CHRISTIANESE

Fluent in Faith, Lost in Translation

WTF is Christianese? Sounds made up.

Wikipedia defines Christianese as “the contained terms and jargon used within many of the branches and denominations of Christianity as a functional system of religious terminology.”

While this is technically true, it’s really just the first layer to the vastness that is Christianese. The frosting on a never-ending layer cake.

It also isn’t dogma, not officially. But it may as well be. Christianese isn’t just the specific lingo used by evangelicals, fundamentalists, and pentecostals. It encompasses the entire underlying Western worldview and historical culture that pervade the bedrock of how these groups choose to see the world and interact with it. Often at the expense of everyone else.

While Christianese is extremely common within American megachurches, it is also prevalent throughout evangelical subculture as a whole. This is true in North America and the rest of the anglophone world, but also throughout the Global South thanks to the remnants of colonialism and White supremacy showing up in both church missions and parachurch organizations. Unfortunately, the worst the US has to offer always gets exported to the rest of the world.

The Christianese language and worldview tend to be at least somewhat authoritarian and can often turn violent. January 6th, 2021 included heavy elements of evangelicalism, Christian fundamentalism, White supremacy, and Christianese. If you like democracy, community, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, bodily autonomy, and all that other good stuff, it’s advisable to know when you’re dealing with disingenuous (and poorly informed) religious zealots.

SYLLABUS

There will be eight modules included in this series split into about 15 separate newsletters each. Every course will include a series of general statements of belief, common evangelical lingo alongside definitions in regular English, popular music from the subculture, original source material reading suggestions, historical artifacts such as Christian music videos and social media screenshots, and links to relevant media coverage such as articles and videos.

Each module will wrap up with a multiple-choice quiz to test your comprehension and a downloadable certificate of completion.

MODULE 1: GETTING SAVED

We’ll start with Module 1 which will get you to level A1 or beginner. If you’ve already got a background in evangelicalism, fundamentalism, or pentecostalism, this should mostly be a review course. If you’re lucky, there might even be a little bit of deconstruction going on.

Fundamentals:

• how to become an evangelical and/or fundamentalist in the Christian tradition
• extra language points if you want to throw some pentecostalism into the mix!
• irrational and/or problematic beliefs (required)

For any newbies taking this course, you might be tempted to think that a lot of this stuff is just made up. I can assure you that the actual songs, videos, and other elements of Christianese are 100% authentic. This newsletter may be satirical, but they, at least, are not.

By going through these modules, you should have a much better idea of what White evangelicalism, Christian nationalism, and the majority of the evangelical/fundamentalist/pentecostal subculture is all about. These groups regularly say things that are unintelligible to anyone who hasn’t been thoroughly indoctrinated into their native tongues. Even other kinds of Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, etc.) are often unable to decipher WTF these people mean when they’re speaking Christianese.

With the fusion of Trumpism and evangelicalism, as well as the threat of Project 2025 should Trump win the presidency in November, it’s a good idea for Americans of all kinds to have a basic understanding of this ideology. Words and phrases mean different things to different people. And religious zealots rarely act in good faith.

Until next time, may your doubts multiply like loaves and fishes, and may you always find the exit in the megachurch of life.