"christian" again

[Arnold Zwicky]

recent news story about the reactions of christian and conservative
groups to patricia ireland's being named chief executive of the YWCA
(or, if you will, the Y.W.C.A.)...

from the New York Times of thursday 5/22/03:

   For Ms. Lafferty [Andrea Lafferty, executive director of
   the Traditional Values Coalition], Ms. Ireland's experience
   makes her a "bizarre selection" to lead the Young Women's
   Christian Association.

[i quote this part mostly because of its nice possessive antecedent
for a non-possessive pronoun (object "her"), in a context in which
there are *two* possible antecedents referring to a woman.  the
example is especially nice, since the dispreferred, and surely not
intended, antecedent is inside an adverbial, even though its not
possessive.]

   Others echoed Ms. Lafferty's sentiments.

   "Could someone have a husband and a woman partner at the same
   time and be a Christian?" asked Donald Wildmon, founder of the
   American Family Association... "I doubt that very seriously."

   Peter LaBarbera, a senior policy analyst at Concerned Women for
   America's Culture and Family Institute..., described Ms. Ireland
   as "a strong advocate for radical feminism, abortion, and --
   due to her lifestyle -- homosexuality."  He said the Y.W.C.A.
   should drop "Christian" from its name.

it's been a while since we had a discussion of the term "christian",
but here's that topic again.

to recap, though in some sense the core meaning has to do with
accepting jesus as christ (and perhaps with a belief in the
resurrection), the term quite frequently extends to cover adherence to
(at least some of) the teachings of jesus.  with lafferty, wildmon,
and labarbera, however, we've moved into sterner territory.
apparently, ireland's offense is that she is, in their terms, a
sinner, at the very least because of her bisexual "lifestyle", and
possibly because of her support for abortion, and maybe even for her
"radical feminism", that is, rejecting the subordination of women to
their husbands.  [note: another possessive antecedent, "ireland's",
with following anaphoric "she".  but of course *i* did that, on
purpose.]

now, being a sinner cannot possibly, in itself, make you not a
christian; forgiveness of sins is a central part of the belief system
of christianity.  so, the problem seems to be that she is not merely
that ireland is a sinner, in their terms, but that she's an
*unrepentant* sinner.  (ireland herself refuses to discuss her
religious beliefs and would of course reject the idea that she is a
sinner at all.)

in addition to the issue of whether "christian" applies to ireland,
there's the question of whether it applies to the YWCA.  on the one
hand, "YWCA" started out as an abbreviation for "Young Women's
Christian Association", which certainly has "christian" in it.  on
the other hand, abbreviations can take on lives of their own (silicon
valley folks have gotten used to the idea that SRI has nothing to do
with stanford, it's just a name, despite the origin of "SRI" in
"Stanford Research Institute").  and ireland tells us that the YWCA
is now a "social justice women's organization", with christian roots
but now "focused on empowering women and ending racism" and now "open
to women of all faiths", so that it's not in fact a christian
organization.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)