Since dabbling more and more in social media networks like Twitter and Facebook I’ve noticed something emerging in the vocabulary of other Christians online. More and more believers refer to their being a “follower of Jesus” or some variation thereof, avoiding or consciously rejecting the more typical “Christian”. I (perhaps mistakenly) thought that this was a product of the Emergent movement, thought it was rather neat and left it at that. Until, I read this post at FaithLab that suggests that it is a conscious decision rejecting the baggage laden “Christian”.

The post goes on to raise some interesting questions: “No doubt, the term “Christian” has baggage. Does it mean a hard-nosed, judgemental, Bible-literalist churchgoer? Or can it also label a humble, quiet, spiritually active follower? What about believers who are not church-goers? Christianity has always had a tremendous diversity of expression. But in our media-saturated world, unfortunately it seems that terms are given meaning by one particular group or approach. How do we define ourselves when we don’t fit that stereotype?”

I confess that since becoming more aware of how religion – and especially Christianity – is portrayed in various media sources, I’ve become more aware of some of this “baggage”. I’ve always approached this awareness through my personal conduct as a believer, a theologian, and a cleric – recalling the line in the morning prayer that says, may I not be the cause of embarrassment to the faith. But, is the praxis of a single individual enough? Krista Tippet talks movingly about the scope of our ability to transform the world in the latter half of her book Speaking of Faith, and says that all we can hope to accomplish is that one to one, individual activity that expresses the core of our belief and tradition.

Over the past decade or so I’ve heard many thoughtful arguments within our own OC/IC community about dropping or changing the labels we use to describe or refer to ourselves. The one that usually gets the axe is “catholic” largely because of its association with the Roman Catholic church (which we are not). Another – interestingly enough – is “church”; this term is laden with associations of institutionalisation, buildings, politics, and hierarchy.

Should we consider changing our terms? What benefit is there in doing so? Should we not instead strive to re-claim the true meaning of the existing language, or is that a lost cause?