I have quite a few bad habits, but here is one that can be told on this blog and not just in the confessional: I sometimes use too many adjectives.
This week I was reminded of this problem when I became irritated with a description on this blog of a political commentator as a Mormon. “What in the world does his Mormonism have to do with anything? Isn’t the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints exceptionally generous to the poor? ” I thought. It reminded me of people who put “extreme right” in front of everything a Republican says or use “teabagging” as a description of a senator.
What of “social” justice? Isn’t plain old justice enough? We certainly should give the poor justice and institutions should be just as well as people, but isn’t adding an adjective to a word often an excuse to import something questionable (government growth) on the back of something uncontroversially good (justice)?
Having almost worked myself up into righteous indignation, I realized that too often I throw in an adjective (“secular”) is a favorite as a shot. Throwing a few shots is fine, unless it is playing to the stereotypes of my particular audience. It is wrong to comfort the comfortable by confirming their stereotypes. It is one thing to beard the secularist in his den, but another to give him a close shave in the friendly, comment free confines of my home blog Scriptorium. The first might be part of the rough-and-tumble of debate, the last seems certainly cheap and possibly cowardly.
So I think I shall watch my adjectives more carefully . . . to make sure I am not piling them on needlessly.
And I still don’t think Beck’s Mormonism is relevant to his position!
March 18th, 2010 | 11:43 pm | #1
On too many adjectives
Like the adjective “hate” in hate crime. What does the adjective “hate” do except to enforce some liberal notion of Political Correctness?
Fwiw, I think using the word “secular” is okay when using the term “secular liberal” so as to distinguish them from “liberal protestant” (which I frequently abbreviate to LibProt).
March 19th, 2010 | 5:52 am | #2
If this post is about the to-do around Glenn Beck’s diatribe against ‘social justice’, and the plea to leave churches advocating for such, then I have to agree with everything but the last sentence.
Objections to caricatures of Joe McCarthy aside, the McCarthy-esque fear of the religious left is the hallmark of the pietistic, legalistic religious right. And, for better or worse, this is why Mormonism is more politically right-wing than even the SBC: it is at its core a religion in which the self-perfection of man is the highest of virtues.
Of course, the other contributing factor for Beck is that he’s a pandering fear-monger who entertains by whipping people up against their worst fears.
March 19th, 2010 | 8:20 am | #3
Social Justice is a useful term only to the extent that too many TR christians believe that it is a bad thing, unbiblical thing, so when they use the word justice they get to just ignore the bibles teachings on the subject.
March 19th, 2010 | 8:42 am | #4
The one thing incomparably worse than too frequently using adjectives is promiscuously using adverbs.
March 19th, 2010 | 10:07 am | #5
Well, Frank the problem with this view of the LDS is that people such as Harry Reid are LDS.
I am not LDS. I do not agree (strongly) with distinctive LDS doctrines . . . but just as “Jewish x” gets my back up so does “Mormon y” when I don’t see the immediate relevance. I don’t like it when it is done to people here either by the way.
Evangelical Joe Carter . . . blah, blah, blah if on a topic not relevant to Joe’s argument is often a way to dismiss or play on reader’s stereotypes.
March 19th, 2010 | 10:08 am | #6
Promiscuously using adverbs is illegal here in Iowa, under the “Promiscuous Adverbosity” act. (Supporters call it the Prom Night bill.)
March 19th, 2010 | 10:40 am | #7
Thank God for the Nanny State.
March 19th, 2010 | 11:55 am | #8
JMR, you have my social thanks for this post ;)
March 19th, 2010 | 12:09 pm | #9
It seems to me that a Harry Reid is the exception that proves the rule. Pietists are legalists — whether they are temperance legalists (right wing) or conscience legalists (left wing).
Eh. It’s not worth fighting over. Glenn Beck is a goofball regardless of his religion. He could be the pastor of Grace Community Church and president or the Master’s Seminary, and with the opinions he tosses off every day I’d still find him odius.
March 19th, 2010 | 12:18 pm | #10
Frank:
We agree on Beck.
I hope you can stand it,
John Mark
March 19th, 2010 | 12:22 pm | #11
“He could be the pastor of Grace Community Church and president of the Master’s Seminary, and with the opinions he tosses off every day I’d still find him odious.”
There are some people (I’m not one of them) who think that John MacArthur’s preachings, teachings, and writings are odious.
March 22nd, 2010 | 8:57 am | #12
As long as Beck sticks to strictly political views and analysis, then I agree, his Mormonism is not all that relevant. But, when he starts telling people where they should or should not go to church, based upon the political position of their church, then his Mormonism becomes very relevant.
March 22nd, 2010 | 8:21 pm | #13
Actually, its the far left that wants perfection not the right. The right as Victor David Hansen mentions sees human beings as flawed and that’s why you can get right wingers to support wars more than left wingers. Left wingers and left wingers that are religious like Jim Wallis are of course pacifists. Mormons are more politcally conservatve as a group with exceptions ike the Udalls and Harry Reid because they federal government made them gave up pural marriage. Also, as John Mark stated all of us would be better off developming are own welfare state like the Mormons,caring for our own not excepting their thelogy.
March 22nd, 2010 | 8:26 pm | #14
I think that Beck sometimes goes off the wall. But Beck was the first person since William F Buckey to mention the massive famine in the Ukraine that happen in the 1930′s, probably caused by Stalin. And leftist religious or not didn’t believe it happen at the time. Histry prove them wrong.
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