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The Language of Religion I

The Language of Religion I

Last updated on: June 14, 2012 at 9:17 pm by Fred Clark

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The Language of Religion I 2012-06-14T21:17:38-04:00 Fred Clark

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"The language of religion," Atrios writes, is "something I don't understand. It's gibberish to me. When people start invoking religion in discussing issues they may as well be talking Martian. I'm not being insulting here, I'm just saying it's utterly meaningless to me personally."

And of course there's no reason such language should be meaningful to him. Sectarian language isn't much use when trying to communicate with people outside of the sect.

This is something we religious types don't always remember. Religious language is our native idiom and it plays an important, necessary role when speaking amongst ourselves. But outside the fold, outside the club, this language doesn't communicate and therefore cannot be expected to persuade. Those of us who are native speakers of religious language shouldn't expect that our peculiar way of expressing ourselves would sound like anything other than gibberish to those who do not share our peculiarities.*

This is why it's necessary for religious believers to adopt the common language of others when speaking to those outside of our particular communities. Religious language needs to be translated into intermediary terms and principles that others can understand, appreciate and engage. Language that is, to borrow a phrase from the Supreme Court, "pervasively sectarian" is only useful when talking to others within the sect. To talk to anyone else, we need to communicate in secular terms.

The word "secular," unfortunately, has been subjected to decades of deliberate distortion by sectarian partisans who pretend it is the antonym of "sacred." It's not. The opposite of "sacred" is "profane." The opposite of secular is sectarian. Secular language, thus, is necessary not just for communication between believers and nonbelievers, or between "Christians" and "secular humanists," but also for communication between sects — between, say, the "General Baptists" and the "Regular Baptists."

Finding such secular, common language can be difficult when the subject in question involves an "ought" — the belief or assertion that certain actions ought to be done or ought not to be done. Once we start talking about oughts we are, inescapably, in the terrain of morality and thus of metaphysics.

At this point, things can quickly deteriorate into a late-night undergrad bull-session. We can find ourselves tackling the perennial question of right and wrong in the abstract, turning to Kant or to John Rawls or some other such philosophical attempt to ground moral thinking in a shared rationality. Or we could point to the seemingly universal commonalities — what C.S. Lewis called "The Tao" — shared by all major religions and moral teachings.

And all of that is fascinating. I love thinking and talking and arguing about all that.** But it's not terribly practical as part of our daily routine.

And anyway, this is not how we humans tend to go about these things. Life simply demands too much of our time and attention for us to indulge in a rehashing of the perennial philosophical questions every time there's a decision to be made about our political or cultural life together.

So we tend, instead, to begin with simple assertions expressed in general terms. We may not be 100-percent in accord as to all the ramifications and/or bases of these general terms, but we share enough of their meaning for them to be useful.

For example, I might say, "X is wrong." At that point it would be perfectly legitimate for you to ask, "What do you mean by wrong?" and we could go spinning off into the clouds, but neither of us usually has time for that, so you will, instead, assume that we agree, more-or-less, as to the what and why of "wrongness" and you will simply, in the same general terms, agree or disagree about the wrongness of X.

If we do agree then we will not find it necessary to further explore the distinct logic of our particular sectarian approaches to morality. We won't need to iron out all the precise distinctions between your concept of right and wrong as a member of the United Free Will Baptist sect as opposed to my concept of right and wrong as a member of the United American Free Will Baptist sect (or between my concept as a Christian and Duncan's as an atheist and anyone else's as whatever else they may be).

If we disagree, then it gets trickier.

If we disagree, then the general, secular term "wrong" apparently isn't working as a common language for us and we'll have to find some other shared language or shared reasoning — whether that's Rawls' veil of ignorance or Kant's categorical imperative or just some dude's "Mean People Suck" t-shirt. But I shouldn't expect my own sectarian language — citing chapter and verse — to be of much use in clarifying or resolving this disagreement.

The odd thing is that even though ideas of morality, of "ought," of right and wrong, seem inextricably bound up with religion and metaphysics, there's often little correlation between the two. We often find ourselves in serious disagreement with others within our own traditions while at the same time finding ourselves in close agreement with others outside of those traditions who seem, despite sharing none of our presuppositions, to share all of our conclusions.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

* True story from back at Timothy Christian School:

We were studying evangelism and the teacher was going over something called the "Romans Road" — a series of passages from St. Paul's epistle to the Romans that described humanity's sinfulness and need for salvation. Evangelism, by definition, involves talking with people who do not already share our faith. Such people, I had noticed, also tended not to regard our Bible as their Bible, so I asked the teacher what we should say to someone who tells us they don't believe in the Bible.

"You show them II Timothy 3:16," the teacher said. And then she quoted it, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

When I suggested that someone who didn't believe in the Bible wasn't likely to believe in II Timothy any more than they believed in Romans, she responded by quoting another passage, II Peter 1:21, and then another from the 119th Psalm.

It went on like that for a bit, like something from Abbot and Costello, with both of us getting more frustrated as she quoted Bible verse after Bible verse about the authority of the Bible and me not doing a very good job of expressing that someone who doesn't believe in Bible verses won't be convinced by a Bible verse that tells them to believe in Bible verses. Until finally she said this:

"Well if they still don't believe in the Bible after you've showed them all those verses, then I guess they just can't read."

** I also find such abstractions comforting, particularly when the particulars of reality are so depressing. Atrios' comments on religious language were made in the context of religious condemnations of torture, and shortly after reading them I read these poll results, showing that American Christians are more likely than others to believe that torture can often or sometimes be justified. I want and need to address this, but I find it so disheartening/exasperating that I needed to work up to it gradually.

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