I have been blessed to have professional relationships with children and young people throughout my adult life. I used to be a youth minister, and now that has translated into having a community from several generations and cohorts younger than mine. It is a great gift, and I have some pretty fabulous artifacts from that 25 year career, in addition to friends all over the world.
I have kept a few of the material things, and a favorite is a hand-written three page list of abbreviations and what they mean. It was made for me by a few youth as a dictionary so I could understand their texts. It included entries like LOL=Laugh Out Loud. Whenever I come across it, I wonder what I am missing now, which glossaries I need. It makes me wonder what translations I will need to do, which new populations I will encounter.
I wrote about the importance and sensitivity of language in a post last year, Words Matter, but really, I think and speak about the idea all the time. At every moment, we must consider how the ineffable -a fleeting thought, a memory, a scent, a feeling- could be expressed with words. We must consider how our words affect others, not only in what we are naming but how we do it.
I know that many of my friends who are lifelong Republicans have left the party so as not to be tainted with the Trump stench. They are embarrassed to associate with a community that before this betrayal -and they do consider it a deep betrayal of principle- had been definitive in their lives. Here in Colorado, Unaffiliated voters make up the largest voting bloc in Denver, and are a solid third of the electorate statewide. There is somewhat of a political voice for those outside the party systems here.
But other states do not have such a robust voter base. Those GOP defectors have no more precinct meetings or strategy sessions to attend, no more GOTV campaigns for issues important to them. No more camaraderie in a shared endeavor. But the conflict was too great, and a piece of their identity was shed. A word changed and their worlds shifted.
And of course, it occurs to me that these political dissidents are very much like the Exvangelicals I encounter, and about whom I’ve been writing. Last week, I wrote about how some of the Evangelicals I know have chosen to redeem that word itself, to transform what it means to be an Evangelical Christian in America. But for the most part, that sect of Christianity hasn’t changed much at all, except in growth and impact.
One of the difficulties I encountered immediately is the Evangelical vocabulary. I had to look up ‘complementarianism’ before I could answer any of one young woman’s questions. I have a Master’s of Divinity and decades of training and experience in the church and I had never heard the term before. It was humbling. The Evangelical church has an entire theology of which any comprehension means understanding its crafted words, its tailored glossary. I suspect they’d have their own bible if they could get away with it, and certainly the translations they use are biased. As most are, of course. Again, language is sticky. And translating any concept from any language into any other has specific challenges.
By the way, complementarianism is the more mild misogyny of the American Evangelical Church. It says that men and women -gender is always very binary and discrete here- each have differing but complementary roles in the household and in their work and faith lives, and that the man is the head of that household by default.
Part of any Unraveling will be the dissection of language, the examination of what you’ve said, what you’ve heard, what you’ve sung. One of the funniest and most poignant ways I’ve seen this happen is when people start paying deeper attention to their hymnody -the words they sing as hymns in church. We know that in the human brain, song can jump start or completely hold together a memory or necessary factoid. It’s a great mnemonic device. I used to work at a well known local bookstore, and on inventory night, one could hear us softly humming the alphabet song to ourselves to facilitate our shelving.
We embed those words, those concepts, when we sing them, or recite them, or chant them. They become part of us, even as we rarely examine their meaning. They seep into our brains when they are preached or taught by someone we consider to be an authority. Even when that authority loses its power, the words remain. Concepts remain. The melodies are still hummed.
These are the harder parts of deconstruction, and something we would like to offer you space to talk about if you need it, tools you may need to navigate it all. It is a hard thing, to examine one’s one doctrine or embedded theologies, to question the automatic responses. From where does authority now come? Who says what this that and the other thing might mean? It’s a good thing to remember that scripture has only been translated into English for about 500 years, and only available for mass consumption for a couple hundred. While the history of faith traditions and their theological exploration stretches back thousands of years, sacred texts in the hands of ordinary people is a fairly new thing. You aren’t going to break anything by trying on new ideas or traditions. I promise.
Something you may be missing is your regular prayer life, and we post weekly prayers @RevJessAbell on all the socials (Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, FB). We hope that these prayers offer a different kind of language when approaching the Divine, when finding a prayerful place in your heart. New wine cannot be poured into old wineskins and we hope a new way of prayer can be a help to fill your cup.
We offer a weekly bible study online (register at info@spiritualitycollective.com), formal spiritual direction, and informal conversations on any of our platforms. We are open to starting online discussion groups, and we can refer you to community groups and resources where you live. We publish a weekly newsletter, and you can subscribe on our website or directly through MailChimp.
Know that you are not alone. People all around you are waking up to some of the same things you are. All of us have questions and seek generative conversation about real things. Regardless of what you have been evicted from or are deconstructing, putting aside, needing to shed -there are tools and resources, mentors and companions.
Most importantly, whatever you do or do not call the force of love that weaves throughout our universe, that binds us a Creation made and called good, and compels us to heal the world, know that you are precious and known, seen and heard.
God loves you, and there is no power in the world that can separate you from that -nothing you can do, nothing that can be done to you. Really. And in this, words simply do not matter.