Religious Advocacy of ‘Bad Language’

There are occasions when an item appears in the news that one suspects has only surfaced because of its controversial nature, or because the person behind the story is seeking some self publication. One suspects this might well be the situation in the case of the Reverend Michael Land, the vicar in the countryside village of Burghill.

He, controversially obviously, has urged his parishioners to adopt swearing in their everyday language. Clearly the word ‘urged’ implies some sort of coercion on his part. And indeed this appears to be the case. He has stated that too many people put Jesus on a pedestal and that people should realise that he was only human too. Because, he says, that Jesus was relatively uneducated and did not mix with the elite of his day.

While this may very well be true, though one can’t help but feel that this is a shameless act of self promotion. After all, there seems to be no relevance to the statement. What is the point behind the it? If you wanted to be supportive and actively look for a reason to uphold this statement I suppose you could reflect on the fact that the vicar has said that the church are at risk of becoming out of touch with ‘ordinary’ people. Although one can’t help but think that there must be better ways to go about it than this.

Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with swearing, even the best of us will blurt out the odd swearword or two now and then, it is somewhat inevitable. Perhaps we should be more generous, however. The Reverend Land has been involved in several community projects that have helped the afflicted, such as drug users. The man himself had an incident where he describes and incident with another road user.

"Someone pulled out in front of me so I sounded my horn. The driver got out of his car and came over to me. "I wound my window down and said 'why don't you learn to f***ing drive'. He just walked away. I don't think he could believe it. "I did not remove my clerical collar, why should I? I did it then and I'd do it again, I'm not afraid to tell it how it is even if that means swearing."Just because I am a vicar I am not a soft touch. "The church needs to modernise and that means keeping up with the trends in language."

Rather than judging it is perhaps a point remembering that, like Jesus, members of the clergy are only human too.