Book Reviews on Language, Prejudice, and Global Christianity
LeRoy Lawson reviews Margalit Foxโs Talking Hands and Frederick Norrisโs Christianity: A Short Global History, drawing out how assumptions and preformed opinions shape human understanding. The review connects the history of sign language and the global spread of Christianity through the shared theme of prejudice and perspective.
- Foxโs book explores what sign language reveals about the mind and the development of language.
- Norrisโs book surveys Christianityโs global history beyond a Western-centered perspective.
- Lawson highlights how prejudice can shape both cultural assumptions and religious history.
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind
Margalit Fox
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007
Christianity: A Short Global History
Frederick Norris
Oxford: One World, 2002
By LeRoy Lawson
For this reader, Margalit Foxโs title could be Talking Handsโand What Theyโve Taught Me About Prejudice.
Prejudice is sneaky, hiding in the deepest crevices of the human psyche, seldom recognized in oneself even by the most accepting and fair-minded among us.
Campaigning Against Sign Language
Take our attitudes toward the deaf, for example. Who would have guessed that Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, whose compassion for his deaf wife and mother drove him to that achievement, campaigned against the adoption of sign language? He demanded instead that the deaf conform to the dictates of oral speechโso they would be more โnormalโ (which, of course, means โbeing more like meโ).
And who would have thought that supposedly enlightened educators at an international congress in Milan, Italy, in 1880 would pass a resolution condemning sign language as an instructional method for the deaf? One speaker was certain God himself opposed sign language:
Oral speech is the sole power that can rekindle the light God breathed into man when, giving him a soul in a corporeal body, he gave him also a means of understanding, of conceiving, and of expressing himself. . . . While, on the one hand, mimic signs are not sufficient to express the fullness of thought, on the other they enhance and glorify fantasy and all the faculties of the sense of imagination. . . . The fantastic language of signs exalts the senses and foments the passions, whereas speech elevates the mind much more naturally, with calm, prudence and truth and avoids the danger of exaggerating the sentiment expressed and provoking harmful mental impressions.
So there.
Fox lifts a story from another book, Deaf in America, that illustrates how prejudice grows. Itโs about Sam, a boy born into a deaf family with several deaf older brothers. He never lacked for playmates, although the girl next door was kind of strange.
He couldnโt talk to her as he did his deaf parents and siblings. She had trouble understanding even the simplest gestures. He finally gave up trying, but simply pointed and accommodated himself to her limitations.
Then one day they played in her home. Her mother walked in, and she and the girl began to animatedly move their mouths. โAs if by magic, the girl picked up a dollhouse and moved it to another place.โ He was mystified.
Back at his house his mother explained the concept of hearing, and that because her mother didnโt know how to sign, she and her daughter had to move their mouths to communicate.
It was an aha! moment for Sam. โHe remembers thinking how curious the girl next door was, and if she was hearing, how curious hearing people were.โ
There you have it. Hearing people arenโt normal.
By the early 20th century, spoken English had almost completely supplanted signing in American classrooms. I recall a conversation with parents of a deaf son who were determined that he would not sign but would master lip-reading and oral communication. They meant well. They wanted him to be normal.
Talking Hands isnโt really about prejudice in general or the discrimination the deaf have suffered and often suffer today, though this theme weaves its way through the book. It is instead a study, as the subtitle indicates, of what sign language reveals about the workings of the mind. It chronicles the research of a team of scientists in a remote Middle Eastern village where everyone, deaf and hearing alike, speaks sign language. Because of continuing intermarriage in the village, recessive deaf genes appear in a disproportionately high percent of the villagers. As a result, deafness is not deemed unusual. The deaf are fully assimilated into village life.
A boon for the researchers, this prevalence makes it possible to study a spontaneous sign language that made its first appearance 70 years ago and has evolved in the succeeding two generations, giving the scientists insight into how the mind enables language itself (not just sign) to grow and develop its grammar and syntax.
Without All the Facts
What do a brief history of sign language and a brief history of Christianity have in common? Even though neither book is really about prejudice, both offer undeniable proof that preformed opinions (conclusions drawn before all the facts are in) govern more powerfully in big matters and little than we want to admit.
On the first page of Christianity Fred Norris disarms the would-be critic: โAnyone writing a short global history of Christianity knows that the task is impossible, yet believes it is necessary.โ OK, so we canโt complain if this fewer-than-300-pages survey is less than exhaustive and some of our favorite eras receive short shrift.
Acknowledging that โthe term โChristianityโ is an abstraction,โ Norris focuses on its fluidity through time as Christian individuals and groups form communities, debate in councils, evolve into institutions, crusade against โinfidels,โ and influence and are influenced by other religions and cultures, now advancing, now retreating, occasionally surrendering but even now vibrant and growing globally.
Iโm especially grateful for the authorโs attention to the sweep of Christian history in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. He never lets the reader forget that the church was not invented by the West, is not owned by the West, and in fact is not even strongest here.
Like this all-too-brief review, to compact so much material into such a short space means Norrisโs never-withheld opinions (prejudices?), grand generalizations, and overstuffed (with facts and dates) paragraphs leave the reader wishing to raise an occasional โon the other handโ and to double-check the missing footnotes. Still, as a tracing of Christianityโs often convoluted trajectory from its humble Middle-East origins to its current robust presence, this โshort global historyโ is a welcome addition to the bookshelf.
And as a study in how prejudice (not to be equated with the will of God) sometimes rules in the highest courts of the land and the noblest councils of the religiousโwell, it offers more evidence than we want.
LeRoy Lawson, international consultant for Christian Missionary Fellowship, is a Christian Standard contributing editor and a member of Standardโs Publishing Committee.
