The Sacred and the Profane

Mircea Eliade wrote, "The Sacred and the Profane", which he considered to be central to understanding what religion was about.

The term, "profane", refers to what is outside the Temple, or in derivative culture, "not belonging to the Church".

I was a student at The University of Chicago when he was there, but I was such a student as found his books dense and obscure.

But this post is not about Eliade: it is about profanity.

At about the same time that I stood uncomprehendingly and watched that giant walk by, I took a year off to live and study in Germany. I had been a clergyman, and my solution to watching my religion seep off into the sand was to learn as much as I could about the religious enterprise. Going to Germany was part of that process.

I worked hard to learn German, and I was intrigued by how Germans swore. It seemed to me to be much more anal than what I was used to. At about the same time, I became aware that my own profanity had religious roots. I learned to swear in church. I will not provide precise examples of what I mean, but God and hell and terms like that came easily and naturally. After all, I had been pretty well educated in their use, and abuse.

What strikes me today is how old fashioned my profanities are! I looked up a list provided by a contemporary dictionary of some sort, for which I had to verify that I was over the age of 16, and confirmed that almost all of the foulest terms in modern English have to do with sex, and not just sex, but violent and crude sex; more than that! Abusive sex! You know what I refer to: the most common term is incessantly referred to as "the F word".

"When Americans swear," a Scandinavian woman once said, "they use terms that refer to the abuse of women." It isn't just sex: it is sexual abuse. It is violent language; almost always male violence.

I am profane, in both its primary and derivative senses. I am outside the Temple, and when I speak profanely, I use what was sacred terminology. But there is a profanity I genuinely hate: it does not have religious roots. It is rooted in sexual violence; in a contempt for women.

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