A blog about religious language in all of life’s contexts
The Good Life, The Life Well-lived: Reflections on The Sacred’s recent event ‘My Dream, My Taste’
At an online event on 29th March 2021, The Sacred podcast, hosted by Elizabeth Oldfield, screened Emily Downe’s multi–award-nominated 3–minute film ‘My Dream, My Taste.’ This was followed by a conversation with leading voices from the fields of theology, philosophy and the creative arts, Professor Miroslav Volf, whose episode of The Sacred podcast inspired the … Continue reading The Good Life, The Life Well-lived: Reflections on The Sacred’s recent event ‘My Dream, My Taste’
Linguistic Gaslighting: Disclaimers as anti-performative discourse
This is another post in a series on the language of abuse, connected to an online catalogue which I hope will help others to identify and resist linguistic harm. In this post, I look at how disclaimers (a form of anti-performative discourse) can be used to minimise violence, to coercively control, to manipulate and to gaslight.
Invoking and Distancing from Sacred Authority: Church Leaders’ Responses to a Report on the Rev. Jonathan Fletcher
This post forms part of a catalogue I am building on the subtle language of abuse. In this installment, I consider a common discursive strategy within texts that carry religious meaning: the invocation of sacred legitimating authority and, conversely, distancing from an illegitimate (often formerly sacred) authority. This strategy often works within an overall us vs. them narrative. To illustrate this, I use a set of prominent church leaders’ responses to the recent thirtyone:eight report on Rev. Jonathan Fletcher’s abuse while he was vicar at Emmanuel Church Wimbledon.
“A temptation to eliminate:” Purity culture and other complementarian discourse in white male violence against women
Robert Aaron Long, a white man, aged 21, has been charged with murder over the killing of eight people at massage parlours in Atlanta, Georgia. Among the victims were six Asian women, prompting discussion about the intersectionality of Long’s alleged crimes, the ways these horrific acts of terrorism reveal how Asian and other minority women … Continue reading “A temptation to eliminate:” Purity culture and other complementarian discourse in white male violence against women
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About Me
Hi, I’m Dr. Valerie Hobbs.
I research, write and teach about religious language.
- abuse
- An Introduction to Religious Language
- apologies
- archaism
- conversion
- death
- definitions
- gaslighting
- industrial religion
- intertextuality
- metaphor
- racism
- religious nationalism
- sacred legitimating authority
- sermons
- the sacred
- us vs. them
- video abstracts
- violence
- vocabulary
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