Inclusive Language: Motivations versus Effects

In my previous post, I wrote about how inclusive language serves a revolutionary purpose by cutting us off from our own cultural traditions insofar as it de-legitimizes all pre-1960's thought, ritual, literature, theology and philosophy as "sexist," "patriarchal" and "exclusive." This makes us ripe for social engineering and revolution.

Of course, many well-intentioned Christians do not recognize the revolutionary purpose of the push for "inclusive language" any more than they see any connection between the Marxist influence on second wave feminism (Frieden, Steinem, et. al.) and the sexual revolution. Many Christians understand the emphasis on "inclusive language" to be a form of chivalry or politeness or civility. Christian men who have been well brought up often adopt a reflexively protective stance toward women and bend over backwards to want to extend courtesy and avoid offending women, who they view as equals and want to avoid excluding or hurting in any way. I understand this motivation and feel it keenly myself.

This impulse, which leads them to accept so-called "inclusive language," is commendable and Christian in and of itself. They sincerely want to demonstrate an attitude of openness, fairness and respect to women, which is exactly what the Bible requires us to do. I cannot stress enough that the motivations are admirable in and of themselves.

But the problem, which most Evangelical Christians fail to think through before jumping on the "inclusive language" bandwagon, is that to require fundamental changes to language and speech is to make a negative judgment on all those who came before us and, by extension, their doctrinal beliefs.

What "inclusive language" says is that we are now enlightened and so we now recognize that in the past the exclusive, oppressive behavior of our ancestors was reflected in their language. So it is not enough to make concrete changes in society to, say allow women into the professions and the universities or give them equal property rights or the vote. We must also renounce past oppression by signaling in our speech habits our opprobrium for past habits of thought as well.

Female equality was achieved by the first wave of feminism from the late 19th century to the 1950s. By the dawn of the 1960s, women in the West were the most free, had the most legal rights, and had the widest scope for action of any generation of women in any society in the entire history of the world. And the reaction of the new wave of feminism that arose in the late 1950s to 1970s and which was highly influenced by Marxism, was to condemn violently the society which produced this state of affairs as racist, colonialist, patriarchal, oppressive, violent and evil.

An attack on the family was launched in the form of the sexual revolution and the sexual revolution, with its hedonism and extreme individualism, is still being institutionalized in Western society today. Inclusive language is part of that process of institutionalizing the sexual revolution and second wave feminism as the "new orthodoxy" of our society and if Evangelical Christians are unreflective enough to go along with it for their own reasons, that is fine by the cultural revolutionaries for now. But Evangelicals should not be naive enough to think that it stops there.

Speech codes are a never ending cascade of fundamental change imposed from above on individuals and they are designed to re-shape our way of thinking. If you think that just referring to "men and women" all the time instead of to "men" is the end of it, you would be wrong. The changes to our language reflect the "progressive" changes to social mores and since such changes are unending so are the changes to language.

Recently there was a story about how the US State Department has decided that US passports would no use the terms "father" and "mother" and instead use the terms "parent one and parent two." (See "Parent One, Parent Two to replace references to mother, father on passport form" - Jan. 7 Washington Post). Even when applying for your passport you must be reminded that enlightened, modern people accept homosexuality as normal. This is now what "inclusive language" means. This is the kind of thing I mean and examples could be multiplied endlessly.

Not only do the social revolutionaries want homosexuality to be legal and homosexuals left alone, that was achieved 50 years ago but it is not enough.

Not only do the social revolutionaries want homosexuality recognized as good and normal in law, that was achieved long ago but it is not enough.

Not only do the social revolutionaries want everyone to recognize the goodness and normalcy of homosexuality, they want use public institutions and public funding to inculcate their moral views into the children in public schools and into the public at large. But even this is not enough.

Finally, the social revolutionaries want to to pass laws to hunt down and punish those who do not conform to the new group think that they are imposing by coercive means on society. (See, for example, the work of Canadian Human Rights Commissions.)

My point is that it is naive and ineffective to simply capitulate on one point at a time and by doing so to think that if you are just cooperative this one time they won't be back for more. This has been proven to be wishful thinking.

Evangelicals who adopt inclusive language policies may have the very best of intentions and the purest of motivations. But my question is: Where do we draw the line? The one answer that is totally unrealistic is the naive position that no lines have to be drawn in the culture war against the traditional family.

Thought Control: The Real Effect of "Inclusive Language"

One of the most absurd examples of political correctness in the contemporary West is the idea that traditional language is sexist and exclusionary of women. The claim is that speaking of how God loves all mankind actually means that God only loves men and that when we speak of a "chairman" of a committee we imply that no woman could be a chairman of such a committee. The claim is demonstrably false. We know that from reading documents from the pre-PC era (pre-1960s) and observing from the context that the use of the masculine pronoun, for example, was a convention that was universally understood to be a convenient way of referring to the human race.

It is easier to write clear prose using such harmless conventions. To say that a certain character in a play represents "Everyman" is easier than saying that such a character represents "Every man and every woman." And since the postmodern relativists consider gender to be a social construct and since they now believe in multiple genders, even saying "Every man and every woman" is exclusive of those newly discovered genders.

This is not an issue of clarity in communication; it actually obscures clarity. No, the issue is whether or not the entire history of Western civilization is immoral. The postmodern, constructivists wish to paint the entirely of Western culture prior to the 1960s as "patriarchal," which to them means bad. The point of casting traditional culture as evil is to justify social engineering, social experimentation and social revolution.

The real point of inclusive language is to place all pre-1960s literature, religion, ethics, politics, philosophy, and tradition under suspicion. It is a way of cutting people off from their roots and traditions and rendering them postmodern, virtual, free-floating individuals with no solidity and no defense against the social engineers of the managerial class of the modern, bureaucratic state.

Inclusive language forces individuals, by means of coercion, intimidation and punishment, to do pennance for the supposed sins of their ancestors and pay obeisance to the cultural Marxism that is working hard to destroy our culture, our traditions, the family and Christianity.

It is a fad that Christians do well to reject, oppose and refuse to comply with wherever possible. If they control the way you talk, they control the way you think.

Robert Hart on the Inclusive Language Agenda

Well, if you thought that I was extreme on this issue; you might want to ask Robert Hart about where he sees the inclusive language agenda taking the Church - and then duck! He points to pantheism as the ultimate destination of feminist theology and he explains just exactly why feminine images of God were rejected by Scripture and what the implications are of embracing them today despite the Scriptural witness. He discusses the New Revised Standard Version in a post entitled "God the Father." He writes:

"I have commented about The New Revised Standard Version of the "Bible" (NRSV) quite critically in previous essays: "In fact the first mistake is in combining the first two verses of Genesis into one sentence, making it seem as if the world may have existed before God’s creation [as follows:] 'In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form…' The Hebrew simply does not justify this 'translation.' The first two sentences are not joined in the original. The older 'And, the earth was without form and void...' is literally correct, and it cannot be used to suggest Pantheism." If I erred at all when writing this, it may be in using the word "mistake."

. . .

Nonetheless, just because the trendy renderings are wrong does not mean they are a mistake. I think it more likely that an agenda has been behind this, something quite deliberate.

. . .

It has never been enough for promoters of "Feminist Theology" to take Inclusive Language only as far as human beings are concerned (which is itself unnecessary and confusing at best). In ways subtle, or at times not subtle, the agenda has been to replace God the Father with a goddess (about which I written before). To teach Creatio Exnihilo, "creation out of nothing," is to teach that God made everything by his Word, that He willed everything that is not God, every nature that is not Divine Nature, into existence, being alone Uncreated and eternal. This is God the Father, by His Word and by His Spirit making all things and giving them life. Against this revelation of Scripture, Feminist Theology teaches a universe equally eternal with God, indeed a universe that is God, in which life comes forth. In many parts of scripture where the active word "made" is found ("without him was not anything made that was made"-John 1:3), newer versions say something passive, such as "came into being." If instead of God the Father we have a Mother Goddess, a universe that is itself one with Divinity, such passive language takes the ideology of Inclusive Language to that ultimate realm of Godhead. Even regeneration is no longer the work of a Father who has begotten His children, so that "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth," (James 1:18) is made passive: He "brought us forth." God the Father becomes a fossil, and a new Mother Goddess, a pagan deity, takes over.

This may be new to western people with a Christian background. But, it is very ancient and has precedents that are rooted in Pagan cultures as diverse as the worshipers of the Ashtaroth and of Kali. To one infant sacrifice was offered, and the other consumes and destroys with demonic violence. Whereas genuine motherhood, as God created it, is about life and even nourishment and care, this demonic sort of Mother Goddess worship has always been about destruction. There is no logic to this, but history proves it to be a kind of demonic theme. Our culture, at the same time in which God the Father has been rejected in favor of increasing tendencies towards Pantheism and a Mother Goddess, has become very much, as Pope John Paul II phrased it, the Culture of Death."

Read the rest here.

No one can prove that each and every feminist or feminist-sympathizing theologian has this long term agenda consciously in mind and no one needs to try. This is not conspiracy theory; it is something rather more pedestrian. This is a case of small, seemingly insignificant errors compounding until the foundations are shaking and no one seems to know exactly where it all went wrong.

The confused and dazed conservatives in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Episcopal Church fit into this category. How did we get from being sympathetic to a movement for equal rights for women to normalizing homosexual activity and de-gendering God? Fr. Hart's point is not necessarily that anyone consciously willed this outcome; it is simply that one thing leads to another. Which is why we are exhorted in Scripture:

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." (Col. 2:8)

"Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not plut up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep you head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry." (II Tim. 4:2-5)

"What you have heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you - guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." (II Tim. 1:13-14)

The Battle for the Pronoun: Inclusive Language Revisited

The other day I read a funny statement on a blog (funny as in sad, not funny as in humorous). The author was lambasting anyone who didn’t cave to the feminists on inclusive language. He went so far as to say that we should not even refer to God using masculine pronouns like “him” or “his” or “he.” But, he said, drawing himself up to his full height, “We must not mess with the revealed name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

Now this was a Churchill-like act of defiance; a veritable drawing of a line in the sand and daring any feminist heretic to cross it at her (or his) peril. It was like Charles the Hammer stopping the Muslim hordes cold in 732 at Tours. It was like Martin Luther at Worms saying: well, like saying: “Here I’ve evolved, I’ll be nudged no further – at least not today.”

So let’s review:

1. First, we have conceded that a dodgy, modernist, liberal experiential-expressivist form of theology of recent vintage (i.e. Feminist Theology) should be taken seriously by the Church in spite of its deficient anthropology, its cavalier rejection of revelation and utter capitulation to the fads of contemporary liberal society.

2. Second, we have conceded that the feminists are correct to argue that the language must be changed now because the great poets, the novelists, the historians, the scientists, the lawyers, the theologians and, well, everyone who wrote in English prior to 1960 was a Misogynist Thug (either consciously, the strict view, or unconsciously, the moderate view).

3. Third, we have conceded that in order to rectify this situation it is not enough to change the way we write today, and from now on, while leaving historical documents from the past (like poetry, hymns, liturgical prayers, the Bible etc.) as they were written. Instead, we must systematically alter the writings of past centuries lest certain, tender, modern sensibilities be offended.

4. Fourth, we have conceded that we should try not to think of God in male terms (such as “Father” or “Son”), but rather try to imagine him (oops! – imagine God) as either pure disembodied spirit or maybe in androgynous terms – at least when using pronouns.

But, we have our standards and they are high and shall never change; we shall not stop using the revealed name of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” of God. We shall, however, agree never to replace either “Father” or “Son” or “God” with a masculine pronoun.

Well, call me mean names like “fundamentalist” and “skeptical” but this appears to me to be much too little much too late; its smells more like General Custer than Martin Luther.

How can we make the concession regarding the pronoun and not regard this as anything other than the kind of temporary truce like Hamas is always talking about where they offer as a “generous concession” the pledge to take a few years off from trying to wipe Israel off the map in exchange for money, arms, world applause, and the Noble Peace Prize?

Some might say that the masculine pronoun is OK when replacing Jesus the man, but not when replacing the Triune God. But if so, they might want to think through exactly what is that they are thereby saying. Is not the whole point of the Nicene doctrine that God became man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth? Does not the New Testament clearly say that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us? We don’t want to have to perform a hermeneutical analysis every time we use a pronoun as to whether it replaces Jesus in his humanity alone or God because the whole point of Trinitarian doctrine is that we want to be able to refer to them interchangeably and the pronoun is a highly useful tool in doing just that. He is God. That is a crucially important Christian thing to say.

The whole idea of not using the masculine pronoun for God but continuing to use the revealed names (Father, Son) simply does not make sense. To concede that it is wrong to speak of God using a masculine pronoun is to have already conceded the principle that we should not think of God in exclusively masculine terms. The only two alternatives, then, are gradually to move to an androgynous understanding of God or to begin to use both masculine and feminine terms for God. The only reason for not making the change overnight is that it takes time to acclimatize congregations to a new view of God (actually to a new god). Refusing to use the masculine pronoun for God and editing it out of the Bible is a compromise between truth and error, but it is also a half-way house on the way to complete destruction of the Biblical concept of God in the Church and also, therefore, the destruction of the Church itself.