Our Father-Mother, who is in heaven
may your name be made holy...
Translation -- Voices United 916
Hallowed is the past participle of the verb hallow, a term that descends from the Middle English halowen. That word can be traced back to the Old English adjective hālig, meaning "holy."
There's the old chesnut about the child who asks a parent, "why is God's named Harold?" The perplexed parent asks why he/she/they would think that this was God's name. "Well, in the Lord's Prayer we say, 'Our Father who art in heaven, Harold be thy name'"...nuck, nuck, nuck.
During a recent episode of the popular quiz show, Jeopardy, none of the three contestants could conjure up anything at all when the clue asked them to fill in the word "hallowed" to complete a phrase from the Our Father, or Lord's Prayer, the prayer Jesus taught his disciples as part of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel with a version in Luke as well.
This "I got nuthin'" from the contestants created an international incident with dismay and even nastiness ensuing online. It even became a news item.
Why, pray tell, do some assume that everyone is a Christian and that all Christians will have memorized the Lord's Prayer? We live in an increasingly religiously pluralistic society as well as one with far more "nones" when it comes to participation in Christian faith communities.
About 35 years ago the Lord's Prayer was sent packing from public schools in Ontario, so we moved it to earlier in our worship services giving the children the opportunity to repeat it each week before heading to Sunday School. Our junior choirs would also lead a catchy sung version, with actions, from time to time. But how many kids attend church anymore? Along the way we began projecting in on the screen during worship as well because we didn't want to assume that folk would know the prayer "by heart."
Perhaps we should actually be expressing exasperation that Jeopardy still depends on the archaic King James Version of the bible when there are so many other versions and paraphrases, some of which are more accurate translations. I know I do!
Holy Moley, may Harold or Haroldette deliver us all from the Jeopardy watchdogs.
2 comments:
The U.S. has more people who identify as Christians than any place on earth (about 64% of the population in 2020). [from Pew Research]
So exposure should count here but more importantly I'll make the argument for general knowledge. That's really what's being tested on Jeopardy. General knowledge of fields such as pop culture, science, linguistics, history, geography and I would add religion/philosophy.
As the most known prayer in the major religion of one's country and of an important living religion world-wide and an important religion historically, it should have been part of their general knowledge, don't you think? KB
I shudder to think of what that identifaction might mean to many. While I doubt that it would include biblical literacy I'm with you, Kathy, the Lord's Prayer should be broadly known. Actually, I'm often surprised by how well contestants fare in the bible and religion categories, but that troika was a dud.
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