From: CXAD@musica.mcgill.ca (CXAD)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: RE:  man vs. humanity [was 'personal savior']
Date: 11 Oct 92 02:28:57 GMT
Organization: McGill University

Steve Hayes writes:
> >
> >A far bigger linguistic danger than "personal" saviour is the
>femspeak insistence that "man" can only refer to a male, and can
>no longer be inclusive and generic. If you see it as a generic
>term, you can say, for example, that Christ bring about
>reconciliation between God and man and man and man, and you can
>affirm the truth of God's relationship to persons in community.
>"Man" means the human person in community. If you substitute any
>other word, you drift off into either individualism or
>collectivism.  "Humankind" speaks of human beings in the mass,
>and "humanity" speaks of an abstract essence. "Man" is the only
>way of speaking (in English) of a human person not just as an
>individual, but as part of a community and representative of the
>community. Perhaps we should coin another acronym as a
>substitute for "man" - thpic - which can stand for "the human
>person in community".
> >.
Let me place this issue in a more even-sided light.  On the one
hand you have the traditional use of male-metaphors for God and
the use of male-pronouns to represent collectives of both men and
women.  No one can doubt that this is derived historically out of
male dominance in the political and social spheres (i.e. the
language-determining spheres).  Thus, when the justice of history
is questioned, so too must the present language be questioned.
Of course, if you think that women should stay at home and not
enter significantly into the political-social-economic spheres,
you won't question the justice of the previously patriachal
history.  Otherwise you will.  If you do question the justice of
the past, then you have to consider the way that using the sexist
language defined by those times maintains and condones the
history of inequality.  And that includes questioning whether God
should be referred to _exclusively_ with male metaphors and
whether we should identify "man" and "all real humans".

Note that I say these should be questioned.  I don't think the
issue is as simple as many feminists make it out to be (and the
same goes for fundamentalists).  For we as believers have
received God's revelation through a tradition that is full of
male metaphors.  Our language itself cannot EVER be fully
separated from its history, for to do that we'd need to create a
totally new, ahistorical language.  That's impossible.  Even if
we did believe that praying "Our Father" is putting God in an
unjustifiably male box, is there any other choice?  Any attempt
to change the tradition significantly loses the historical
"punch" that has for so long defined it.  As is pointed out
above, the new ways of using language may NEVER have exactly the
same significance as the previous ones.

My decision, therefore, has been to challenge the patriarchal
foundations of language when the change in meaning is minimal.
Thus, I refer only to God, not to He or She (certainly nothing
lost there).  I will also refer to humanity rather than man,
because in my mind "humanity" is not an abstract essence, but is
the collective whole of a bunch of individuals.  Apparantly
Webster's agrees with me, for humanity is there defined as:

1) the fact or quality of being human, human nature
2) the human race, mankind, people
3) the fact or quality of being humane, kindness, mercy, sympathy

This doesn't seem excluded to the "abstract essence" you claim,
but seems instead to capture the important distinction mentioned
above of individualism vs. collectivism.  I believe we can
replace mankind, man, & chairman with humanity, human & chair
without losing any important meaning.  The issues of what to do
with "Father" and God's "Kingdom" are much harder to deal with,
and every believer should struggle with them faithfully.

BTW, I find it quite disturbing that a man would get up and tell
_everybody_ that "man" is an acceptable collective term.  OF
COURSE you feel comfortable with man refering to the individual
collective.  You're a man.  You are included in that collective
and don't feel the exclusion that a woman could feel.  Had a
woman lodged this point (and there are many who would) I feel she
would have demonstrated a bit more sensitivity to the issues at
stake.  I'm not saying that men CAN'T say legitimate and
insightful things in a dialogue like this, or that a man MUST be
a feminist to be heard.  But I AM saying that I get mighty
suspicious when a man heavily criticises the movement toward
liberation without showing any understanding or respect for that
movement.  Might be misinterpretted as a take-care-of-my-own
mentality.  Therefore, when I lodge my own disagreements with the
feminist agenda, I always try my hardest to make sure that I
understand the other's point, and present my own view in direct
confrontation therewith.

Love in Christ,
Tony D

_____________________________________________________________
Tony Dugdale            |  The perfect                      |
McGill University       |        solidarity of              |
Philosophy of Religion  |               mutual              |
CXAD@musica.mcgill.ca   |               misunderstanding    |
------------------------------------------------------------|
Attempts to separate "spiritual" concerns and "social/political"
concerns have been front and centre ever since Pharaoh tried
unsuccessfully to persuade Moses that religion had nothing to
do with Egypt's domestic policy on the status of nonindentured
servants.                   -Robert McAfee Brown