This was cited in church today.
The Bull-Crap secret of spirituality goes all the way back to the Eland Bull ritual at first menstruation.
That article is focused on holy sweat in the African-American church but holy sweat is also the focus on the San Bushmen N/om healing energy.
the spittle is telling. This lack of
self-consciousness suggests the preacher has somehow become lost in the Word or captivated by its transformative power. Social propriety is dethroned for a moment
cursing was understood
more broadly to describe the “unsayable,” whether dirty or religious.20 The dirty usually entails
the sexual and the excremental, or those things that are concealed by clothing, privacy or through
disposal.21 In contrast, religious swearing usually involves using God’s name as part of an effort to
convey shock, frustration, or outrage.
Both forms of cursing have tremendous plasticity because profanity is an unstable linguistic
category.22 Words like “sh*t” and “f*ck” are generally considered profane in contemporary
American English. These words were similarly profane for the Romans, but had fairly mundane
meanings in medieval England.23 A heron was innocently called a “shiterow,” and a kestrel was
matter-of-factly named a “windfucker.”24 Other wildlife, plants, and city streets were similarly
named with terms that would be profane in contemporary American English. These terms would
not register as obscene or amount to cursing again until the end of the 19th century.25 Instead,
coarse language in medieval England included oaths or forms of language that inspired people to
sin.26 The most taboo phrases involved religious swearing because there was such high regard for
the holy. Exclaiming, “By God’s bones!” or “Christ’s nails!” were understood to have a literal
power to physically harm God.27 Whether religious or dirty, cursing continues to play a critical
role in American speech. As one scholar puts it, curse words “do what no other English words
can.”28 In the toolbox of language, curse words are the “hammer.”29
The gospel has always met with ridicule, right from the very first time it was preached.Put to the purpose of clarifying scripture, a curse word takes on a new role. A curse word has the
It has always sounded like a lot of leiros. It has always been more than the church can
handle, even when it is the very thing the church prays for; not even the disciples, as much
as they loved Jesus, could take the good news.49
potential to disclose a divine message
The resurrection is unbelievable to them and they call the message leiros or
“nonsense.” Anna Carter Florence suggests that translators have softened the meaning of leiros in Luke 24:11 with translations like “an idle tale” when it “means ‘nonsense,’ ‘drivel,’ ‘trash,’ ‘garbage,’ ‘crap,’ ‘bull,’ or in its more vulgar form, ‘~!@#$?%^&!*.’”47 She adds that leiros is not used anywhere else in the New Testament, amplifying its effect.48
Dr. Anna Carter Florence is a Presbyterian minister! cool
That was the denomination I was raised in for our neighborhood church and my Grandfather was a preacher in that denomination also.
