What I say is who I am!

I am writing this article in Jerusalem, where I am with a Moore College tour group. One of the notable features about Israel is the strong identity people have regarding their faith, or at least their ‘nominal’ faith. They are either Jewish (even if 65% of these are ‘non-religious’), Christian or Muslim, with a few Druze as well. This identity comes from the family and community rather than being an individual choice.

Different identities are marked in many ways, but I want to think about language as one of the main markers. In Israel, the road signs are in three kinds of alphabet, which reinforces the different identities: Hebrew letters for the Jews, Arabic for the Arabs (whether Muslim or Christian), Roman letters for tourists. At the Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem this Wednesday morning, I was one of three at the early communion service. The other two were Arabic speakers – if I hadn’t been there, I wondered if they would have done the service in Arabic, or would they have followed the English service, because of the identity of St George’s Cathedral with its historic link to the English missionary effort?

I am interested in cross-cultural communication, so I face a dilemma here: I can’t always tell what background people come from by looking at them, so I don’t know whether to try to greet them in Hebrew (as Jews), or Arabic, or something else.

This obviously rich linguistic environment can help us think about the ways that language and identity so often go together, with important implications for ministry and mission, whether close to home or further away. Let me explore two statements and then tease out some problems and solutions. Read more