tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post8963193820339483760..comments2024-03-26T11:33:59.219-06:00Comments on Religion in American History: John Stott vs. Jerry Falwell: Evangelical Diversity and the Conundrum of "Biblicism"Paul Harveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13881964303772343114noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-85275691383450443542011-08-01T12:58:10.115-06:002011-08-01T12:58:10.115-06:00Brantley,
thanks so much for this post. Lots of in...Brantley,<br />thanks so much for this post. Lots of interesting material here. I've had Smith's book on my mind, but have yet to get around to reading. But if I may, I wanted to respond rather briefly to the quotation from Smith's book: "it becomes beside the point to assert a text to be solely authoritative or inerrant" because the "Bible gives rise to a host of divergent teachings on important matters." I wonder if this kind of advice is primarily given in the hope that, for example, a person like the late Jerry Falwell would not have been so dogmatic (among other things!) when citing Scripture or "thus saith the Lord" to support a controversial or publicly disputed politic position. In which case, it is a kind of modest counsel to practitioners to be more self-aware of divergent interpretations of Scripture or that there is no straightforward or fast and easy way to translate the moral prescriptions and narratives of Scripture into hard and fast political precepts in our modern world. While I appreciate the concern of those who perhaps express puzzlement over evangelicals and what is sometimes seen as a simplistic appeal to Scripture on some contemporary and contested moral issue, what seems to be implicit in these critiques of evangelicalism is that there is some alternative for all those others who are supposedly unified in singular appeal to a "justice," compassion, or other set of principles and ideals. I'm certainly not as convinced that the laity in these churches are as "confused" as this article suggests, given that many of them do not agree with their leaders and have access to other sources of information, in spite of the increasingly insular nature of much of our political conversations and feedback. Even liberal Protestants and Catholics of various theological persuasions are by no means unified in their attempts to instantiate their personal and moral convictions into public policies. So I guess I'm not sure how "biblicism" per se creates more tension when division results on political issues. I realize that this can be a problem to outsiders, but as I've wrestled with this issue when looking at how different Christians held very divergent views of slavery and the Bible, it reminds me that perhaps we expect too much consistency when we examine how people address the messy realities of social and political life. In the end, I wonder, what is the conundrum of biblicism? That people appealing to what they believe to be a sacred and ultimate text can come to opposite conclusions about what it demands of believers? Or that it is hard to see why they don't see that a simple appeal to Scripture can resolve complex social and political problems? Or that some of them can be so dogmatic about it in the face of such realities? Or perhaps that religious peoples of all stripes--well, let's just throw in the entire human race--have been unable to find any common set of principles, or singular text that will guide them to a unified approach to political life, that they have been unable to find that common language to erect a utopia? I'm being a little facetious, but I very much appreciate the article.<br /><br />Curtis J. EvansAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com