September/October 2007 Newsletter

The Religious Language Newsletter
Volume 8, Issue 5 -- September/October 2007
==========================================================
The Religious Language Newsletter (available by e-mail only) is written and published every other month by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D. (linguistics), from the Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS), at PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137. For additional information, or to unsubscribe, please e-mail ocls@madisoncounty.net.
==========================================================
In This Issue: Editor's Note; Quotes & Comments; Cyberspace; A Religious Language Conflagration That Should Have Been Avoided

#Editor's Note

There's more than the usual amount of editorial business to bring up this bimonth; I'll do my best to keep it brief.

First, I'm concerned by the fact that I got no e-mails from anyone among you telling me that you hadn't received your July/August newsletter (or some part of the newsletter). I don't feel safe assuming that the cybergremlins have found some other target for their activities and that everything arrived without a single glitch. If you did _not_ get one or more parts of the issue, please let me know so that I can re-send it.

Second, because September has come around again, it's time for me to start mentioning the topic of newsletter renewals for 2008. Early renewals are a tremendous help to me, always, and I'll be grateful for them; if you'd rather not renew early, that's also fine -- just try to be sure your renewal reaches me by December 15, 2007, so that I can get all the "list management" tasks out of the way before I send out the first newsletter for 2008.

And finally, I want to let you know that 2008 is going to be the last year that I publish three separate newsletters. I'm sorry about that; I've done all three for so long that it will feel strange not to, and for some of you it will be an inconvenience. But the time has come for me to cut back a bit, and I wanted to give you ample warning.

My plan for 2009 right now is to go back to publishing just one e-mail newsletter, to be called _The Lonesome Node_, and to include in it sections on Religious Language, on Verbal Self-Defense, and on Linguistics &Science Fiction. I would welcome your comments about that plan, as well as any input you might be willing to provide on how you'd like for me to carry it out. The more I know about what you'd like to see in that one newsletter, the more likely it is that I can make it "speak to your needs." I'd welcome your help.

#Quotes & Comments

1. The 7-8/07 issue of _Books & Culture_, pp. 14-15, had a thought-provoking review by Lauren F. Winner of Margaret Kim Peterson's book _Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life_; the review is titled "An Outpost of God's Kingdom: Making a Christian Home." On page 14:

"Peterson's interpretation of housework is deeply scriptural. _Keeping House_ is organized around what Peterson identifies as three crucial imperatives in the Bible -- the injunctions to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. Those three activities are at the heart of Jesus' words to the disciples in Matthew 25, and they are at the heart of housekeeping. In Peterson's hands, rather mundane tasks like cooking, washing clothes, and changing the sheets become crucial, transformative acts of love. Insofar as housework is creative, incarnational, physical, and sacramental, exposing the ways the material and the spiritual come together to remind us that 'the provision of home is a central aspect of God's creative and redemptive activity,' housework allows us to participate in life with the God who called the very dust mites into being."

And on page 15:

"In an 18th-century American household -- at least a free, white 18th-century household -- women's work was skilled work: women produced and preserved food, spun yarn, made soap. By the late 20th century, the complex set of skills and knowledge that 'home economy' once required had become obsolete (or such was the common perception), replaced by the 'skill' of smart shopping... At the same time, the rise of germ theory created new standards of cleanliness within the home, so in place of meaningful, productive work, housekeeping increasingly devolved into shopping and scrubbing. No wonder work within the household lost social capital."

I'm going to have to spend some time soon doing housework that I find distasteful beyond description -- like taking every single thing out of each of the kitchen cupboards, cleaning them to a faretheewell, and then putting every single thing back. I'd like to think that I could manage to perceive that as a spiritual task, but I have my doubts; I have a feeling that that's far beyond my capacity.

2. My thanks to Sally Lloyd for sending me a copy of "Should Science Speak to Faith?" on pp. 88-91 of the 7/07 issue of _Scientific American_. The piece is billed as a debate, and the debaters are Lawrence M. Krauss and Richard Dawkins; the headline blurb reads "Two prominent defenders of science exchange their views on how scientists ought to approach religion and its followers."

I was all for Krauss at first. There he was, on page 89, saying (a bit polysyllabically, but sensibly) that "Telling people... that their deepest beliefs are simply silly -- even if they _are_ -- and that they should therefore listen to us to learn the truth ultimately defeats subsequent pedagogy." There he was on page 90 saying that "one cannot pick and choose in one's fundamentalism. If one believes that homosexuality is an abomination because it says so in the Bible, one has to accept the other things that are said in the Bible, including the allowance to kill your children if they are disobedient.... and so forth." But he lost me for good on page 89, where the following exchange took place:

Dawkins:
"I once wrote in a _New York Times_ book review, 'It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).' That sentence has been quoted again and again in support of the view that I am a bigoted, intolerant, closed-minded, intemperate ranter. But just look at my sentence. It may not be crafted to seduce, but you, Lawrence, know in your heart that it is a simple and sober statement of fact. Ignorance is no crime. To call somebody ignorant is no insult. All of us are ignorant of most of what there is to know. I am completely ignorant of baseball, and I dare say that you are as completely ignorant of cricket."

Krauss:
"I have to say that I agree completely with you about this. ... It is not pejorative to suggest that someone is ignorant if they misunderstand scientific issues."

Hello?? Both Dawkins and Krauss know perfectly well that being called ignorant is perceived as an insult, and as a pejorative, by native speakers of English. And Dawkins knows perfectly well that his statement about people who don't believe in evolution being "ignorant, stupid or insane" is the utterance of a bigoted, intolerant, closed-minded, intemperate ranter; the fact that he is also a distinguished scholar and author does not change that.

An extended version of this debate is online at http://tinyurl.com/249kpe .

3. From "God Is in the T Bills," a brief interview by Jason Storbakken with Bishop T.D. Jakes, on page 58 of the 6/4/07 _Forbes_:

Q: "How do you use business to preach to wrongdoers?"
A: "You cannot share the Gospel with somebody who is a convict, a drug dealer or a prostitute because when you share the Gospel you actually put them out of business. You have to teach them how to operate a business that is moral and Christian-based. If you lead them to the Lord but leave them grumbling in the street without any economic empowerment they ultimately digress [sic] back into the hole they came from."

According to _Forbes_, Jakes was once named "America's Best Preacher" by _Time_. According to _Forbes_, in Jakes' current book _Reposition Yourself_ (his 25th book), he writes that "Money is the answer to everything." What he might have to say about the _love_ of money, I have no idea.

4. Thanks to Patricia Mathews for sending "Theologian urges a new way of looking at Jesus," by Nancy Haught, in the 4/5/07 issue of _USA Today_. The theologian in question is Marcus J. Borg, theology professor and author, former member of the Jesus Seminar; and the article presents some religious language that is new to me.

For example, Born is quoted saying: "To 'belove' Jesus means more than simply loving Jesus. It means to love what Jesus loved. That is at the heart of Christianity." [I did a Google search for "belove," and found it defined simply as "love"; it also appears to be a common surname.]

And Haught tells us that Borg's fans wear T-shirts that "borrowing from _Star Wars_," say: "May the 'phors' be with you'." 'Phors. As in "metaphors."

4. In "Having faith in women," by Oliver "Buzz" Thomas [_USA Today_ for 4/9/07], Thomas points out that the two largest religious denominations in the U.S. -- the Catholics and the Southern Baptists -- still refuse to ordain women, and asks whether this refusal can be justified biblically, perhaps by St. Paul's admonishment to women in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 that they are to keep silent and are not to teach. And then...

"This is not the first time the church has had to escape the clutches of biblical injunctions that have no place in today's world. St. Paul ordered slaves to submit to their masters and masters to be good to their slaves. He never even hinted that a better option for masters would be to free their slaves. Even the most literalistic interpreters of Scripture now concede that for one person to enslave another is a sin. Yet, during the 19th century, Southerners, of whom I am one, used the Bible to justify their sin. Two centuries and a bloody civil water later, we should know better. ... When church leaders quote texts written in the first century to people living in the 21st century, do we not sound like my Southern forebears who tried to stop the abolitionist movement (and later the civil rights movement) by quoting the Bible?"

Excellent question.

5. "...[M]uch of what is being faced and experienced by many mainline Protestant churches is not about them. It is about the end of an era, a sea change in the religious ecology of North American and the role of congregations in our society. American Christendom is over. While this may not be news to most clergy, it remains news for many in our congregations. Churhc leaders need to do a better job of helping their congregations understand what is meant by 'Christendom' and what that era meant... "

This is Anthony B. Robinson, writing on page 24 of "Changing the Conversation: Nurturing a Third Way for Congregations," an article on pp. 23-28 of the Summer 2007 issue of _Congregations_; my thanks to Hillevi M. Wyman for the copy. The article got my attention because it opened by saying that the "dominant interpretive framework of American society" is the polarized either/or framework with no middle ground, and went on to ask if a "third way" is possible when church congregations experience conflict; it includes ten recommended "conversations" that Robinson claims will help find that third way. I plan to discuss some of those conversations in another issue of this newsletter.

However, when I got to the paragraph I quoted above, I was sidetracked by the sentence saying "American Christendom is over," and by the immediate realization that I was far from certain what Robinson meant by "Christendom" in that paragraph. Where I live, the entity that I understand to represent the meaning of "Christendom" is certainly not over, or even on the wane, and I was puzzled. So I went googling. And I came across an article titled "The end of Christendom," by Stuart Murray, at http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/361 . From reading that article -- which is written in the UK, where it appears that Christendom _is_ over -- I learned a good deal. Including this: "Missing from the list of western societies experiencing the shift to post-Christendom was the United States of America. ... In some parts of America, despite constitutional separation between church and state, an unofficial but deeply entrenched form of Christendom continues to thrive."

And the Murray article gifted me with this extraordinary anecdote about something that I'm certain could not _possibly_ have taken place in my area of the United States:

"In a London school a teenager with no church connections hears the Christmas story for the first time. His teacher tells it well and he is fascinated by this amazing story. Risking his friends' mockery, after the lesson he thanks her for the story. One thing had disturbed him, so he asks: 'Why did they give the baby a swear-word for his name?"

6. Thanks to Patricia Mathews for "Opening the door for us all," by Joel P. Engardio, from the 5/7/07 _USA Today_. Engardio is a Jehovah's Witness; here's his final paragraph:

"I'm proud of my door-knocking childhood... Consider this: At their last Supreme Court appearance, in 2002, Jehovah's Witnesses successfully argued that the climate of fear surrounding 9/11 should not justify the government's right to limit free speech by requiring permission to knock. I want to live in a society where everyone has the right to knock on a door and speak face-to-face with his neighbor. Even, as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, if it's just to 'borrow a cup of sugar.' "

The article included a sidebar -- also written by Engardio -- titled "Jehovah's Witnesses 101"; its "Beliefs" section reads as follows:

"God's name is Jehovah. His son Jesus preached the Gospel on earth and died for mankind's salvation. Like Jesus, Christians should be 'witnesses' of Jehovah's purpose. The world is currently ruled by Satan, which explains suffering and evil. But in the battle of Armageddon, God will destroy the responsible political, religious and economic systems that operate under Satan's influence. The earth will be restored to paradise. The crucifix should not be worshipped because Jesus died on a pole, not a cross."

I didn't know that Jehovah's Witnesses believe suffering and evil is explained by the belief that "the world is currently ruled by Satan."

7. When Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy wrote the cover story for the 7/23/07 issue of _Time_, they laid on the religious language with a trowel, to the point that I suspect its effects grew weaker and weaker as the pages (28-34) went by and it all became far too cute. I've never seen a political article not intended as satire written in the religious register to the extent that this one is. Here's a list of the most obvious items....

Cover blurb: "How The Democrats Got Religion": "They ignored the faithful for decades. Now Clinton, Obama and Edwards want to level the praying field."

Page 28 (and a bit of 29) illustration: A stained glass window with Clinton, Obama and Edwards standing before it with their hands in what I believe is intended to represent a "clasped in prayer" gesture; the title "Leveling the Praying Field"; title blurb reading "The Democratic front runners are leading their party's crusade to win over religious voters"

Page 29: "the gates of heaven"; "the holy wars"; "marinated in Scripture"; "a Great Awakening in the Democratic Party"; "this revival"; "the biblical imperative"

Page 30: "fluent in the language of the faith"; "godless hedonists"; and [quoting Obama] "ask believers to leave their religion at the door"

Page 31: "show some spiritual skin"; [quoting Edwards] "the hand of God today; "prayer life"; "the churchgoing vote"; [header] "The Valley of the Shadow of Defeat"; "a spiritual journey"; "baptism by full immersion"; "helping the least, the lost, and the last"; "religious outreach"

Page 32: "getting into the spirit"; "any common language of faith"; "test the holy waters"; "a stronger faith-based bass line"; "sell their liberal souls"; "traditional religious alliances"; "Redeem the Vote"

Page 33: photo of Hillary Clinton, perhaps praying

Page 34: "a new army of Christian soldiers"; [header] "Parting the Red Sea"; "faith-based"; "close the party's 30-year God gap"; "great awakening"; "faith-minded"; "Democratic rebirth"; "preaching to a much larger congregation"

8. In "The Catholic Origins of Manliness" (pp. 16-17, _Catholic Men's Quarterly_ for Winter/Spring 2007), Michael P. Foley notes that Achilles has often been proposed as a "paragon" of the Real Man, and then goes on on page 17 to say this:

"Jesus Christ the New Man gave us a counterintuitive yet ultimately greater model of manhood, one that has the _chutzpah_ to beat down one's own vainglory for the greater glory of God and for the sake of defending His most helpless creatures. The result is a blend of solicitude, gentleness, and toughness that makes Achilles' egotistical bravado look puerile. And for that we can be profoundly grateful."

My thanks to Douglas Dee for the copy.

9. On pp. 8-9 of "Naming God," (pp. 8-10 of the 1-2/07 _Books & Culture_), Virginia Stem Owens discusses various possibilities; and then, on page 9, she writes:

"So I'm back to Lord. Even though it isn't native to our times or tongues, it leaps unbidden to our praying lips. It's the name which most of us have heard most frequently, both in and out of prayer, whether talking to or about God. Because Lord, either in lower- or all uppercase letters, stands in for several Hebrew divine monikers, it appears more often in Scripture than any other name. We often use Lord in offhand colloquial expressions such as, 'The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.' We take our troubles 'to the Lord in prayer.' And I use such exclamatory phrases as 'Good Lord' with no hesitation whereas I would shrink from using _God_ in the same mode."

And _then_, on pp. 9-10, there's this:

"I have an elderly cousin who sometimes addresses her prayers directly to Jesus, adding the shockingly familiar accolade, "You're just so precious!" This woman has been throughout her long life a better Christian than I'll ever be, yet I cringe when she says it, picturing her tweaking Jesus' cheek."

I wonder about that last item (and sincerely hope that the elderly cousin in question doesn't read _Books & Culture_). There are two quite different tunes those words can be set to -- two quite different intonational patterns. There's "You're JUST so PRECIOUS!" -- which is the one that goes with cheek-tweaking. And then there's the other pattern, in which there's no emphasis on "just" and there's a marked drop in pitch on both syllables of "precious." That one lacks the shocking familiarity.

10. From "I Confess, I Want Latin," by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, on page 60 of the 7/30/07 issue of _Time_:

"I come today having heard that Pope Benedict XVI has just removed restrictions on celebrating Mass in Latin. Many of those who favor a return to the Tridentine Mass were born before 1930 and long for it out of conservative nostalgia. Not me. I confess: I want to hear Mass sung in a language I don't understand because too often I don't like what I hear in English."

And....

"In my desire to return to church, I see the Latin Mass as an acceptable solution: With your back to the congregation and speaking in a dead language, you would find it difficult to tell me how to vote. Allow me to experience the joy of communion without the anguish of our modern-day differences."

Cullen has my sincere sympathy. I can think of many a Baptist sermon that I would rather have heard sung, and would rather have heard sung in Latin....

#Cyberspace

1. The _Internet Scout Report_ for 6/22/07 had an interesting brief review of a report from the Pew Hispanic Center titled "Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion," online at http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/75.pdf . Here's a sample:

"Released in April 2007, the report takes an informed and broad look at the ways in which Latinos are transforming American religion. Working in collaboration with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the Pew Hispanic Center conducted over 4600 interviews in order to create an accurate portrait of the ways in which Latinos worship and how the emergence of Latino-oriented churches is changing the broader religious landscape across the United States. The report is divided into eight chapters, which include 'Religious Practices and Beliefs', 'The Ethnic Church', and 'Ideology and Policy Issues'.

2. From a review note in _Publishers Lunch_ for 4/5/07, titled "Pope Criticizes Rich Nations in New Book":

"An excerpt from Pope Benedict's forthcoming book JESUS OF NAZARETH is 'passionately anti-materialistic and anti-capitalist,' the Guardian reports, accusing rich nations of having "plundered and sacked" Africa
and other poor areas of the world." [Article at http://tinyurl.com/2mfysz .]

"Plundered" and "sacked." Those are heavy-duty words, with heavy-duty religious connotations. I wonder whether they are in fact _exactly_ the words used in the book before its translation into English. The article in the _Guardian_ doesn't specify the language of the original.

3. Here is an extraodinary, and very different, example of the effects of religious language; my thanks to Cindy Brown for alerting me to it. It's by fourth-year rabbinical student Jordana Gerson, it's titled "Rabbinical School Is Ruining My Love Life: I promise God won't smite you for taking me out to dinner," and it's online at http://tinyurl.com/34gkha . Samples....

"For many Jewish men in their 20s, you can't just date a rabbi. You have to be serious about her. This Madonna-whore complex has wreaked utter havoc on my dating life, and produced more conversations with the word 'marriage' in it than I want to recall. ... But too many Jewish men think that they have to be serious -- on-the-road-to-marriage serious -- to even casually date me."

"There's nothing as frustrating as dating a great guy who adores you but is afraid to touch you because he's worried that he'll incur the wrath of God. (Or be smote. Be careful when and with whom you joke about smiting.' "

And finally....

"The problem is this: I'm not willing to give any of this up. Not my sexuality, not my spirituality, not my Judaism, and not my career. I want it all. And as a third-wave feminist, I want to believe that I can have it. I expect it. So mah la'asot? What to do?"

I'm not at all sure that Gerson's situation is comparable to the situation of a young woman who's a fourth-year student in a Protestant Christian seminary, studying to become a pastor. Because she begins by explaining that Judaism's attitude toward sexuality is very different from that of Christianity. Recommended.

4. From "Making Distinctions - Seeing Possibilities," by Chip Berlet, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/7/22/103145/861 :

"Letha Dawson Scanzoni has produced a useful set of distinctions that explain this in her AlterNet article "The Gospel On Gay Marriage":

Aggressive Combatants, who mobilize their followers to go to battle against whatever they consider to be the current threat (most recently, same-sex marriage);

Loyal Followers, who consider the Combatants to be their religious authorities, buying their books, tuning in to their broadcasts, accepting their interpretations of the Bible, and responding to their fundraising pleas;

Thoughtful Questioners, who were drawn to the movement by its emphasis on a personal relationship with God and the importance of the Bible in their lives but are not convinced that all issues are settled or that all the answers are already in;

Hurting Strugglers, sincere believers who earnestly practiced their faith and followed the rules they had been taught, yet were faced with some circumstance that turned their well-ordered world upside down -- a divorce, a gay child, a pregnant teenager, domestic violence, mental illness, job loss, bankruptcy, a suicide in the family.

5. IN PEN Weekly NewsBlast for 7/27/07, titled "The Case for Teaching the Bible":

"Public school courses on the Bible are growing nationwide. There aren't that many. But they're rising in popularity. Last year Georgia became the first state in memory to offer funds for high school electives on the Old and New Testaments using the Bible as the core text. Similar funding was discussed in several other legislatures, although the initiatives did not become law. Meanwhile, two privately produced curriculums crafted specifically to pass church-state muster are competing for use in individual schools nationwide. Combined, they are employed in 460 districts in at least 37 states. The numbers are modest, but their publishers expect them to soar. The smaller of the two went into operation just last year but is already into its second 10,000-copy printing, has expressions of interest from 1,000 new districts this year and expects many more. The larger publisher claims to be roughly doubling the number of districts it adds each year. These new curriculums plus polls suggesting that over 60 percent of Americans favor secular teaching about the Bible suggest that a public school teacher may soon be talking about Matthew or Genesis in a school near you. To some, this idea seems retrograde. Citing a series of Supreme Court decisions culminating in 1963's Abington Township School District v. Schempp, which removed prayer and devotion from the classroom, the skeptics ask whether it is safe to bring back the source of all that sectarianism. But a new, post-Schempp coalition insists it is essential to do so. It argues that teaching the Bible in schools -- as an object of study, not God's received word -- is eminently constitutional. The Bible so pervades Western culture, it says, that it's hard to call anyone educated who hasn't at least given thought to its key passages. The 'new consensus' for secular Bible study argues that knowledge of it is essential to being a full-fledged, well-rounded citizen."

[Note: To subscribe to PEN Weekly NewsBlast, go to http:// www.publiceducation.org/subscribe.asp .]

6. From PEN Weekly NewsBlast for 8/3/07, titled "Some Say Schools Give Muslims Special Treatment":

"Some public schools and universities are granting Muslim requests for prayer times, prayer rooms and ritual foot baths, prompting a debate on whether Islam is being given preferential treatment over other religions. An elementary school in San Diego created an extra recess period for Muslim pupils to pray. Critics see a double standard and an organized attempt to push public conformance with Islamic law. 'What (school officials) are doing ... is to give Muslim students religious benefits that they do not give any other religion right now,' says Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Law Center, an advocacy group for Christians. Supporters of the accommodations say they are legal, reports Oren Dorell in USA TODAY. 'The whole issue is to provide for a religious foundation for those who are observant while respecting separation of church and state,' says Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Many schools accommodate the Christian and Jewish sabbaths and allow Jewish students to not take tests on religious holidays, he says. Barry Lynn, of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, says that the law is murky on these expressions of faith. And the American Civil Liberties Union says overt religious symbols such as crucifixes are not legal, but whether Muslim foot baths and prayer rugs fall into that category is not clear. The ACLU, which has often sued schools for permitting prayer, says it is waiting to see what kind of policy the San Diego school settles on before deciding whether to sue. It says promoting prayers is unconstitutional."
[See http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070726/a_muslim26.art.htm . See also "Muslim prayers in school debated," at http://www.signonsandiego.com/union/trib/20070702/news_1n2prayer.html .]

7. Thanks to Cindy Brown for "Rise of the funerals that leave out God," by Caroline McClatchey, at http://tinyurl.com/39coea . This is again a story from the UK, where, McClatchey says, there were more than 30,00 funerals in 2006 that "were non-religious, as families turn increasingly to 'celebration-of-life' ceremonies... "
She goes on to say:

"Ten years ago, a funeral without a minister of religion and reference to God was virtually unheard of but increasingly, services are presided over by a 'celebrant' and involve poems instead of psalms, while mourners are often asked to wear something bright rather than black."

I wasn't surprised by this; I've been to memorial services here in the U.S. that were entirely non-religious. I went to one recently where all the music was jazz. But I _was_ surprised by this sentence about the situation in Britain:

"The rise is being attributed to people's willingness to admit that they are non-believers, and to their desire to avoid 'hypocrisy.' "

8. "... [T]heists are too quick to project their experiences onto atheists. They imagine the atheist must have a god-sized hole inside him, that he must feel empty and hollow. What if he doesn't? ... And you know the conversion experience? That moment when you found God? How suddenly the world looked new and anything seemed possible? Believers need to understand that _everybody_ gets that experience. It's not specific to any particular religion. A lot of atheists had that experience when they _dropped_ their concept of God. ... Both sides need to understand this: Not everyone who disagrees with you is stupid or obstinate or hard-hearted or evil. Some people disagree because they have experiences that don't fit neatly into your categories. You need to respect that possibility if you're going to have a productive conversation."

This is from an interesting talk by Doug Muder titled "Meeting at Infinity: What Theists and Atheists Can Learn From Each Other," online at http://freeandresponsible.blogspot.com/2006/04/going-home-again.html . Recommended.

And in this context, I want to quote from an article by Tom Flynn -- writing as a secular humanist -- titled "The Big M," on pp. 14-15 of the 6-7/07 issue of _Free Inquiry_, sent to me by Douglas Dee. The "Big M" is Flynn's term (on page 14) for "the conviction that there exists an exterior source of Meaning with a capital _M_ ..." -- his term for "transcendent Meaning." And on page 15 he says:

"Admitting that small-m meanings are all you'll ever have takes guts, especially for people who've known the addictive comfort of believing in something more. ... Their robust existential courage is, to me, one of the most stirring aspects of living without religion. Some of us take deep pride in acknowledging that aching place where God and certainty and Meaning used to be -- and in resolutely _leaving it empty_, even though it hurts, because we know it as a place where nothing true can dwell."

Which leads me to add to Muder's "They imagine the atheist must have a god-sized hole inside him, that he must feel empty and hollow. What if he doesn't?": What if he _does_?

9. From a review by H. Allen Orr, titled "A Religion for Darwinians?", of Philip Kitcher's _Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith_, at http://www.powells.com/n/217/review/2007_08_20 :

"Kitcher hopes to accomplish two things in _Living with Darwin_. One is to survey various versions of creationism and to recount the arguments against them. In doing so, he hopes to present a positive case for Darwinism and 'to formulate it in a way that people with no great training in science, history, or philosophy could appreciate.' Kitcher's other goal is more ambitious and... perhaps more important. He hopes to get at just what it is about Darwinism that's so threatening to religion. Why is it that of all intellectual enterprises, this one 'particular piece of science provokes such passions, requires such continual scrutiny, demands such constant reenactment of old battles?' ... In the final part of this book, Kitcher thus offers his diagnosis of the difficulties Darwinism poses to faith and describes the adjustments to religion that he believes are demanded by science."

10. The 8/8/07 _Religion BookLine_ had a brief interview by Sarah Gold with James Kugel, author of _How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now_, coming out from Free Press in 9/07. Here's a sample:

Q: "You accept that the Bible is a blend of various texts. Were they humanly written?"

Kugel: "The question of divine versus human authorship is something that I never make any pretense at solving, simply because it seems to me that a divinely inspired, dictated text would in any case involve human words. There's no kind of litmus test to say, Oh, this word came from God, and that word was just an ordinary word."

11. Quoted from an 8/25/07 AP story by Eric Gorski, in a Language Log post by Mark Liberman titled "In Awe Of Bologna And Doritos," at http:// itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004856.html#more :

"While churches from every imaginable tradition have been adding Spanish services to meet the needs of new immigrants, an increasing number of Hispanic ethnic congregations are going the other way -- starting English services. It's an effort to meet the demands of second- and third-generation Hispanics, keep families together and reach non-Latinos."

And...

"Some second- and third-generation Latinos prefer Spanish as their language of worship. When a group of young adults lingered after the Spanish service at the Carpenter's House, their small talk was in English, not Spanish. 'We grew up going to Spanish services,' said Abdiel Quiles, 28. 'It just feels like home.' "

12. Some cyberplaces to check out: David Novak's TNR Online review ("How it Began") of Peter Schafer's _Jesus in the Talmud_, at http://www.powells.com/n/219/tnr/review/2007_08_02 ; "A New General for God's Army?", by Bill Berkowitz, at http://www.commondreams.org/ archive/2007/06/14/1879 ; "Women and the Bible: Becoming Junia -- again," at http://www.thestar.com/living/Religion/article/244389 , suggested by Cindy Brown, about the controversy over whether there was or was not a female apostle named Junia .

#A Religious Language Conflagration That Should Have Been Avoided

This item comes from "The Conservative's Pope," a blogpost at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/10/163959/658 written by someone who calls himself/herself "Devilstower." It says:

"Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches. ... It restates key sections of a 2000 document the pope wrote... that set off a firestorm of criticism among Protestants and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the 'means of salvation.' If this seems like a minor doctrinal dispute, read that last part again. As a gnostic pointed out in his diary, Benedict has declared that Pat Robertson -- and incidentally, every other protestant -- is doomed."

Talk about the effects of religious language! When I read this I thought there would most certainly be yet another firestorm of criticism. When not a word was said about it on any of the news channels, I was bewildered; it seemed to me that this was for sure _news_.

If you do a Google search now on this topic, you will find articles, from sources all over the world, repeating the claim made in the DailyKos paragraph I quoted above, although usually made far more temperately. I could give you URLs here for article after article repeating the claim that the Pope has declared that Christian churches other than the Roman Catholic Church "lack the means of salvation." However, if you go to the text of the relevant document -- at http://tinyurl.com/ 2pzqa9 -- you will find that what it actually says is this:

=======
"It follows that these separated churches and Communities, though we believe they suffer from defects, are deprived neither of significance nor importance in the mystery of salvation. In fact the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as instruments of salvation, whose value derives from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church."
=======

I am truly baffled by all this. I don't understand how the inflammatory claim about the Pope saying non-Catholics are "doomed" got started in the first place, given the wording of the actual document. I don't understand why it was then perpetuated by so many writers who have the same quick and simple access to that document that I have. I have been doggedly searching the Net every day for some sort of official clarification, and have at last found one titled "Press gets it wrong," at http://www.catholic.org/views/views_news.php?id=24746 . It starts by expressing surprise at two things: that the Pope's endorsement of the Tridentine Latin Mass didn't cause a commotion; and that "an unheralded three-page document" definitely _did_, thanks to "overheated and undernuanced media coverage of the document, particularly a story by the The Associated Press." It says:

"The AP's lead sentence was that Pope Benedict XVI 'reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation."

It then goes on to quote the section of the document that I quoted above. And then it adds:

"If we may be permitted one complaint, the Vatican should have been better prepared to handle the pastoral confusion this document's release unfortunately created. Slipping it into the public domain... without commentary, indeed with no visible effort to 'control the spin' that would have been easily predicted, was not helpful."

I'll second that complaint. And I'll add another, about journalists who apparently can never be bothered to read the original source materials for their stories before they publish them, and who appear either to delight in causing trouble or to be indifferent to that possibility. This was not an example of "the public's right to know," just an example of carelessness and laziness.

If there have been additional clarifications, I would be grateful to know about them.

Return To Content Page