What's Offensive? Preaching in the Language of Dignity
I’ve never fully taken to my last name, Cressman. It’s a fine name with a long Swiss Mennonite history still in use only because ancestors fled to Canada from religious persecution for their Anabaptist practices.
To my ears, it’s even a more pleasant-sounding name than the one I was born with: Kraske.
The problem is that it’s never felt like my name.
My husband and I took each other’s names when we married, adding or retaining Kraske as a middle name.
Being married feels like “me,” but even after thirty-plus years, “Cressman” feels more like a habit, not like my identity or heritage.
Adding my husband’s last name to signify our relationship is a choice I made, but marriage didn’t erase my baptismal name, and I acquired a degree or two along the way that deserve to be acknowledged just as my husband’s are.
So please don’t address me—ever—as Mrs. Erik Cressman. Not when introducing me, not on a formal invitation, not in my obituary. Formally, I’m The Rev. Dr. Lisa Cressman.
Still, and in spite of my repeated requests, some in my parents’ generation continue to address me as “Mrs. Erik.”
[Insert eye-roll of frustration here.]
At this point you may be thinking to yourself that perhaps I shouldn’t be so easily offended, that I should have a tougher skin and grant more grace to that generation because that’s what’s normal for them.
On the other hand, you might be thinking to yourself that you get it, that it makes you a bit frustrated yourself, or perhaps you’re wondering why I just didn’t stick with my own name?
The question is: Who gets to decide whether “Mrs. Erik Cressman” is offensive?
Offended? That’s Your Problem
In her book On the Offensive, linguist Dr. Karen Stollznow points out that we live in a curious age that believes that if you take offense it’s because you’ve taken it.
It’s as if someone placed words in your ears that you had no choice in hearing, but then you select whether the words travel deep down to your gut to twist it in shame, or curve to your heart to inflame it in rage, or go over to your brain where it can be remembered and chewed on for years.
Alternatively, the logic goes, you have the choice to pluck the words from your ears before they get too far and dangle them over the garbage can, or release them to the wind like so much chaff, or best of all, drop them to bounce off your toughened skin.
If offense is taken, that’s entirely your own doing because none was intended in the selection of the words from the countless choices available, or when sending them your direction.
If you’re offended, the thinking goes, that’s your problem.
Dishonoring People’s Dignity dehumanizes them
We don’t think of our society as being honor-driven—at least not like it was in biblical times.
But we do still defend our honor.
It’s the means by which we do so that have changed.
For example, a quick glance at social media shows people defending their honor because they feel disrespected. This can lead to verbal feuds and unfriending friends and relations.
Another example of defending honor are civil rights protests and movements, like Black Lives Matter.
We’re moved to defend our honor when some of the dignity with which we are endowed by God is subtracted by demeaning comments or behavior or policy, about us individually or the group we’re part of, in an attempt to diminish our honor.
When we have not received the dignity we are due as a human being, we can feel our human being is human lessened.
When our experiences, preferences, and identity are diminished, we are rendered invisible.
And that’s offensive, motivating us to defend our honor.
Each person is the one sole expert about what offends them.
Each person has a unique, advanced degree in what honors, dignifies, and affirms they are seen.
To avoid dishonoring someone and, even better, to honor them, asking them what they prefer to be called and following through on that request is an opening gesture.
Asking about their preferred pronouns is a next step.
Opening space for them to claim their roots, where they call home, is another.
Trusting their answer, no matter their accent or lack of it (“accent" by whose standard?), skin tone, or length of time they used that zip code, is the next step.
We take a dozen steps backwards, though, when we argue, second guess, address them by a different name, or downplay the effect of our words as we try to ensure that their identity doesn’t offend us.
And if it does, that really is our (spiritual) problem.
Trying to Keep Up
It might feel like we can’t say anything without offending someone.
You’re right.
Language evolves and therefore so does what is deemed offensive.
It’s inevitable that we’ll use what we thought was a respectful term not realizing that the terms have changed.
Dr. Stollznow notes:
It seems almost inconceivable nowadays, but colored and darky (or darkie) were once considered to be mild or even polite terms, although they became derogatory through negative connotations and usage. Colored is outdated and offensive today, given its strong association with the Jim Crow era of racial segregation (1877 to mid-1960s), and the ubiquity of the word in public signs that segregated white from non-white or colored people. It must be noted that colored is still acceptable in some in-group usage only, especially in older references and names such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization founded in 1909.
…In the United States, some stakeholders prefer the term African American, which highlights their heritage. However, others eschew the term because it perpetuates the myth that all black American people come from Africa, or implies that they are immigrants who were born in Africa. Black is the preferred self-identifying label for many stakeholders, and it is often capitalized as Black in writing.
Stollznow, Karen. On the Offensive (pp. 18-20). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
To preach in the language of dignity in and out of the pulpit means keeping up with the changes in language so that we are honoring and seeing our neighbors.
And as Dr. Stollznow points out, only the person or member of the in-group gets to decide what language confers dignity.
How do we keep up?
Ask. Ask a person, ask the stakeholders. Honor them by following through.
Read books like the one I quoted from above to learn the history of offensive terms and the current respectful ones.
Give the message, explicitly and implicitly, “correct me if I’m wrong”—and mean it.
When corrected, avoid the common response “I didn’t mean to offend.” That makes the “apology” about the speaker and their intentions, not the hearer and what they experienced. Instead, the old-fashioned sentence “I beg your pardon” is more useful. It puts the offender in proper relationship to the offended.
Be courageous enough to correct others, on your own behalf or as an ally for others. Know better? Say better.
Preach about the awkwardness, the good intentions, the not-so-veiled mal-intentions, and the connection between dignity, names, and being seen.
In a free speech society, we can call anyone anything we want.
But as Christians, would we ever want to call them anything other than who they say they are?
“Hello. I’m the Rev’d Dr. Lisa Cressman. Minnesota is home though I wasn’t born there and haven’t lived there for more than a decade. My pronouns are she/her, and you’re welcome to call me Lisa.
And you are…?