Precis: This brief “confessional” is not intended as a public display of self-ridicule for past mistakes, nor as a self-congratulatory show of recent discoveries. Rather, it is intended as an example of how a modestly well-intentioned person, working within the ideological and political premises provided by the surrounding culture at a given moment in history, can make honest but serious mistakes that have consequences far beyond anything that he or she foresaw or intended. It is, therefore, a call to serious self-examination in the midst of the forces that are currently shaping the future of our country; the future, that is, in which our children and grandchildren will have to live. Do we really want them to feel that it is a good thing to replace all references to “mother” or “father” with a neutered term like “parent,” in order to align themselves with the political demands of one ideology?
In the fall of 1987, as I was finishing up my dissertation on the theology of the hymns of John and Charles Wesley,[i] I was asked by Carlton Young to address the members of the newly formed Hymnal Revision Committee (HRC) of the United Methodist Church, on the topic of how to organize the new hymnal.[ii] As part of my role with the committee, over the course of several meetings during the next year or so, Dr. Young also asked me to make suggestions regarding “gender inclusive language.” That is, to suggest where I thought the Wesley hymns might be altered, if at all, in order to keep pace with the growing pressure at that time in all things theological, especially worship resources, to use the rapidly developing standards of inclusive language.
The ostensible purpose of using gender inclusive language was to make both women and men, male and female, feel included in the ways we address God, and each other, in the course of singing hymns or saying prayers, etc..[iii] In my mind, at the time, I thought of this part of my task as a somewhat mixed assignment: on the one hand, perhaps, a matter of showing compassion toward those who might feel excluded; and, on the other, a matter of trying to avoid an all-out donnybrook over pronouns, and the like, that could threaten to overshadow the deeper and grander contribution of the Wesleys to Methodist worship, not to mention world hymnody.
And so, I made suggestions to the HRC about inclusive language: where, and in what cases, I thought pronouns, or other words, might be changed without disturbing too much the rhythm, beauty, and sense of the original Wesley hymns. Some of the suggestions I made were accepted and approved. Others were debated, rejected, or over-ridden in favor of sharper, more radical changes. In all of this process, many individual hymns were affected, often in ways that an average worshipper might not notice.[iv] I told myself, at the time, that it was more important to get these great hymns into the hymnbook, and to influence the larger organization of the hymnbook as a whole, than to lose individual hymns or the larger theological structure because a word or a pronoun here or there gave offense to the ears of some listeners, whether male or female or both.[v]
I think, now, that I chose the wrong course. I should have argued more clearly and forcefully for the appropriateness of traditional poetic language in the Wesley hymns, and against what has proven, in my estimation, to be in many cases an overly-sensitized reaction to a politically skewed issue, made all the more acute by regular complaint and appeasement.[vi]
The issue of language and poetry really shouldn’t have become so embattled. What may have begun as a matter of compassion, has become a matter of politically partisan war and control. In the worst cases, such as the recent push by Nancy Pelosi to require neutered pronouns and terms for all familial references (e.g., “parent” for “mother” or “father”) in the US House of Representatives, inclusive language, like other areas of identity politics today (race, gender, class), has devolved into a raw struggle of one party for power. It is no longer, if it ever truly was, about language or compassion at all. It is about power for a left-wing agenda.
[i] The Presence of Christ with the Worshipping Community: A Study in the Hymns of John and Charles Wesley, Emory University, 1988.
[ii] Carlton Young was the editor of the hymnal and also a faculty member at Emory. The outline of my comments to the committee was published as “Patterns of Worship in Early Methodist Hymnody, and the Task of Hymnal Revision,” Quarterly Review, Fall 1987, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 14-29.
[iii] My focus in this brief comment is on the use of gender inclusive language, though even then, in the late 1980s, and certainly since, other groups have also become sensitized about their inclusion.
[iv] This is, of course, a subjective judgement. Because for anyone, such as myself, who was raised in the Methodist Church (or in any other tradition for that matter) who has memorized the widely loved Wesley hymns over many years of experience, the changes would be more jarring and obvious. Here is an example of a change that might or might not slip by, from the opening line of the hymn, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Note that the solution for inclusivity in this case, involved repeating the last line of a stanza from the original in the second line of the altered version, in order to avoid the phrase, “sons of men.” “Sons of men” was, of course, a metaphorical synecdoche, invoking “all human beings,” not just the males.
Original Inclusive Change
Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia! Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens and earth reply, Alleluia!
[v] It may be important to note in this regard that the most outspoken advocates of gender inclusive language in the late 1980s were not always female. For some, whether male or female, it almost seemed that this issue provided a powerful rallying point of agreement, in a field where there were many other debates about what or what not to include. Inclusive language was becoming at that time a kind of implicit orthodoxy.
[vi] The example of “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” (note iv above) may already suggest problems that can arise poetically and theologically simply by repeating a phrase (“earth and heaven”) in order to avoid a traditional metaphor, “sons of men and angels.” Is it really a good thing to be so sensitized to an issue that we sacrifice the poetry of the original in order to “gain” a rather flat, unremarkable, political point? Might it not be better to show a large-hearted capacity to read the original synecdoche in the way it was intended? The problem becomes even more evident in another example, when personal pronouns for God (he, his, him) are replaced by demonstrative pronouns (that, this) or by repeating abstract gutturals (God, God, God, etc.) especially when the point of the hymn is to heighten the sense of God’s personal and intimate presence with us in the struggles and anxieties we face. Here, for example, is the original and the altered versions for a single stanza of a hymn by Paul Gerhardt, “Give to the Winds Thy Fears,” which John Wesley translated in 1739. The hymn begins with a reference to God as follows: “Give to the winds thy fears; hope and be undismayed. God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears; God shall lift up thy head.”
Original Inclusive Change
Leave to His sovereign sway Leave to God’s sovereign sway
To choose and to command; To choose and to command;
So shalt thou, wondering, own His way, So shalt thou, wondering, own that way,
How wise, how strong, His hand. How wise, how strong, this hand.
Faith and the Arts 