Fourth Presbyterian Church uses Merriam-Webster and the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) as our style guides for language. As such, explanations of our spelling and language choices can be found there. This page describes a few to which we call particular attention.

Black is capitalized when referring to racial or ethnic identities, unless Black or Indigenous authors indicate a different preference in their work.

God is named corporately in a variety of ways, drawing on names and images from the Bible and from within our faith tradition, names such as Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Good Shepherd, Light of the World, and Holy One. This, along with largely gender-neutral references, allow for each individual to name God in the ways meaningful to them.

Pronouns referring to God and Jesus are lowercased (CMOS 8.95), as they are in most Bible translations, including the New Revised Standard Version, which is the translation of the Bibles found in the Fourth Church pew racks.

The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago is the official name of our congregation and the name we use when identifying our congregation for those outside of our city. When our Chicago location is assumed, we use Fourth Presbyterian Church on first reference and Fourth Church on subsequent references.

The language used in Fourth Church’s recording waiver is here.

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