I <3 John Shelby Spong
Sep. 25th, 2008 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yolenBishop Spong Q&A
Bruce Barrett from Mobile, Alabama, writes:
I want you to know that I have an advanced education where understanding the Bible is concerned. I took Old Testament and New Testament at Wittenberg University in the early '60s. Wittenberg was then a liberal LCA college. While I understood the concept of the "historical critical method," the connotations of "critical" have always bothered me on an emotional level. Why can we all not say "analytical" instead? After all, that's what it is. We read and analyze relative to the available knowledge about the times, and draw conclusions based on that analysis (scripture, reason and tradition). We're all (well, the intelligent folks, anyway) trying to understand God's revelation of God's marvelous self to humankind. Terminology affects the ease of sharing insight.
An example of the problem: At a Lenten Wednesday evening lecture/discussion several years ago, our curate announced that we would be studying Mark by the historical critical method. The discomfort in our mostly college educated faithful was palpable. Our curate, being prepared to present seminary level material, was a bit taken aback by the tension and didn't grasp that it was just the terminology that was bothering the group. Now these members are the serious members of the congregation, not the twice a year folks. They're not literalists by any stretch of the imagination. It's the connotation of the word "critical" (admittedly, taken out of the academic context) that bothered them. I don't mean to brag, but the mood relaxed significantly when I piped up and said something like, "So we're analyzing the story, not criticizing the Bible, then?" The curate grudgingly agreed. I suggest this to you because you have a wide audience that (I suspect) includes clergy as well as intelligent laity. It's my opinion that intelligent understanding of scripture can be facilitated by appropriate terminology. Don't you agree?
Dear Bruce,
No, I do not agree.
Surely if the word "critical" causes people to turn negative then some other word (like "analytical," as you suggest) might be substituted. I think, however, that this still looks like placating the fundamentalists and I have little patience with that. The time has come for scholarship not to be defensive about the Bible. Much of the Bible needs to be criticized. It has been proclaimed as literally true for far too long and a literal Bible turns off far more people than the word "critical" ever will.
I recently published a book called The Sins of Scripture, which looked at what the literal Bible has done to the environment, to women, to left handed people, to people of color, to homosexual people. The Bible has been quoted to justify things as evil as the Crusades, the Inquisition and slavery.
You say that the people of your church are not literalists, but I have been to Alabama and Mobile many times and biblical fundamentalism is surely in the culture there, indeed in the very air one breathes. My father was a native of Montgomery, so that world is not unknown to me. The Episcopal Bishop of Alabama, Henry N. Parsley, Jr., is not a literalist, but he does not want to disturb the literalists by allowing them to be educated. I regard that as just as bad, to say nothing of being an example of ineffective leadership. I suggest that literalism is deeper than you might imagine. For example, I do not know of a single reputable New Testament scholar in the world who thinks that the stories of Jesus' virginal birth are actually historical or that the resuscitation of a deceased physical body is the meaning of resurrection. Try those ideas on those you say are "certainly not literalists" and see if you don't get critical responses.
The gospels are distorted by literalism. The depth of these ancient stories is violated by literalism. That needs to be heard. I think using the words "critical biblical scholarship" opens people to new possibilities and, if they are afraid of these words, then it is because they are defending their literal understanding of the Bible. Sorry, but I vote with the curate.
–John Shelby Spong
Bruce Barrett from Mobile, Alabama, writes:
I want you to know that I have an advanced education where understanding the Bible is concerned. I took Old Testament and New Testament at Wittenberg University in the early '60s. Wittenberg was then a liberal LCA college. While I understood the concept of the "historical critical method," the connotations of "critical" have always bothered me on an emotional level. Why can we all not say "analytical" instead? After all, that's what it is. We read and analyze relative to the available knowledge about the times, and draw conclusions based on that analysis (scripture, reason and tradition). We're all (well, the intelligent folks, anyway) trying to understand God's revelation of God's marvelous self to humankind. Terminology affects the ease of sharing insight.
An example of the problem: At a Lenten Wednesday evening lecture/discussion several years ago, our curate announced that we would be studying Mark by the historical critical method. The discomfort in our mostly college educated faithful was palpable. Our curate, being prepared to present seminary level material, was a bit taken aback by the tension and didn't grasp that it was just the terminology that was bothering the group. Now these members are the serious members of the congregation, not the twice a year folks. They're not literalists by any stretch of the imagination. It's the connotation of the word "critical" (admittedly, taken out of the academic context) that bothered them. I don't mean to brag, but the mood relaxed significantly when I piped up and said something like, "So we're analyzing the story, not criticizing the Bible, then?" The curate grudgingly agreed. I suggest this to you because you have a wide audience that (I suspect) includes clergy as well as intelligent laity. It's my opinion that intelligent understanding of scripture can be facilitated by appropriate terminology. Don't you agree?
Dear Bruce,
No, I do not agree.
Surely if the word "critical" causes people to turn negative then some other word (like "analytical," as you suggest) might be substituted. I think, however, that this still looks like placating the fundamentalists and I have little patience with that. The time has come for scholarship not to be defensive about the Bible. Much of the Bible needs to be criticized. It has been proclaimed as literally true for far too long and a literal Bible turns off far more people than the word "critical" ever will.
I recently published a book called The Sins of Scripture, which looked at what the literal Bible has done to the environment, to women, to left handed people, to people of color, to homosexual people. The Bible has been quoted to justify things as evil as the Crusades, the Inquisition and slavery.
You say that the people of your church are not literalists, but I have been to Alabama and Mobile many times and biblical fundamentalism is surely in the culture there, indeed in the very air one breathes. My father was a native of Montgomery, so that world is not unknown to me. The Episcopal Bishop of Alabama, Henry N. Parsley, Jr., is not a literalist, but he does not want to disturb the literalists by allowing them to be educated. I regard that as just as bad, to say nothing of being an example of ineffective leadership. I suggest that literalism is deeper than you might imagine. For example, I do not know of a single reputable New Testament scholar in the world who thinks that the stories of Jesus' virginal birth are actually historical or that the resuscitation of a deceased physical body is the meaning of resurrection. Try those ideas on those you say are "certainly not literalists" and see if you don't get critical responses.
The gospels are distorted by literalism. The depth of these ancient stories is violated by literalism. That needs to be heard. I think using the words "critical biblical scholarship" opens people to new possibilities and, if they are afraid of these words, then it is because they are defending their literal understanding of the Bible. Sorry, but I vote with the curate.
–John Shelby Spong
