Earlier in my journalism career, I remember how shocked I was when sources swore in interviews. At the time, I was still trying to keep myself from mindlessly saying, “Oh my God,” in case that could offend the Christians I spoke with. Maybe about once a year, a pastor would get going in conversation and drop a four-letter word, usually correcting himself to rephrase to something more quotable.
I noticed that in the past few years, I hear sources cuss a bit more, without shame or apology. Part of it comes with doing interviews on heavier subjects; people bring in stronger language when describing painful feelings of trauma, anger, and betrayal. But part of it is just how normalized casual cursing has become in American culture.
I’d say these days, it’s not unusual to hear abbreviations like OMG, BS, or WTF in ministry settings. And even when speaking to a Christian media outlet, some sources aren’t afraid to go on the record with phrases that include profanity. Just this week, Stanley Hauerwas described himself as “scared s—less” in the first line of an interview with CT on Alasdair MacIntyre.
If we at CT include quotes with curse words, we still dash them out most of the time, but many outlets don’t anymore. I read an interesting piece on cussing that I wanted to link here but decided not to because it contained so many bad words that, had it been a movie, it would have been rated R.
