Shibboleths to Benediction: Why Words Matter in a Divided Age
Words and the World
Recent months have seen an increase in politically motivated violence, political stalemates at all levels of government, and expanding political divides. Our nation’s discourse has become increasingly violent and divided. Words that once stayed on the fringe now echo through politics and social media. A recent news story revealing racist and dehumanizing messages among young political leaders left me wondering: do words merely describe the world, or do they build it? Is there a strong partition between words and actions, or open pathways of influence? Are words negligible or consequential? Unimportant or powerful?
On one hand, we know that people often say things they don’t literally mean. We excuse cruel or careless words with phrases like “they didn’t mean it.” They are just venting or merely expressing an opinion. Growing up, we were taught to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” And the phrase “just rhetoric” is often used to placate people angry at someone else’s opinion or discourse. In some ways, we’ve been conditioned to see words as ephemeral.
Among Disciples, we love to quote St. Francis, even though he apparently didn’t say it: “Preach the gospel always; when necessary, use words.” We like to convince ourselves that we can communicate all that we need to communicate about faith without using words. We convince ourselves with hymns like “They will know we are Christians by our love.” We’ve gotten the word (pun intended): actions speak louder.
On the other hand, ancient historians offer a different perspective about the relationship between words and actions. Thucydides (c. 460–395 BCE), in The History of the Peloponnesian War, explained why he thought it important to include the speech a general or leader might have used before battle. He admitted that he might have taken some creative license in recreating these speeches. Still, he thought the speeches were important because, in his worldview, great events were always preceded by great speeches.
This same affirmation of the power of words showed up in how people thought about personal beliefs. In St. Augustine’s (354–430 AD) pastoral work, he would preach a sermon on the day that he gave the Creed to the catechumenate (people preparing for baptism). In one of those sermons, he said of the Creed, “It must be said because your heart will believe what it hears your lips say.”
The New Testament book of James agrees with Thucydides and Augustine. It compares the tongue to the bit in the mouth of a horse and the rudder under a great ship. The tongue may be small, but it directs the actions of a much larger entity. For what it’s worth, I lean in the direction of words having greater significance than other people. Across centuries and traditions, the link between speech and the formation of souls, communities, and nations may be subtle at times but it is always constant.
Language and Belonging
Groups form identities partly through shared words, phrases, metaphors, and stories. This happens at the most intimate level of friend groups and families all the way up to communities, states, and nations. This is significant to me as I interact with congregations and regions. Social groups use key words, phrases, and creedal statements to identify themselves.
We use stories, creeds, phrases, words, and even parts of words to distinguish our participation or lack of participation in a group. People are so adept at using language to mark in-group and out-group membership that we can even do it with parts of words. In Judges 12, the Gileadites detected their enemies, the Ephraimites, by having them say “Shibboleth.” They couldn’t pronounce it correctly, saying “Sibboleth” instead. That’s a simple example (and yes, I knew about it before the West Wing episode you may be thinking of). Still, the story, and the word we now use in English, shibboleth, point to the capacity of language to function as a social gatekeeper.
That symbolic use of speech also explains the formation of online group identities. Words and phrases inscribed on bullet casings reflect ideological commitments. The racist slurs in the leaked texting chats did not emerge from nowhere; they were incubated in a space where words created in-group belonging. Hateful engravings and “jokes” about gas chambers or slavery are not isolated outbursts from unhinged individuals; they are shibboleths of belonging. They were taught and learned. And as they circulate among groups of people, they begin to form larger networks of connections that we sometimes call “worldviews” or “ideologies.”
The Church’s Counter-Testimony
As dreadful secret conversations come to light, or the ideological commitments underlying violent actions surface, there is a rush to denounce both the words and the actions. And certainly, I would join those in saying that racist words are wrong even when they are spoken in private. Ideas that justify violence are wrong when they lead to violence, to be sure, but also when they do not lead to violence. They pollute the air with hatred that may not directly trigger violence but contribute to it.
However, denunciation offers a prophetic word, but denunciation alone cannot offer a constructive response. Where words have damaged us, words are needed to repair us. If words have been used to help build a web of hatred, we must use words to forge an even stronger netting of justice and grace. Justice Brandeis, in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, said, “The fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
Jesus told a story once about an evil spirit removed and the spiritual home being put in order, but with no occupant to replace the evil spirit, the space is given for even greater demonic inhabitants. Frankly, I’m not really sure what to say about Matthew 12:43–45 (the story I just referenced), but what it makes me think is this: we cannot merely scrub our rhetoric clean; we have to use our words to offer a counter-testimony.
We live in a time when speech is both cheap and powerful. Digital platforms have turned every user into a potential broadcaster. Ironically, the technology that allows us to stay connected can also disconnect us from each other. People feel empowered to say things through their keyboards that they would be more reluctant to say aloud. But followers of Christ know that the spoken, written, and digital Word itself is sacred.
So how do we respond when words are weaponized? We speak better words. We use language that articulates the gospel, not as a private ticket to heaven, but as a public vision of a world healed by grace. It may seem simplistic (and for a minister, self-serving) but I think this is one of the reasons it is important to be in corporate worship. A worship service is many things, but one of its chief functions should be that it is rehearsal for our lives. Not just a rehearsal for eternity, which it most certainly is, but a rehearsal for Monday-Saturday. We sing words of praise to God; we offer words of reconciliation to each other. We learn to speak the words associated with benediction and supplication and thanksgiving and doxology. We practice them with one another in the context of worship so that we can extend them into the world.
Worship is the place where we bear witness to the three great truths of our doctrine of humanity: Imago Dei: Each person is made in the image of God. Capax Dei: Each person has the capacity to know and relate personally to God. Coram Deo: Each person lives their life before the view of God in both mercy and accountability. It is through learning and integrating the grammar of grace that we resist and replace the hateful rhetoric of racial slurs, dog whistles, propaganda, and echo chambers and instead seek spaces where we can speak aloud to one another and to others words of truth, excellence, and dignity. “Whoever speaks should speak words given them by God” (1 Peter 4:10).