COMMENTARY : Euphemisms: Killing Clergy With Kindness

Euphemisms abound in religious circles. Some are aimed at diminishing pain. Whether we like them or not, their goal is kindness.

What follows is a list of euphemisms often aimed by members of congregations at their leaders. They are phrases that should give pause because their intent is the opposite of kindness. By bitter experience, I’ve learned that when they appear in the give and take of congregational life, a hidden agenda is at work.

Make it short : Sometimes conveyed just by words, sometimes by body language suggesting impatience. The message, indicating boredom with “spiritual things,” is often delivered to a clergy member just before a religious ceremony begins.

What’s interesting about the message is that it’s rarely directed at politicians or professors--two types perhaps most in need of such advice. Nor is it often directed at physicians, lawyers or guest speakers from out of town. People pay big money to hear from those people, suggesting that perhaps clergy should get more money. In a free-market economy, a thing has value only if a hefty price tag is attached. That which is offered without cost is almost always undervalued.

If clergy charged big fees for sermons and ceremonies--baptisms, weddings, funerals, bar and bat mitzvahs, baby namings and the like--the tolerance level of the congregation might increase.

I’m not really religious : This is a way of informing the clergy that the speaker neither participates in religious rituals nor supports religious institutions. It also suggests that the speaker disdains the spiritual values the clergy member represents.

Religion deals with all the “big questions”--good and evil, life and death, justice and compassion, love and hate, morality and sin. It’s hard to imagine anyone who has not given serious thought to such things. With a nod to Descartes, I would suggest that “we think, therefore we are religious.” More than one philosopher has remarked that everything in life is religious.

When people declare they are “not really religious,” they are, without realizing it, making an important theological statement about themselves. The person who says, “I’m not really religious,” is either lying or denying reality. Both are definite forms of “religious” behavior.

Some of us in the congregation have been thinking: This phrase is tantamount to a declaration of war. It means a group in the church or synagogue dislikes the sermons a clergy member delivers or objects to his or her manner of relating to one of several groups. It could be young people, the middle-aged or the elderly; the sick, dying, newborn or dead; longtime or new members; poor or wealthy members; teachers in the school, directors of the board, cantors or choir members . . . you name it.

When people in a congregation confess to its leader that they are “thinking,” a plot to remove the rabbi or minister may be afoot. Almost surely, people have not only been “thinking,” but heating up telephone wires and fax machines in efforts to propagate their “thoughts.” Radical strategies are in order--building a bomb shelter, organizing a counter-coalition.

Most important, clergy survival in a congregation calls for an early warning system to head off surprise attacks passed off as intellectual enterprise.

It was an interesting sermon: What’s wrong here is that “interesting” is arguably the most damning word in the English language. Its use by a member of a congregation conceals the real opinion: two thumbs down. It is a word often used to describe music that is atonal, art that is abstract, films with subtitles in a foreign language, finger-painting by children, symbolic logic--anything the speaker has trouble relating to.

When applied to a sermon, “interesting” often means, “I had trouble staying awake,” or “I counted light fixtures as you spoke.” At its most insidious, “interesting” implies that the clergy member had the temerity to base a sermon on a recent editorial and to express a view with which the speaker disagrees.

How is your wife/husband? We haven’t seen her/him lately: This question means the clergy member’s spouse fails to attend services or to participate in other activities. Although congregations in fact employ only half a couple, leaders often believe they have hired a two-person package with a single salary.

The spouse of a minister or rabbi may be a medical intern in a hospital emergency room, a rocket scientist, a teacher working with autistic children, a public defender of criminals, an advocate for the homeless, a writer grinding away at home. No matter. The statement is a clear signal that such activities are less important than higher visibility in the congregation.

A final word of advice for all clergy is this: Keep your ears open at all times.