A case of logocide
Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 recently aired a discussion about the Church of England’s Five Guiding Principles. These principles underpin the arrangements allowing parishes to discriminate against ordained women because of theological convictions – that is, the belief that only men can and should be priests or church leaders. Women and the Church (WATCH) is campaigning for an end to the Five Guiding Principles because they limit women’s ministries, undermine women’s ordained status, and violate the basic principles of equality. The campaign is called ‘Not Equal Yet’.
The programme’s discussion featured Rev Martine Oborne, the Chair of WATCH and Dr Ros Clarke, Associate Director of the Church Society, setting up the debate (as the BBC often does) as a two-sided argument. I have written elsewhere about why I think treating an issue of equality as a two-sided debate is problematic – when one ‘side’ is arguing for the elimination or degradation of the status of a group based on gender (or any other characteristic) it is not a debate, theological or otherwise; it is a question about oppressor and oppressed. (However, I also write at length about how women priests are not victims but actively resist misogynistic positions). Whilst the debate is a false one, resistance does come in the form of presenting a case for gender equality; on the programme, Rev Oborne explained with great clarity how the Church’s current structure is discriminatory, unethical, and unjust. Moreover, this is a one-way set of restrictions – there are no roles from which men are officially excluded in the Church.
In addition to this ‘two side-ism’, there is a second problem with the terms of discussion currently normalised in the Church. As Rev Oborne pointed out, the word ‘equal’ is used in the context of defending the restrictions on women’s ministries. In response, the presenter of Woman’s Hour suggested there are different interpretations of the word ‘equal’. Such a suggestion, I argue, flags up an egregious assault on the word’s meaning that is being perpetrated.
Many of us who have been involved in so-called debates about the restrictions on women’s lay and ordained roles in the Church have faced the slippery use of the language of equality. We are told that men and women are equal, but different. Or that women and men are equal, it’s just that men are more equal (which ought to raise eyebrows – the phrase ‘more equal than others’ is famously used in Orwell’s Animal Farm, an allegory about the rise of totalitarianism).
These rhetorical devices rely on the illusion that differentiated roles and traits are given the same value and status, present the same opportunity for fulfilment in the fullest sense, and are given the same material and symbolic rewards. We are asked to believe that the restriction of women’s ministry does not affect parity of status, opportunity, and respect. This is not honest discourse; such abuse of the word ‘equal’ hides the fetishisation of difference. In other words, gender difference drives the hierarchy in the symbolic (God only permits men to be priests or leaders) and the structural (the Church facilitates through policy the discrimination of women priests at parish level). To claim there is no gender hierarchy is disingenuous and dishonest.
The ‘equal but different’ rhetoric is so widely used in the Church to support positions that restrict women’s roles that it is normalised. In partnership with WATCH, we undertook research into how parishes who reject women’s priesthood and lay leadership communicate their beliefs and practices. We wanted to find out whether the language used is transparent and clear, especially to those not familiar with the Church’s structure or the theologies and realities of complementarianism (that men and women have inherently different traits and therefore different roles). We asked whether messaging on church websites made it clear that women were not accepted in positions of authority as priests or lay leaders.
We found a number of these websites used the word ‘equal’ in their statements about men’s and women’s roles in the church. For example, one church that rejects women in church leadership roles states on their website, ‘We believe in the complementary ministries of men and women of whatever race or colour, in our absolute equality of value in personhood and ministry before God.’ The word ‘complementary’ signals (for those who are in the know) gendered beliefs that restrict women’s ministries, whilst the term ‘absolute equality’ is used to obfuscate these beliefs.
I have argued that this abuse of the language of equality amounts to a form of logocide.
I came across the notion of logocide in Chris Hedges book American Fascists: The Christian right and the war on America (2008) in which he talks of the weaponising of language amongst the political Right and how ‘they engage in a slow process of “logocide”, the killing of words. The old definitions of words are replaced by new ones’ (p. 14). Another scholar, Young (1991), writing in the context of how totalitarian regimes use language as a tool of control, uses the word ‘semanticide’ to describe how the meaning of a word is changed, and ‘logocide’ to describe the erasing of words altogether. These are tactics, Young argues, that are used by authoritarian and totalitarian regimes to manipulate and control on a societal scale. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls this ‘duping’ by the dominant to misdirect and hide oppressions. In popular language we talk about ‘gaslighting’.
The use of the word ‘equal’ in churches where women’s ministry is restricted is another form of logocide or semanticide – the word is not erased or changed, but hollowed out, leaving ‘equal’ as meaningless. In its death, ‘equal’ is used to give a respectable tone to misogyny. It has no semantic function but is employed as protection and misdirection. It is a zombie word – a bodyguard with no meaning.
We should pay attention to the contexts in which logocide and semanticide are perpetrated; these are linguistic tactics employed in the service of authoritarian systems. Timothy Snyder, in his manifesto-style book, On Tyranny (2017), implores us to take care with language, to write clearly and read deeply, and to challenge and resist the use of language as obfuscation. The logocidal tendencies of those who seek to separate men’s and women’s roles and traits in the Church need to be challenged as a matter of urgency. Why? Because the terms of the discussion are hijacked to give the impression of two rational theological sides, shoring up the fiction of gender parity, whilst deflecting challenge to these fundamental beliefs about gender hierarchy, beliefs that harm women.
People are free to choose their theological beliefs and to engage in theological debate to defend those beliefs. We must not allow, though, the killing of important words to hide the realities of a gendered theological position. If women are excluded from the priesthood and positions of Christian leadership and authority, it should be stated in terms that are honest and commonly understood – that women and men are not equal in the Church. The challenge is for those who hold gendered beliefs about ministry to develop the integrity to stop using ‘equal’ as a dead and meaningless word and to speak plainly about the reality of complementarianism and men-only leadership and priesthood. In contrast, the WATCH campaign ‘Not Equal yet’ uses the word as commonly agreed in its vital and justice-oriented meaning. As well as calling for the end of a discriminatory structure, the campaign plays its part in highlighting the lack of transparency in language. We should name this lack of transparency what it is – logocide.
