IELC eliminates Mankind
Fr. David wrote http://www.davidpetras.com/Keleher.htm regarding inclusive language: As mentioned, one cannot get into this without “extreme” emotion. In my personal opinion, since we believe that God saves both men and women, we should say this more often. In the Byzantine Liturgy, one of the main problems is the term “lover of mankind,” Philanthropos, “mankind” being labeled as a sexist term.
Who has labeled “mankind” a sexist term?
This could actually be easily solved, saying simply “Lover of humankind.” It means exactly the same thing, avoids gender exclusivity, adds one syllable, and is not a “neologism,” since it has been around since the sixteenth century, as the Oxford English Dictionary has pointed out.
Why then change to “humankind” if, as you say so clearly, “[i]t means exactly the same thing” as mankind? Am I to understand that they “mean exactly the same thing” but one is sexist and the other is not? Who has determined that huMANkind “avoids gender exclusivity” but MANkind does not?
Of course, it is not possible to propose this without “extreme” emotion, and those opposed to inclusive language generally go ballistic at this suggestion. Why? I think because it is an easy fix. They don’t want an easy fix,
This is a personal aside, but as a matter of taste, it is not an easy fix for me (besides it being an unnecessary fix). For several years I have read the Psalms in the NRSV which uses “humankind” a lot. De gustibus non est disputandum: I just couldn’t warm to it; it came across as cacophony - plodding, flat-footed prose where one is expecting beauty and poetry. So there I am reading - praying - the psalms and I encounter this inhospitable word, put there not because of its intrinsic meaning or value for clarity, but to satisfy an agenda. Not surprising, considering such agenda-driven translations, as a Persian proverb puts it, “the nightingale is silent and the ass is braying.”
but to force “feminists “ to use more circuitous language that can be more easily ridiculed.
This is perhaps true: “more circuitous” instead of their normal circuitous language.
“Humankind” then is rejected as bowing to the “feminist agenda.”
Well, isn’t it taking the stated position. Let us instead make a prophetic stand. All are invited, but leave your agendas at the doors of the church. We already have an agenda, the Gospel. Considering the success of this alien agenda that has convinced so many that MANkind is sexist but huMANkind is ok, I wonder (apart from the manipulation aspect) what we are missing in getting our agenda across. And amazingly, this hijacking of the language has been accomplished in less than 40 years.
Consider this from the BBC [emphasis added]:
On This day: 21 July
1969: America lands man on the
Moon
American Neil Armstrong has become the first man to walk on the Moon.
The astronaut stepped onto the Moon's surface, in the Sea of Tranquility, at 0256 GMT, nearly 20 minutes after first opening the hatch on the Eagle landing craft. ...
As he put his left foot down first Armstrong declared: "That's one small step for man but one giant leap for mankind." ...
They also unveiled a plaque bearing President Nixon's signature and an inscription reading: "Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/July/21/newsid_2635000/2635845.stm
Or this:
More
on Philanthropos