“No Name Calling Week”

According to a calendar of unusual and largely unknown holidays and events, this week, January 15-19, is “No Name Calling Week.”

When I clicked the link, it took me to the Broward County Public Schools web page and offered this explanation and challenge.

Join us in celebrating kindness during the annual No Name-Calling Week, every 3rd week in January. Use educational and enlightening lessons and activities to reduce name-calling, bullying, and bias.

Whether you’re a teacher, student, guidance counselor, coach, librarian or bus driver, you can show you care by organizing a week of activities at your school aimed at ending name-calling once and for all.

Broward County includes the Florida cities of Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood, and Pompano Beach.

With the 2024 Presidential election heating up, so also is name calling. It may seem worse in recent years, but it’s been around a long time. While we remember our 16th President as “Honest Abe,” during his lifetime his enemies labeled Abraham Lincoln as a “barbarian,” a “yahoo,” a Scythian,” an “idiot,” and a “gorilla.”

The candidates’ propensity, as well as many talking heads on cable news, for calling others by ugly names, has spilled over into our culture at large. Vulgar descriptions, pejorative labels, and insulting, offensive slurs are tossed around with impunity. Sadly this is too often witnessed in groups of Christians, or on their social media posts, or by bumper stickers.

Apart from politics, too often ethnic or racial groups of people are labeled with unkind names and ugly slurs. Sometimes this occurs because of one’s profession, social or economic status, or their physical appearance.

Jesus warns us that “every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matt 12:26-37).

Furthermore, the Bible offers these admonitions about our language.

Eph 4:29-30
Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. 30

Ps 34:13
Keep your tongue from evil,
And your lips from speaking deceit.

Ps 141:3
Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth;
Keep watch over the door of my lips.

Rom 12:14
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

Col 4:5-6
Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

In an online e-magazine, Emotional Intelligence Magazine, author Brittney-Nichole Connor-Savarda, writes that name calling is a sign of “low emotional intelligence.”

Cornor-Savarda says people call others ugly names out of insecurity or envy. Or a failure to articulate their thoughts. Or they may believe that others are unworthy of their kindness or respect.

I would further suggest that name calling is often used as an emotional weapon against those with whom we disagree. Or an attempt to make ourselves look better. Or maybe to distract from the issue at hand. If you can’t answer the argument, then attack the man, or the woman. In debate this is called an ad hominem argument or attack.

Christians who apply the above Biblical admonitions not only refrain from crass, coarse, and crude name calling, but rather speak wholesome words of kindness, civility, and charity.

This political season, let’s not devolve into ugly name calling, regardless of what popular politicians say or do.

You can begin by joining the Broward educators in making this “no name calling week.” Then let’s enable that spirit to morph into a month. Then a year. Then a lifetime.

–Ken Weliever, The Preacherman