Generally, I favor sentiment over semantics. I get criticized for using overly
specific language, and at times for being to minimalist, but when listening to
other folks, I listen for the sentiment rather than picking apart the
semantics.
Recently, however my mind really got locked down in a
semantic exercise. The term that
stopped me was “religiously liberal”.
I’ve heard it often and in this instance, it wasn’t being used as a
slant or even to me specifically.
What stopped me was the word order. “Religiously liberal” means that I have
social views which are informed by my religion. On the other hand, “liberally religious” is someone who has
an open-hearted view of religion.
Semantics can be dreadfully boring and often does more to
highlight shortcomings in our language than it does to refine a viewpoint. What I think we need here is a whole
new word that merges “liberal” and “religious” in such a way that neither take
the lead – both words modify each other.
Relibious? Libligious? Maybe just “Open-Hearted”?
No comments:
Post a Comment