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Nov. 30th, 2005 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseI've mentioned before that my church is exceedingly liberal, and in some ways, that suits me very well. However, I've been finding myself occasionally annoyed, in flashes, with some of their language choices.
I'm okay with changing the opening to the Pater Noster, to "Our Mother and Father." It's a touch clunky, but as someone who has looked on Deity in female form, I can't really gripe at the attempt. It's better than "Our Parent".
The people who push to change all references to "Kingdom" to "kindom" amuse me, but again, don't much bother me. I could quibble, since yes, King is a patriarchal term, but Kingdom is also a term for a place controlled by one supreme ruler, and what is God, male or female, if not supreme? To me, "Kindom" starts trying to place us on equal footing with Deity.
But it doesn't really hurt the sound or the feel of the prayer. When a whole congregation is reciting, the difference in tone is lost to the united cadence and pacing and pitch.
(Then again, I was also raised in Roman Catholic, where the belated addition "For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the Glory" is excluded, and I tend not to say it. That still leaves "thy kingdom come")
They're open to individuals who choose things like that, dropping a whole phrase, or, if one wishes, reciting the whole of it in Latin while everyone else uses English.
Some of the changes to the choir music are equally unlikely. The whole of the song called "Lord, Give Me Faith" stood unchanged, ditto the adaptation of the Prayer of St. Francis, though Lord is not only masculine and patriarchal, but classist and dictatorial (And if Kingdom is out for the reasons of dictatorship as well as maleness, then...). But a one-line reference to "And God so loved the world He made" was changed so that it didn't even rhyme (Or demi-rhyme, as the original was already pushing it) with the next phrase, and was harder to sing, and less directly referential to the commonly-used translations of the Bible.
According to the organst/choir director, there are people who will nitpick the song choices to death if they catch these remnants of patriarchy, which is why he gets his partner to look over the lyrics and make changes (usually ones that read fairly smoothly, to be fair). I believe it - I don't know what it is, but it seems as if this last week or two, I've been exposed and over-exposed, online and elsewhere, to many debates on feminism vs. patriarchy, feminism vs. female supremicism, and various gender identity discussions.
I know what words mean. I know what our use of words implies. That's why, of my three point of view characters, I have one character who uses "he" in his thoughts when generalizing, without any realization he's doing it, one who is gender neutral reflexively (Coming from a race that's effectively hermaphroditic), and one who doesn't generalize much at all, since recent experience has told her she doesn't know what other people really think or feel.
I approve of trying to change the world through fixing our *current* language use.
But sometimes I wonder who it is who's hurt by one reference to God so loving the world "he" made, but not by constant use of the word "Lord".
And I sometimes wonder what's the point of fixing the words of past writers to be less hurtful? What about the songs in Latin, the Handel and the Mozart? If it's not done to texts that can be truly defined as Historical, why is it okay to do to something only ten or twenty years old?
And what's the worth if the poetry is stripped away along with it? Because breaking the poetry hurts me more than references that make it clear that parts of our history had a patriarchal/male-centric point of view.
I'm okay with changing the opening to the Pater Noster, to "Our Mother and Father." It's a touch clunky, but as someone who has looked on Deity in female form, I can't really gripe at the attempt. It's better than "Our Parent".
The people who push to change all references to "Kingdom" to "kindom" amuse me, but again, don't much bother me. I could quibble, since yes, King is a patriarchal term, but Kingdom is also a term for a place controlled by one supreme ruler, and what is God, male or female, if not supreme? To me, "Kindom" starts trying to place us on equal footing with Deity.
But it doesn't really hurt the sound or the feel of the prayer. When a whole congregation is reciting, the difference in tone is lost to the united cadence and pacing and pitch.
(Then again, I was also raised in Roman Catholic, where the belated addition "For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the Glory" is excluded, and I tend not to say it. That still leaves "thy kingdom come")
They're open to individuals who choose things like that, dropping a whole phrase, or, if one wishes, reciting the whole of it in Latin while everyone else uses English.
Some of the changes to the choir music are equally unlikely. The whole of the song called "Lord, Give Me Faith" stood unchanged, ditto the adaptation of the Prayer of St. Francis, though Lord is not only masculine and patriarchal, but classist and dictatorial (And if Kingdom is out for the reasons of dictatorship as well as maleness, then...). But a one-line reference to "And God so loved the world He made" was changed so that it didn't even rhyme (Or demi-rhyme, as the original was already pushing it) with the next phrase, and was harder to sing, and less directly referential to the commonly-used translations of the Bible.
According to the organst/choir director, there are people who will nitpick the song choices to death if they catch these remnants of patriarchy, which is why he gets his partner to look over the lyrics and make changes (usually ones that read fairly smoothly, to be fair). I believe it - I don't know what it is, but it seems as if this last week or two, I've been exposed and over-exposed, online and elsewhere, to many debates on feminism vs. patriarchy, feminism vs. female supremicism, and various gender identity discussions.
I know what words mean. I know what our use of words implies. That's why, of my three point of view characters, I have one character who uses "he" in his thoughts when generalizing, without any realization he's doing it, one who is gender neutral reflexively (Coming from a race that's effectively hermaphroditic), and one who doesn't generalize much at all, since recent experience has told her she doesn't know what other people really think or feel.
I approve of trying to change the world through fixing our *current* language use.
But sometimes I wonder who it is who's hurt by one reference to God so loving the world "he" made, but not by constant use of the word "Lord".
And I sometimes wonder what's the point of fixing the words of past writers to be less hurtful? What about the songs in Latin, the Handel and the Mozart? If it's not done to texts that can be truly defined as Historical, why is it okay to do to something only ten or twenty years old?
And what's the worth if the poetry is stripped away along with it? Because breaking the poetry hurts me more than references that make it clear that parts of our history had a patriarchal/male-centric point of view.
