without a desperately-needed surgery because that citizen can't qualify for the free surgery -- paid for by citizens' taxes -- that an illegrant immigrant in the same desperate need _can_ qualify for. Thanks to Patricia Mathews for the copy.

7. In "We believe" (pp. 30-31, _New Scientist_ for 1/28/06), evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar opens with two questions: (a) Why are human beings so willing to hold religious beliefs that they can never have any hope of proving either true or false? (b) Why do human beings voluntarily practice religious beliefs that clearly are not in their own self-interest? And then he says, still on page 30, that scientists in his field think there are at least four aspects of religion that can be perceived as helping human evolution along:

"The first is to give sufficient explanatory structure to the universe to allow us to control it, perhaps through the intercession of a spirit world. The second is to make us feel better about life, or at least resigned to its worst vagaries... A third is that religions provide and enforce some kind of moral code, so keeping social order. Finally, religious belief might bring a sense of communality, of group membership."

And on page 31, saying that his personal conviction is that the fourth aspect is the one that really matters, he goes on: "Religions bond societies because they exploit a whole suite of rituals that are extremely good at triggering the release of endorphins, natural opioids in the brain." Endorphins, he says, not only make us feel happier, they "tune up" our immune systems and make us healthier. Religion is therefore good for us. My thanks to Frances Green for sending the article.

8. Thanks to Douglas Dee for sending a copy of "They mix religion and liberalism: Bloggers urge Democrats to keep the faith," by Jeff Diamant, from the 8/1/06 _Star-Ledger_. The bloggers, Diamant says, "want Democrats to counter the off-voiced criticism that their party is overly secular and hostile to religious people. They like to note that political discourse on religion hasn't always focused on abortion and same-sex marriage like it does now, that earlier in American history religion played a vital role in debates over slavery, prohibition and civil rights."

Diamant was reporting on a "Progressive Religious Bloggers Conference" held in July 2006; bloggers attending included Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. According to Diamant, both the Velveteen Rabbi [http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog ] and the Mainstreet Baptist were there. I had no luck finding the Mainstreet Baptist on line; it's possible that that should have been the Mainstream Baptist [at http://mainstreambaptist.blogspot.com ] instead.

9. One of the most newsworthy items of religious language news recently was of course the uproar in Islam over the pope's quotation from a Muslim source, and the I'm-sorry-that-anyone-was-upset-by-that-quotation pseudo-apology that followed. What I'd like to do here is quote what the pope said just _before_ the quotation, which none of the media has been bothering to do. Of his source, the "Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos," the pope says this: "... [H]e addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness... on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new..." And so on through the now-familiar quotation.

This excerpt appears on the same page as a very interesting article: "Pope posed tough questions that the world must answer", by George Weigel, in the 9/25/06 _USA Today_ (and online at http://www.usatoday.com/ printedition/news/20060925/opcomreligion47.art.htm ). In which Weigel, discussing and summarizing the pope's speech, says:

"Christianity, following its Jewish parent, proposes a God of reason, love and compassion.... That idea of God shapes the Jewish and Christian convictions that the world is intelligible and that people of reason and goodwill can build decent societies, based on reasonable standards of behavior. But there are other ideas of God to offer, and one of them is the idea of God proposed by certain currents of Islamic thought. In this view, God is utterly transcendent, a majestic, unapproachable lawgiver to whom the only appropriate response is the absolute submission of our own minds and wills." This idea of God, Weigel goes on, "can lead to a profound piety"; but he notes that the pope went on to say that "Taken to extremes, it may suggest that God can command anything."

I suspect that the pope actually said "Taken to extremes, it may suggest that can command ANYthing" -- with that emphasis. Suicide bombing, for example. Concentration camps. Torture. Waterboarding. Inquisitions.

10. On the same topic, Sally Lloyd sent me Jeff Israely's "The Pontiff Has a Point," (page 44, _Time_ for 9/25/06), in which Israel says the pope's speech "could turn out to be the most important step forward for interfaith dialogue since [a famed series of interfaith gatherings in Assisi in 1986]." And:

"Benedict said Islam teaches that God's 'will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.' The risk he sees implicit in this concept of the divine is that the irrationality of violence might thereby appear to be justified to someone who believes it is God's will."

I see no evidence in today's world that this idea -- that violence might "appear to be justified to someone who believes it is God's will" -- is limited to the Islamic faith.

11. Once in a while I come across an article that I want to recommend to you, but that's hard to quote from because only quoting the entire piece would do it justice. This issue's example is Doug Muder's "Is Feminine the New Normal?", by Doug Muder; it's online at http://freeandresponsible.blogspot.com/2006/01/is-feminine-new-normal.htm . Muder's subject is the question of whether today's Protestant churches are so "feminized" that they offer men nothing worth attending for; he talks about David Murrow's book _Why Men Hate Going to Church_; he talks about a Japanese soldier in Neal Stephenson's novel _Cryptonomicon_. Femininity he says, is so much the "assumed common ground" in church that he constantly finds himself feeling obligated to apologize for his "masculine reactions."

I'm going to risk one quote:

"Murrow's book is populated with many semi-fictional characters, including the Christian couple Greg and Judy. Judy loves their church, but Greg hates it. ... 'Greg,' Murrow writes, 'has no desire to fall in love with a wonderful man, even one named Jesus.' Hearing this message preached by a man every Sunday does not make it any more palatable."

CYBERSPACE

1. The _Internet Scout Report_ for 9/8/06 recommends the ReligionLink website at http://www.religionlink.org/, describing it as follows:

"Writing about religion can be a difficult task, and for many novice journalists it may present a number of quandaries. One helpful resource is the ReligionLink website, which is designed to help journalists write informed stories about the ways religion affects public life."

2. The URL for the new "God's Politics" blog established by Sojourners and BeliefNet is http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/godspolitics . I don't know what I think of this yet; at the moment it seems to me to tell me more about Jim Wallis than I really want to know. Perhaps that will change over time.

3. Quoted at http://www.andrewtobias.com on 4/10/06:

"On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional amendment to prohibit gay  marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at  AU, was requested to testify.  At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: 'Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman.  What do you have to say about that?' Raskin replied: 'Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution.  You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.' The room erupted into  applause."

4. _SojoMail_ for 3/8/06 had a brief note about the origins of the phrase "Red-Letter Christian," saying that it was first suggested by a. "secular Jewish Country-and-Western disc jockey in Nashville, Tennessee" who was interviewing Jim Wallis. He said to Wallis, "So, you're one of those Red-Letter Christians -- you know -- who's really into those verses in the New Testament that are in red letters!" "...[A]lluding to the fact that in several versions of the New Testament, the words of Jesus are printed in red."

5. For a free PDF of the Dilbert e-book titled _God's Debris_, go to http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/.
The site says: "I'm giving it away because I found out that most people who read it end up either recommending it or buying the paper version as gifts for other people. Why not get a copy for your laptop, so you have something to read next time you're traveling? You can't beat free." Thanks to Douglas Dee for letting me know. I haven't read this book yet, but I plan to; if you've read it, your input would be welcome.

6. Social psychologist Patrick Bennett's 2005 dissertation was a research study (expanding on earlier research by James Pennebaker) in which 204 college students took part in four 15-minute writing sessions. He divided them into three groups: one, the control group, wrote about "how I use my time"; one group wrote standard "self-disclosure narratives" about traumas they had experienced in their lives, and the emotions associated with those traumas; a third group wrote original spontaneous prayers to "God, a higher power or a supreme being" with their most tramautic experience as the topic of the prayers. Results: "Students in the prayer and the self-disclosure groups had reduced physician visits compared with the control group over the next four months... They also had less emotional distress during that period compared with the control group."

There's no mention in the report on this study of any difference between results with the self-disclosure group and results with the prayer group, and I haven't read the dissertation. However....

" 'One of the things that really amazed us in the long run is that it really didn't seem to matter how religious the individuals were, they were still able to use the exercise in an effective way to make meaning from events,' Bennett said. Julie Exline, a psychology professor... applauded the work. 'It suggests that even among those who are not highly religious, expressing one's feelings and thoughts to God via prayer can be therapeutic. This is a nice extension of [Pennebaker's] existing work on emotionally expressive writing into the spiritual arena,' she said."

This caught my attention because of its relevance for one of the five principles in the Lovingkindness Mission Statement -- the one which proposes "That the effects of religious language are in many ways independent of whether affected individuals consider themselves to be religious or not." [The mission statement is online at http://www.forlovingkindness.org/missionstatement.html .]

[Source: "Writing religiously may help trauma survivors," by Geralda Miller, online at http://www.stnews.org/Research-1532.html .]

7. In the same context -- effects of religious language -- Baylor university has released some information about a survey on religion in the U.S. In "Baylor Study Offers Data on Reading Habits" (_Religion BookLine_ for 9/13/06), Juli Cragg Hilliard writes:

"The survey of more than 1,700 adults found Americans classifying themselves less often by denomination than by beliefs, and showed that perceptions of God as authoritarian, benevolent, critical or distant markedly influence individuals' world views."

[See also "American Piety in the 21st Century," online at www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/33304.pdf .This 174-page PDF document includes the survey questionnaire.]

8. Thanks to nolly at LiveJournal for pointing me to "The Five Points of Calvinism" -- which claims that "Calvinism is known by an acronym: T.U.L.I.P."

T is for "Total Depravity"; U is for "Unconditional Election"; L is for "Limited Atonement"; I is for "Irresistible Grace"; and P is for "Perserverance of the Saints (also known as Once Saved Always Saved)." The document, with details and definitions of terms, is at http://www.mslick.com/tulip.htm .

If any of you know of other examples like this -- denominations or doctrinal groups "known by an acronym", I'd be very interested in having that information. This is a first for me.

9. Luc J. Bovens addresses a thorny question in "The rhythm method and embryonic death," at http://jme.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/32/6/355 . Sample:

"A concern for consistency has pushed advocates of the pro-life position into opposing all contraceptive techniques that cause embryonic deaths. Catholics might welcome this, since the official position of the church is that, aside from the rhythm method, no contraceptive techniques are permissible. This benefit is questionable. What has gone unnoticed is that, if one is willing to make a few relatively innocent assumptions, then the rhythm method may well be responsible for massive embryonic death... "

Reaction to the paper was largely negative, and not polite; you can read Bovens' response to the criticism at http://jme.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/32/6/355#546 .

I can't comment on this item, because the science involved is far beyond my expertise; it does, however, pose an interesting ethical quandary. Thanks to Cindy Brown.

10. Thanks to Rebecca Haden, I now know about the Protestant "prayer shawl" movement and "knitting ministries." Here's a quote from a story about Calvin Presbyterian Church, in Pennsylvania....

"The prayer shawls are one part of that renewal. Each is 'made by the hands while the heart is praying for blessing for the wearer and the people that the wearer loves,' said Diane McClusky, 46, who coordinates prayer ministry at Calvin. 'Usually, when you say you are going to pray for someone, they don't really know you are doing it. But when you put those prayers into a tangible thing they can take in their hands and wrap around them, it's like wrapping them up in prayer.' "

The story ("If you look, mainline Protestant success stories abound," by Ann Rodgers) is at http://pcusa.org/pcnews/2005/05018.htm .

A Google search took me to a number of interesting places, including the "Prayer Shawl Ministry Home Page," at http://www.shawlministry.com , which says that Janet Bristow and Victoria Galo "gave birth" to the prayer shawl ministry as a result of a program of "applied Feminist Spirituality." Whether this means they were the very first, I have no idea. The page itself is in one of the formats I most dislike -- centered type, all in boldface -- but it provides a lot of useful information, including patterns for both crocheted and knitted shawls. I recommend clicking on the "symbolism" link and reading the explanation for using stitches and rows that are based on the number three.
I wonder how this fits into the current concern that Protestant churches are all so "feminized" that men won't have anything to do with them. I'm finding a lot of men posting on crochet websites and blogs these days -- there's even a "Crochet Dudes" webring -- but whether that means Protestant men would be willing to join a needlework ministry right out in public, I have no idea. The ones that complain so loudly about church being unacceptably "cosy" sound to me as though what they want in church activities is not needlework but wrestling, deer hunting, and group drumming.

11. From an interview with neuroscientist Andrew Newberg by Steve Paulson titled "Divining the Brain," at http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/09/ 20/newberg/print.html :

Q: "Do you think the human brain is hard-wired for religious belief?"
A: "Well, I think the brain is structured in such a way that we can very easily have religious beliefs and spiritual experiences. But the problem with the term 'hard-wired' is that it implies that someone or something did the hard-wiring. And I'm not sure that I can say that."

[In the introduction to the interview Paulson writes: "Over the last decade, Newberg has conducted a series of brain-imagine studies of various spiritual practitioners, including Franciscan nuns, Buddhists, and Pentecostal Christians who speak in tongues. ... Newberg uses an imaging technique called single photon emission computed tomography, which measures blood flow in various parts of the brain. More blood flow, of course, means more brain activity."]

12. On October 21, 2006, Mark Liberman posted a very interesting article titled "Private Prayer Language" at http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003695.html#more , after the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary voted 36-1 that "Southwestern will not knowingly endorse in any way, advertise, or commend the conclusions of the contemporary charismatic movement including 'private prayer language.' " He goes on to explain that "private prayer language" seems to be a euphemism for "(some of) a set of practices that are more commonly referred to as 'speaking in tongues.' " He goes on to discuss the history of the term, and the controversy about the practice, in careful detail. I had not been aware, until I read this piece, that a distinction is made between public and private speaking in tongues. Highly recommended.

13. Cyberplaces to visit: "The Write Question" at http://www.timesandseasons.org/?p=3485#more-3485 , suggested by Stephen Marsh; Mary Sidney Herbert's verse translation of Psalm 58, at http:// www.luminarium.org/renlit/psalm.58.htm ; a sermon from the Church of Craft, at http://www.churchofcraft.org/sermon1.html ; links to a group of sermons by Doug Muder, at http://www.gurus.com/dougdeb/sermon/index.html ; a Language Log blogpost about God's punctuation, at http://itre.cis. upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003613.html ; "Controversial new Bible cuts out difficult gospel passages," at http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/ news_syndication/article_061018bible.shtml .

AN EXAMPLE TO US ALL: THE AMISH RESPONSE

In October there was another tragic school shooting -- this time, in an Amish schoolhouse. More deaths by sudden violence; another suicide; another media frenzy. But this time we had an opportunity to hear the devastated community speak about the urgent need to forgive, instead of the urgent need for revenge. This time we had an opportunity to watch that community reach out to offer compassion and support to the family of the man who had taken the lives of their loved ones. The religious language below comes from the Summary Statement of that community's "Confession of Faith"; you'll find the complete document online at http://www.mcusa-archives.org/library/resolutions/1995/1995Summary.html .

"Human beings have been made for relationship with God, to live in peace with each other, and to take care of the rest of creation."

"We believe that peace is the will of God. God created the world in peace, and God's peace is most fully revealed in Jesus Christ, who is our peace and the peace of the whole world. Led by the Holy Spirit, we follow Christ in the way of peace, doing justice, bringing reconciliation, and practicing nonresistance, even in the face of violence and warfare."

[See also Sally Kohn's "What the Amish are Teaching America," at http://www. commondreams.org/views06/1006-33.htm ; suggested by Cindy Brown.]

Copyright © 2006 Suzette Haden Elgin
All rights reserved

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