One of the issues I raise in the opening chapters of my new book, Pieces of Heaven: Recognizing the Presence of God, is how people shut out God from their conversations and thinking. People’s own mental distractions shut him out. Rules of etiquette shut him out in many social and business settings. The current academic and scientific assumptions of our culture often take any 
consideration of God off the table before the conversation even begins.
I deal with those ideas more specifically in the book, but here I want to focus on another way in which Christians themselves take God out of the conversation. As I write in the book, “To make matters worse, some Christians have crippled their own vocabulary when it comes to talking about spiritual issues.” How? By buying into the idea that Christian terminology is somehow “insider language” or “Christianese” that believers should avoid because it may be offensive or not understood by those who don’t share the same faith.
I know that Christianese can be insidious when people use words and phrases to say one thing when they really mean another. The Evangelical Press Association came up with a list of such phrases that are both funny and sad when Christians abuse them. For example, the phrase “if it be God’s will” may really mean “I really don’t think God is going to answer this one.” “Let’s have a word of prayer” may really mean “I am going to pray for a long, long, long time.” “That’s not my spiritual gift” may mean “Find someone else.” A longer list of these abused phrases can be found here.
I certainly agree that Christians should avoid such cliches, but the language I am referring to is a little different. I am objecting to Christians avoiding theological terminology altogether simply because those outside the faith may not immediately understand it. Christian Piatt wrote a prominent series of blog articles over the summer in which he listed what he called clichés that Christians should never use. I agreed with him on many of them, but some of the statements he objected to were things such as “Jesus died for your sins” and “Have you asked Jesus into your heart?”
I do believe such concepts require explanation and discussion. As I write in the book, “Why not use terms like ‘salvation’ and ‘atonement’ and ‘sanctification’ with one another and with those not in our faith, but probe their meaning together? Better to use insider language—with frank discussion to go along with it—than to stay silent. Everywhere I go I am confronted by the language of other realms of thought—medicine, sports, video games, electronics technology. The people who inhabit those areas of interest don’t dumb down their language for me or refuse to use their terminology for fear of confusing me or offending me. If I don’t understand, I ask, and they explain.”
I remember listening to a sermon in which the speaker was clearly straining to explain salvation without ever using that term or any other recognizable theological word that referred to it. I thought, what would it be like if people were required to discuss other domains without ever using the terminology associated with them? What if you wanted to talk about football but were not allowed to use terms like “wide receiver,” “first down,” “safety,” “tackle,” “offside,” and so on? If someone knew nothing about football but wanted to find out, you wouldn’t avoid those terms, you would use them and define them. In the sermon that sidestepped the word “salvation,” the avoidance confused the discussion rather than clarified it.
Give people credit. They are willing to learn a few new terms if the topic under discussion is of interest to them.
Comments 7
I just finished teaching a group of homeschool students a course on how to get published. My first lesson included the terminology they’ll need in order to communicate with magazine editors. Most of the students told me they enjoyed learning all this new information. They’d had no idea that writing/publishing is a business with its own ‘buzz words.’ To me this is an example of your point. If people are interested in a topic they’ll want to learn the words and phrases that are related to it. We don’t have to patronize or confuse them by avoiding what’s so.
I definitely am for using “Christianese” as long as we bring some context together with it when talking to our non-Christian counterparts.
To be honest, I remember feeling a little out of place when my Christian friends would always use the terminology with/around me, but would never at least follow it up with some laymen’s terms (I only became a Christian in 2004).
You are right though—I think we should be bolder when we discuss theological topics with others, and that it may ultimately help bring them to the feet of Jesus, in repentance.
Perhaps one of our reactions to the seeker-sensitive movement is feeling that church has become irrelevant to the outside world, that churchgoers should strip off every churchism to recruit their unchurched friends. I don’t know about you, but I think that a place where our Creator can be contacted and worshipped and studied should be held in more sacred hands. Rather than greasing the doors of our churches to make them more accessible to outsiders, we should embody a life that makes outsiders eager to look inside. To strip down our traditions and terminologies makes us look, well, a little desperate, and a little pathetic.
RE: “Everywhere I go I am confronted by the language of other realms of thought…” I want to add to that the 4-letters words and other expletives that many of us are forced to overhear in public. Wish THOSE speakers would avoid them.
Joe, I really like your concern that to give up Christian terms is to give up knowledge of a domain. This is really well said. I think, however, that while I agree that we need to keep the very important terms of salvation and those that have theological substance, we should still be careful not to fall into religious jargon in the same way that academics in education or, dare I say it, literary criticism, sometimes do. I do think that to avoid christianese can sometimes help me to see the way that nonbelievers see their issues–only so that I can meet them on their terms (not that this has happened very often).
I find myself using “Christianese” with specific groups of people in my life, and I would also avoid it with other groups. I find myself doing this, much due to the over sensitized culture that we live in. We are so “politically correct,” these days that “Christianese” is not used in order to not offend or impose my believes on another. For example, I have come across a student reading a verse from Psalms at my work place (at a secular middle school) and when I saw her read this verse, I had asked her what she was reading, she was so excited to show me what she was reading and she began to explain to me the specific verse. Even though, it might of been alright for me to share my views, because she had asked, I held back due to the very nature of the situation I was in. I was in a public school talking about faith, and I subconsciously muted myself from “Christianese” because I didn’t feel like it was “politically correct.” Rather than discuss this verse with this student, I chose to avoid it and play it “safe.”
Dr. Bentz,
I really appreciated your thoughts on terminology. Growing up in the church, many phrases of Christianity and theology come naturally to my vocabulary and have long been a part of how I communicate within a body of believers.
However, since coming to college, I have definitely found that my vocabulary and “God-Talk” as author Kathleen Norris phrases in her book Amazing Grace, has changed. In many ways, I can no longer communicate within the church that I grew up because we are no longer speaking the same language theologically. I often wonder if this is for the better or worse. On one hand, I appreciate how my faith has grown and evolved in understanding and deepened in level of communication. But at the same time, what will be the future ramifications of having a language that is so exclusive in terms of content and specificity?
Thank you for your thoughts!