Women, Abuse, and Inclusive Language

This is in response to JC, who left a comment under “Give the Dead a Vote” (other readers: please read JC’s comment first to get the context). JC, I don't know how you located this blog, but am delighted that you cared enough to read it and to comment. I decided that your argument deserves a fuller response than the “comment” section allows.

The quibble with "choice of language" doesn't originate with hymnody, but with the language of the Bible. The Bible is full of metaphors of "dark" for sin and "brotherhood" for humanity, from which hymnody is derived. My primary argument is that refusing to use these metaphors anymore means staying captive to our own prejudices and our own pains--confessing that our culture’s misuse of “dark” and “brotherhood” is too powerful and has overcome our congregation’s interpretive skills. The culture will continually misuse words, and if we keep giving ground to this, we will find ourselves in a very small corner of language indeed. I prefer to educate myself and my congregation about the true meaning of the biblical words--redeeming the language, if you will.

The Bible is replete with warnings to not be fooled by appearances, encouraging full acceptance of all people regardless of income or skin color or gender--and warning that Satan himself appears as an "angel of light". Part of my training in not being overwhelmed by peoples’ appearances is to not be overwhelmed by words’ appearances--to tease out the meaning of the biblical word rather than continually to read my own prejudices into it.

As a woman, I’d like to emphasize that educating myself at the level of the text, rather than constantly changing the text to match my current level of understanding, can be very healing. Most of the women I met during grad school were in favor of no longer referring to God as “our Father,” because of the abuse they or their friends had suffered at the hands of men and especially of fathers. However, although I’ve suffered at the hands of men, persisting in calling God “our Father” has redeemed the word “father” for me in a way that retreating from the word or burying it could never have accomplished. My heart aches for the women who are still trapped in feelings of rage, despair, and pain at the idea of “father” because they have been taught to see the word as evil rather than the particular manifestation of it in their lives. “Plenteous grace with Thee is found.”

When language is abused, when words are allowed to suffer violence and to be ripped from their context, people suffer, too. Rather than retreating from these wounding and wounded words, I have a vision of bringing healing to people through bringing healing to language--the language of our Bible and of our hymns.