a grouchy grammarian on religion vs. relationship

So, I think the "It's not a religion, it's a relationship" line is a bit silly. [Edit: If you need it, here's a quick example of what I'm talking about.  But be warned, it will try to play music automatically.  Christians of varying tones (and varying degrees of web-savviness) use similar arguments, but this was just the first thing that came up on a Google search for religion and relationship.]

Part of the insistence on relationship terminology is well-intentioned.  I think it's meant to help reach out to people who have been burned by religion as such, and that's a noble goal.  And I'm also all for emphasizing our relationships with God and other people -- I think that's what it's all about.

However, I don't know that shunning the term religion in favor of the term relationship is always helpful.  Semantically, I think making a big deal of the switch is equivalent to proclaiming about one's life with a spouse, "It's not a marriage, it's a relationship!"  -- Ok, yes, true, it's a relationship.  But that could mean a lot of different things, and our language has all these handy extra words to specify what kind of relationship.

And on the level of interpersonal relationships, we need that specificity because there are different behavioral expectations for different types of relationships -- I have a professional relationship with my boss, which entails reports on how my work is going, and I have a sibling relationship with my brother which entails hugs with a running start (which would knock over any normal person).  Not a good idea to confuse these, even though they're both relationships and that's lovely and all.

Anyway, the point is that religion is a perfectly serviceable English word to denote a particular kind of relationship among many others.  It's a kind of relationship where people worship God and try to figure out what that does to all the other relationships.  Maybe there are some situations where the substitution of terms (relationship for religion) is helpful, but I think it can often mean a loss of clarity.

I think there's even more of a problem, though, in the way people sometimes use this relationship language rhetorically to distinguish themselves from other religious folks -- the implication being that religion is not a relationship and that therefore those professing relationship instead are authentic and are offering something totally different from religion.

Ok, I agree with part of the point here: I think it's true that there are some people who participate in religious activities but are not truly cultivating transformed relationships with God and other people.  This is a legitimate concern.

However, I think the terminology switch doesn't really fix the superficiality problem and can also involve some polemics that aren't fair to other religious people.  The assumption that religion and relationship are mutually exclusive makes it easy to dismiss people whose religious practices are different from one's own (and therefore more apparent as religious practices -- relationshippy folks still have religious practices).  In many cases, these other people would see themselves as pursuing a relationship with God through the elements of their religious practice.  And no, you don't have to agree with others' practices -- but I think that talking about religion as necessarily separate from relationship can often lead to a superficial way of shutting down other groups (often in the absence of their competent defenders) rather than engaging the issues respectfully.

Lieblingsnotizbuch

The "history of Moleskine" leaflet is some of the rankest commodity fetishist marketing invented, and yet to be honest I'm quite pleased that there's apparently a specific German word for favorite notebook.

"guilt-free" . . . ?

I've recently been rather puzzled by advertisements and articles using the tagline "guilt-free."

For example:
An outlet mall billboard proclaims "Guilt-free shopping!" and displays the logos of available brands, the first one being Nike.

Or, another one:
An article on the Weather Channel website shows how to "Enjoy Your Barbeque, Guilt-Free." It proceeds to relate seven tips, all of which focus on how not to gain weight during summer revels.



The phrase guilt-free seems to be applied pretty often to either the shopping or the eating category. Ok, that's fair enough: consumption as a source of guilt makes some sense.

But what kind of guilt precisely are we avoiding here? On the shopping, I'd guess guilt-free should mean (at the least) that we're buying things made by companies that deal fairly with their employees, but I'm thinkin' probably not if Nike is first on the list of guilt-free shopping options. What is it that makes the outlet mall guilt-free, then? Other advertisements confirm that it's the discount prices. Apparently a lot of people think the problem with buying extra stuff isn't exploiting workers, wasting natural resources, or feeding one's own materialism -- the part responsible for guilt (and hence moral angst, shame, "I really shouldn't," etc.) is . . . spending money? Guilt reactions are structured to protect the consumer's own wallet rather than look out for anyone else.

Same kind of deal for the food guilt. This kind of discourse on guilt leaves out questions like, Does eating all this meat hurt the world food market? and, What can we do for the folks in our community who can't afford mountains of delicious food? (I'm not saying I've got clear answers to those questions, just that I think they're sensible questions to ask if you're going to talk about the ethics of barbeque in the first place.) But instead, we're asking, How can I keep from getting fat? It's a similar misdirection -- forget about the wider implications of the consumption and shift the moral burden to protecting one's own body.

In both cases, there's a move to make morality about covering and beautifying one's own backside. I think that's pernicious on multiple levels, since it distracts people from addressing more meaningful causes for guilt in consumption, and the ethically-charged language also gives an illusory halo of righteousness to decisions that are simple self-preservation. Not that I'm against saving money or staying healthy -- but I think those issues should occupy a very much smaller fraction of the moral discourse on consumption than they now do.