Copyright 2003. All rights reserved

The term "Christianese" has come into being in recent years to describe the unique lingo of the evangelical subculture. The word is usually used in a derogatory sense, an often humorous comment on the tired clichés we frequently use among ourselves in the Church. But there is a real problem underlying the humor. Christianese can be negatively misinterpreted by the unchurched, becoming one more barrier to the Gospel among the young.

Many Gen X and Y’ers have been brought up without exposure to even nominal Christianity. Words that might seem positive to "lifelong" evangelicals sometimes convey a very different message to those of us not exposed early in our experience to biblical terminology. As someone most definitely raised outside the religious world (I did not crack open a Bible until I was 22) two terms, specifically, have been hard for me to wholeheartedly embrace.

The first one is the word "praise". To say that this word is ubiquitous in evangelicalism is an understatement. "Praise God" is probably one of the most constantly heard expressions of all. I think it is safe to say that all born-again believers have used it at one time or another and most of us use it regularly. For the Christian it is an affirmation of the goodness of the Lord and the more aware of and thankful for that goodness we are the more we declare it through this declaration. There is, unfortunately, a problem when we use it around the uninitiated. To begin with, in 21^st Century America, praise is an uncommonly used word. To communicate the same meaning Americans are more likely to say they "approve of", "respect" or "love" someone or something. Moreover when they do speak the term it is often in condescension as in "praising" a child, or even a pet, who responds well to a command. Certainly that was the only way I used it in my pre-Christian life. To this day, nearly 13 years after my conversion, the word just does not sound right to me when being used to refer to almighty God.

The second word is "glory". For us glory has rich and multiple meanings. It is the ineffable beauty of God, His sublime nature, His final triumph. To be in the presence of God is to be caught up in this glory and the believer looks forward to the great day when this glory will become all he or she will ever know. It is a heavenly word in the most literal sense. But, again, secular people rarely use glory and when the average American occasionally does use it glory is often seen in a negative light. For instance selfish men seek glory for themselves. Warmongers live for the supposed glory of battle. "Vainglory" is really the meaning communicated by the term in the vocabulary of contemporary society. This word, too, I have struggled to make my own.

Added to the more important problem of turning off unchurched people who have different views on the meaning of these words the fact is that Christians can make them meaningless through sometimes mindless repetition. What is the solution? Probably the best answer can be found in more modern translations and paraphrases of the Word of God. The Contemporary English Version (CEV), Living Bible and Eugene Peterson’s The Message are all good places to find a fresh vocabulary to honor God in the context of present day America. Even a good thesaurus will list a number of alternative words. Roget’s thesaurus, for example, lists eight synonyms for "praise" and eleven for "glory". Also, though it may seem a bit much to talk about the "Coolness of God", we might even dare to adopt some of the positive slang of the larger culture. It is important to remember that the New Testament itself was written in Coine Greek which was the common street language of the Roman world. Every culture (and generation within that culture) has its own equivalent to Coine Greek, its own "Lingua Franca", and those who hope to make God real to the average man or woman in 2003 must take that fact into account.