The label debate

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 30 December 2007 09:48:40

Glen Marshall , (who I don't know but like to read), has an interesting post on labelling and the problems with the tendency to disgard them in a postmodern society.

As somebody who bangs on the whole time about inclusivness and looking at people beyond labels, but then uses specific labels to point out who is still being described and treated as "the other" I found his points interesting. I am stuck with a parodoxical problem when it comes to the whole business of labels.

I see it as vital we look beyond labels and see everybody as an individuals, recognising the imago dei, (image of God), within everybody. I buy into the idea we are all different anyway, having a mix of social characteristics which are expressed in different ways according to the environmental factors we have been exposed to and the time and space which we find ourselves in. This is one of the reasons I think the use of an inclusive household approach to church, (where we seek to reinterpret the first century model for a late modern time), is so important. Before anybody states the obvious yes I know the original household codes were patriarchal and open to abuse but there was still an inclusiveness within the society which saw the single, the asylum seeker and the orphan included.

And with that last statement I have my problem. Whilst I want us to be individuals connected within a church household I am holding on to labels to justify my point. It is only through the use of labels I can identify who modern concepts of church as family, (too often using the exclusive modern sense of family), end up excluding. If I were not using labels such as "lone parent", "single", "childless" and "non-heterosexual" I would not be able to identify what those who sometimes find themselves excluded through the impact of language on practice in our churches have in common.

Yet on the other side of the coin I know far too well from personal experience it is when the person with those labelled social characteristics lets go of the labels themselves that freedom can occur. I recently described the fact that for the first time in memory I feel truly accepted and free in church. Whilst I think there may have been some small movement in the thinking of others the biggest change has occurred within me. I am simply Tractor Girl as she is with her unique mix of social characteristics and opinions and have stopped looking at myself as x, y, or z which doesn't quite fit in with the dominant characteristics in the church. Simply being Tractor Girl and dropping the labels has enabled me to be loved by the other members of the church household without the wall, which the fear of rejection gives and which comes from owning the labels, getting in the way.