September/October 2003 Newsletter

THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 4, Issue 5 -- September/October 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; Quotes & Comments; Cyberspace; Announcement.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Because September is here, it's time to start thinking about renewing your Network membership for 2004. Early payments in this slow season are very helpful and welcome, and I will cheerfully accept them. However, the deadline for payment ($5.00 for regular memberships, or $15.00 for Supporting Memberships) doesn't come along until December 31st. The earlier you let me know that you _plan_ to renew, the less of a fandango the 2004 mailing-list chaos will be for me. Keeping track of all of you is complicated; I'd be grateful for the advance information, at your convenience.

NETWORK INPUT

1. My thanks to all of you who wrote to comment on the poem that I included in the July/August issue. I was prepared for comments along the lines of "Why on earth are you wasting valuable newsletter space on poetry?", but nobody wrote to say that. Instead, I got a batch of messages disagreeing with me about the difficulty of using words to pray with. That's delightful; I'm pleased; I learn something every day. For example, Elizabeth Barrette wrote:

"Well ... this is a skillful poem, apt on technical grounds, appealing to eye and ear. As a poem, it works. But as theology? Not for me. It doesn't fit my experience. ... This is NOT how I experience language, not at all. It's how I experience _numbers_ instead of words. For me, the words soar and fly..."

Wonderful. For me, words are the most intractable medium imaginable, and the more serious the purpose to which I am putting them, the more they fight back.

2. Margaret Carter sent a quote from an essay by Dorothy Sayers titled "The Other Six Deadly Sins"; Sayers, who agrees with Jim White that coveting and envy are two different sins, defines Envy as the attitude that "hates to see other men happy." Here's the quotation: "[Envy] begins by asking, plausibly: 'Why should I not enjoy what others enjoy?' and it ends by demanding: 'Why should others enjoy what I may not?' Envy is the great leveller; if it cannot level things up, it will level them down."

Obviously I don't know how to envy properly, or I can't get past Sayers' first stage. I can't imagine wishing that someone else _lacked_ something just because it's something I wish I also had. Or perhaps I'm still mixed up, and what I do is only coveting. I'm in trouble, either way.

3. I asked for input on the idea that seeing an irrefutable miracle would destroy faith because it makes it impossible for you _not_ to believe. And Anne Newkirk Niven wrote:

"This concept 'that faith must be contrary to reason' has a logical aspect, if you realize that faith is intended to be either an act of will or of emotion. Faith cannot be seen as a moral act, an act to be commended on the basis of its virtue, if it is simply a logical outgrowth of reason. That is to say, in order for faith to have an emotional charge, it requires extraordinary effort. Another virtue (or emotion, perhaps) to compare this with would be that of love. True love cannot simply be the result of reason: Who would be heartened if someone said 'I have decided to love you because you are healthy, well-endowed with highly valued possessions and have a pleasant face'? No one! But the emotion of love, like that of faith, has as its basis a leap, a stretch, a reaching beyond oneself that reason cannot provide. ... "

In this same context, I want to quote two relevant items from page 34 of an article by Neal Grossman in the 9-11/02 issue of _IONS_ titled "Who's Afraid of Life After Death?":

"Beliefs pertaining to the possible existence of a transcendent reality -- God, soul, afterlife, etc. -- are based on faith, not fact. If this is true, then there can be no factual evidence that pertains to such beliefs. This metabelief -- that beliefs about a transcendent reality cannot be empirically based -- is so deeply entrenched in our culture that it has the status of a taboo."

"As long as religious values are presented as merely religious values, then it is easy for popular culture to ignore them or give them minimal lip service on Sunday mornings. But if these same religious values are presented as empirically verified scientific facts, then everything changes. If the belief in an afterlife were to be accepted not on the basis of faith or on the basis of speculative theology, but as a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis, then this could not be ignored by our culture. In fact, it would mean the end of our culture in its present form."

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1. _Image_ asked a group of artists (from all the arts) to "address the idea of community." The result was pp. 19-88 in the Spring 2003 issue, a wonderful collection of short essays titled "Bringing Home the Work: The Artist and the Community." Here are a few samples:

"Speaking from experience, it seems to me that being a Christian artist has distinct advantages over being the secular kind. A Christian artist automatically has something important to paint _about_, as well as a constituency of people who share his convictions and understand his language, symbols, and narratives... And a Christian artist has a necessary role within the community of the faithful, where his gifts add to the spiritual dimensions of the community.... [Wayne Forte, in "Confession and Revision," pp. 30-32 and page 33; on page 32.]

"I have of late been following the Celtic saints around... These medieval believers argued that everyone needed an _anachmara_ -- a soul friend -- a notion that combines mentor, spiritual director, confessor, and boon companion. The Celts thought no person was complete -- or safe -- without one. " [Daniel Taylor, in "Soul Friends," pp. 33-35; on page 33.]

"Timothy Keller writes that what made first-century Christians radical was that they didn't build a temple. Other religions of that time and place saw a building as necessary to experience the divine. But for the early church, the community was the temple. 'You, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house,' wrote the apostle Peter. Our community is built not by brick upon brick, Keller says, but by Christian upon Christian -- and God inhabits us together." [Chris Anderson, in "A Family Story," pp. 37-40; on page 39.]

2. Pat Mathews sent me a copy of [my apologies for the title] "Why _Buffy_ Kicked Ass: The deep meaning of TV's favorite vampire slayer," by Virginia Postrel, pp. 72-73, _Reason_ for 8/03. The thesis of the piece is that "_Buffy_ assumes and enacts the consensus moral understanding of contemporary American culture." Postrel identifies this consensus understanding as composed of seven principles; she comments on each one, and offers an example of its representation in the _Buffy_ series. The seven principles are: "Evil exists. Redemption is possible. Evil must be fought. Evil never goes away. We don't get to choose our reality. We do get to choose what we do. Life's pleasures are precious." Here's an example, on page 72:

"_Evil never goes away_. Individual evildoers can be defeated; the current manifestation of evil can be destroyed. But, says Buffy, 'There's always more.' "

3. My thanks to Kathe Rauch for sending "Why Prayer Could Be Good Medicine," by Dianne Hales, pp. 4-5, _Parade_ for 3/23/03. The article is a well-written brief overview of the research and controversy about whether prayer heals. Two quotes:

" 'We are not out to prove that a deity exists,' says Prof. Diane Becker of Johns Hopkins, recipient of two NIH grants for research on prayer. 'We are trying to see whether prayer has meaning to people that translates into biology and affects a disease process.' "

And Dr. Harold Koenig (of Duke University's Cener for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health) says that prayer "boosts morale, lowers agitation, loneliness and life dissatisfaction, and enhances the ability to cope in men, women, the elderly, the young, the healthy and the sick."

(Koenig conducted a six-year research study at Duke with 4000 people over 64; findings included the claim that those in the group who said they never prayed had a 50 percent greater chance of dying than those who prayed or meditated regularly, even when results were adjusted to take into account such factors as smoking and social support networks.)

4. In "Mary grows up: The Virgin in her later years," by Lesley Hazleton (pp. 12-13, _The Women's Review of Books_, 7/03; on page 12), the writer describes Mary critically, as "a being so self-effacing that all she can say at the Annunciation is 'Let it be done unto me' -- a phrase some biblical scholars interpret as a queenly 'Let it be,' but that can as easily be read as a cowed 'Yes, sir,' or even as a sulky 'Whatever.' "

Whoa, please. I understand Hazleton's desire to replace the "ethereal" Mary of Renaissance art with a woman more like she must actually have been, a desire Hazleton fulfilled by writing _Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography_. But I don't understand the comment above. We are talking about a young girl who is talking to an angel, and one of the biggest of the Big Name Angels (Gabriel) to boot. She was unlikely to have had much instruction in the proper mode for conversing with angels, and I believe that "self-effacing" was an excellent choice. I'm an old woman with plenty of experience of the world, and if _I_ ever found myself obliged to speak to an angel, I would most certainly be as self-effacing as possible. My thanks to Sally Lloyd for the copy.

[Note: This issue of TWRB was a special issue on "Women aging," with lots of interesting content (although as almost always happens, I found myself having little in common with either the women writing or the women written about). I especially enjoyed Florence Howe's "My 'old ladies' ," on pp. 14-16. Back issues are $4.00, to The Women's Review, Inc., 838 Washington St., Wellesley, Ma 02481.]

5. "I've heard that in English-speaking countries the question most commonly asked about the Bible is, 'Why does it emphasize those words? I mean, uh, like, all those words in italics?' The question comes from readers of the King James translation. That's the one that says, 'And God saw the light, that _it_ _was_ good.' People naturally wonder why you're supposed to raise your voice when you get to a passage like 'it was.' The answer is, you're not. The translators of the King James Version... valued faithfulness so highly that they used warning italics when they inserted words that do not appear in the original but are necessary to fill out the sense in English."

This comes from "Word Watch," by Stephen Cox, pp. 18-19 in the 8/03 _Liberty_, on page 18. It surprised me; I thought I had heard every surprising about-the-Bible question in existence, but I've never heard this one. In my experience, anyone reading the King James for the first time asks "Why are those words so funny-looking?" (if they're youngsters) and "Why are those words in italics?" (if they're adults), and hears the answer, and that's the end of the matter.

6. Recently I bought a copy of the Spring/Summer 2003 issue of _What Is Enlightenment?_, seduced by the content blurbs on the cover. "Can God handle the 21st century?" in big red type. Titles like "Can Religion Save Us?" and "The Messiah, the Apocalypse & Your Salvation." Writers like Ray Kurzweil, Jeremy Rifkin, Thomas Berry... Who could resist? I couldn't, but I was very disappointed. The magazine is awfully pretty, awfully modern, and -- to my mind -- mostly a waste of my time, although it was interesting to read profiles of people who actually believe that they _are_ the Messiah. I did find one useful quote on page 63, in "Traditions on the Edge: can the past meet the future?", by Jessica Roemischer (pp. 56-68); the speaker is Dr. Ismar Schorsch.

"Judaism is about self-restraint, through a ritual language that imposes limits on the individual. Many prohibitions in Judaism pertaining to the way we conduct our lives are also about restricting the human appetite. Judaism is about teaching us to be satisfied with less. So one day out of seven we don't work. That's an incredible environmental contribution. Imagine if, as a globe, we were governed with a day of rest, when we would not be shopping and indulging our consumerism. The streets would grow quiet. We would be able to enrich our inner lives and, for one day, cease ravaging the planet. I think the Sabbath is an environmental holiday."

7. From "The Prophet's Pulpit," an interesting interview with Patrick Gaffney by Agnieszka Tenna, on pp. 19-21, _Books & Culture_ for 1-2/02:

On page 19: "I should add that Islamic preaching has a linguistic code. In traditional understanding, the clerics are supposed to preach in formal Arabic. The difference between written Arabic and spoken Arabic is much greater than the difference between written English and spoken English... ... Preachers have customarily employed high, formal Arabic even though the uneducated people don't understand such language very well. ... In the last 30 years however, the Islamist movement and its mujahid preachers (the warrior type) have introduced the language of the street into preaching. This informal langauge, which used to be taboo, evokes a more immediate response from ordinary people."

And on page 21: "I don't think it's widely understood that Muslims worship the same God that Christians and Jews worship. Allah in the Islamic tradition is the same spiritual being as Yahweh, the Lord. Muslims worship the God of Abraham. And Muhammad understood his calling as a prophet to be in full continuity with the God of Abraham. ... Jesus is a stumbling block, and genuine Muslim-Christian dialogue is difficult. Jesus is central for us as Christians in a way that Muslims simply cannot accept. They have their own Jesus, but it's a Jesus we hardly recognize."

8. Also in the 1-2/02 _Books & Culture_ (in "Maya Mysteries," by Wendy Murray Zoba, pp. 28-31; on page 28):

" 'Picture a square bed sheet,' my informant instructed. 'The four corners are the four cardinal points. Now picture four heavenly creatures holding each of the corners: The creature on the northern corner is white; the one on the east is red; the one on the south is yellow; the one holding the western corner is black. Now picture not one, but 13 sheets, one on top of the other, rising upward. These are the 13 layers of the Maya Upperworld. The sky-bearers, _bacabs_, are holding the corners of the 13 levels. The book of the Apocalypse in the Bible talks about four horsemen in heaven. Their horses are white, red, black, and yellow, like the _bacabs_. It talks about four angels holding the four corners of the earth. Isn't that interesting?' "

"When the Spanish conquistadors appeared in the sixteenth century with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, the Maya were already intimately familiar with many of the religious concepts the Spanish thought they were introducing to this 'primitive' people...."

9. From "Primal Silence," by Steve Perrin, pp. 50-54, _PanGaia_ for Winter 01-02; on page 52:

"To approach the seat of personal experience, Quakers still themselves by agreeing not to intrude on one another's peace, so wait together in shared silence. That silence, so unusual in this information age, produces a powerful effect. People create a space among and within themselves for rediscovering who they are, not as true adherents to a common faith, but as individuals. Quakerism is truly a grassroots religion: a joining of individuals unique in themselves to form a larger body, not a larger body imposing its dogma on wayward individuals. Communal self-discovery is the fruit of Quaker worship, and expectant silence is its method."

And also: "Many Quaker meetings for worship are 'gathered' in the sense that the circle is centered on a common concern, and successive speakers address different facets of one issue, adding their voices to a shared revelation, binding the meeting as a community of seekers."

10. I'm not going to try to quote from it, but I want to strongly recommend "A Gospel According to the Earth," by Jack Hitt, pp. 41-55 of the 7/03 _Harper's_. You'll like the way it looks; it's set as a contemporary version of an "illuminated" manuscript, and it's very handsome. Some of the section titles: "The Book of Tomato"; "The Book of Stag Bladder"; "The Book of Fireflies"; "The Book of Jesus Christ, Freelance Writer"; "The Book of the Weather Channel, Revealed." (My thanks to Pat Mathews for the copy.)

CYBERSPACE

1. From Religion Bookline for 7/22/03, in a discussion of the recent Christian Booksellers Association International Convention in Orlando, Florida:

"Patriotism was also a big theme in Orlando. The Presidential Prayer Team, a national organization of almost three million citizens pledged to support the president with daily prayer, held a press conference on Monday morning to announce new partnerships with several Christian book and music publishers. J. Countryman will publish two titles: 'The Presidential Prayer Team Devotional' and 'The Presidential Prayer Team Prayer Journal.' Tommy Nelson will publish 'Kids Who Pray for the USA,' a volume for children."

I had no idea that there was such a thing as the "Presidential Prayer Team," much less that it had a children's division and was entering into partnerships with publishers!

2. Notice in the current issue of _Image_: "The _Image_ Study Guide is now available on our website. The pilot guide covers content from five selected issues of _Image_ in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and the visual arts, and includes discussion questions, activities, and suggestions for further reading." At http://www.imagejournal.org. [My elderly browser won't let me access this material; I'd welcome your comments after you've looked at it.]

3. Kathe Rauch alerted me to the Pentagon Meditation Club's website, at http://www.pentagonmeditationclub.org. (The stated goal of the PMC is to banish war from the face of the earth; it received its official charter from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 1976, and functioned at the Pentagon through 1996, but "is now a civilian based activity operating from outside the Pentagon facility." That it's now a civilian outfit does not surprise me.) Here are two items from the FAQ, to give you a sense of the site:

Q6: "What is the ultimate solution?"
A: "The problem of conflict and war is basically theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character."

Q10. "What is spiritual defense?"
A: "When enough people call on the Name of God in prayer and meditation, there will be an end to wars, terrorism and other forms of violence in the world. Herein is a hidden technology for transformation and spiritual defense, which serves to change the way of knowing, thinking and the behavior needed to eliminate the evil of war, conflict and strife."

That "when enough people" bit strikes me as shoddy theology. As if God had a quota system for putting an end to violence. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding; perhaps the idea is that when enough people share that attitude toward violence, they will word their prayers to express that attitude? Maybe. It's anything but clear. I also don't understand at all why this technology is described as "hidden."

4. "For a decade, the Spindrift organization of Salem, Oregon has conducted experiments on the ability of a prayer practitioner to effect changes in simple biological systems such as sprouting seeds or yeast cultures. Their findings show that the most powerful method of prayer is when the person uses a _non-directed_ approach in which he or she does not attempt to _tell_ the object of prayers specifically what to do -- i.e., if he or she prays that _Thy will be done_ or _May the best thing happen_). This _let it be_ method is difficult for many people to accept, for we usually prefer a _directed_ form of prayer in which we tell the universe what to do -- praying for the cancer to go away, the heart attack to repair itself, etc. But the Spindrift experiments show that, although both methods work, the non-directed approach is much more powerful than the directed method."

[Larry Dossey, in "Prayer and Imagery," online at http://www.imagerynet.com/ atlantis/articles/prayer.html.]

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that "May the best thing happen" prayers are more effective than "May the cancer go away" prayers; certainly they are safer, since you can never know what awful thing might follow from the cancer having gone away. But the statement Dossey makes above reminds me of research that extrapolates from rats to human beings; it seems to me that the evidence is only that the non-directed approach to prayer is more powerful than the directed approach when the object of prayer is something like sprouting seeds or yeast cultures.

5. PCA NEWS for 4/2/03 quoted from a 3/2/03 _Los Angeles Times_ review of the _Left Behind_ series ("Danger Lurks in the Fringes," by Zachary Karabell), a review that asked two questions: " How many Americans embrace the story not as fiction but as prophecy? And how much is the public policy of the country driven by a stark conviction that a final battle between good and evil is fast approaching?" Here's
an excerpt:

"Had these books simply found a small niche audience, we could ignore them as cultural flotsam... But the 'Left Behind' series is not a fringe phenomenon, and the story is not treated as fiction by many of its readers. ... [T]he message of 'Left Behind' as applied to current affairs isn't fringe. It is, in fact, quite similar to some of the messages emanating from Washington. The response of some in the U.S. government to the crises of the last year and a half feels ripped from the pages of the 'Left Behind' books. ... [These books] are danger signs."

The review is online at http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/books/la-bk-karabell2mar02,1,5039723.story.

6.. Some webplaces to check out: "How Should You Pray?" at http://1stholistic.com/Prayer/hol_prayer_HowToPray.htm#StylesofPrayer; also at the Holistic-online site, a long list of links for "Prayer and Spiritual Healing" -- http://1stholistic.com/Prayer/hol_prayer_home.htm.

ANNOUNCEMENT

We now have Peacetalk 101 available as an audiobook. It's read by me, and is about 1 1/2 hours long, available as either two tapes or two CDs. The price is $10 for the set, plus $3.50 shipping, to OCLS, PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137; by check, money order, or Visa/Mastercard.

[Note: I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who has used Peacetalk 101 (with or without the workbook) as material for a Sunday School class or other church group. If I can help in any way, just let me know.]

TO JOIN A NETWORK AND RECEIVE ITS NEWSLETTER: Send newsletter title, your e-mail address, and your check, money order, or credit card information (for Visa or Mastercard) to OCLS, PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 USA. The newsletters are: _The Linguistics & Science Fiction Newsletter_; _The Religious Language Newsletter_; and _The Verbal Self-Defense Newsletter_. Each $5.00 a year ($15.00 Supporting) for the six issues of the calendar year, by e-mail only, advertising-free. For more information or a free sample issue, e-mail OCLS@madisoncounty.net. [Note: The new _Peacetalk 101 Newsletter_ is free; contact information is the same.]

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