The AP’s decision to drop the use of the word “homophobia” has been met with wide approval among Christian and other moral traditionalists. This presents a problem, however, for those who have grown accustomed to using the term “Christophobia.” The AP recommended against the use of all “-phobia” words, for reasons that apply whether the prefix happens to be “homo-” or “Christ-.”
Writing for First Thoughts earlier this month, Mark Movsesian sounded some notes of caution against the use of “Christophobia”:
The hostility to Christianity one encounters in the West is mostly ideological. What we have is a struggle between competing worldviews, one of which seeks to win by excluding the other, which it sees as irrational, from public debate. This strategy is illiberal, ill-informed, and childish, but it is not really “phobic” in the way we normally use that term. It reflects not so much a visceral antipathy to Christians as people as a desire for Christians to keep quiet and stop retarding social progress.
Now, things may be changing. When critics denounce Christians as “bigots” — for maintaining the traditional understanding of marriage, for example — that does imply a personal judgment. Bigots are bad people; you wouldn’t want them living next door to you or building a gathering place in your neighborhood. You wouldn’t want your children to associate with them. Maybe the ideological struggle in the West is becoming a personal one, in which Christians are seen as comparable to racists. I don’t think we’re there, yet, but I concede there’s evidence we may be heading that way.
For Movsesian, as for the revisers of the AP Style Book, the central worry is that we’re diagnosing—perhaps without much basis—our opponents. We’re turning disagreement into a disease.
Does the term better describe the persecution of Christians abroad? Movsesian thinks so, while warning that to describe the maiming, humiliation, and martyrdom of Christians abroad with the cool, clinical term “Christophobia” is to flirt rather dangerously with euphemism:
In countries like Egypt, Mali, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria, Christians are being murdered and forced to leave their homes in large numbers. Churches are being destroyed and Christian villages emptied. “Phobia” certainly describes this phenomenon. If anything, “phobia” is too mild a term: what we are seeing in these places is the widespread persecution of Christians.
“Christophobia” was coined by Jewish legal scholar Joseph Weiler in his short book, A Christian Europe: An Exploratory Essay and popularized by George Weigel’s The Cube and the Cathedral. Weiler’s initial use of the term was somewhat (and I think significantly) narrower than what has become the common use today. He elaborates on the term in more detail than I can summarize here, but its central meaning is suggested by the way Weiler phrases his vision of a healthy Christian Europe:
It is a Europe that, while celebrating the noble heritage of Enlightenment humanism, also abandons its Christophobia and neither fears nor is embarrassed by the recognition that Christianity is one of the central elements in the evolution of its unique civilization. It is, finally, a Europe that, in public discourse about its own past and future, recovers all the riches that can come from confronting one of its two principal intellectual and spiritual traditions.
“Christophobia” here describes not just any anti-Christian act but instead Europe’s particular continental embarrassment at its Christian past. The persecution of Diocletian was not “Christophobic” in this narrow sense, nor are all the ongoing persecutions in Muslim lands. Weiler’s “Christophobia” diagnoses a specific condition of the European mind, the denial of its inescapably Christian nature and history. (Of which Weiler, a Jew, is vividly aware.) It is not a suggestion that whoever express anti-Christian sentiment is diseased, but that some such expressions partake of a broader cultural psychosis.
People persecute the Church for any number of reasons, of course, and lumping them under the heading “Christophobia” is useful only as shorthand. That said, we will have difficulty understanding discrete anti-Christian acts in the West if we do not see them as a kind of war of a civilization against itself, a denial and rejection of its own past. In this sense, Weiler’s term helpfully recalls us to one of the central facts about the persecutions of our day.
November 29th, 2012 | 1:54 pm
[...] also: Does It Make Sense to Speak of “Christophobia”? Comments [...]
November 29th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
Well, whoever has become accustomed to saying “Christophobia” should get over it.
November 29th, 2012 | 2:27 pm
You certainly can’t rule out Islamophobia and defend Christophobia without being utterly inconsistent. I would say that the major reasoned objections to homophobia also apply to Christophobia.
Of course, it is nonsense that -phobia words necessarily imply mental illness or fear. Would this be edited by the AP?
Also, to pick nits, wouldn’t Christophobia imply hatred and fear of Christ rather than Christians?
November 29th, 2012 | 4:44 pm
Also, to pick nits, wouldn’t Christophobia imply hatred and fear of Christ rather than Christians?
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Only if “homophobia” implied a fear of any thing or any creature that is the same and the word was never used regarding sexuality.
English isn’t German.
November 29th, 2012 | 6:30 pm
English isn’t German.
Vielen Dank. Ich wusste nicht, dass.
November 29th, 2012 | 9:24 pm
The right here is trying to Orwell language. First off, ‘phobia’ does not mean a mental condition. The original Greek simply means ‘fear’ or ‘morbid fear’. The adoption of “phobic” as a suffix by the medical community hardly means the medical community gets a monopoly on the whole word thereby limiting its use only to medical conditions!
I favor the use of the word ‘homophobia’ because it’s easy to say, easy to spell and flows easily in speech. That is how the English language works. Some other words the prefix ‘ist’ fits these requirements better. Hence racist or sexist works better than ‘blackophobia’.
I have no problem with advocating language change. Unlike some, I did not think it was a big deal that ‘Negro’ changed to ‘Black’ to ‘African-American’ (although I’ve always wondered how would one describe a familly of white South Africans who emmigrated to the US? Wouldn’t they too be ‘African-Americans’ as a family from Dublin would be ‘Irish-American’?) But two rules of thumb I think make sense are:
1. Proposed useage changes should make it easier or at least no less easy to express ideas.
2. The information content conveyed by new word usage should go up, or stay the same, but not decline.
So I didn’t like Fox News’s idea to call suicide bombers ‘homicide bombers’. There are some bombers who bomb without killing themselves (ex Tim McVeigh, the unabomber, etc.) and some who do. ‘Suicide’ provides information about which type of bomber one is talking about. ‘Homicide’ does not since presumably all newsworthy bombings either kill or are intended to kill someone.
So if ‘homophobia’ is out, then what is in? What word would one propose in its place to express the idea of opposition to gays? Or more importantly bigotry against gays? Gayism? If you’re proposing nothing then you’re essentially playing the role that Big Brother did in 1984 with ‘newsspeak’; a manufactured language that was designed to suppress dissent by making it difficult or impossible to even express ideas with language.
November 30th, 2012 | 6:38 am
“So if ‘homophobia’ is out, then what is in? a blogger writes. “What word would one propose … to express … opposition to gays?”
Some first thoughts on the subject: A person of good will can object to homosexual practice without being in any way whatsoever “opposed” to persons who understand themselves as “gay”. His or her perspective may be the result of of concern for bodily health as this relates to sexual practice (this would include heterosexual promiscuity of course) or may be based on the concept of category error (as in, for example, confusion of noble friendship with marriage).
The words we use, when thinking and speaking about this subject, should reflect respect for the struggles that are part of every life and our responsibility to offer best counsel to one another.
One might, first of all, explain one’s respect for others’ privacy. If asked to proceed, information about health concerns and category error can be given.
My approach to life, based on my belief in the Roman Catholic Church as a spiritual entity and in the grace-giving sacraments empowered by the Holy Spirit, is considered absurd by many of those in my community. They are however quite tolerant of a strange person in their midst. I could not (and would not) accuse them of “Catholophobia” even though they do not “affirm” the beliefs on which I base my life.
If I were to insist that my neighbors agree with me, even that they instruct their children of the “rightness” of my beliefs, even that they “celebrate” my faith, I would be seriously out of order and would, I am certain, be made to understand that.
November 30th, 2012 | 1:35 pm
I agree with Boonton that “homophobia” is nicely assonant and, just as English, preferable to imitators like the one mentioned in the title of this post.
November 30th, 2012 | 3:21 pm
A Reader,
I think you might have went off track a bit. You correctly say a person could disapprove of homosexuality while not being bigoted against homosexuals. But that isn’t really the question. The question is how should we speak about such people who are so bigoted? Simply depriving the language of the words to describe such people doesn’t mean they cease to exist.
This leads me to suspect a more nefarious agenda at play here. If you’re not allowed to easily call out anyone who is a bigot on homosexuality, then bigots get a free pass. If we can’t even accuse the ‘God hates fags’ crowd of homophobia (or gayism or sexual orientationism or whatever word one would put in its place), then you’re inhibiting the discussion on behalf of those you say you oppose.
November 30th, 2012 | 4:41 pm
To Boonton: Well, it seems to me that the term “bigoted” is useful in describing the kinds of behavior you describe.
I was actually attempting to respond to your question about a word that would express opposition to homosexual behavior. Obviously I do not think any one word or expression can explain a considered, respectful opinion on the subject.
Just to be clear, I find labels that purport to describe a person’s integrated essence – to convey a definition of the whole person – unhelpful and unfair. A human person cannot be reduced to a label.
I realize that my post was off subject and constituted a response to a comment rather than to the informative article on “Christophobia”. It probably should have been deleted. With that said, though, I do not at all understand Matthew Schmitz’ comment.
November 30th, 2012 | 11:50 pm
I agree a human person should not be reduced to a label, but labels IMO are quite useful. Since a human is not a label, they shouldn’t act like one, no?
Hence if I act like a jerk, it’s good that people can call me a jerk. I suppose you’re right that we don’t quite have a good, short word for ‘not like a jerk’ . A campaign to eliminate the word ‘jerk’ may rest on the claim that the word should go because there’s no true person in the world whose a jerk. Maybe but I think we get close enough often enough to merit keeping the word and others like it!
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