The Times They Are A-Changin'

Yesterday I spent the late afternoon and early evening at one of the local Barnes & Nobles doing some recreational reading. By that I mean it had absolutely nothing to do with church, religion, or theology in any way, shape or form. I picked up a couple of books on language, mostly because the subject interests me. However, if I happen to stumble across something that I can apply to the development of a couple of conlangs (Constructed Languages, think Star Trek's Klingon and J.R.R. Tolkien's various languages of Middle Earth) I dabble with.

Among my selections for the afternoon was David Crystal's The Fight for English: How language pundits ate, shot, and left (Oxford University Press, 2006). I found several things that I will take into consideration as I continue work on the conlangs. However, I also came across something else of interest.

This is a lesson everyone who studies language eventually learns. You cannot stop language change. You may not like it; you may regret the arrival of new forms and the passing of old ones; but there is not the slightest thing you can do about it. Language change is as natural as breathing. It is one of the linguistic facts of life... If all the energy that has been fruitlessly spent over the past 300 years complaining about language change had been devoted to improving our grasp of the nature of language, and developing fresh methods of language teaching and learning, we would be a lot better off. (pp. 89-90)

What is happening here is change, change, change, but the language is not getting worse as a result of it. Nor is it getting better. It is just--changing. It is keeping pace with society, as it always must, sometimes changing slowly, sometimes rapidly. Today, with so much social change about, especially as a result of increasing ethnic diversity, the spread of English as a global language, and the effect of Internet technology, we find the language changing more rapidly and widely than ever before.

This puts some people in a real panic. They see a disaster scenario. But there is no need. If the language had been decaying at the rate of knots predicted by Dryden et al., there would have been no language left by now! (p. 90)

I could not help but think of the tempest in the Anglican teapot when I read this. First in terms of the prayer book, and then in terms of both Christianity and the Anglican Communion. Just as language changes, so does culture. And as culture changes, so does the church. Recently I heard a speaker at a conference (I wish I could remember who, but I can't find my notes at the moment) say that every time the church went to a new place, it changed. Every place Christianity encountered a new culture, it changed. We even see evidence of this in Paul's letters, some of the earliest Christian writings we have.

As crystal wrote about people dealing with changes in language, we can see the same thing in the the church. What we have here is change, change change. And the church must change or die. No matter how often conservatives point to the megachurches that hold conservative Christian views, or point out that the largest congregations in the Episcopal Church are conservative ones (actually the largest are both the very conservative and the very liberal), they cannot stop the changes that they see as the scourge of liberalism destroying the church.

The church is not being destroyed. It is changing. That may mean the end of the Anglican Communion as we know it. It may even mean the end of Christianity as we know it. But Christianity will survive. It will survive because it will change. It will figure out how to do the things Christ asked us to do in new ways.

Sink or swim, folks. The choice is yours.



Peace,
Jeffri