Have You Committed Verbicide Today?

Word-snatchers invade the church.

Advertising sells a lot more than cars, cookies, and computers,” a recent Advertising Council Ad states. It also sells culture, colleges, candidates, and churches. The rhetoric of ad men transforms standard brands into graven images for profit. Moreover, in the areas of religion, politics, and charities, as well as business, there is a growing trend to sell an image instead of a fact, person, or product.

This image-vying and image-buying is, according to Wright Morris, “a ‘religious’ rite in the sense that it involves idols behind altars.…” (A Bill of Rites, A Bill of Wrongs, A Bill of Goods, New American Library, 1968, p. 135). These “idols of the marketplace,” to borrow Francis Bacon’s phrase, are hawked in a liturgical lingo. However, this religious doublespeak has another side; while Madison Avenue uses religious ideas and language, churchmen have adopted the techniques and language of Madison Avenue.

A typical use of religion in advertising is the ad for Italian slacks called “Jesus Jeans,” which displays a girl in tight-fitting shorts branded he who loves me, follows me. Biblical echoes in other recent ads are Michelob’s Do unto others, Johnnie Walker’s Honor Thyself, and Seagram’s Stop loving thy neighbor’s-Get thine own. Yardley of London asks Can woman live by detergents alone? and Rolf’s of Amity Leather Products offers a wallet For your daily bread or a beatific, Welcome to the fold. Such ads are designed to transfer positive associations to products that otherwise might have no appeal.

If the advertiser, sometimes verging on sacrilege, borrows language from the churchman, placing idols behind altars, the churchman, sometimes verging on desacralization, borrows jargon and technique from the advertiser, placing altars behind idols. We hear such phrases as Things go better with Christ; Jesus is the Real Thing; You’ve got a lot to live and Jesus has a lot to give; Relief is just a prayer away; Try Him—you’ll like Him; and Give the Master Charge of your life. Such expressions bring to mind Paul’s warnings about those who corrupt the Scriptures, as well as those who peddle religion for gain.

A Committee on Public Doublespeak, established by the National Council of Teachers of English, has been studying semantic distortion by public officials, political candidates and commentators, advertisers, and all who use the mass media. The fact that religious doublespeak has not been examined is perhaps due to the false notion that those who disseminate the word of truth have no problems with truth of the word. But, as C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape reminds us, nowhere is temptation so successful as on the very steps of the altar. “We have contrived that their very language should be all smudge and blur,” Screwtape says (Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Macmillan, 1961, p. 172).

Lewis recognized that the smudge and blur begins first in the heart and mind and then transfers to speech. Similarly, George Orwell says doublethink is both a cause and an effect of doublespeak: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness, while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it.…” (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Harcourt, 1949, p. 163).

Doublethink and doublespeak have roots in the sinful nature of man. Montaigne wrote over three centuries ago that “We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and we cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

It is human nature that produces Orwellian doublethink, which, in turn, produces doublespeak, leading often to doubledealing (that is, hypocritical, cunning deception; veiled duplicity of action), and finally even to doublecross (flagrant misrepresentation and treachery). The children of men “Speak lies each with his neighbor,” the psalmist wrote, “with false lips and double heart they speak.” Or as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, men “do but flatter with their lips, and dissemble with their double heart.” Basic to doublespeak is incongruity between what is said and what really is, between word and referent. Doublespeak is characterized by incongruity between what language is supposed to do—communicate—and what doublespeak does—obscure. It is the incongruity between the specific referent and the ambiguity, abstraction, or inaccuracy of words. It is the incongruity between what should be said and what is left unsaid or slanted to cloak essential but unpleasant facts.

Incongruity between the medium and the message has no place in communication of Christian truth. The verbal medium must conform to the message, never vice-versa. In a Christian context at least, the medium is not the message; rather the Christian message is itself also the medium: the Word is both subject and object. Effective Christian communication is possible when words and their referents are united through the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit. “We speak not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, combining spiritual things with spiritual words” (1 Cor. 2:13, NAS).

Doublethink produces doublespeak, which in turn leads to doubledealing, and finally, to doublecross.

Acommon variety of religious doublespeak might be called rhetorical overkill, which in its milder forms is inane verbosity and in its more severe forms is tasteless bombast. “A fool’s voice is known by a multitude of words,” Solomon wrote (Eccl. 5:3). We often hear expressions such as free gift, God incarnate in the flesh, self image of yourself, unmerited favor, real reality, ascend up to heaven, and essentials necessary to Christian growth. Such tautology results from ignorance of language or a lack of faith in the power of the Word.

In Studies in Words (Cambridge, 1967, p. 7), C.S. Lewis discussed several forms of “verbicide” that men commit “because they want to snatch a word as a party banner, to appropriate its ‘selling quality.’ ” One of the commonest of those cited by Lewis is inflation: “Those who taught us to say awfully for ‘very’, tremendous for ‘great’, sadism for ‘cruelty,’ and unthinkable for ‘undesirable’ were verbicides.” Because of the use of adjectives such as awful and wonderful to describe commonplace things, these words have lost their impact when used to describe the sacred; their original meaning has been lost or vitiated through inflation. Makers of Gillette Blue Blades have experienced this similar problem: because of the use of inflated language in past advertising, they have no words left to meaningfully describe improvements in their product. “What can we do?” a company executive asks. “Say, ‘This time we really mean it’?”

Christendom seems to be choking in fuzz, fluff, and flummery—epitomized by the ubiquitous slogan, “Have a nice eternity.” This pseudo-statement illustrates what might be called rhetorical underkill or blunderkill. The incongruity between noun and modifier renders the phrase oxymoronic—with due emphasis on the second syllable.

Linguistic puffery in a religious context has brought about the lie that is not quite a lie and the truth that is not quite the truth. A church ad states, “Your friendly neighborhood church is just a few short miles off the freeway, just a few short minutes from practically anywhere in the Valley.” Ours, you see, is an age of relativity, even in linear and chronological measurement—although our friendly neighborhood pastor probably preaches absolutes in the pulpit. Think of it. The miles to church are not restricted to 1,609.35 meters each, and Ptolemy’s minute can be shortened as one drives there. A religious breakthrough has come. If Madison Avenue can advertise a large pint, a big, big gallon, and a full quart, why can’t the churches advertise short miles, short minutes, a full Gospel, and a full salvation, as well as an eternity that’s gonna last a long, long, time?

Another form of religious doublespeak is the use of euphemism. Some euphemisms, of course, serve a legitimate purpose in situations where tact, taste, and courtesy are required. Used responsibly, they can be the soft words that turn away wrath. But when they cloak essential truth, when language belies reality, when manipulation and exploitation are the motive, they become pernicious words in sheep’s clothing or the whitewash on sepulchres full of corruption. By use of euphemism some preachers avoid a clean exposition of sin, a central and essential doctrine in Christian teaching. “Whatever became of sin?” Karl Menninger asked in his recent book. A myriad of euphemisms have replaced and obsured it; sin becomes a faux pas, a peccadillo, a lapse, a slip, a breach, a misdeed, or an impropriety. One does not sin; one is simply being human.

In T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party, Celia Coplestone, in a session with her psychiatrist, describes her guilt:

“I had always been taught to disbelieve in sin.

Oh, I don’t mean that it was ever mentioned.

But anything wrong, from our point of view,

Was either bad form, or was psychological.…

But when everything’s bad form, or mental kinks,

You either become bad form, and cease to care,

Or else, if you care, you must be kinky

(Complete Poems and Plays 1909–1950, Harcourt, 1971, p. 361).)

An age in which sin is bad form is a doublespeaking age in which the power to define a word can be the power to shape ideas and control minds. G. K. Chesterton, in his essay “On Evil Euphemisms,” aptly characterizes our time: “Everything is to be called something that it is not.… Everything is to be recommended to the public by some sort of synonym which is really a pseudonym. It is a talent that goes with the time of electioneering and advertisement and newspaper headlines; but whatever else such a time may be, it certainly is not specially a time of truth” (Essays, Stories, and Poems, I.M. Dent and Sons, 1935, pp. 208–9).

Still another form of religious doublespeak is the use of jargon. The use of esoteric, theological terms inappropriate to audience and occasion is the stock-in-trade of the religous doublespeaker who says thaumaturgy rather than working of miracles, viable Weltanschauung rather than sensible world-view, and relevant kerygma rather than effective proclamation of the Gospel. This person lives in a pastorium; interacts with and gets input and feedback from his prayer-cell circle of the Committed in a Christian Life Center; has dialogue in Christian constructs; opts for viable alternatives to implement, and Outreach Explosion to the unchurched. The Apostle Paul warned the Ephesian believers, “Let no man deceive you with vain [or empty] words” (Eph. 5:6), and Peter warned believers of those who would make merchandise of them with false words (2 Pet. 2:3).

A first cousin of this type of doublespeak is what might be called “purr words”—highly general, abstract language that is long on impression and short on repression, designed to sell rather than to tell. These words and expressions have such vague associations and referents that no clear meaning is conveyed or even intended—for example, the American Way of Life, a meaningful religious experience, distinctively Christian, and the word religious itself.

Another form of religious doublespeak consists of what Ralph Ellison has called “church-house rhetoric”—that is, hackneyed language, prefabricated pietisms, sanctimonious stereotypes. One who uses pious platitudes not only speaks mechanically, but also reveals the quality of his thinking and devotion. If the blessings of God are new every morning, why is the language of testimony and prayer threadbare and stale? It is certainly not the clarity of some expressions that have led to their overuse; consider: the battlements of heaven (Is the Holy City under siege?) or a journey to far-flung corners of the globe (to be accomplished, I suppose, by throwing caution to the four winds). We must be aware not only of what we mean to say but also of what we say without meaning to. Consider this common expression: May God add his blessing to the reading of the Word. The implication is that man has blessed the Word by reading it and Almighty will add a little something.

Although some words lose their value to communicate through hackneyed stereotypes, others do the same thing through a hip rhetoric slanted to accomodate a particular audience. Such expressions as Groove with God; Let Jesus turn you on; get high on Jesus, and take the ultimate trip with the Big Man upstairs fall dangerously short of any biblical referent. Paul’s advice to Timothy to “shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase into more ungodliness” (2 Tim. 2:16) is appropriate warning to anyone who is guilty of this form of doublespeak.

One of the most subtle forms of current religious doublespeak is the use of what Theodore Roosevelt called weasel words. These are words that have been emptied of their meaning, like eggs sucked empty by a weasel. As Mario Pei points out, the term “can be legitimately extended to cover any word of which the semantics are deliberately changed or obscured to achieve a specific purpose” (Words in Sheep’s Clothing, Hawthorne, 1969, p. 2). For example, Neo-Orthodox theologians often use Christian terms while denying their historical basis in fact, which in effect empties the word of meaning. This is true of their use of the terms virgin birth, revelation, and resurrection. With respect to the last Charles Ryrie has noted that “Barthians say that the accounts of the resurrection in the Bible are not the ground of our faith in the resurrection; nevertheless, they are an important element in the witness to revelation of the resurrection, and this revelation is the ground of our faith. Reduced to simple doubletalk this means that theoretically we would not need the Bible accounts of the resurrection in order to believe it, but admittedly they help, and actually we could not believe without them” (Neo-Orthodoxy, Moody Press, 1956, p. 60).

Paul warned Timothy that in the latter days men would “be full of big words,” maintaining a “facade of religion but their conduct will deny its validity” (2 Tim. 3:1–5, Phillips). Such is the incongruity of religious doublespeak. If doublespeak is the language of corruption issuing from the deceitfulness of the human heart, then the desideratum is a language of integrity. Amelioration of doublespeak will result from the single-mindedness of an integrated and regenerate personality. When the word of Christ dwells richly within, when the Holy spirit combines “spiritual things with spiritual words” doublespeak will diminish.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

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