Retta Blaney at the National Catholic Reporter doesn’t like the new production of Godspell, but her chief beef is with the language of the King James Version that the script uses:
all the scriptural references featured the “God and men,” “every man who humbles himself” and “nurses a grudge against his brother” viewpoint.
I had this same complaint when I reviewed the 30th anniversary off-Broadway revival in 2000 for NCR. I mentioned this to Schwartz during a telephone interview then and he told me inclusive language “fails as art” and that he has always felt men represented everyone. I told him I had never felt included in the word men. Why would I? I’m not a man. I suggested substitutes like neighbor or brothers and sisters and he said he liked the idea of using neighbor and would speak to the director, Shawn Rozsa. I didn’t revisit that production so I don’t know if the changes were made, but here we are in 2011 for the trumpeted first Broadway revival, and the language is as exclusive as ever.
I have noticed that the New York Times and most journals use man and men to mean all human beings. Man is still current to mean a human being: ”man-eating shark,” “men-working,” “Age of Man” (National Geographic), “Hope in the Age of Man” (New York Times) “A Man-Made World” (The Economist),”The Museum of Man” (San Diego), etc.
If man or men is does cannot in any context include all members of the human race, nor can men and women, because that phrase des not include children. One would have to say male and female (really awkward) or use an abstraction or a collective noun. As Stephen Schwartz said, it fails as art.
The tortured syntax and plain bad-grammar in many alterations of hymns and biblical translations is a result of a feminist “church speak” that is more artificial than using thee and thou (which were ordinary usage at one point).
One example of feminist syntax is the greeting by priests of “sisters and brothers.” English has what Fowler called cast-iron idioms: Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters. When one alters them, it sounds very odd and unidiomatic.
And the worst part about it is that it’s just patronizing lip service.
I’ve always found “inclusive language” insulting and infantalizing. If a woman needs “inclusive language” to feel good about herself, then her self-confidence and self-perception need more help than a mere language shift can provide.
It was in the late 1990s that I went with my mother to the church in which she had raised me for a visit, and I noticed that the old hymnal had been replaced with a new one. The tunes were the same, but the lyrics were all different. God was not referred to as “he” anymore unless no subject or object could be substituted. All memorable lines from old hymns had been replaced with unmemorable platitudes.
When we sang the rewritten version of “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ Her Lord,” I belted out the old lyrics in a loud voice. This caused people to turn around and look at me. ( Note Bene I do not act up like this in other churches only in the one in which I was raised, made an elder, and have a sort of proprietary feeling. Therefore, I avoid such modernistic churches as much as possible.)
I do not believe that men should dominate women, but I do believe that Christianity should target men for strong moral development. When men no longer think that their personal morality is important in the eyes of God, then woman and children are really in trouble.
When men no longer think that their personal morality is important in the eyes of God, then woman and children are really in trouble.
Janice, Dennis Prager cites that very reason for the OT using masculine pronouns in describing God.
I think your last comment explains a lot of what has been happening in the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse crisis. A lot of Catholics seem to believe that if you’re Catholic, then you’re “in” with God. IOW, institutional membership constitutes salvation. If priests and bishops believe that, then how can they be motivated to see that their personal morality matters? Throw in the institutional arrogance and the sense of entitlement that pervade the hierarchy, and you’re throwing gasoline on a wildfire.
Joseph it is not “women” who need the inclusive language but apparently the military and the CIA that do. I recall when Gloria Steinem gave a more recent interview to the Press and admiited the CIA funded her “Ms Magazine”.
“‘In 1958, Steinem was recruited by CIA’s Cord Meyers to direct an “informal group of activists” called the “Independent Research Service.” This was part of Meyer’s “Congress for Cultural Freedom,” which created magazines like “Encounter” and “Partisan Review” to promote a left-liberal chic to oppose Marxism. Steinem, attended Communist-sponsored youth festivals in Europe, published a newspaper, reported on other participants, and helped to provoke riots. One of Steinem’s CIA colleagues was Clay Felker. In the early 1960’s, he became an editor at Esquire and published articles by Steinem which established her as a leading voice for women’s lib. In 1968, as publisher of New York Magazine, he hired her as a contributing editor, and then editor of Ms. Magazine in 1971. Warner Communications put up almost all the money although it only took 25% of the stock. Ms. Magazine’s first publisher was Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a CIA-connected PR executive who planned John Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade route.’ ”
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/310075.shtml
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/031800-02.htm
The relationship between women and men on basis of equality remains challenging. Focusing it on the WORDS man and woman may making it more an English language problem. My native language Dutch uses “mens” for both, as does the German with “Mensch”. My adopted language Pilipino has the word “tao”. What other languages have a common word (aside from the specific man and woman word)? Maybe if English-language speakers could find a word for both genders (0r revive an archaic one if such ever existed), we could focus all on what really unites and devides us.
Thoughts are things, and language expresses them. To continue to revert to the “Old” language of the Mass as somehow more “authentic” than inclusive language is absurd. And only an unaccostomed ear is disturbed by “People” instead of ‘Men”.
I beg to differ with Mr. Schwartz, but art is not reliant on exclusive language. Perhaps women should be writing the hymns and the rituals..
There is no such thing as “cast-iron” idioms.
AW