Is English Destroying the World?

Sometimes I get depressed about job opportunities... One of the old standby things to remember is that I can always go and teach English in China or Korea, which, while not being something I actually want to do, is something that combines teaching and adventure... and pays actual money. However, recently I have been considering if this activity that occurs across the globe and is often used as a platform for Christian mission is actually contributing to the destruction of humanity. I know I am stating this extremely strongly but I want you to consider if a universal language is as good a thing as we generally consider it. I have grown up knowing that I can travel almost anywhere in the world and someone will be able to understand me... As a native English speaker I do not need to learn any other language to go anywhere or do anything, the whole world is devoted to catering for me.

However, is it a good thing that this is the case? Is this something that is bringing the world together? Something that allows for better communication amidst global diversity? Or is it yet another example of western imperial cultural domination that occurs at the literal destruction of other language and culture? Is the ubiquity of English contributing to the homogenization of global culture and the destruction of diversity?

Wikipedia:

Estimates of future language loss range from half of more than 6000 currently spoken languages being lost in the next 200 years,^[10] to 90% by the year 2050.^[4] Wade Davis states that languages - as not simply bodies of vocabulary or sets of grammatical rules, but "old growth forests of the mind" - for the many and unique cultures of the world reflect different ways of being, thinking, and knowing.^[9] 

As Davis puts it, language extinction effectively reduces the "entire range of the human imagination... to a more narrow modality of thought",^[9] and thus privileges the ways of knowing in dominant (and overwhelmingly European) languages such as English. Foucauldian ideas of power and knowledge, as both inseparable and symbiotic, are implicated in the universalizing of European knowledge as truth, and the rendering of other forms as less valid or false: mere superstition, folklore, or mythology.^[11] In the case of language extinction, those "voices" which are deemed to be inferior or secondary by colonizing, globalizing, or developing forces are literally silenced. 

Davis also illustrates that languages are lost not because cultures are destined to fade away (as proponents of environmental or cultural determinism or Social Darwinism may contend), but rather that they are "driven out of existence by identifiable forces that are beyond their capacity to adapt to"; he further remonstrates that "genocide, the physical extinction of a people is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of peoples' way of life is not only not condemned, it's universally - in many quarters - celebrated as part of a development strategy."^[9]

I think this is specifically interesting in relation to Christian mission which has been co-opted to spread the Gospel of English along with the Gospel of Christ... How should these statistics and realities impact the way Western Christianity positions itself in global markets? Is "English Camp" or "English Corner" a responsible platform for building relationships? Should we as Christians be concerned with preserving culture just like the environment? Should our missions celebrate honour and preserve diversity of language?

Many Christians are aware and regret the First Nations residential schools, which did not allow children to speak their native language and enforced English. This systematic, deliberate, and enforced destruction of culture no longer occurs with such explicit violence but rather is commercially marketed seducing the whole world back to Babel... I say Babel because that is the location where God creates/confuses the previous mono language of humanity. I say Babel because it is first example of human pride and empire building in rebellion against God. I say Babel because the Biblical redemption of Babel in Acts at Pentecost is not the destruction of language but miraculous understanding. At Pentecost, unity is found in the midst of diversity...not the destruction of diversity.

To my regret, I dropped out of French after Grade 9...To my regret, I have not maintained what I learned of Greek and Hebrew...To my regret, I never really learned any Dutch from my Dad or Grandparents... I have hated the pain and difficulty of learning language most of my life and therefore avoided it. It seems less and less likely I will every become even conversational... But I want to. I want to learn another language as an act of subversion of the hegemonic monocultural empire that is on the rise. I invite you to reconsider your monolinguistic love and learn another language not for practicality but for the greater Glory of God and the preservation and stewardship of his good creation both natural and cultural.