Jesus said people would know we are his disciples if we love one another (John 13:35), but increasingly they know evangelical factions by our speech. There are many Christians in America who are united on major ethical and theological issues but divided by our moral language, and this chasm between culturally moderate and conservative evangelicals is only widening.
We agree, for instance, that racial reconciliation is biblical but clash over whether diversity sounds aspirational or woke. And we agree that abortion is evil and helping unexpectedly pregnant women is important but break ranks over phrases like baby killers (too harsh?) or caring for women (too soft?). And we agree on a sexual ethic that rejects same-sex marriage and gender transition, but we differ on how to describe it: Is it a “biblical” ethic? An “orthodox” ethic? A “traditional” ethic? And do we describe someone as a “trans-identified male” or a “man pretending to be a woman”? Our ethical destinations may be the same, but our language can be miles apart.
Much of this difference may come from location, as Aaron Renn observed in Life in the Negative World. Because they often live and work in more urban areas, culturally moderate evangelicals tend to “face more risk and a greater social cost when they run afoul of the current secular progressive line,” he wrote, a risk that “is often under-appreciated” by evangelicals in more conservative and Christian-friendly environments.
But this difference is not merely a matter of culture. Paul wrote that our conversation should “be always full of grace, seasoned with salt” (Col. 4:6), a pairing that suggests we can err in either direction. Is there a role for hyperbolic, crude, or even demeaning language in moral leadership? When is strong language necessary to wake people up to wickedness—and when does it become sinful itself?
These questions have repeatedly come up in recent years. In early September, for instance, apologist Gavin Ortlund hosted theologian Joe Rigney on his podcast to hash out a disagreement they’d had about use of coarse language and swearing by Christians generally, young men specifically, and even more specifically, pastor and author Doug Wilson, who is Rigney’s colleague.
When confronting grave sin, Rigney argued, Christians can and perhaps should use satire—including crude or even sexualized language—“to reveal the great evil, the great wickedness that’s being celebrated and yawned at by evangelicals,” to rebuke “both evangelical apathy” about wrongdoing and the wrong itself. Over an hour of conversation, Ortlund pushed back, agreeing with the underlying sentiment that strong language could be used to morally awaken people but denying that disparaging women (and particularly specific female body parts) is ever acceptable.
A similar conversation arose in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. A political activist and debater, Kirk was known for speaking provocatively—something many saw as admirable and worth imitating and others deemed distracting or even hateful.
Or consider President Donald Trump’s use of political hyperbole. His book Trump: The Art of the Deal popularized the phrase “truthful hyperbole,” which Trump defined as “an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”
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It’s also a very effective tool of division. This kind of hyperbole is surely part of why conservatives don’t take “the climate crisis” seriously and progressives won’t productively engage “the border crisis.” As Damon Linker observed at The Week, we now use existential threat far more often and easily than we should. This kind of hyperbole, Linker argues, “is the rhetorical equivalent of screaming at the top of your lungs in a room echoing with noisy arguments and teeming with seductive distractions.”
Insults like Big Eva, Big Pharma, and Big Fertility provoke strong feelings, but they rarely move us closer to truth or understanding. Slapping the label liberal or right-wing on any given position immediately raises walls. Calling people “sodomites” or saying they’re full of “reckless, indefensible, racial rhetoric” might technically be true, but is it necessary or persuasive? Calling anything we dislike trauma, tyranny, or fascism, waters down the realities of those words.
There’s often some truth in these statements. Calling out sin is certainly necessary—and can be done quite persuasively. But hyperbole and other alienating language is risky whatever the speaker’s cultural alignment. It might draw attention, but it also raises blood pressure with mixed results.
“The more we shout, the less we hear. The more we exaggerate, the less we believe,” concludes Linker. “And the more we hype the truth as we perceive it, the less likely we are to think anyone else has anything valuable to say.” Christians care about truth and about people, and our relationships with fellow evangelicals should be marked by love, not division. We can persuade, rebuke, and care through reason without adding to the drama (John 8:7).
I am certainly not making a case for watered-down language. It’s not that the middle way is always best. A winsome apologetic doesn’t have to be soft. Any reader of Scripture will recognize the strong and forceful language Jesus, Paul, and Peter used in their attacks on immorality—especially inside the church (Matt. 7:6; 16:23; Phil. 3:8; 2 Pet. 2:12). Ortlund and Rigney discussed God’s condemning language through the prophet Ezekiel in calling Israel “dry bones” (37:1–4).
Yet Proverbs reminds us often that frequent and foolish words are ruinous (10:10; 12:18). And Paul’s instruction about grace and salt in his letter to the Colossian church is given “so that you may know how to answer everyone” (4:6). It is grounded in Paul’s desire to “proclaim the mystery of Christ … clearly, as I should” (vv. 3–4).
Clear does not usually mean harsh or exaggerated. It means command of the facts, specificity, and the argument-through-questions method of Jesus and Socrates. If we know the truth, we can hold it out bare and trust that it will pierce the hardest of hearts.
Kara Bettis Carvalho is a features editor at Christianity Today.
