I have heard the
opinion recently, and not least at the last Unitarian Annual
Meetings, that we need to change language to attract newcomers. Don't
say "hymn" or "church" (or even "God")
- we're told - these sorts of words put people off.
This argument comes
from a genuinely good instinct - to do all we can to attract people
outside our Unitarian communities - but I think it needs thinking
about a bit more. Let me use an example to think through these
issues.
Imagine I am on a
mission to get more people to play football in the United States of
America. I would certainly be starting on the wrong foot if I started
talking about "football" all the time, because that means a
completely different sport in that culture. I would need to use the
word "soccer." It would be absolutely necessary to
translate a term to something
more meaningful in that culture. In all I did I would say, "I'm
promoting soccer" even though in my life and culture I would
naturally use the word "football."
But
that is a different process to thinking "Americans don't like
exercise they like fast food" so I'm going to say, "I'm
promoting lovely delicious fast food." I'm sure I could
selectively find lots of research and statistics to back up my
assertion that Americans prefer fast food to exercise. And so I could
make a good argument that saying "I'm promoting fast food"
would be a much more popular advertising campaign. So I could set up
football matches but advertise them as giving away fast food. I could
put up golden arches outside football pitches but then when people
came through them they would discover not fast food but in fact the
invitation to play football. The problem with this is obvious. It is
false advertising. It is lying.
The
other way I could promote this is the opposite. I could say "come
and play soccer" but in fact give up the game and just give
people fast food when they turned up. "I'm promoting football"
I could say, "It's just that 'football' now means eating
hamburgers, as we've discovered that that's much more popular."
This has the disadvantage that it might very well annoy the people
who did want to come
and play football, but in turning up have discovered only fast food.
It also, obviously, is a failure of the basic mission of getting
people to play football - I have failed in that task as I've
forgotten what football actually is. I'm just promoting something
entirely different and labelling it "playing football."
So,
to return to the world of religion - should we give up words like
"hymn" "church" or "God"? Well, that
entirely depends. If it is a matter of translating a
term into something more meaningful to a particular culture, then
fine. But if it is indulging in lying (pretending
we're something we're not) or of abandoning the mission (promoting
something more popular, but in doing so losing the very essence of
what we're doing) then we clearly shouldn't.
The
point is we need to know very clearly what the essence is of what
we're doing before we start doing it. I need to be very clear that I
know what football is and how to play it before I go about my mission
of getting more people to play it. If I get in a muddle and start
promoting American football (an entirely different game) then I'm
failing in my mission. If I cheat, lie, or cynically manipulate what
I'm doing so that I'm really promoting
fast food and simply labelling it "playing football" then
I'm failing in my mission.
And
if I want people to play football I need to realise that I am going
to have to spend some time getting people to understand the language
and the rules of the game. I need people to understand the off-side
rule, what a goalkeeper is, what a penalty is, if I want people to
play football. If people change the language, and use entirely
different words, then no problem. But if folks start changing the
rules, like picking up the ball with their hands, then we have
stopped playing football.
Similarly
it is not unreasonable to think that in joining a religious
community, there will need to be a process of induction and
education. People don't understand what a term means? Well, of course
they don't, until we teach them. We must teach them the rules - the
practices of the faith. That may be a process that takes a long time,
years even.
So
how about dropping a word like "worship" - calling it a
"gathering" or "celebration" or something like
that? Well, sure, if that's a reasonable translation of the term that
is more meaningful and understandable, then absolutely fine. But if
we actually stop worshipping, if we actually change the core activity
that we're doing, then we've got rather in a muddle. And we may have
failed to fulfil our mission.
If
our mission is to get people to worship (a particular spiritual
practice) then it doesn't really matter if we call it "worship"
or some other term. But if we cease to worship because we believe
people don't like worship, then we have failed in our mission to get
people to worship. We've stopped doing the core activity we were
trying to promote. We started playing football, and now we're just
eating hamburgers.
(Some of these ideas are explored in a similar way in the book "Evangelism after Christendom" by Bryan Stone)
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