Ben Cole, flung out of the sordid business of secular politics and back into the sordid business of denominational politics is perhaps the first to employ Potemkin village in our Grand Convention. Rather than Neil Sedaka as Ben suggests, better cue the Mussorgsky for SWBTS and change “Bald Mountain” to “Seminary Hill.”
By blogging fiat, I declare complementarianism to be Southern Baptists favorite tongue-tying word, as well as being about six syllables beyond what we are comfortable with. No wonder it is undefinable and applications vary widely among us.
…concerning which, the avuncular Dave Miller, with time on his hands as he recovers from surgery, offers as an alternative to complementarianism “schmooperism.” An immediate problem is noted: “schmooperism” has but half the syllables of “complementarianism” and thus half the heft. Important but loosely defined words need to look and sound weighty, ponderous, consequential. A mere four syllables doesn’t do the job. By Plodder fiat: schmooperism is deep-sixed.
Occasional commenter Kevin takes a stab at elevating his vocabulary by chastising The Great Plodder thusly: “You are free to dispute my assertion, but your disputation does not invalidate its veracity.” Perhaps a bit ostentatious, bro, but I commend the effort and encourage more of the same. I suggest not using the same nifty term, even as a cognate, twice in a sentence but points are given for taking a stab (ouch!) at it.
Dave Miller makes a sly point by referring to our new Voices contributors from the distaff side, a word derived from routine women’s work of an earlier time. There are plenty of the patriarchical brethren who would be pleased to relegate SBC females to spinning yarn rather than writing insightful articles. There’s so much written these days about women and the SBC, some alternative terms are needed. “Distaff side” fills this nicely.
Ann Hibbard, by the cognomen is one of the distaff side writers here and she refers alliteratively to the mundane. Very nice. The fields of mundane matters are white unto the harvest in the SBC blogging world. Good job.
Vinh T. Nguyen offers a look at a couple of dictionary glosses of “diversity.” Probably necessary to expand on the dictionary for the term, I suppose. “Glosses” has such an academic air to it but blogging fare should occasionally be elevated to ivory tower heights, just for the aesthetics if nothing else.
