Monthly arts column

Somebody's going to have to help me out on this, but I think that the author of a small book I used to own, called Danger, Saints at Work, was Tom Rees. While we're sorting the bibliographic details out, I'm glad to acknowledge its robust contribution to my Christian growth. It put its finger on some of the failings that beset Evangelicals, and did it with grace and a lot of humour. My copy has long since disappeared, but I remember it with affection. I hope I learned from it as its author intended.

Its comments on evangelical jargon, in particular, were joyfully received by those of us youngsters who had for years collected gems from the pulpit like: 'We pray for those who are sick of this church' (I think Mr Rees's version was 'We pray for those who are laid aside on beds of sickness' - equally good value for whiling away a slow service, if you were not very old but were old enough to spot a howler when you saw one). My church was particularly good at this kind of thing. Who could ever forget the report of the youth group singing hymns at the local hospital - where 'Every bed was almost full'? Or the moving account of the crematorium gardens ('I have rarely seen gardens so beautifully laid out' - well, you have to have a northern England upbringing to get the full flavour of it ...)?

Joy or sorrow?

Death was always spoken of discreetly, sometimes leading to real confusion: 'We've been praying for Mrs. X for some time: she has been very gravely ill in hospital. Yesterday, she went home' - leaving the congregation not altogether sure whether joy or sorrow was appropriate.

Women were the subject of some of the most celebrated circumlocutions from our all-male pulpit. There were unfortunate attempts at semi-inclusive language - 'The brethren, of course, embrace the sisters' - but the finest effort of all, which instantly passed into our church's folklore, was the announcement: 'The programme for the missionary sewing day is now available; will every lady please collect a pink slip as she passes out.'

Jargon

I mention these fragments of a disreputable past partly out of an incorrigible desire to leave things documented; they have probably never been recorded in print, and those of us who were involved will in due course be putting our collective foot in it in a better place.

But I mention them also because I was reminded of them a few weeks ago. Attending a cousin's funeral at a Catholic church, I was initially struck by the freshness of various aspects of their rubric. But later I realised that it was probably because I was hearing a different jargon to the one I was used to.

All fellowships develop their own jargons, their own accidental humour. And that isn't a great problem, if the only people we ever speak to are members of our own fellowship. It's when we try to communicate outside it that our convenient short-hand expressions and family nicknames suddenly become barriers between us instead of bonds.

At what point did the phrase 'God has a heart for ƒ' come into the evangelical language? Not that long ago. We all know what it means; most of us use it occasionally, some use it constantly. Yet it's a strange expression, especially to an outsider. Sure, he or she can work it out easily enough - but why should they have to? Or the term 'Let's bless one another', when clearly no spoken blessing is involved and no physical act of blessing either?

We are comfortable with such phrases. We define them by their usage. But they are less than useful when used outside the family. Maybe the church in every generation should ruthlessly scrutinise the jargon it inherits and the jargon it creates. Awareness that there's a potential for problems is half the battle won.

Sexist hymns

At a Protestant service, I was also struck recently by the sexism that still persists in some of our English hymnody. Every hymn we sang assumed that only males were Christians. It was a typical English church; one in which women outnumbered men. Women took part in a number of leadership roles, and a fair amount of administration was done by women. Yet its language of sung praise that day was wholly male-dominated.

This isn't about the ordination of women; it's not an exercise in feminist theology. Those are different discussions, matters of disputed biblical interpretation. But the Bible is unequivocally anti-sexist. Can there be any biblical defence of hymns which speak of believers exclusively as male? And is it fair to continue to explain the problem away by saying that of course, everybody knows that the brethren embrace the sisters?

Jesus spoke with lucid clarity to those outside his immediate circle, and he broke numerous conventions by the respect and individuality with which he spoke to women. On both counts, the Christian church in 2004 has some way yet to go.

David Porter

© Evangelicals Now - April 2004
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