Israelite Genealogies and Christian Commitment: The Limits of Language Ideologies in Guhu-Samane Christianity (Beyond LOGOS: EXTENSIONS OF THE LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY PARADIGM IN THE STUDY OF GLOBAL Christianity(-Ies)) (Report‪)‬

Introduction Christian conversion has been an exemplary topic for studies focusing on language ideologies because conversion and Christian commitment can be understood in terms of the classic foci of language ideologies: personhood, apperception, and their relation to language (see Woolard 1998, Silverstein 1979, Whorf 1956). In particular, many scholars of Protestant, and especially Pentecostal, Christianity have noted that when individuals understand themselves to be in a relationship with God, sins are forgiven, the past is separated from the present, and the convert enters into a social relation characterized by intimacy with God. This intimacy is created primarily through metasemiotic stances of language-mediated intentionality, sincerity, and a commitment to personal truth (especially Keane 1997, 2007; see also Bauman 1983, Harding 2000, Robbins 2001, Shoaps 2002). For some Christians, even language sometimes gets in the way of this intimacy (Keane 1997), since it cannot so easily be divorced from its history of use (Bakhtin 1981). Speaking to God, hearing His word, or otherwise being in a relation of recognition, is, for the convert, a matter of making one's sincere, meaningful, and especially individual expressions as transparent as possible by shedding anything social that might complicate it-one's past, one's sins, one's language. (1)