Why so many Christian acronyms?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My parents are very religious (Christian). My mother is always relating these little acronyms and has plaques and such on the wall with these acronyms.

For example, my daughter was wearing a Christmas shirt that said “Joy” on it. I overheard my mother saying “You know what Joy means? Jesus, Others, You” (as in order of precedence I suppose). Of course, that’s not what joy actually means.

She has a wall-hangy thing that says FAITH - “Forsaking All I Trust Him”. And there are more.

I did a quick web search for “Christian acronyms” and oh my goodness, there are TONS of them! For example, the first google result is this site, which seems to be a collection of ones the blogger has come across:

Now, we have a lot of acronyms at work and in the government and business of course. We all love our acronyms. But in business/government/etc., they are usually a shortened name for a product or a process or something that would be cumbersome to refer to spelled out - like it’s much easier to say “NORAD” than “North American Aerospace Defense Command”. And yes, many of the acronyms are “backronyms” where the letters were picked first then they came up with the words they stand for. But still, they stand for things or companies or something.

But the Christian ones puzzle me - they are used completely differently. Of course, they’re usually “backronyms” as well, where the word exists first and the “meaning” is made to fit the word. But I guess my question is, why? Why are these so popular? There are literally thousands of these acronyms that don’t exactly take the place of longer terms in normal speech, so they don’t fill the usual purpose of acronyms. They seem to be primarily made to put on signs and shirts and such.

What’s the purpose of these? Why are there so many? Is it just that it’s a “fun” thing to think up new religious sentences based on existing words?

I’m not trying to put them down or anything, I’m genuinely curious. I mean, there are lots of these! Do other religions have the same kind of thing? If not, why not?

2

Christian use of acronyms may go as far back as the first century AD, fueled at least in part by the need to maintain secrecy in a time when Christianity was illegal.

3

Those you describe at the start, especially, sound to me like historically recent creations. As you noticed, too down-pat, probably created by some Bible Society types to create a market for little wall plaques with glurge on them and to get the kids to grow up associating certain common words with the preaching message (hence Mom’s comment about “joy”). I strongly suspect these are associated mostly with conservative or fundamentalist denominations.

In our own lifetime we did see the succesful promotion of of the initialism “WWJD” in Christian paraphernalia, that one was a legit take on popularizing a phrase from an existing work.

There ARE historically significant Christian initialisms for example:
[ul]
[li]The very ancient AND recently revived IChThYS (literally, “fish”), standing for Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr - Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior. [/li]
[li]Or from Reformation times,“TULIP”, representing the “Five Points of Calvinism” - Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of saints.[/li][/ul]

As you may notice these two form mundane words rather than anything evocative like JOY or FAITH, they are more along the line of mnemonics to communicate certain actual doctrines and teachings. Also, back in the really old days you wanted to save on ink and parchment, or on carvings on stone, so you abbreviated if you could; robert_columbia points out as well, go really way back far enough and you want plausible deniability of what is it you are writing on your walls. That created a bit of a tradition.

4

These are sometimes referred to as backronyms, or when they are created by a certain thespian named Gary, they are Buseyisms.

5

That’s very interesting, I hadn’t known about the “code word” aspect in the past. So it seems likely maybe the current batch of “fun” acronyms is just a distant relative of these historical ones - something that was a necessity a long time ago, but kept spawning new versions until it’s just something that’s done, although with no real necessity anymore.

Thanks!

6

Credulous rubes love numerology and this is a variant on the same idea. It’s “letterology”*, finding the hidden message embedded in any keyword found in your vocabulary.

It helps them feel like members of the in-crowd to know these little tricks or advertise them on their T-shirts.

It’s attractive for the same reason conspiracy theories are attractive. It helps the simple-minded to think they’ve got one over on their betters.

=====

  • semi-joking term I just made up.
7

As for the number of them; I write it off to 2000 years and borrowing a bucket-load from our Jewish ancestors. :smiley:

8

Nitpick: TULIP doesn’t come from reformation times; it expresses ideas which originated in the early seventeenth century, but the acronym itself isn’t found before the early twentieth century, and prior to that the same theological ideas were often expressed using other terminology. and/or were listed in a different order. Plus, of course, the acronym obviously originates in an English-speaking community, whereas the ideas for which it serves as a mnemonic do not.

As others have said, in early Christianity there were acronyms used as a discrete sign or code, but the need for this faded before too long. Then, I suspect independently, you have the development of letter-based symbols that have an iconographic function - the Chi-Rho symbol, Alpha and Omega, IHS. And then in modern times you have the slightly cutesy acronyms that the OP refers to - FAITH, JOY, etc. I suspect that these arose out of a general (i.e. not particularly religious) fashion for mnemonics as an aid to instruction/memorisation.

9

“What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for, Agent Ward?”
“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”
“And what does that mean to you?”
“It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out shield.”

10

Well, yes, this the country that produced the PATRIOT Act, after all.

11

Nitpick, its USA PATRIOT Act.* Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism*

12

Well, there you go.

And, FWIW, when I first read the OP, my immediate thought about these cutesy religious acronyms was “that’s not a Christian thing, that’s an American thing”. As in, you see this in American-influenced expressions of Christianity, but not so much elsewhere.

13

What I came to post. While things such as the Ichtus, the M for Mary, etc. have been around for a long time, a big chunk of it is just American love of acronyms and backronyms. Anybody who came up with a Christian acronym for alegría (joy in Spanish) would be giggled to the color of a ripe tomato.

14

The following, not religion-related; but the British tend to be big on (b)ac(k)ronyms too. As with our police central computer set-up, introduced several decades ago, with the title – thought up by some whimsy-merchant – HOLMES: Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. A title widely disliked and ridiculed, including by many in the police – " ‘Large Major’, for heaven’s sake – that’s not even English".

The detective-fiction author Peter Lovesey wrote a short story in which British organised crime inaugurates, to further its own objectives, a rival super-computer called MORIARTY – standing for something like “Malevolently Ordering Reprehensible Informantion, And Rot The Yard” [Scotland Yard : general figure of speech for the policing – especially detection-type – establishment in the UK].

15

I once worked with a guy who said he was one meeting away from getting the new system named the Forward Accounts Receivable Tracking System.

Regards,
Shodan

16

Was that the meeting where he gets Super High Intensity** T**raining?

17

I haven’t had seen much of this phenomenon (a very little, but not much), despite being an American Christian. So it’s not “Something Christians do”; it’s something that some individual Christians or groups of Christians do.

And as long as we’re speculating on why they do it, for whatever reason, it’s part of human nature that some people like hidden meanings and things that stand for other things. This manifests itself in religious contexts but also in nonreligious ones (ask an English teacher about the hidden meanings and symbolism in a story or poem), and can be taken with varying degrees of seriousness.

18

Symbols are important to help with remembrance and remembrance is the first step in self improvement.

19

And it doesn’t stop with just words. For example, the candy cane.

20

I think a lot of the initialisms and mnemonics come from Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. They are simply a mechanism to teach youngsters the Gospel.