A Changing Language in a Changing World

By Robin G. Jordan

I have been rereading C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles. I just finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy and I am about to start on Prince Caspian.

For many years it was my habit to read the Narnia Chronicles at least once a year if not more often. I first read them when I was a young boy in England around the time they were first published.

I fell out of the habit of reading them after I moved to Kentucky. Watching the video of Joe Rigney's talk, "Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles," at the 2013 Desiring God National Conference -The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis - reawakened my interest. Reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy was like meeting a dear friend after a long absence.

I have also started to read C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Michael: Chiefly on Prayer. A comment Lewis makes in the first letter about the language of The Book of Common Prayer and Patrick Deneen's article “How a Generation Lost Its Common Culture” prompted this article.

I do not think that today you can make the argument for not changing the language of the Prayer Book that Lewis makes in his first letter to Michael. When Lewis was alive, the Jacobean English of the Prayer Book and the King James Bible were still a part of the culture. Young people if they attended church were exposed to the Jacobean English of the KJB and if they attended an Anglican or Episcopal church to the Jacobean English of the Prayer Book. If they attended high school, they were also exposed to its near cousin Tudor English in the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare and the writings of his contemporaries.

You cannot say that today. Not only do exchange students from other countries for whom English is not their native language struggle with Tudor English so do American students who have been speaking English all of their lives. Except perhaps for drama and English majors they have little incentive to learn Tudor English. A fellow student at my university, a young man who just turned 20 years of age pointed this out to me.

I am friends with a young couple who were students at my university. Both have graduated. The husband works as an elementary school teacher; the wife, as a veterinarian’s assistant. I was surprised to learn that the husband did not know a number of words that I used in my everyday vocabulary and which I took for granted as forming a part of our common vocabulary. It was not the case. He is not alone.

More recently the same young man about whom I wrote earlier told me that his creative writing professor discouraged his classes from writing in any other language than the language that his students spoke day to day with each other. He did not encourage his students to learn and use new words – something which I was encouraged to do both in high school and college to expand my vocabulary. Indeed he would give his students a lower grade if they did.

I learned four languages when I was growing up – the King’s English, the local dialect, Prayer Book English, and after my family immigrated to the United States, American English. This is not what young people are learning today. They may be very proficient in the technical language required by the use of computers or some other specialty but their everyday language is impoverished in the sense that it is devoid of many of the words that once enriched the English language. They have not only lost their common culture, they are in the process of losing their common language.

The implications for churches in the Anglican tradition, especially those in the Continuum, are far reaching. While I personally have no difficulty in navigating the 1662 English Prayer Book, the 1928 Prayer Book, and other traditional English liturgies, many young people are put off by the unfamiliarity of their language and its sometimes obscure or archaic vocabulary.

I have more difficulty in reading aloud the King James Bible, stumbling over a number of the words and phrases. Since my church uses the KJB in its Sunday church services, I must also explain the meaning of some words and phrases to the congregation in my preaching because the English language has changed since the seventeenth century and these words and phrases have either fallen into desuetude or their meanings have changed. If we use them, we no longer use them in the way that the seventeenth century English divines who translated the KJB used them. The KJB is also not entirely free from translation errors. While the jurisdiction with which my church is affiliated permits the use of several more recent Bible translations, the church’s bylaws require the use of the KJB.

If Continuing Anglican churches are to become more outward-looking and to reach out into their communities, they need to come up with ways of working around these obstacles. For example, the service bulletin might include an insert that explains the more difficult word and phrases in the Prayer Book and contains a more recent translation of the Scripture readings alongside the KJB. The latter has precedence in the targum, “spoken paraphrases, explanations and expansions of the Hebrew Bible that a rabbi would give in the common language of the listeners.” In Roman Palestine the common language was Aramaic; in the Jewish diaspora it was Greek. Near the end of the 1st century BCE Hebrew was no longer spoken every day. It was only used in worship and schooling. As was the case in that period in history, our language is in transition today. We only use Jacobean English and its near cousin Tudor English in the worship of a small number of churches and the performance of plays. It is no longer used in schooling to the degree that it once was.

While it is saddening to see the disappearance of what was our common culture and our common language, it is one of the realities of the 21st century. As Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote, we should not abandon something in our rites and services because it is simply old. We should retain it as long as it is agreeable to Scripture and is useful. Being useful includes being useful beyond our own small circle. He also wrote that we should not cling to something in our liturgies because it is old if it not agreeable to Scripture and is not useful. He provides us with two valuable criteria that we can apply in evaluating what we are doing and whether it helps or hinders us in being faithful to our Lord and fulfilling the Great Commission.