Jargon obscures

[marnanel]

In 2012 the Bishop of Leicester wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian called "There is no place for homophobia in the church." Someone in the comments asked whether an imam would be writing an article called "There is no place for homophobia in the mosque."

There's a lot to say about that, but I want to point out something about jargon. Turning "church" into "mosque" shows that the commenter thought the bishop was talking about a building. But the article's context shows that the bishop meant "the community of all Christians". (I believe the Muslim equivalent is "Ummah"; please do correct me if I'm wrong.)

I hadn't even considered that the headline might mean there was no physical place for homophobia in a building. I suspect the bishop hadn't either. I wonder how much more of what Christians say is obscured by jargon and misinterpreted by almost everyone outside the church.

Comments

[simont]

and misinterpreted by almost everyone outside the church

... meaning, I hope, that they only seem to be able to get the definition right while they're actually standing on holy ground? :-)

[pseudomonas]

the commenter thought the bishop was talking about a building

There's also a transferative/metonymic use, I think, where "in the church" means "in respect to the kind of things that go on in church"; this certainly applies to "mosque" as well.

[jack]

I realised that I'd picked up from Liv, the habit of using "going to shul" to mean "going to a synagogue service" and "going to the synagogue" to mean "going to the synagogue building". And she didn't deliberately make that distinction, the words mean the same thing. But I'd just picked up that use. And most of the time they were the same, but occasionally not.