Early in life we learn to read and write. Normally we go to school for this. But there is a prior language skill that we begin to learn soon after birth -- speech. One of the ways in which we are nearer our Stone Age ancestors than we think is the preponderance of speech as compared with reading and writing. I guess that the Stone Age tribesmen did not spend a lot of time reading books. Most likely they spent even less time putting their thoughts into writing. We in the digital age (should that be Digital Age?) are uncommonly like them. Our speech habits are not only a major part of our daily life – face to face, on the phone, on a vox pop etc. They also dwarf our written exchanges (which are mostly exercises in box-ticking).
Speech does not stay the same from generation to generation, or even now from day to day. We have only to consider the revolution brought about by feminists. We no longer speak of workers descending into man-holes. We eschew the word 'mankind'. We gasp for relief from 'his and her' phrases and plump for the indeterminate and scarcely defensible 'their'. Even the furniture takes a hiding. A woman conducting a meeting may favour the word 'chair' rather than 'chairwoman'. Where we used to speak of firemen, we now speak of fire-fighters. (But the Master of my old college is a woman. Where does that take us?) The requirement that for the time being we conduct conversations at long range does not influence the general linguistic movement. The shift of stress in words like ‘contribute’, ‘adversary’ and ‘formidable’ is one feature of this movement.
Speech, especially casual speech, has dealt a deathblow to the majestic sentences of the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Religious language of the kind favoured by, say, Dr Johnson, has been replaced by street-speak. Our language is the language of a people that build not cathedrals but football stadiums.
Underlying all these hesitations and glitches is the contest between specialist religious language and the vernacular. A common religious language like Latin is the same the world over; that is also true in some measure of Church Slavonic. And in today's world we could claim that the international language is English. Ask any airline pilot.
In short, we have to choose. And the choice may already have been made for us. If we worship with one of the Orthodox Churches, the choice was made generations ago. We inherit the magic and the mystery of a solemn liturgy. If we worship with one or another of the contemporary Western Churches, we are invited to say or sing what we mean and mean what we say or sing. It may be as bald as that. We should beware of thinking there is only one way to use speech in worship.
HAYDOCK TANGO
Haydock is known for its racecourse and its brass band. St Mark’s church, Haydock, St Helens has a community hub café-cum-furniture-cum clothing shop (TANGO – together as neighbours giving out). It also has a global outlook featuring Tearfund, YWAM and CMS with the Revd Daniel Leathers leading the way.
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