The ever-renewing endurance of the vernacular

As I was recently visiting a Christian college, a book in the bookstore caught my eye (not exactly unusual). The title is "Translating the Message, The Missionary Impact on Culture", written by Lamin Sanneh.

A paragraph stands alone, in more ways than one, at the very beginning of the book. It not only convicts the many historians who have, with incredulous blindness to the obvious, missed how Christianity has shone on the human face of this world, but it shows unequaled perception into how the Lord Jesus has used the common language of people to carry the so freely offered message along that very pathway of history.

Here's the quote--read it slowly, since it's packed with keen insight.

The issue that frequently escapes the dragnet of the historian is the cumulative capital Christianity has derived from the common language of ordinary people. To the secular historian this fact has only political significance as a force for incitement; to the economic and social historian it is a fact that creates social mobility, and perhaps social tension. Yet to a Christian the confident adoption of vernacular speech as consecrated vessel places it squarely at the heart of religious change, and thus at the heart of historical consciousness. The central and enduring character of Christian history is the rendering of God's eternal counsels into terms of everyday speech. By that path believers have come to stand before their God.

To the phrase, "vernacular speech as consecrated vessel," I say, "Amen."