5 March 2005 - Saturday
Professionalism
As a result of attending a small academic conference last spring, I am one of hundreds of people on an e-mail list related to the work of the Inklings literary group. (I know there are hundreds of us because I can see every e-mail address on the list every time I receive a message.) I do not actually recall asking to be included in this list, although I suppose I may have checked a box on a form during the conference.
Today, a message arrived with the subject line "gender-inclusive language; why I oppose it." The message is more than 700 words long. It has an RTF attachment that runs to more than 6,600 words.
Allow me to provide a sample of the e-mail:
I have just completed a controversial essay that I think C. S. Lewis would have agreed with but which much of modern academia would not. I am asking you all to please, please take the time to read or at least skim through it and to then forward it on to others in your address book whom you think would benefit from it. [. . .]Finally, I ask that if you agree with what I’ve written that you forward this email on to others in your community, workplace, school, church, etc. The censorious tide of gender-inclusive language CAN be pushed back, but it will take a real GRASSROOTS effort to do so (something akin to the grassroots attempt to halt gay marriage).
This e-mail came from a professor of English.
I was amused when, twenty minutes later, one of the recipients of this message sent a reply to everyone on the list: "Please remove me from this email distribution list. I am not particularly a lover of C.S. Lewis and have not benefited from any emails sent to me on Lewis-related topics."
| Posted by Wilson at 23:59 Central | TrackBack| Report submitted to the Humanities Desk
*** Whistles, eyebrows raised ***
The thoughts of Daniel Leatherwood on 6 March 2005 - 17:49 Central+ + + + +
His personal site is well worth a visit as well, if you're patient and want a laugh: http://fc.hbu.edu/%7Elmarkos/
The thoughts of Blame Jared on 7 March 2005 - 20:47 Central+ + + + +
Sorry, shoulda included this excerpt in my last comment, but I couldn't resist including the following for those who don't want to bother to read his site:
I am a humanist Christian. I stand, like the Colossus of Rhodes, with my legs stretched out across two shores: my right foot poised atop Golgotha (Jerusalem); my left upon the Acropolis (Athens). I feel neither discomfort nor conflict, and, though I do yearn within for the day when my legs will be drawn together in a geographical consummation that will leave both my feet planted firmly in the good soil of Zion (New Jerusalem), I do not perceive that these opposing shores are either hostile or alien. I do not hear, as Matthew Arnold did, the sound of ignorant armies clashing by night. I hear rather the low rumble of deep calling out to deep, as though the Eastern shore were calling out to the Western like a lover wooing his beloved. And I sense (as even Arnold did in a moment of illumination) that the two shores are but torn halves of a single continent. Once unified, now divided, they are yet joined by two criss-crossing lights, two beams in darkness. The guiding light that flows from the one (Jerusalem) illuminates and dignifies the other (Athens), while the searching light that gropes outward from the other loses itself finally in the one.
I am a humanist Christian. Though I admit the euphonic superiority of the alternate phrase, Christian humanist, I must still insist on the grammatical (and perhaps ontological) precision of the former phrase. Christian is the substantive; humanist the descriptive. I am a humanist Christian in the same sense that I am a Greek American. I, like my parents, was born and raised in America. My self-identity, my allegiance, my very reason for being are linked to America. But my grandparents were born and raised in Greece, and there is a something in my soul that yet responds to this ancestry, that resonates with the legacy of three millennia. My firm citizenship in the one frees me to explore those elemental ties to the other that even now flow along my blood like the sound of Derwent water flowed along the dreams of the young Wordsworth. My participation in my Greek heritage individualizes and strengthens me, a strength and an individuality that I carry with me into my primary and fuller citizenship.
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Yeah. High quality, that.
The sheer chutzpah of that first sentence alone . . . *shakes head*
The thoughts of Blame Jared on 6 March 2005 - 13:13 Central+ + + + +