Friday, April 12, 2013
Why does language matter?
Life got away from me and it has been more than a few days...but let us get started.
I stumbled headlong into this subject a week or so ago. The power of words, the power of naming things. It came up as part of a discussion around a Seder dinner that my husband and I were invited to. The Haggadah (script if you will) for the Seder dinner had been developed and written by two of the dinner guests. During a particularly tricky part of translation, the authors asserted, that they had tried to be mindful of gender bias. Wherever possible they had adjusted the language to be more inclusive. That discussion and their perspective as observant Jews wrestling with their own convictions and what language to use when talking about God was fascinating.
Words are powerful things. They have the power to exalt and praise, just as they have the power to demean and destroy. But generally, we as the speaker do not give the words we choose much thought. Stop and consider for a moment the words you love to hear or say, how they make you feel. Do they make you feel powerful? Right? Just? Loved? Now take another moment and consider the words you do not like to hear. How do those make you feel? Do they make you feel weak? Wrong? Unloved? Hang on to those thoughts for a minute and consider this...
There is a whole different category of words, you have used them a myriad of times in a wide variety of contexts. They are gender words. While they may appear to be innocuous, they are not. Within the construct of religious scripture, practice and sermons they have the power to exalt or demean one half of the human population.
Why does this matter? Language is the essential building matter of communication. It is used not only to convey emotion, but also to explain important information such as concepts, descriptions, and structure. Therefore, when gender language is used to define ultimate concepts such as God or the Divine, they imbue all like gendered individuals with a degree of power and authority simply by association.
So, at this point you may be wondering where I am going with this...After all I just published an edition of this blog discussing language anomalies within Hebrew translation. What is this mini-lecture about how language justifies prejudice and marginalization, and how does this tie in?
Religious scholar an feminist theologian, Elizabeth A. Johnson contends,
"The symbol of God functions as the primary symbol of the whole religious system, the ultimate point of reference for understanding experience, life, and the world. Hence the way in which a faith community shapes language about God implicitly represents what it takes to be the highest good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty. Such speaking in turn, powerfully molds the corporate identity of the community and directs its praxis. A religion, for example, that would speak about a warlike god and extol the way he smashes his enemies to bits would promote aggressive group behavior. A community that would acclaim God as an arbitrary tyrant would inspire its members to acts of impatience and disrespect towards their fellow creatures. On the other hand, speech about a beneficent and loving God who forgives offenses would turn the faith community toward care for the neighbor and mutual forgiveness" (She Who Is, 1995).
I contend that Ms. Johnson is correct, however, her assertion is not merely limited to religious communities. Instead becomes the pervasive valuation paradigm for the whole community regardless of variances within actual faith practice. What I mean by that is that a community comprised of disparate faiths or denominations (Baptist, Protestant, Presbyterian, Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, and even Muslim) will and do construct their highest and best around their understanding of the ultimate - of God. This becomes problematic when related to gender. I have used Mary Daly's quote before, but here it bears repeating. Ms. Daly states, "If God is Male, then Male is God," (Beyond God the Father, Beacon, 1973). The consequences of this are that anything that is not male is other, as such it is less, inferior and those things become marginalized not only in value but in voice. And in so doing, it is viewed as completely acceptable - dare I say ordained by God.
It is more than time for this to change. In a culture where a very serious recommendation within halls of higher learner was to offer a course on "How not to rape," as if that should even need to be a topic. Why should it be acceptable for a woman to make 77 cents on the dollar for the same job as her male counterpart is doing for full salary? The answer is it shouldn't. However, until we are a culture are unified and decided that gender, and by extension marginalization of anyone is unacceptable, the paradigm won't shift. To wrap up my point, I'm sharing the post below which came to me via upworthy.com. Read it over, give it some thought...then change how you walk and speak in the world.
I stumbled headlong into this subject a week or so ago. The power of words, the power of naming things. It came up as part of a discussion around a Seder dinner that my husband and I were invited to. The Haggadah (script if you will) for the Seder dinner had been developed and written by two of the dinner guests. During a particularly tricky part of translation, the authors asserted, that they had tried to be mindful of gender bias. Wherever possible they had adjusted the language to be more inclusive. That discussion and their perspective as observant Jews wrestling with their own convictions and what language to use when talking about God was fascinating.
Words are powerful things. They have the power to exalt and praise, just as they have the power to demean and destroy. But generally, we as the speaker do not give the words we choose much thought. Stop and consider for a moment the words you love to hear or say, how they make you feel. Do they make you feel powerful? Right? Just? Loved? Now take another moment and consider the words you do not like to hear. How do those make you feel? Do they make you feel weak? Wrong? Unloved? Hang on to those thoughts for a minute and consider this...
There is a whole different category of words, you have used them a myriad of times in a wide variety of contexts. They are gender words. While they may appear to be innocuous, they are not. Within the construct of religious scripture, practice and sermons they have the power to exalt or demean one half of the human population.
Why does this matter? Language is the essential building matter of communication. It is used not only to convey emotion, but also to explain important information such as concepts, descriptions, and structure. Therefore, when gender language is used to define ultimate concepts such as God or the Divine, they imbue all like gendered individuals with a degree of power and authority simply by association.
So, at this point you may be wondering where I am going with this...After all I just published an edition of this blog discussing language anomalies within Hebrew translation. What is this mini-lecture about how language justifies prejudice and marginalization, and how does this tie in?
Religious scholar an feminist theologian, Elizabeth A. Johnson contends,
"The symbol of God functions as the primary symbol of the whole religious system, the ultimate point of reference for understanding experience, life, and the world. Hence the way in which a faith community shapes language about God implicitly represents what it takes to be the highest good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty. Such speaking in turn, powerfully molds the corporate identity of the community and directs its praxis. A religion, for example, that would speak about a warlike god and extol the way he smashes his enemies to bits would promote aggressive group behavior. A community that would acclaim God as an arbitrary tyrant would inspire its members to acts of impatience and disrespect towards their fellow creatures. On the other hand, speech about a beneficent and loving God who forgives offenses would turn the faith community toward care for the neighbor and mutual forgiveness" (She Who Is, 1995).
I contend that Ms. Johnson is correct, however, her assertion is not merely limited to religious communities. Instead becomes the pervasive valuation paradigm for the whole community regardless of variances within actual faith practice. What I mean by that is that a community comprised of disparate faiths or denominations (Baptist, Protestant, Presbyterian, Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, and even Muslim) will and do construct their highest and best around their understanding of the ultimate - of God. This becomes problematic when related to gender. I have used Mary Daly's quote before, but here it bears repeating. Ms. Daly states, "If God is Male, then Male is God," (Beyond God the Father, Beacon, 1973). The consequences of this are that anything that is not male is other, as such it is less, inferior and those things become marginalized not only in value but in voice. And in so doing, it is viewed as completely acceptable - dare I say ordained by God.
It is more than time for this to change. In a culture where a very serious recommendation within halls of higher learner was to offer a course on "How not to rape," as if that should even need to be a topic. Why should it be acceptable for a woman to make 77 cents on the dollar for the same job as her male counterpart is doing for full salary? The answer is it shouldn't. However, until we are a culture are unified and decided that gender, and by extension marginalization of anyone is unacceptable, the paradigm won't shift. To wrap up my point, I'm sharing the post below which came to me via upworthy.com. Read it over, give it some thought...then change how you walk and speak in the world.
Monday, March 11, 2013
God is What?
The next few installments of this blog are going to address similar topics. They are, in fact, pieces of a much larger topic. However, because each of them is significant in and of themselves, I thought it would be more digestible in segments...I'm interested in your thoughts.
I did not start out wanting to be a religious scholar. Nothing in my youth pointed to the fact that I was interested in dogma or religion per se. What I was interested in was the dynamics of religion, most especially that of their culture, the societal structure and power structures and how that affected their followers. From a very young age (6), I have vivid memories of attending church and hearing lessons and purposely discarding concepts that I thought were stupid, or that did not seem right. Like author and religious scholar Sue Monk Kidd, I attended a Baptist denomination and I heard many of the same messages:
"God is a man...it says in the Bible God the Father, so he must be a man"
"Jesus was a man"
"Eve committed the first sin"
"The ONLY way to salvation is through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as your savior"
"If you change denominations, many churches require that you be re-baptized, as if one is not enough"
"A personal relationship with God did not mean you didn't need an intermediary"
I still have huge issues with many of these points and did so even as a small child, but lets examine each the first of these issues:
God is a Man
Even in my early religious upbringing the point was clear...God was a Man. The scriptures (The Bible and Torah) referred to him in terms of Lord, Father, Master, etc these were very gender specific concepts, even for a young child, but no one missed the point. Women were not God, nor like God (or were they?), maybe they were not evil or the embodiment of evil, but they were definitely different than men and as a result other than God. After all, God was a man, Jesus was a man, so just by being male you had to be closer to God than a woman? Right? Well, I did not think so. Though it would not be until years later that this very point would become such a central point of my study and work, but when I finally found the insight I was looking for, the reaction both personally and academically was profound.
In Beyond God The Father, author and Feminist Theology scholar Mary Daly wrote, "If God is Male, then Male is God," (Beacon, 1973). What she was saying is that by equating gender language to God, most specifically that of masculine identity, the other gender is removed from God or is defined as "other." It set the stage for what was deemed powerful, good and the ideal, in short - male. It defined the power paradigms and seemed to justify the marginalization of anything that that did not embody the masculine ideal. Think about that for just a moment. That was certainly the message I had received from a myriad of pulpits and Sunday school classes over the years. It was mirrored not only in Christianity, but in Judaism and Islam as well.
This has been a defining premise of my studies. The concept of a God, of which humankind was fashioned in the image of could only be conveyed in the embodiment of masculine form and language. But lets start at the beginning...The Book of Genesis, it does note get much more "beginning" than that.
The JPS Hebrew-English TANAKH, The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1999. Pg. 2,
States:
Genesis 1:26-27
And God said "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish
of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth and all creeping things that creep on
the earth. 26 And God created *(hu)man in his image, in the image of God He created him;
male and female he created them."27
*(hu) is my addition because the Hebrew word used is quite acceptably translated as human, even thought he TANAKH chooses to use the word man.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible - Third Edition, Oxford University Press, 2001, Pg. 14,
States:
26 Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the
earth." 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male
and female he created them.
I've read these passages dozens of times in my life and had never really given them much thought, it certainly never occurred to me to actually question the legitimacy of the translation or even the word choice. Yet that is exactly that I am doing now...in fact what I am asking you as the reader to do. What do you notice about these two excerpts?
Let's break it down:
In the Torah translation (and incidentally it is also true in the original Hebrew), God said:
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Anyone pick on the interesting fact that the monotheistic God of the Ancient Israelites...the foundation of monotheism in the Western world is a plural? And yet there can really be no dispute of the language chosen, the pronouns that God uses when describing God, is us and our.
While that is certainly interesting, there is more to consider. I have long contended that if humankind was fashioned in the image of God, that it would be impossible for God to solely be male. After all, how did woman get created in the image of God if there was not a feminine reflection upon which to base her. Both the Hebrew and Christian scripture support this concept with the statement "and female he created them."
It all comes down to language, gender language. Hebrew, like many of the world's languages does not have neutral category or gender-less category. By the advent of the written word, the world's power paradigms had largely been defined and masculine had won out over feminine in many cultures. Yet despite this explanation, or even the modern religious answer of "God has no gender" the literary and cultural inference exists and is damaging.
Many religious communities, both within Judaism and Christianity, are working diligently to re-work scripture to gender balanced language. It will likely take countless generations for a significant consciousness shift to occur, but it is happening.
If you want to find out why I think this matters, check back in the next day or so.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible - Third Edition, Oxford University Press, 2001, Pg. 14,
States:
26 Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the
earth." 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male
and female he created them.
I've read these passages dozens of times in my life and had never really given them much thought, it certainly never occurred to me to actually question the legitimacy of the translation or even the word choice. Yet that is exactly that I am doing now...in fact what I am asking you as the reader to do. What do you notice about these two excerpts?
Let's break it down:
In the Torah translation (and incidentally it is also true in the original Hebrew), God said:
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Anyone pick on the interesting fact that the monotheistic God of the Ancient Israelites...the foundation of monotheism in the Western world is a plural? And yet there can really be no dispute of the language chosen, the pronouns that God uses when describing God, is us and our.
While that is certainly interesting, there is more to consider. I have long contended that if humankind was fashioned in the image of God, that it would be impossible for God to solely be male. After all, how did woman get created in the image of God if there was not a feminine reflection upon which to base her. Both the Hebrew and Christian scripture support this concept with the statement "and female he created them."
It all comes down to language, gender language. Hebrew, like many of the world's languages does not have neutral category or gender-less category. By the advent of the written word, the world's power paradigms had largely been defined and masculine had won out over feminine in many cultures. Yet despite this explanation, or even the modern religious answer of "God has no gender" the literary and cultural inference exists and is damaging.
Many religious communities, both within Judaism and Christianity, are working diligently to re-work scripture to gender balanced language. It will likely take countless generations for a significant consciousness shift to occur, but it is happening.
If you want to find out why I think this matters, check back in the next day or so.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
I've considered writing a blog for some time. With the support and encouragement of many friends and family, I am moving forward with my blog.
Welcome to Divining Grace. This is the forum I have established to winnow out studies in and around, but likely not limited to Religious Studies and the knowledge and questions I come across on my path to reaching both my Master's and a degree of personal enlightenment. Religion, religious studies, The Divine, Sacred Feminine, and the language used for and by these subjects are fascinating to me. I hope I bring a slightly fresh perspective to the topic, it will likely not be mainstream, and you are welcome to comment. I'll try to respond or answer any questions as to how I have arrived at the conclusions I reach here to the best of my abilities. I will also make the commitment to post regularly.
I hope you enjoy this path of discovery and discussion.
Best...
D
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