Rhetoric of hate dehumanizes fellow citizens, harms debate

By Patricia Templeton

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,

But words will never hurt me.”

We all learn this rhyme as children, but even children know that it is not true. Words may not break our bones, but they can inflict pain that lasts long after a fractured bone is healed and forgotten.

The danger and pain inflicted by the tongue is a problem as old as humanity. Almost 2,000 years ago New Testament writer James devoted an entire chapter to what he called “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

“The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits,” he writes. “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.”

We all carry the memory of words that have wounded us, but James is talking about something even more serious than words hurled in anger or rumors that damage our professional or personal lives.

“The real peril of the tongue is not found in the passing angry word or the incidental oath or the petty bit of slander,” Emory professor Luke Timothy Johnson says. “It is found in the creation of distorted worlds of meaning within which the word of truth is suppressed.”

That is an accurate description of what is going on in our country right now.

Last spring, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning of the resurgence of hate groups in this country. Examples from recent months show how hatred and its toxic rhetoric can have dire consequences.

In late May, James von Brunn walked into the Holocaust Museum and shot and killed a guard. He was stopped before he could kill others.

Von Brunn has a long history of participation in groups that feed on hatred of Jews. He maintained a Web site filled with poisonous and evil words, words that eventually propelled him to action.

Ten days after the museum murder, Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed on Sunday morning in his Kansas church. Tiller was a provider of abortions.

“Tiller, the baby killer,” is how one cable TV host frequently referred to him, saying on air that the doctor must be stopped. Anti-abortion Web sites listed not only Tiller’s office address, but his home and church as well, and called in explicit terms for his “removal.”

The man arrested in the killing has a past which was saturated with that kind of rhetoric.

In August, the day before a presidential visit to Arizona for a health care rally, the Rev. Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church, near Phoenix, preached a sermon entitled “Why I Hate Barack Obama.”

“I hate Barack Obama,” the preacher proclaimed. “You say, ‘Well, you just don’t like what he stands for.’ No, I hate the person. I hate him.

“Obama ought to be aborted. I pray that he dies and goes to hell.”

The next day, one of Anderson’s parishioners appeared outside the president’s speech with an assault rifle. He told reporters that he concurred with his pastor’s wishes.

I am not concerned here about the pros and cons of abortion, or health care, or the president. It is the language, the rhetoric we use when we talk about such things that concerns and frightens me. Much of the language and rhetoric so prevalent in our country now is promoting a mean and polarizing spirit.

It’s not just the radical fringe that is engaging in this kind of rhetoric. Elected officials have deliberately lied about the details of proposed health care reform and questioned the legitimacy of the president.

Language shapes reality. Words have consequences.

When a person, like any president; or an entire group of people, like gays, or Jews, or Muslims, or illegal immigrants; are spoken of in dehumanizing terms, when they are painted as “other,” or somehow less than human, then we are only a small step away from violence.

And when we can no longer discuss an issue based on truth and facts, when we can no longer engage in true debate and work together for the good of the whole, then we are in danger of unraveling — as a society and a nation.

Words have creative power. We create worlds of meaning with our language. We can use words to create worlds of truth and beauty and healing and justice.

Or we can allow our tongues to be infected with deadly poison and create a world where words are used to create fear rather than to inspire hope, to spread lies rather than truth, to polarize rather than unite.

I believe what James calls the evil of the tongue, the toxicity of our language, is one of the gravest dangers our society faces today.

We combat it by watching our own tongues, of course — by trying to be mindful of careless remarks or words hurled in anger, by resisting the temptation to engage in rumor and innuendo.

But we also combat it by paying attention to the words with which we surround ourselves — by what we read, and listen to, and watch. Do those words dehumanize others, do they pander to our fears, are they more interested in ideology than truth?

If the answer is yes, then we need to turn off the radio, TV or computer, put away the publication, and vote those who engage in this rhetoric out of office.

If we don’t, I fear that the sparks set off by the tongue may ignite a blaze that makes the fires in Los Angeles pale in comparison.

The Rev. Patricia Templeton is rector of St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta.