‘Humpty, are you there?’ I thought I would sound out Humpty on names for things. I couldn’t catch his attention. He wasn’t on his wall, so I’ll see if I can manage without him.
Adam, you will remember, was given the job of naming the animals. That was straightforward. Some creatures readily invite naming. Nobody could be in doubt about naming a centipede. Nor could anybody fail to see that a hippopotamus is a river-horse. Of course, Adam did not speak English. Nor did he have any Latin or Greek, so the names that come readily to us would not have been available to him. Perhaps he had to invent not only the names but the whole idea of words and sentences. Poor Adam!
Suppose, however, that Adam was given the further task of naming the variety of Christians we see today. Poor Adam indeed!
Take the name ‘Anglican’. This word comes as a signifier of tribal identity. The Angles who swarmed into England along with their Saxon partners provided a convenient term to describe the settlers who set up shop alongside or after the departure of the Celts or Romano-Britishers. The 19th century saw English Christianity being exported to all the quarters of the globe. So dominant was this imperial initiative that it seemed to signify normal Christianity, as though anything else was a poor imitation. In the 21st century this understanding has lost its shine.
How about the word ‘Catholic’? A word meaning ‘universal’ has more resonance in the world today. The only dominant English entity across the globe is now the English language. In the Greek word ‘Catholic’ we have a word that, like Christianity, goes beyond tribalism. It suggests loyalty to a supra-national organisation. It was once confined to western Europe but has successfully gone global. Italy and Rome long had a pivotal role in this but Polish and Argentine office-holders in Rome have strengthened global claims.
‘Evangelical’ is a word that has lost its way. It cannot be allowed out alone. An Evangelical is either open, charismatic, conservative, liberal or complementarian. Shorn of these qualifying adjectives, ‘Evangelical’ is less than meaningful. This is not surprising. Nor is it regrettable. Evangelicals (though Simeon was not fond of the term), were known as enthusiasts, earnest men engaged in preaching the Gospel. Increasingly they needed to be identifiable Were they Calvinists, Arminians or prayer book men? The historically purposeful Oxford Movement leaders found themselves subject to a similar array of distasteful nomenclature, being called ritualists, Anglo-Catholics. Tractarians. New labels were necessary. The existing vocabulary was inadequate to define these new groupings.
The history of the word ‘Protestant’ is a sad one. It derives from a Latin word meaning ‘assertion’ and it originally expressed the idea of putting forward a point of view. This implied a benevolent conviction on the part of the person using the word, as in Herrick’s charming poem ‘Bid me to love and I will live thy protestant to be.’ It then became associated with discord and separation. As a result, the word nowadays is shunned. Protestants are thought to be noisy and their movement fissiparous.
I noticed that Humpty was showing signs of distress – or was it mirth? It must have been that word ‘fissiparous’. Humpty savours tricky vocabulary—though he doesn’t always take it seriously. ‘I thought I heard you say hissy-fit,’ he said.
‘Humpty, you’re impossible,’ I replied. ‘These are serious matters.’
NEW MERCY SHIP
‘Global Mercy’ a new hospital ship, has completed its sea trials and will set sail from China this month, having been built there. The £145m vessel has six operating theatres and is the world’s largest hospital ship for civilians. Don Stephens, founder of Mercy Ships, said: ‘We hope that this new vessel and the volunteer crew who serve on her will bring hope, healing and transformation for the next 40 to 50 years.’
If you have a comment on this post please send an email to Revd John King at johnc.king@talktalk.net Edited extracts may be published. To forward this to a friend click on the chain icon below.
Comments