Who Has Authority Over Your Personal Freedom?
Who has authority over you? This is the basic question lying beneath “Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies.”
Why focus on the question of authority?
Religion Ties You Back
Religion is fundamentally about authority. The word religion means “tied back.”
Every religion makes particular authority claims over people who are part of the religion. Different religions make different authority claims. The claims range from very strong claims of authority to minimal claims.
The key point is that every religion makes its own authority claims over those who profess to be part of the religion. If you are willing to be part of a religion, you willingly surrender some of your personal freedom to the authority of that religion. Read more…
Bible Education Questions Bad Bible Bullies Don’t Want You To Ask
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
What if the way to set yourself free from the oppressive power of Bad Bible Bullies is as simple as asking better questions?
One thing is certain about Bad Bible Bullies. They already know the answers. Ask them a question about the Bible, and they will give you the definitive, authoritative answer about “what the Bible says.”
Getting The Right Answers
For many Christians, “The Truth” comes in the form of predefined answers. You learn to recite a catechism or statement of faith or creed. Your “faith” is equivalent to your “belief” in authoritative statements and “belief” is your assent to the doctrines and practices of your particular religious group.
This is why Bible “study” is often the same as “studying” for a test in school, where you are judged by whether or not you provide the “right” answers.
Many of us learned very early to accept predefined reality as the way things really are.
The Real Meaning of “Education”
Consider the word “education.”
For many of us, education means sitting passively in classrooms, while the “teacher” expounds information. Our job as students is to “learn” the information well enough so that we can provide the right answers to questions about the predefined information.
In fact, “education” comes from the Latin word, educare, which is derived from the Latin word, educere, which means “to bring out, lead forth,” from ex- “out” + ducere “to lead.”
In other words, “education” is a matter of direction. It is not a matter of putting information into the student, but a matter of the teacher “bringing out” and “leading forth” the student.
But what is brought out of the student? What is the student led forth to do?
Consider this dictionary definition of “educate.” Education “develops the faculties and powers of the student.”
As a former teacher, I have thought long and hard about what this basic meaning about education means for teachers and for students.
And as a preacher and teacher in churches, I have thought long and hard about what this basic definition means about preaching and teaching the Bible.
And as a writer, I consider this basic definition as the essential foundation for Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies.
It’s Not About Getting The Right Answer
If you feel oppressed by what you have learned about the Bible, the solution is not to start by asking for answers, but to ask a new set of questions.
For four years, I taught a course on the “Old Testament Prophets” at a theological seminary in Berkeley. I never taught the course the same way twice, but I always began the semester with a class motto.
On the first day of class each semester, I gave the students a one-page handout with these words on it.
Class Motto
It’s not about getting the right answer.*
*It’s about asking better questions.
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I told my students at the beginning of the semester that I was a hard teacher and an easy grader. They would have a short written assignment for each class. Each assignment had a question or two. The assignment was to do their best to answer the questions, based on their own reading of the Bible.
I specifically asked them to answer the questions themselves and not to use the textbooks or any other references books. I told them that I wasn’t looking for specific answers to the questions, but for evidence that they had actually engaged with the material.
I also told them that I would make comments on their papers but I would not put grades on them.
Bible Education For Seminary Students
My students were all adults, which means they had spent lifetimes learning how to play the game called “going to school.” Seminary students all have at least a bachelor’s degree. Some have advanced degrees. This means that my students knew very well what it meant to sit and listen and take notes. They were veterans at the game of figuring out what the teacher is looking for and feeding it back. Give the teacher the right answers, and you get a good grade. Give the teacher the wrong answers, and you flunk.
Freedom From The Need To Get The Right Answer
As a teacher, I was fascinated to watch the students react to the freedom to read the Bible without having to produce the “right” answers. Some students immediately caught on to what I was after. Others struggled for a while. But as time went on, I could recognize the moments when particular struggling students finally realized that I meant it. All I wanted was for them to answer the questions without having to worry about getting the “wrong” answers.
What was most fascinating to me as a teacher was to watch the quality of responses over time. I began to see amazing insights from students. Their insights opened up perspectives I had not seen before.
I was especially gratified as a teacher to see how much the students who had always considered themselves to be mediocre students began to realize that they were far more capable than they ever imagined they could be.
Of all of my students, the one who resisted the most was a woman who had given up her position as a tenured full professor at a prestigious university to start theological seminary.
One time, when my assignment asked for a one-paragraph hand-written response to a particular question, she gave me an eight page typed paper with a dense one page bibliography that included references to five books written in German.
In my comment on her paper, I wrote: “This is not what I asked you to do. All I wanted from you was one paragraph telling me what you see in this chapter when you ask this question.”
It went on like that for ten weeks of a thirteen week semester. She could not do any assignment without turning it into a research paper compiling the opinions of experts.
Undoing Three Hundred Years Of Education In The West
And then one day, as I was in the front of the room, leading a class discussion, she blurted out from the back of the room: “I have finally figured out what you are doing. You are trying to undo three hundred years of education in the West.”
Although I had never quite thought about my teaching method in those terms, I said, “You’ve got it.”
In hindsight, that is exactly what I was attempting to do. I was attempting to set my students free from an educational process that that indoctrinates more than it educates.
This is especially true in “Christian education,” which often has little to do with education and much to do with indoctrination into particular doctrines and formulated beliefs.
And this is exactly what I am attempting to do here. To teach in a way that educates rather than indoctrinates.
And so back to the Bad Bible Bullies.
Why Bad Bible Bullies Do Not Want Genuine Bible Education
One of the dominant characteristics of Bad Bible Bullies is that they do not allow genuine study of the Bible, because genuine questions about the Bible have a way of challenging the status quo.
And even more significantly, for Christian believers who claim that the Bible is the “Living Word of God,” a process that doesn’t allow genuine questions doesn’t leave much room for any sort of life-transforming insights.
And this is exactly why so many people who have been wounded by Bad Bible Bullies quoting Bible verses can’t quite get free of the lasting effects of the hurt. They have only the old answers. They don’t have new questions.
Unquestioned Answers That Become Weapons
The Bible—in the hands of untrained users—can be as dangerous as a loaded assault weapon in the hands of someone who has no idea how to use it. The Bible is a powerful weapon and can hurt people, whatever the intention of the person using it.
You could be someone who grew up the way I did. The dominant experience of my earliest years was constant fear for my life. I was constantly terrified by parents who were—in my experience—terrible parents.
Where did I first encounter Bad Bible Bullies? They were the well-meaning Sunday school teachers who taught me that I had to be obedient to the parents who terrified me.
Very early, I knew—was absolutely certain—that the angry Father God in Heaven didn’t care at all about me. God cared only that I obeyed my parents. And to make it even worse, God knew everything about me. God could see me, even when I was lying in bed terrified, too scared to allow myself to sleep.
I knew—was absolutely certain—that God could see me and didn’t care. All God cared about was that I obey the raging drunk who beat me and keep silent under endless verbal assault.
I knew—was absolutely certain—that God would punish me if I ever disobeyed my parents by telling the truth about what happened at home.
Did my Sunday School teachers intend to be Bad Bible Bullies? I’m sure they didn’t. They were well-meaning volunteers with no training at all in biblical scholarship. They couldn’t have known know how much their instructions to obey my parents compounded my fear. Their unquestioned answers kept me silent and scared, forcing me to keep secrets no child can bear to keep without paying a heavy price.
Hurt By Bad Bible Bullies
Over the years, I have listened to many people who have been hurt by Bad Bible Bullies.
I have listened to battered women talk about going to their clergymen, asking for help, only to be told that they must submit even more to their abusive husbands. The pastor or minister recited Bible verses, and chided them: “If you are more submissive, your husband will stop beating you. And if he doesn’t stop beating you, your submission will make him feel guilty and then he will repent.”
I have listened to gay Christians talk about the fear and shame heaped upon their heads by those who fire Bible verses as if they were bullets. They have been ostracized from families, excluded from churches, targets of verbal abuse and physical violence, and denied various civil rights, in the name of the “Word of God.”
I have listened to black friends talk about their experiences growing up in the segregated Deep South, and how they were wounded by Bible verses about the curse of Ham and the obedience of slaves, and claims that God ordained the separation of races.
I have listened to stories about children being sexually assaulted by priests and ministers—“men of God”—who heard what all abused people hear from Bad Bible Bullies: “God demands that you be obedient, submissive, and silent. And you have to forgive the one who wronged you, even when the one who abused you never asks for forgiveness, because Jesus said you must forgive. And if you don’t forgive, you are an even greater sinner.”
I have listened to people who were out of work and struggling to put food on the table tell stories about how someone armed with Bible verses told them that they had to tithe, even if it meant going hungry, because God demands it in the Bible.
These are just a few examples. I could list many more. All of these people—and so many more that I have known personally and legions more that I have heard or read about—experienced the power of Bad Bible Bullies.
Whether the Bible is used as a weapon intentionally or unintentionally, the result is the same. People get hurt in the name of the “Word of God.”
Asking Better Questions About The Bible
The only way to set yourself free from the suffocating answers of the Bad Bible Bullies is to go back to the Bible with a different set of questions.
- Does the Bible really teach scared children that God will punish them if they tell the family secrets?
- Does the Bible really teach women to be submissive and silent in the face of male authority and abusive power?
- Does the Bible really teach that homosexuality is an abomination and that gays deserve to be killed, or at least ostracized?
- Does the Bible really teach that dark skin means defectiveness?
- Does the Bible really teach that God cares only that people be obedient to power?
Does the Bible really teach this kind of stuff?
If you can find something in the Bible that seems to say so, are you sure that you know what it really meant then?
And if it really did mean that in its own context, is that meaning the best that the Bible has to offer now?
Are certain types of people always meant to endure abuse because of something that was written and recorded in the Bible? Really? What kind of Good News is that?
These are the types of questions that can set you free from the oppressive certainties of Bad Bible Bullies.
If you see yourself in this list, and you want to be free of the power of Bad Bible Bullies in your life, I welcome you to ask these questions with me.
I invite you to join my Bible Authority Questions Email Newsletter for regular emails about the difference between answers about the Bible that rob you of personal freedom and questions about the Bible that will set you free.
For Your Freedom
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Categories: Tags: bible authority, bible study, bible verses, biblical scholar, biblical scholarship, bullies, christians, educare, educere, meaning of education, obedience, personal freedom, word of god
How Protestant Church Beliefs About Bible Authority Create Bad Bible Bullies
By Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
The Protestant Reformation laid the foundation for Bad Bible Bullies because of a dramatic claim about the location of authority within the Christian Church. The core claim of Protestantism is that Bible authority trumps all other types of church authority.
The Protestant Reformation And The Authority Of The Bible
Throughout history, the Christian Church has always regarded the Bible as authoritative in some way. The Reformation elevated the role of Bible authority to levels that far exceeded any notion of biblical authority in previous centuries of the Church.
The Protestant Reformation declared that believers could be set free from obedience to the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. “Hierarchy” means rule by priests. In a hierarchical church, the priests are the ones who stand between God and the people. The hierarchy administers sacraments. The hierarchy declares God’s grace and God’s forgiveness. The hierarchy declares what God allows and does not allow. The hierarchy has the authority to interpret the Bible authoritatively.
No Priests Needed
In reaction to abuses of power by the medieval Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant reformers made a radical claim. Christians do not need priests to discern God’s will for their lives. This led to a radical change in the personal freedom of believers.
Protestant church beliefs claim that ordinary believers have the freedom to seek God’s will for their lives by going directly to the Bible.
This claim led to translations of the Bible from Greek, Hebrew, and Latin into vernacular languages, beginning with Martin Luther’s formidable accomplishment of translating the entire Bible from Greek, Hebrew, and Latin into his own German dialect. This is why Protestant translations of the Bible abound, in every known language on Earth.
The good news is that this claim set Protestant believers free from the authority of priests. Who needs a pope, bishops, and priests to declare God’s will for your life when you have your own direct line to God through the Bible?
The bad news is that this radical new freedom from abuses of power by hierarchy laid the foundation for a different type of abuse of power by anyone with a Bible.
I want to be clear here. Every church tradition provides opportunities for bullies to intimidate believers.
Bullying In Hierarchical Churches
Hierarchical churches have plenty of ways to bully believers. However, they are much more likely to use other means of bullying than quoting the Bible, because the Bible is not the prime source of authority within hierarchical churches. Priests can quote a wide range of authoritative encyclicals, canon law, and church dogma to demand obedience to hierarchical authority. I leave for others to define the connections between bullying and hierarchical claims about authority.
Bullying In Protestant Churches
My focus here is on the direct connection between Protestant claims about Bible authority and the use of the Bible as a weapon in the hands of bullies.
My point is that the foundational Protestant claim that God speaks directly to anyone with a Bible provides license for Bad Bible Bullies to claim authority to speak for God. This is especially true in Protestant churches with Calvinist roots.
What Protestant Churches Have In Common
At this point, please know that I am making broad generalizations. Protestant churches, sects, and cults have a dizzying array of differences between them. My goal here is not to sort through the differences but to emphasize what they have in common. I am using “Calvinist” as a very broad category.
Calvinist Churches And Bible Authority
“Calvinist” churches include various “Reformed,” Presbyterian, and Southern Baptist churches with direct Calvinist roots.
It also includes others with Calvinist “influences.” Some of these churches broke away from Calvinist churches in opposition to particular aspects of Calvinist beliefs, while remaining rooted in other Calvinist beliefs.
These churches include: Congregationalists; the United Church of Christ; Methodists; and Episcopalians; Anabaptist groups, such as Mennonites and Amish; Pentecostal churches, such as the Assemblies of God; Seventh Day Adventists; Disciples of Christ. The list also includes a wide range of cults and sects.
Most significantly, Fundamentalist and Evangelical churches, including many of the largest megachurches, are deeply influenced by Calvinist claims about the authority of the Bible.
The relevant point is that Bad Bible Bullies tend to come from “Calvinist” churches, where Bible authority trumps all other authority.
Fundamentalism and Bibliolatry
In the late nineteenth century, and in the early years of the twentieth century, “Fundamentalists” elevated the claims about Bible authority to such an exalted level that the Bible became not just authoritative but also “infallible” and “inerrant.”
This “high view of scripture” led some biblical scholars, church historians, and theologians to claim that Fundamentalist churches—and the Evangelical churches that emerged from Fundamentalism—practice “bibliolatry.”
Bibliolatry is a derogatory term for those who worship a book. The Bible itself becomes God.
Bible Authority As A Weapon for Bullies
This is hardly the outcome that the Protestant Reformers envisioned when they shifted the focus of authority from priestly hierarchy to the Bible.
The practical result of devotion to the Bible as the infallible and inerrant sole source of authority for Christian life is that the Bible can become a potent weapon for Bad Bible Bullies who claim that they are the only true interpreters of the Bible.
Self-Validating Bible Authority
Now we come to the point at which Protestant freedom to read and interpret the Bible can easily turn from personal freedom into a license to bully.
Anyone who reads the Bible is free to interpret the Bible and claim to know what it meant and what it means.
But how do you know if that interpretation is valid or if it is simply personal opinion expressed as universal truth?
Because The Bible Says So
As a seminary student, I heard many of my fellow students recite this favorite aphorism of born-again believers.
The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.
This is a statement about the Bible that requires no logic, no study, no evaluation of the validity of your belief by others.
The unstated belief behind this aphorism is that the Bible is crystal clear on any topic and that the one who reads it knows exactly what it meant and what God intends.
The Missing Piece
The missing piece in this assertion is any acknowledgment of potential personal bias.
Although no born-again believer will ever state it this way, the real truth of the claim is this:
I say that the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.
In other words:
- Don’t bother me with any sort of genuine Bible study that would force me to evaluate my own assumptions.
- Don’t expect me to consult biblical scholars who spend lifetimes studying the Bible.
- Don’t ask me to consider the perspectives of other believers.
- I don’t need to consult anyone else. I know it is true because I believe it is true.
This is self-authenticating authority. I am my own authority and I have no interest at all in having my self-authenticated authority challenged.
A Breeding Ground For Self-Authenticating Authority
This kind of self-authenticating authority to read the Bible without regard for the considered opinions of others, including those of other religious traditions, is why the Protestant world is a fertile breeding ground for a plethora of conflicting interpretations about “what the Bible says.”
Sects and cults are born from idiosyncratic readings of the Bible by people who are convinced that they are absolutely correct in their Bible interpretation. They will allow no critical opinion to muddy the waters of their own certainty.
The Final Step To Create A Bad Bible Bully
It takes only one more step to create a Bad Bible Bully. If God’s will is so transparently clear to me, it must be God’s will for me to impose my interpretation on you.
Then the born-again aphorism about the Bible then becomes a license to bully.
I say that the Bible says it. You’d better believe it. Or else!
By the time Bad Bible Bullies reach this point, the Bible becomes a weapon to force you to surrender your personal freedom in the name of obedience to the authority of the Bible, which most often means surrendering to the authority of the Bad Bible Bullies.
The Flaw In The Logic of Bad Bible Bullies
The first step to freedom is to recognize the flaw in the logic of Bad Bible Bullies.
Whoever said these words first, they are powerfully liberating.
You have the right to your own opinion. You don’t have the right to your own facts.
Demonstrating How Bad Bible Bullies Get The Facts Wrong
My method on Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies is to demonstrate ways that the Bad Bible Bullies get the facts of the Bible wrong. You might be surprised to discover how often the Bible doesn’t really say what they say it does. The Bad Bible Bullies are entitled to believe what they want. That doesn’t mean you have to believe them.
For Your Freedom,
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Categories: Tags: abuses of power, authority of the bible, bad news, bible authority, biblical scholar, bullies, bully, catholic church hierarchy, church beliefs, hierarchical church, obedience, personal freedom, protestant believers, protestant church, protestant reformation, protestant reformers, protestantism, roman catholic church
Interrogated By A Bad Bible Bully On My First Day Of Seminary
By Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
“Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies” exists to address a problem created by particular claims about Bible authority within certain Christian churches.
The best way I know to illustrate the problem is to begin with a true story about my first day at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a large evangelical theological seminary north of Boston, Massachusetts.
The seminary scheduled three days of orientation for the incoming students. It also provided lunch each day in the cafeteria.
On the first day of orientation, I got my lunch and found an empty space to sit down at one of the long tables. The young man across from me subjected me to a careful visual inspection and clearly noticed the wedding ring on my finger.
He asked coldly, “Is your husband a student at this school?”
I thought it was an odd question at an orientation lunch for incoming students and said, “No, I am a student at this school.”
And then he narrowed his gaze and demanded, “What is your degree program?”
I answered, “M.Div.” [The Master of Divinity degree is the course of study for students intending to be ordained to ministry.]
And then, he demanded to know: “Haven’t you ever heard of 1Timothy 2:12? What is your hermeneutical position which allows you to be disobedient to the Word of God?
Taking Aim At A Sitting Duck
I was a sitting duck. Completely unprepared. Unarmed. Unequipped. At that point, I was so ignorant of the Bible that I really hadn’t heard of 1 Timothy 2:12. I also had no idea what the word “hermeneutical” meant.
I managed to say, “I believe that God has called me to be here.”
At that point, he started pounding his fist on the table, in a staccato drumbeat to match his words, with the volume of his words matching the intensity of his fist beats. “God! Does! Not! Call! Women!”
I sat there stunned, silenced by his anger and his belligerent certainty. I had no idea that I would experience such a confrontation on my first day of school.
The reason I didn’t expect such a confrontation was because I really didn’t know what it meant to be an “evangelical.” How I enrolled as a student at Gordon-Conwell in the first place is a significant part of the story, which I will save for another time.
At that moment, as I sat as an incoming student in an evangelical seminary, as ignorant as it was possible to be about what it means to be an evangelical, I remember thinking, This is going to be harder than I thought.
Typical Bad Bible Bully Tactics
This story captures the essence of what “Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies” is about. The specifics don’t really matter, but the encounter does. The student did what Bad Bible Bullies do.
- He had judged me as an outsider who had no right to be there.
- He interrogated me, coldly, harshly, demanding answers.
- He quoted the Bible authoritatively, with no doubt about its meaning.
- He used a Bible verse as an assault weapon.
- He became angry, loud, and intimidating.
- He used technical language I didn’t understand.
- Most of all, he was certain that he was right.
- He claimed to speak for God. He knew without a shadow of doubt that God does not call women to ministry because it says so in the “Word of God.”
- And most importantly, his entire argument focused on the idea of obedience to the Word of God as the ultimate authority.
Defense Training Against Bad Bible Bullies
Decades have passed since that day. What has happened in the years since?
I have grown older, wiser, and significantly more aware of the tactics and claims of Bad Bible Bullies.
I have spent a significant portion of the intervening years in a form of defense training against Bad Bible Bullies.
My training began by enduring arduous years at Gordon-Conwell, in a hostile environment of other fist-pounders who took as their God-ordained mission to “confront the women students with their disobedience to the Word of God.”
My training continued with a doctorate in Biblical Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, three thousand miles away geographically and light years away theologically from the kinds of hostile evangelical certitudes about the Bible I experienced at Gordon-Conwell.
My training continued, as I worked in churches and taught in theological seminaries. I have seen again and again how claims about Bible authority become weapons to hurt other sitting ducks who have no idea how to defend themselves against the assaults of Bad Bible Bullies.
Learning The Secrets
Since that September day in 1975, I have done more than “hear” about 1Timothy 2:12. Among other biblical scholar skills, I learned to read Greek. When I could read Greek, I discovered that every single English translation I have ever seen has mistranslated 1 Timothy 2:12 in order to perpetuate the claim that women are forbidden to have authority over men.
I also have learned very well what the word “hermeneutical means.” Hermeneutics is the practice of Bible interpretation.
Simply put, exegesis is the practice of discerning what a Bible text “meant” in its original contexts. Hermeneutics is the practice of deciding what it “means” in contemporary contexts.
Responsible Bible scholars make hermeneutical claims only after they have done meticulous exegesis.
With hindsight, I understand clearly that my lunchtime interrogator who demanded to know my hermeneutical position on 1 Timothy 2:12 had reached his own hermeneutical position without doing responsible exegesis.
I have seen so many times in the intervening years that this young man was simply following the familiar tactics of legions of Bad Bible Bullies.
They claim Bible authority to scare and intimidate people who have no way to demolish their arguments.
They insist that they are simply being obedient to “the Word of God.”
They claim that their “high view of scripture” obligates them to confront disobedience to the clear teaching of the Bible wherever they find it.
Undoing Despicable Uses Of Bible Verses
Most importantly, I have also learned why the tactic of using specific Bible verses as weapons to intimidate people is a despicable practice that prevents any kind of authentic, honest, and liberating reading of the Bible.
My purpose for “Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies” is to educate, equip, and empower people who have been intimidated by Bad Bible Bullies.
My method is to use the Bible itself to demonstrate how that many of the claims of Bad Bible Bullies about Bible authority are misunderstood, mistranslated, out of context, and misused.
As far as possible, I intend to read the Bible as a biblical scholar, without making any faith claims about it. See Bible Scholarship, Christian Belief, and Drinking Beer for more about what biblical scholars believe about the Bible.
For Your Freedom,
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Bible Scholarship, Christian Belief, and Drinking Beer
By Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
What Do Bible Scholars Believe About The Bible?
What is the connection between Bible scholarship and Christian belief? Put another way, do all biblical scholars share the same Christian beliefs about God, the Bible, Jesus, the church, personal piety, and religious practices?
Anyone who thinks for thirty seconds about the extraordinary range of Christian churches and denominations would know in an instant that it is truly ridiculous to think that all Christians agree about anything.
Do Bible Scholars Drink Beer?
And yet, consider the assumptions of the man I talked with at an internet seminar in Orlando, Florida a few years ago.
After the day’s sessions, hotel staff set up a bar in the back of the room, so that attendees could buy drinks and mingle for a while.
I noticed a man I had met at an earlier seminar. Actually, my husband and I had enjoyed a conversation over lunch with him and his wife. I knew that he was a retired history teacher.
He was standing alone, sipping beer from the bottle he had bought at the bar. As someone is not a natural schmoozer at such events, I saw a perfect opportunity to strike up a conversation, and so I walked over to talk with him.
Fairly early in the conversation, I mentioned that the last time I had been in Orlando, I attended the Annual Joint Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion.
He held up his bottle of beer and proclaimed, “I bet they didn’t have any of these at that meeting!” And then he laughed, with a loud guffawing laugh, and took a big swig of his beer.
How To Respond To False Assumptions About The Bible
I was so surprised by his comment that I stood speechless for a few moments, wondering how to respond, as my mind searched through my databank of possibilities.
I thought about challenging his evident assumption that all biblical scholars are teetotalers and that Annual Meetings of professional scholars are equivalent to Sunday School picnics in churches that use grape juice as a substitute for wine in Communion.
I thought about telling him about the two drink tickets every participant receives each year with the name badge as part of the registration process for the Annual Meeting. The tickets are for the joint reception of the two societies, held every year in the biggest ballroom available. Scholars eagerly greet friends and colleagues they have not seen since the last meeting, as they cruise through the crammed ballroom, drinking from the glasses of wine and bottles of beer they hold in their hands. Some even drink fruit punch.
I thought about telling him about my friend Paul, a Jesuit New Testament scholar, who grew up in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Paul and I were teaching assistants together one quarter at the University of California at Davis and we became good friends.
One year, when the Annual Meeting was held in New Orleans, Paul invited me to join him and some other graduate school friends for a night on the town. At first, I thought it might be interesting to go through the French Quarter with someone who had grown up there. But since I am not at all interested in bar hopping, I declined Paul’s invitation.
The next morning, I was especially glad I had made that decision. Paul and I happened to meet in the lobby of the headquarters hotel. I was leaving to attend a session and Paul was just coming in after his night of bar hopping, looking like a man who had visited every bar in the French Quarter.
But the former history teacher had reduced me to a caricature of a teetotaling, blue-nosed moralist. All I said was that I had attended the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion and he had jumped to a conclusion that was so off the mark from reality that I was speechless.
At that moment, I decided that it wasn’t worth my effort to challenge his assumptions. I left him to drink his beer, as he continued to chortle at his cleverness, still utterly ignorant about what it means to be a biblical scholar.
What Do You Have To “Believe” To Study The Bible?
The first thing to know about biblical scholars—beyond the fact that many do drink beer—is that you cannot assume anything at all about what Bible scholars believe or don’t believe about the Bible, God, Jesus, the church, personal piety, and religious practices, because they study the Bible.
You don’t have to “believe” in something to study it. This is why studying terrorism doesn’t make you a terrorist. Studying homophobia doesn’t make you a homophobe. Studying racism doesn’t make you a racist. And studying the Bible doesn’t necessarily mean you “believe” any part it.
In reality, biblical scholars are a large and varied group, including believers and non-believers, from many religious traditions. And most biblical scholars are very clear that a professional meeting is a gathering of scholars and is not a religious function. The meeting is an occasion for “disciplined reflection on religion” not the practice of religion.
The American Academy Of Religion
The American Academy of Religion (AAR) is the larger of the two societies. As you can guess by the name, the range of the AAR is broad. It is concerned with religion in all of its forms and complexities, and includes members from every religious tradition you can imagine. Membership does not imply belief or adherence to any particular religious tradition.
This is its mission statement. The final paragraph of the mission statement is especially relevant.
Mission Statement
In a world where religion plays so central a role in social, political, and economic events, as well as in the lives of communities and individuals, there is a critical need for ongoing reflection upon and understanding of religious traditions, issues, questions, and values. The American Academy of Religion’s mission is to promote such reflection through excellence in scholarship and teaching in the field of religion.
As a learned society and professional association of teachers and research scholars, the American Academy of Religion has over 10,000 members who teach in some 1,000 colleges, universities, seminaries, and schools in North America and abroad. The Academy is dedicated to furthering knowledge of religion and religious institutions in all their forms and manifestations. This is accomplished through Academy-wide and regional conferences and meetings, publications, programs, and membership services.
Within a context of free inquiry and critical examination, the Academy welcomes all disciplined reflection on religion — both from within and outside of communities of belief and practice — and seeks to enhance its broad public understanding
The Society Of Biblical Literature
The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is narrower in focus than the AAR. While the AAR includes study of sacred books from all religious traditions, the SBL focuses on “critical investigation of the Bible.” “The Bible” includes Hebrew and Christian Bibles, including the Apocrypha which is included as part of the Bible in Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions and excluded in Protestant Bibles.
The Society of Biblical Literature is the oldest and largest international scholarly membership organization in the field of biblical studies. Founded in 1880, the Society has grown to over 8,500 international members including teachers, students, religious leaders and individuals from all walks of life who share a mutual interest in the critical investigation of the Bible.
The Society’s mission to foster biblical scholarship is a simple, comprehensive statement that encompasses the Society’s aspirations. Our vision is to offer members opportunities for mutual support, intellectual growth, and professional development.
As a longtime member of both societies, I am disappointed to report that the two societies recently stopped holding joint meetings together. I am happy to report that joint meetings will resume in the future.
Beer And Fundamentalist Bible Interpretation
And so, back to the story about the man with the bottle of beer and what his comment has to do with “Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies.”
This ignorant remark is a symptom of something far bigger. It demonstrates the impact of Fundamentalist beliefs about the Bible within the larger culture, both within the United States and around the world.
Bad Bible Bullies are most often Fundamentalists and their next-of-kin Evangelicals, who claim that their Bible interpretation is the only authoritative interpretation of the Bible.
Fundamentalism began with a specific set of claims about Bible authority, Christian beliefs, and Bible interpretation. Over time, Fundamentalist claims about the Bible have managed to overpower other Christian beliefs about the Bible, so that “what the Bible says” frequently becomes what Fundamentalists say the Bible says.
The man with the bottle of beer was expressing Fundamentalist beliefs about alcohol, whether he knew it or not.
If the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature ever bans alcohol consumption, based on claims about “what the Bible says about alcohol,” it will no longer be a gathering of Bible scholars, who are engaged in a disciplined study of the Bible, but a convention of believers who share a particular set of Fundamentalist beliefs about Bible authority.
And so, “Freedom from Bad Bible Bullies” involves understanding how Fundamentalists hijacked the Bible, to turn it into something it never was.
There is no more effective method to take back the Bible from Fundamentalists than disciplined Bible scholarship, practiced by people who strive to study the Bible without imposing their own religious beliefs upon it.
For Your Freedom
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
When Christian Preaching Is Bad News
By Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Christian preaching is supposed to proclaim good news. The Sunday sermon gives the preacher the opportunity to speak to the gathered congregation on some topic. Most sermons are monologues rather than conversations. This means that the preacher speaks to a captive audience. A good news preacher can fill a congregation with hope. A bad news preacher can plunge the congregation into fear.
The sermons of Bad Bible Bullies are prime examples of Christian preaching as “bad news.”
A Bad News Sermon About Jonah And The Whale
Here is an example of bad news preaching by a Bad Bible Bully in a large San Francisco church. The church is an impressive red brick structure, with a massive organ, elaborate stained glass windows, high ceilings, a balcony, and large chandeliers. Even though unreinforced red brick is considered the most dangerous type of building in a city prone to earthquakes, the venerable church building withstood both the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes.
The preacher that Sunday morning was a retired Lutheran bishop. He had the shape of a fire hydrant and the voice of a basso profundo. He had no need of a microphone.
Although the church followed a list of readings—a lectionary—the preacher chose to ignore the three readings for that particular Sunday. Instead, he told the well-known story of Jonah. At least he told his version of the story of Jonah. It was obvious that he had told this story many times before.
The famous story—and it really is a story—is about “Jonah who was swallowed by a whale.”
I will restrain my biblical scholar tendencies to challenge the preacher’s Bible interpretation and do my best to report the essence of what the preacher said about the story. You will notice that the fundamental theme of the sermon is obedience to authority.
A Bad Bible Bully Preaches
The preacher began by this way. “God ordered Jonah to go to Nineveh to tell the people to repent. But Jonah disobeyed God and went in the opposite direction and got on a ship. So God had to teach him a lesson.”
Then the preacher talked about how Jonah was thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale.
The preacher continued. “But Jonah stubbornly refused to do what God told him to do. It took Jonah three whole days in the belly of the whale to finally repent of his disobedience to the command of God. Finally Jonah repented. Then God made the whale spit Jonah out onto the land. At last, Jonah obeyed God and went to Nineveh and told the Ninevites to repent.”
By this point in the story, the preacher was bellowing with his basso profundo voice at a volume that was so loud that the chandeliers overhead actually started to shake.
And then the preacher made his point, with the subtlety of an armored tank knocking down a building. “It doesn’t matter what you want to do. If God wants you to do it, he will make you do it.”
Turning A Bible Story Into Bad News
What turns any part of the Bible into “Bad Bible?” It’s not just the words themselves but the impact of those words on those who hear them.
What was the impact of this preacher’s telling of the story of Jonah on the people who heard his sermon?
They shrank.
Although I have often wished I were not so sensitive, I could feel people shrinking all around me. The longer the Bad Bible Bully preacher ranted, the more the people shrank. They shrank from the voice that kept getting louder and louder. And they shrank from the message itself.
Surely, you know what it is to shrink from fear. Your muscles tighten. You hold your breath. You slump down to make yourself smaller. Your first goal when you are under attack is to protect yourself.
Shrinking in fear is a universal instinct of living things. If they cannot run away, they shrink where they are. Fear makes turtles pull their heads inside their shells. Fear causes armadillos to roll up into tight balls. Fear causes clams to snap their shells shut.
The message was a stern warning delivered in a booming male voice of authority from the pulpit on a Sunday morning worship service, a warning delivered on behalf of an overpowering God.
The Stark Contrast Between Freedom and Obedience To Authority
It doesn’t matter what you want. If God wants you to do it, God will make you do it.
Bad Bible Bully Preacher
This statement is as clear as any I have ever heard of the conflict between personal freedom (the power to determine action without restraint) and authority (the power or right to control, judge, or prohibit the actions of others), which is the core issue of this blog.
In the preacher’s telling of the story, Jonah has no personal freedom to decide whether or not to go to Nineveh. His only choice is to submit to God’s authority.
And then the preacher turned the story of Jonah into a stern warning to the hapless people shrinking in front of him.
His theology has no room for personal choice. His message about personal freedom can be summarized this way.
You have no freedom to choose because you have no choice. What you want makes no difference. The only choice that matters belongs to God. If you do not do what God demands that you do, God will chase you down and make you do it.
Bad Bible Bully Preacher
This the opinion of a bullying preacher about a bullying God.
Whatever Happened To The Good News?
The fundamental claim of the Christian church is that it has “good news” for people. This is what the word “gospel” means.
The greatest injury of all on that Sunday morning in San Francisco was that the preacher didn’t convey what most human beings would consider good news. Instead, he used his opportunity to preach good news as an opportunity to harangue a captive audience of people who are supposed to sit still, keep quiet, and listen.
People who sat in the pews on that Sunday morning with some hope of hearing good news got blasted and lambasted and told that they had no choice. God—the greatest bully of all—would make them do what God ordered them to do.
This “sermon” is the essence of how Bad Bible Bullies turn the Bible into “Bad Bible.” It is also a prime example of how Bad Bible Bullies distort the hope of good news into the reality of abused trust.
And even more importantly, this sermon demolishes any conflict between personal freedom and Bible authority. He told the people sitting in front of them that their only choice was to obey authority.
In other words, he declared:
You have no personal freedom. You must submit to God’s authority because the Bible says so.Bad Bible Bully Preacher
How Bible Scholarship Gives Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies
Was the preacher right about this story? Is this kind of Bible interpretation valid? Is it truly biblical? How can you know? Is it just a matter of opinion?
My goal is to offer a liberating perspective to others who are seeking freedom from Bad Bible Bullies by looking at something like the book of Jonah from the perspective of a biblical scholar.
What I have experienced in my own life is that Bible scholarship set me free from the fear-inducing tactics of Bad Bible Bullies.
“Exegesis” is the primary method of Bible scholarship. Exegesis attempts to understand something like the book of Jonah on its own terms. Exegesis asks what are its historical, social, political, and theological contexts? What about the translation from Hebrew into English? How do you read a story? How does Jonah fit into the context of the whole Bible? These are just a few of the questions that biblical scholars would ask about the book of Jonah.
As far as I could tell, this bullying preacher made no effort at all to do the most basic biblical exegesis of the book of Jonah. He simply scared people with a preposterous story told as historical fact.
After asking exegetical questions, the next important question is this: What do you do with such a story? This question comes under the category of “hermeneutics,” which deals with what the story means right now. How do you interpret this story in the contemporary world?
For the preacher, the hermeneutical meaning of the story was perfectly clear. The story of Jonah is a stern warning. Do what God tells you to do or else.
Although I will not begin the process of exegesis and hermeneutics of the strange story of Jonah here, the real point in all of this is that the best remedy for bad news Christian preaching begins with disciplined Bible exegesis, followed by disciplined Bible hermeneutics.
You don’t have to know very much about exegesis to realize that Bad Bible Bullies are notorious for preaching bad news without bothering to ask a few basic exegetical questions.
You can quickly learn how to recognize the difference between good news preaching that can set you free and bad news preaching that robs you of your freedom by demanding that you obey bullies.
For Your Freedom,
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Categories: Tags: bad news, biblical scholar, book of jonah, preacher, sermons, story of jonah
Words: The Freedom From Bad Bible Bullies Guide To Getting The Words Right
By Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
There is a story about the great American writer, Ernest Hemingway. A reporter asked how much rewriting Hemingway did. Hemingway said that he rewrote the last page of A Farewell To Arms thirty-nine times. When the reporter asked why, Hemingway answered: Getting the words right.
The weapons of Bad Bible Bullies are words. They claim they know what the words of the Bible mean and what they mean for you. You might be surprised to realize how often the bullies get the words wrong when they quote the Bible.
This guide is a work-in-progress guide to unfamiliar words, words with multiple meanings, and biblical words that never meant what the bullies claim they mean.
The shortest and simplest route to freedom from Bad Bible Bullies is “getting the words right.”
Belief is confidence that something is true without sufficient evidence to prove that it is true.
Exegesis is a critical explanation of a portion of the Bible. The word is derived from the Greek word exegeisthai, which means “to guide out of.”
For biblical scholars, exegesis involves analysis of the biblical text from many angles. The most important word in exegesis is context. The goal of exegesis is to understand what the original text meant in its own time and place, and to understand its original purpose.
Biblical scholarship involves a wide range of methods. This is not a complete list, but it gives a range of exegetical methods and topics.
- Exegesis begins with study of the text in its original language.
- Exegesis analyzes translation issues.
- Exegetical methods identify historical, geographical, social, and political contexts of the text.
- Exegesis considers the persuasive intention of a biblical passage, to understand who was attempting to persuade whom about what.
- Exegesis involves study of the literary context, which includes consideration of the genre and the structure of the text, as well as the grammar and history of the words themselves, since meanings of words change over time.
- Exegesis considers the context of any biblical passage as part of its own book, as well as its context within the whole Bible.
- Exegesis also considers the theological meaning of the biblical passage to the ones who wrote and edited it.
- And significantly, exegesis involves consulting the work of other scholars. This provides critical feedback about assumptions, methods, and conclusions.
Why is exegesis important?
The Bible is an ancient book, written in times and places and circumstances that are dramatically different from our own.
These words by William Countryman grasp the reason for exegesis as well as any I have ever read.
The Bible belongs forever to the past. No one has added to it or subtracted from it for a long time, and it is unlikely that anyone will in the near future. Even when the canon first began to be formulated most of the books that entered into it were already quite old and their age was one of the reasons for including them. This means that the Bible always stands outside our present.It is not always easy to see this. Christian communities develop certain traditions of reading Scripture; they domesticate it in this way so that nobody will be bitten by it. Much of the time, as we read Scripture, we see nothing but that traditional interpretation, and we hear nothing new or unusual. Yet the very fact that these are documents of the past means that the appearance of sameness and predictability can never be altogether true. The past was different from the present, sometimes quite dramatically so. When we read ancient documents, we are looking out of the window of our prison onto a different landscape of human existence. And when we read them well, they begin to speak to us and even to offer a critique of life as we think we know it. It is this experience that breaks down the walls around us.
William Countryman, Biblical Authority or Biblical Tyranny
Proof is sufficient evidence to establish a thing as true.
Tautology is the needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word. From Greek, tautologia, (tauto “the same” + -logos “saying,”), repeating what has been said.
Categories: Tags: biblical scholar, biblical scholarship, critical explanation, exegetical methods, meanings of words
