K.C. Ptomey Leads Worship

Focusing on Power of Words

by Ray Waddle

Almighty God in the Book of Genesis invoked the power of words to shape reality — and so do journalists every time they sit down to write.

So, please, use language with care, the Rev. K.C. Ptomey of Nashville urged a roomful of Presbyterian journalists at the annual Synod Communications Seminar.

“Called by God to a vocation that uses words as our tools, we become co-creators with God — co-creators, who with words can evoke a world of peace rather than war, love rather than hate, and truth rather than suspicion,” he declared.

“This is an awesome responsibility, but it is also for most of us a source of great joy and therefore a reason for thanksgiving.”

K.C. Ptomey,
Candidate for G.A. Moderator

Ptomey, 62, has been minister at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Nashville for 22 years. This year he is in the national church spotlight, emerging as a candidate for moderator when the General Assembly meets later this month. (The vote is June 26.)

During a worship session at the seminar April 29, Ptomey cautioned writers and editors to be alert to the way powerful people use language, or distort it, to their own ends. Journalists should be wary of the words they choose when writing about controversy; they should examine their own motives all the while.

“There’s a dark underside: Words have the power to construct alternative reality,” he said.

Calling an enemy country an “evil empire,” or a missile system a “peacekeeper,” are efforts to shape opinion and control debate, he noted.

Racial slurs are age-old attempts to “rob people of their humanity and make it easy to kill them,” he said.

“All these wordsmiths understand at the deepest level that language, words, shape reality.”

The power of words was demonstrated from the very beginning of the Bible, he said, when God called the world into being, and Adam gave reality to things by naming them. The Genesis creation story itself became a powerful narrative of hope to the struggling ancient Israelites, giving them a vivid new understanding of the sovereignty of the biblical Lord.