I was skimming Jeff Tiedrich’s latest email, about Trump and his Bible sale, when I came across this quote from Christianity Today:
And therein lies the most alarming concern we share about this “American Bible.” It promotes the myth of an American exceptionalism that is founded on God blessing this nation in a way that God has not or does not blessed other nations.
There are two auxiliary verbs in there, not separated by commas, and that’s okay, except that what follows is totally screwed up. The auxiliary verbs in question are “has not” and “does not.” But they’re separated by the word “or.”
What the authors are trying to say is “…God has blessed other nations” and “…God does not bless” other nations.
“Has blessed” is past tense. “Does not bless” is present tense. You can’t just shove those two together and then use the past-tense “blessed” for the verb.
If you look around the internet, you’ll find that most people just use the verb form that relates to the subject, or in this case the auxiliary verb, that is closest to it. So, they’d say “Martha or her parents don’t want the pie, but I’m not sure which.” This could be grammatically correct. I’m still trying to figure it out. If you put that sentence into Pro Writing Aid, it says that’s just fine.
Or, they’d say, “Martha has not or does not eat spinach.” And everyone assumes this is just fine. Pro Writing Aid says it’s just fine.
But it’s just wrong. Wrong, I tell you!
And when you try that with our little wowzer of a sentence: “God has not or does not bless other nations”–Pro Writing Aid tells you to put a comma before and after “or does not” and then tells you “bless” is wrong.
So, it’s just wrong.
You can’t put two different tenses of an auxiliary verb together and then use only one tense of the verb. You can’t say “…God has not or does not bless other nations.” And you can’t say “…God has not or does not blessed other nations.”
You could separate the offending auxiliary verb with dashes: “…God has not–or does not–blessed other nations.” At least, Pro Writing Aid doesn’t flag it. But if you ask me, it’s still wrong.
The only way to fix it is to say: “It promotes the myth of an American exceptionalism that is founded on God blessing this nation in a way that God has not blessed, or does not bless, other nations.”
There! I fixed it for them.
I am not going to read all of their article. Based on this sample, I don’t think I could handle it.