The Dumbing of the Church

I wrote a blog recently in which one reader excoriated me for using words like “excoriate.” Noting that my blog is about things theological, he suggested that theology was really quite simple and, therefore, simple words would do just fine when talking about God. He suggested that I lose the polysyllabic morphemes (sorry, I just couldn’t help myself) and replace them with single syllable words on a 5^th grade reading level. Of course, some of us read Shakespeare in the 5^th grade, so that’s no help.

I’ve been hearing this more and more lately, both from laity and clergy. It seems that even when dealing with a subject as complex as the Divine, the motto is KISS – “keep it simple, stupid.” It is symptomatic, I think, of a more serious contemporary ecclesiastical (there I go again!) trend; namely, the “dumbing of the church.”