To be a Pilgrim: An experiment in inclusive language
Let’s take the text of a favourite hymn, and subject it to a grammatical/linguistic experiment.
In the original version, the first verse of Bunyan’s ‘To Be a Pilgrim’ goes:
‘He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.’
Of course, the words ‘he’, ‘him’, and ‘his’ are problematic, as the pilgrim could just as easily be a woman:
‘She who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let her in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make her once relent
Her first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.’
But this is just as exclusive as the first version. So we try a version that does not specify gender:
‘They who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let them in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make them once relent
Their first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.’
Or, in what I am told is the emerging feminist consensus:
‘Zie who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let hir in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make hir once relent
Hir first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.’
On balance, the slightly dodgy grammar of the third option wins over the sheer strangeness of the fourth. So the third person plural comes to be treated as if it were a gender-inclusive form of the second person singular.
A fifth and final option:
‘If one would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let one in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make one once relent
One’s first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.’
While it has the virtue of being grammatically consistent, this version has little warmth or vigour!
To you to decide…
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Hi Joel, this is great! The Zie/hir verse looks cool and trendy, but wouldn’t actually work singing, would it? Because you’d hear ‘her’.
This is a problem – none of the options are ideal (though if pushed I’d probably go for the the ‘they’ one, or else in a super-conservative place go for ‘he’ reluctantly and change ‘men’ for ‘they’ in the last verse). It would be interesting to challenge a congregation with the ‘she’ verse – exclusive, yes, but has the advantage of making people think.
G x
Thanks Gemma, love the feedback!
Perhaps even a combination of gender exclusive and gender inclusive forms within the same service? A familiar hymn with ‘his’ and ‘he’ changed to ‘they’ or ‘she’, on the one hand… and on the other, a new hymn made gender exclusive.
All this could be accompanied by a reading of Galatians 3 or some other familiar inclusive passage