Inclusive Anguish

I’ve been visited by the evangelical thought police.

I had always assumed that the hardline enforcers of religious trendiness were busy in the bureaucracies of mainline Protestantism—banning “Onward Christian Soldiers” for its militarism, axing “Jesus Loves the Little Children” because it excludes Hispanics, chopping “sexist” references to God with all the subtlety of a Moscow purge trial.

But evangelicals, I figured, were above all that.

Now, I’m not so sure.

Last year I received a letter from the organizer of an evangelical conference to which I had submitted a paper. He compared my views to racism and anti-Semitism, and called me an advocate of “Christian Archie Bunkerism.”

My crime? I had used the words “mankind” and “man” as inclusive of both men and women. This, I was told, “effaces the dignity of women.”

This concerned me, of course, but I dismissed the letter as the work of an overzealous evangelical faction determined to emulate its liberal role models and be fashionable at all costs.

Then it happened again. Days before I was scheduled to address another evangelical gathering, I received instructions that said using sexist words like “mankind” was not only equivalent to ethnic jokes or racist slang, but would violate “ethical/biblical guidelines.” I was also told that when reading Scripture aloud, I should change my translation to conform to their “gender inclusive” standard.

Does this mean I’m a bigot, that in my public addresses all these years I have routinely offended audiences with language that is the moral equivalent of “nigger” or “kike”?

This is the accusation—a serious one. But what are the facts?

There is very little etymological evidence that “man” or “mankind” are words that intrinsically denigrate women. Historian Jacques Barzun writes that the study of Middle English “leads us to the truth about man, a truth that the reformers do not know or wish to ignore, namely, that the word has two equal meanings, of which ‘male’ is only one. The other (and earlier) is ‘human being.’ ”

But even if these words are not historically sexist, have they become so today? After all, the accepted meaning of a word is influenced by common usage. That’s why dictionaries are constantly revised.

Every dictionary I have consulted, however, lists both generic and gender specific definitions for “man” and “mankind.” For most speakers and writers of English, these words are still used and understood to mean both men and women.

But despite their accepted usages, these words apparently still offend some people. So why not simply change the way we speak and avoid any offense? Why be a stickler?

This is a persuasive consideration, and I understand that many who use inclusive language do so purely out of the desire not to offend or exclude women. I respect this motivation; I’ve often chosen to use inclusive language myself for that very reason.

But choosing to do so is a different matter altogether from being called a bigot if I don’t do so—which for me raises two crucial considerations.

The first is that language is important. It forms the basis for moral discourse, and should not be changed lightly. People who don’t understand their own language need to be informed, not humored.

But the second reason goes much deeper. For while most well-meaning evangelicals see this merely as an issue of not offending others, I suspect that for some the primary concern is another agenda altogether. For them, nonsexist language is an ideological test to distinguish the “sensitive” sheep from the “reactionary” goats. The linguistic case matters little: the real object is to determine who will salute when the radical feminist flag is raised.

During sociologist Peter Berger’s childhood in Italy in the 1930s, Mussolini made a speech calling for reform of the Italian language. Italian had two forms of address, the formal lei and the familiar voi. Mussolini, without good linguistic reason, decided that lei was a sign of effeminacy while voi was a symbol of fascist virility. “From that point on,” writes Berger, “everyone who used lei or voi was conscious of being engaged in a political act … every time you said voi you were making the linguistic equivalent of the fascist salute.”

Berger sees parallels to the current debate over nonsexist language. “That is what inclusive language means … the artificial imposition of an ideological jargon whose purpose is to compel ideological allegiance in a symbolic fashion. It is not what people pretend it to be—namely, a rectification of past discrimination or exclusion. But it is precisely ideological-political jargon.”

This ideological-political agenda is the dark side of the sexist-language debate, and, if successful, it could well lead to two serious consequences.

First, it would threaten the division of roles essential to Christian conceptions of the family and the church. For believers there is no moral or spiritual superiority of one sex above another. But there is a biblical division of responsibilities in both the family and the church. To question these is not a revolt against unwarranted prejudice but a revolt against the order of the universe itself.

Second, blurring gender distinctions would not only disrupt order in church and family, but could eventually blur our understanding of who God is.

All language about God is symbolic. Though God is evoked by female images in Scripture, male images predominate. This does not mean God is masculine. But if we strip the masculine of its symbolic significance we strip our understanding of God as well.

Language, when it is loaded with an ideological agenda and made a test of ideological purity, is no longer a means of communication that brings people together, but a source of division that tears them apart. Line up with the feminists or the chauvinists—and don’t dare make any verbal slips. Every word can brand you. Every sentence can categorize.

And all this suspicion, all this judgment, all this condemnation, is advocated in the name of Christian sensitivity. Well, I have felt the sting of that sensitivity; I have known the scurrilous accusations of bigotry. I fear where it will lead. And I will not salute.

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