In my experience with Evangelical, fundamentalist and charismatic churches, I’ve found that they tend to view the world through binary lenses. Everything is either morally good or morally evil, with nothing — nothing! — amoral or in-between.

The classic example is music. Churches, particularly youth groups, are big on convincing people to destroy their “secular” music collections and listen exclusively to “Christian” music (in short: Christian music really only refers to an artist’s record label, not their lyrics, actions, or actual religious views). A speaker at a youth group event I attended once shouted, “Secular music will drag your soul down to the pit of hell!” The reason is because of spirits in the music — no matter what the singer is saying, if the musician is not a Christian then the devil is inhabiting the music for the sole purpose of getting teenagers to have sex and become atheists. No music is neutral, it either a force for good or a force for evil and you’d better make sure you’re supporting the right side.

This attitude can be extended to anything — clothing, movies, brands of food, local businesses, whatever. Not all churches take it to the same extremes, but it’s there.

Part of the problem, I think, has to do with the way they approach the Bible. Somewhere along the line, the Evangelical community decided that the only way to read the Bible was to assume that:

1. Everything in the Bible was written directly by God himself and is meant to be interpreted as literal, historical and factual (known as inerrancy) “whenever possible”. When the inerrant writings of God seem to contradict themselves, then you can start considering the possibility that maybe one of the passages in question has some kind of cultural explanation and isn’t mean to be taken entirely literally.
2. Everything in the Bible is either a command or a prohibition.

This stark reading of scripture can’t lead to anything but perpetual judgment of all things as “good” or “evil”. So, when pastors start decrying books and movies from the pulpit, the laity says, “He studies the Bible more than I do. He must be right!” and BAM! culture war. It leads to intense division (which is a whole other topic in itself) and perpetual witch hunting.

I view the Bible, particularly the Hebrew scriptures, as a collection of stories or fictionalized historical accounts written by people who had specific ideas about God and morality that they wanted to convey. I don’t believe that God would order the slaughter of women and children after the army defending them was defeated, but I do believe that someone could use that as a literary device to make a point about something else. I believe that Jesus really lived, really died, and really was raised from the dead, but I also believe that the writers who provided us with accounts of those events were also thinking about presentation and probably fudged some things for the sake of creating a compelling narrative.

But, I majored in English and enjoy creative writing, so I have trouble thinking of fiction as anything but honest and true. If God were to task me with writing a holy book, my first step would be world-building and probably rolling up some character sheets.

Today’s installment isn’t about something I find particularly offensive, just… really annoying. “Christianese” is the name given to the strange jargon that peppers conversations between Evangelicals. I don’t know where this term came from, but I learned it inside the church, as in, “Sometimes our classmates or coworkers don’t understand us if we speak Christianese,” so at least they know their speech patterns are off-putting.

At first glance, Christianese seems pretty benign — people say things like, “I am so blessed,” or “The Lord was teaching me patience as I was driving to church” in response to, “How are you?” It’s stilted and awkward, but hey, they’re making a conscious effort to be grateful no matter what happens in life.

If you’ve read 1984, you’re familiar with Newspeak. If you’re not, here’s the basic idea: If people don’t have words they can’t articulate thoughts, so if you don’t want people having certain thoughts, you take away the relevant words. Christianese lacks the ability to destroy the thoughts, but it does limit which thoughts can be safely expressed within the walls of a church.

First and foremost, Christianese assumes that everything happens as a direct result of God doing something. All events, all the time, as if God didn’t create a universe that operates according to a variety of laws and doesn’t require a whole lot in the way of maintenance. So, when someone asks, “How are you?” or “How was your week?”, your answer needs to take into account that whatever transpired in the previous seven days represent God, in his infinite wisdom, reaching into the very fabric of reality to specifically make your week occur in the manner that it had.

Obviously, this rules out shitty as an acceptable response.

“The Lord has been teaching me patience” is one way to report on a less-than-perfect week, as is, “God has shown me the importance of maintaining my relationships.”

In some situations, however, invoking God feels like overkill, so Christianese allows its speakers to attribute things to “spirits”. This also goes for things that a person might not feel right pinning on God. A laughing child, for example, might be described as having a “spirit of joy” about him. Know a guy who seems unflappable? Spirit of peace. Experiencing depression or anxiety? Spirit of oppression or fear.

In the worst situations, this tendency to spiritualize everything can lead people to make harmful decisions. For example, I’ve known people who quit taking anti-depressants because they saw depression as a spiritual problem rather than a chemical one. This is, sadly, somewhat common in Evangelicalism, particularly if you head down the fundamentalist or Pentecostal branches.

But even when it’s not that bad, attributing everything to spirits can have a negative effect on people. When I used to play guitar at churches, people would frequently approach me to tell me that I had a “spiritual gift” of guitar-playing, or that when I played they felt “a spirit of peace” or “a spirit of worship”. Sometimes it would even get escalated to God somehow playing through me. Never mind that I practiced several hours a day, harvesting riffs from the songs I loved, running my scales and arpeggios until my fingers were numb. My efforts meant nothing; God was running my hands and the spirits were in the sound.

This destroyed my work ethic. See, since things only happened if God willed them, and I was only good at guitar because God intervened and made me good, then obviously effort didn’t matter. If I tried a new hobby but failed to grasp it immediately, I gave up on it; if I took an interest in an academic subject, I quit reading if I didn’t instantly memorize the basics. Obviously, God didn’t want me to do it, or he would make me perfect at it.

Christianese permeates Evangelicalism, so it’s going to show up in the rest of this series. I may make bingo cards (probably not).