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One of the fascinating elements of this political campaign is the juxtaposition between the present ”bible-believing Christian” Sarah Palin and the past “Pentecostal” Sarah Palin. 

It is clear that she was chosen as the Republican vice-presidential candidate to appeal to Evangelical Christians.  She was promoted to the “conservative, Christian base” as one of them, without making clear her Pentecostal roots. 

John McCain has courted Evangelicals for much of his political campaign. Meanwhile, the Evangelicals have not quite trusted him to be one of their own. McCain made the ultimate effort to woo the Evangelical vote in his appearance at the Civil Forum at Saddleback Church.

After all of this effort to capture the Evangelical vote, it is rather astonishing that McCain did not choose an Evangelical to run as his vice-presidential nominee. Instead, he chose a woman deeply rooted in the Assemblies of God. John McCain Jilts The Evangelicals To Choose Sarah Palin From The Assemblies Of God.

Since then, her faith has been presented in vague terms. This strategy follows Sarah Palin’s own efforts to distance herself from being identified as “Pentecostal” in order to run for Governor of Alaska. 

While the McCain campaign has promoted Palin to religious conservatives as a woman of “strong faith,” they have gone to unusual lengths to avoid providing a picture of that faith. In fact, a Palin spokeswoman says the Alaska governor is “not a Pentecostal,” and points out that Palin was baptized as a child as a Roman Catholic, although there is no record that her family attended Catholic services before joining the Pentecostal church where she became saved at age 11. The candidate does not even claim the Evangelical label, instead using the code phrase “Bible-believing Christian” to describe herself. Palin’s official biography on the McCain campaign website makes no mention of her religious affiliation.  Does Sarah Palin Have a Pentecostal Problem?

Sarah Palin’s religious history includes a strong Pentecostal background and includes membership in an Assemblies of God church, which is a Pentecostal denomination.  Pentecostalism is consistent with much Evangelical theology at some points, and divergent at others. It is highly likely that many of the Evangelicals who were so enthused about her nomination would be a bit more skeptical if they understood how much her Pentecostal background is being deliberately obscured.  Whether fair or not, the label “Pentecostal” carries negative connotations within much of the Christian world. 

It is this Pentecostal association that most concerns and confuses the McCain campaign. As Minnery makes clear, millions of Evangelicals have accepted Palin because of her membership in a Bible church. But there is no denying that mainstream Evangelicals and Pentecostals, while political allies on many social issues, have historically had significant tensions over theological differences. The Evangelicals’ swoon for Palin might fade if it turns out that she continues to hold fast to Pentecostal practices and beliefs. Does Sarah Palin Have a Pentecostal Problem?

This article from Time Magazine, by Amy Sullivan, is the single best treatment I have seen on the topics of Sarah Palin’s religious background and Pentecostal beliefs and practices.  It is fair, and carefully and accurately outlines key elements of the history of Pentecostalism. Does Sarah Palin Have a Pentecostal Problem?

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

For a grown-up Christian approach to money, be sure to see Going Broke With Jesus. How Heroic Stories Intended To Liberate The Poor Become Biblical Urban Legends About The Evils Of Money.

written by Kalinda \\ tags: alaska, Amy Sullivan, Assemblies of God, Bible, bible-believing, christian, evangelical, John McCain, pentecostal, Sarah Palin

It is time for a confession. I have fallen into the trap. I have let Evangelicals define the agenda, even here on this blog. I’ll explain what I mean by telling a personal story.

While I was pregnant with my second child, I was under the obstetric care of two brothers who shared a joint practice. I never knew which brother I would see at any visit. I knew only that I liked one brother and didn’t like the other.

The first brother, Doctor Sidney, seemed to enjoy being a doctor and seemed to like his female patients. The second brother, Doctor Harold—an early Dr. House misanthropic type—gave the impression that he regarded pregnant women as a major annoyance, who were utterly unworthy of his superior intellect.
 
Harold was a master at asking the kind of questions that made patients wrong at the outset. It was the kind of question that comes under the category of: “do-you-still-beat-your-wife” questions. And so Doctor Harold would ask with a condescending tone: “How many times did you forget to take your vitamins?”

Such questions are a power strategy to make clear who is in charge of the conversation. The question is designed to put the person who is asked such a question into a reactive, defensive position. There was no room in Doctor Harold’s worldview for a patient who took her vitamins without fail.

Why do I bring up memories of my unpleasant encounters with a doctor who was clearly in the wrong profession?  

It is because this is the stance that Evangelicals often use to define the discussion about religion and politics. This is why the pilgrimage by John McCain and Barack Obama to Saddleback Church for the Civil Forum was such a problematic precedent in American politics. An evangelical megachurch pastor asked questions that presupposed that Evangelicals have the corner on God and Bible. Part of this assumption is that only the Republican Party represents an authentic Christian perspective.

I’ll let an Evangelical pastor express his opinion on these assumptions, in his letter in Time Magazine, September 1, 2008. 

As an Evangelical Pastor, I find the high percentage of fellow Evangelicals who believe that Senator John McCain is the candidate “most guided by his religious beliefs” hard to fathom. The testimonies of the two candidates in your “In Their Words” section shows McCain, in fact, to be far less connected to Evangelical spirituality than Barack Obama, who can also lay claim to an authentic born-again experience. Unfortunately, what this shows is that many Evangelicals believe that Republican and Christian are synonymous terms. It’s time that myth be put to rest. Time Letters, The Rev. John Hubers, Chicago

These are the assumptions that led James Dobson to assert that Barack Obama does not follow traditional Christian faith, in his widely publicized statement.

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said. Obama ‘Distorting’ Bible, Pushing ‘Fruitcake Interpretation’ of Constitution”)

Such statements are Doctor Harold statements. Since Evangelicals make up a quarter of the electorate, the media and politicians treat Evangelicals as being the true exemplars of Christian faith. This means that religious questions are framed in Evangelical terms, according to Evangelical presuppositions. As a result, everyone else is put on the defensive.

I have fallen into a similar trap with this blog, by reacting to the ways that Evangelicals have claimed the right to ask the defining religious questions. And so, I resolve to stop letting Evangelical presuppositions and assertions define my agenda for this blog.

The truth of the matter is that Evangelicals might make up a quarter of the electorate but they do not “own” God or the Bible. And the claim that an Evangelical viewpoint is consistent with “the traditional understanding of the Bible” does not stand up to any sort of historical, theological, or ecclesiastical scrutiny.

In my next post, I will refer to an article by Greg M. Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, in which he makes these statements:

Happily, though, I’ve seen several signs that an Obama administration might recognize the single most essential truth of American religion and politics in the 21st century. That is, not only is the U.S. not merely a “Christian Nation,” we have become something new entirely: the world’s first truly “Interfaith Nation.” As my Harvard colleague Diana Eck has eloquently described, the U.S. is now the world’s most religiously diverse nation. If we embrace the values of religious pluralism, our diversity will be a rich resource, rather than a source of division.

However, this historic opportunity would become an historic tragedy of prejudice and discrimination if we fail to recognize that an Interfaith Nation must make room for Humanists, atheists, and the non-religious as equal partners alongside Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and many others.  Don’t Exclude Humanists, Atheists from the Melting Pot

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

written by Kalinda \\ tags: Barack Obama, evangelical, James Dobson, John McCain, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Rick Warren

On Saturday, August 16, Barack Obama and John McCain will attend a “Civil Forum” at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. The forum will be moderated by Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church.

Time Magazine made Rick Warren the subject of a recent cover article. The cover identifies Warren as “America’s most powerful religious leader” (Time Magazine Cover, August 18, 2008 Issue.)

A more cautious figure than Warren might have passed on the opportunity to become a political lightning rod. But he has spent the past few years positioning himself for just such a role as a suprapolitical, supracreedal arbiter of public virtues and religious responsibilities.
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The payoff is the Aug. 16 event, a kind of coronation for the 54-year-old, jovially hyperactive preacher. “It’s remarkable. The candidates are according him tremendous status,” says William Martin, author of the definitive biography of Billy Graham, A Prophet with Honor. “I don’t see them doing it with an Episcopal bishop or a Cardinal – or another Evangelical.”

If Warren is not quite today’s Graham, who presided as “America’s pastor” back when the U.S. affected a kind of Protestant civil religion, he is unquestionably the U.S.’s most influential and highest-profile churchman. The Global Ambition of Rick Warren

The idea of the forum as a “kind of coronation” for Rick Warren raises all kinds of interesting questions about the connections between religion and politics.

What is clear is that Obama and McCain are making a kind of religious pilgrimage to one of America’s evangelical megachurches, to make an appearance before “the U.S.’s most influential and highest-profile churchman.”

What is obvious by now is that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain is an evangelical. This means that both are problematic candidates for a significant number of evangelical Christians. The reason this matters politically is that so many American Christians identify themselves as evangelicals.

“It’s quite an extraordinary thing, it’s the first time a preacher has convened the two presumptive candidates …

They are both fighting for that vote,” said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston.

Evangelicals account for one in four U.S. adults and have become a key conservative base for the Republican Party with a strong focus in the past on opposition to abortion and gay rights and the promotion of “traditional” family values.

Such issues delivered almost 80 percent of the white evangelical Protestant vote to President George W. Bush in 2004 but the movement is more fractured and restless this year though it remains largely in the Republican camp. Obama, McCain Aim For Faith Vote At Forum 

So, both Obama and McCain are in the position of having to prove themselves sufficiently evangelical to satisfy evangelical voters, especially on the litmus test issues of abortion and gay marriage.

McCain has not excited conservative evangelicals because of his past support for stem cell research, his blunt criticism of the movement’s leaders in 2000 and other political heresies.

But the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner-of-war has long been opposed to abortion rights, a trump card with this group.

“McCain has a good record on that issue (abortion) and he must show that he will continue it as president,” Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative lobby group the Family Research Council, told Reuters. Obama, McCain Aim For Faith Vote At Forum 

The most significant point I want to make here is that the “faith” of these two candidates is being defined by their stances on these issues—especially the issue of abortion.

Once again, public discussion of religion has been reduced to a few critical, hot-button issues. Complicated issues of faith, the relationship of religious groups to political power, the role of religious education in public schools, and a multitude of social justice issues get little attention. Instead, religion and faith become defined by a few issues.

It is important to note how Rick Warren has expanded his focus beyond the evangelical hot-button issues since the 2004 presidential election.

During the 2004 presidential election, he seemed to toy with using his new influence to become the next Jerry Falwell or James Dobson. Although he did not officially endorse George W. Bush, the mega-author made no secret of his preference. Two weeks before the election, he sent an e-mail to the several hundred thousand pastors on his mailing list, enumerating “non-negotiable” issues for Christians to consider when casting their votes: abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, euthanasia and human cloning. The Global Ambition of Rick Warren 

Since then, Warren has started a global program to mobilize churches in the Third World to deal with poverty, disease, and illiteracy, among other global issues.

And he is both leading and riding the newest wave of change in the Evangelical community: an expansion beyond social conservatism to causes such as battling poverty, opposing torture and combating global warming. The movement has loosened the hold of religious-right leaders on ordinary Evangelicals and created an opportunity for Warren, who has lent his prominent voice to many of the new concerns.

A shift away from “sin issues” – like abortion and gay marriage – is reflected in Warren’s approach to his coming sit-downs with the candidates. He says he is more interested in questions that he feels are “uniting,” such as “poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights,” and still more in civics-class topics like the candidates’ understanding of the role of the Constitution. There will be no “Christian religion test,” Warren insists. “I want what’s good for everybody, not just what’s good for me. Who’s the best for the nation right now?” The Global Ambition of Rick Warren

Yet, despite Warren’s larger vision, for many evangelicals in this election season, “faith” is neatly defined by the “right” answers on a handful of hot-button issues.

So, Barack Obama and John McCain will sit down as Rick Warren—who promises that there will be no “Christian religion test”—will ask Obama and McCain about abortion.

And many Evangelicals have, like Warren, broadened their agenda of concerns to include issues that should favor Obama like global poverty and the environment. But in practice, abortion continues to be a threshold issue for a large number of Evangelical voters.
Warren has already said he will raise the issue with the candidates on Saturday, and Obama could well take advantage of the opportunity.
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Large numbers of Evangelical and Catholic voters will be listening for Obama to articulate his abortion position in his conversation with Warren. A significant number of them remain undecided in the race, and their votes may hinge on his answer. Obama and McCain’s Test of Faith

When I read the words of Jesus in the four gospels, I wonder how abortion and gay marriage have become the defining issues for evangelicals. As far as I can tell, Jesus had nothing to say about either topic. Does this mean that Jesus would approve of abortion and gay marriage? It only means that they were not mentioned in the gospel narratives. It is hard to make any case on any issue based what someone didn’t say about it.

Although Jesus did not directly address current hot-button issues, he had plenty to say about power, justice, and the poor. My impolite question is: How is that these are not the defining issues for people who base their identity on scripture as the sole authority in faith and practice?

Emphasis on the “sin issues”—as Time magazine calls them—without giving at least equal weight to such central gospel topics as justice, power, and poverty is an example of “selective hermeneutics.”

Exegesis focuses on “what it meant.”  Hermeneutics focuses on “what it means.” Selective hermeneutics occurs when people pick and choose portions of the Bible, to decide which parts are relevant and which are not relevant to their lives. This is what has happened with abortion and gay marriage, along with stem cell research and cloning. They have become the defining issues of faith, even though none of them is explicitly mentioned in scripture.

When selective hermeneutics is at work, religion becomes reduced to a small set of issues. This means that politicians find themselves in the position of having to tiptoe carefully on a tightrope between the hot-button issues and their own religious beliefs—whatever they are—to placate potential voters who have reduced ”faith” to a limited set of beliefs on a few defining issues.

“Faith” reduced to these few topics is dramatically diminished biblical faith. We all deserve more than a few carefully chosen responses on a handful of topics to determine how any candidate for public office will address the relationship between religion and political power in a multi-cultural, multi-religious nation.

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

written by Kalinda \\ tags: abortion, Barack Obama, Bible, civil forum, evangelical, exegesis, gay marriage, hermeneutics, Jesus, John McCain, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, politicians, politiics, Rick Warren, Saddleback Church, selective hermeneutics

After writing several articles about evangelicals, I want to pause for a bit to consider the role of the media and their use of sensational language about religious topics.

Christianity Today—a reputable publication that really ought to know better— reported on a session at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting of November 14, 2007 with this title: 
“Postcard from San Diego: Fighting ‘Bibliolatry’ at the Evangelical Theological Society.”

They follow the headline with this quotation from a paper delivered by J.P. Moreland, “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done About It.”

“In the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ,” he said. “And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”

The problem, he said, is “the idea that the Bible is the sole source of knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole authority for faith and practice.” Postcard from San Diego

The title, “Fighting ‘Bibliolatry’ at the Evangelical Theological Society,” is deliberately inflammatory, because of the word, “bibliolatry.”  Bibliolatry is a coined word, combining “Bible” with the idea of idol worship. It is used frequently as a pejorative to claim that evangelical commitment to an inerrant, infallible Bible is idol worship, in which the Bible becomes the idol.

As with any caricature, there is real truth in this charge. But the real truth behind the label is not my point here. My point concerns the tactics of the media when they ferret out something deliberately provocative, to incite anger, interest, and polarization. The media have done this for a long time. As the saying goes—”they want to sell papers.”

In another post, I will deal more directly with the issues that Professor Moreland raised in his paper, because they are significant in any discussion of the relationship between religion and politics. But before doing that, I want comment about the role of the media in both reporting and creating the news.

One of the consequences of watching many political campaigns is that I have seen how many campaigns turn into contests based on slogans. In the earliest televised debates, Kennedy and Nixon went on and on about Quemoy and Matsu. With Bush the Elder and Dukakis, it was Willie Horton. John Kerry was sunk by Swift Boaters. This election is following in the same slimesteps. The media find something provocative to glom onto and will not let go, all the while they tell us know how much they find the slime reprehensible.

One of my own personal frustrations is the way that the news media report on religious issues. When it comes to religion and Bible, the media usually get it wrong. I see it in the articles about John McCain and Barack Obama. The reporters in the various news media—who by and large have no training in biblical exegesis or theological hermeneutics—are looking for the hook, the interesting story, the outrageous claim to put into a headline. They don’t have the time, training, or interest to understand the deeper issues or put issues into larger context.

I imagine that anyone who is truly an expert in some area feels the same way. Journalists working on deadline—who know almost nothing about the topic they are covering—find some juicy tidbit and report on that, all the while missing the forest for the trees. In the process, the media are not reporting on news. They are creating it, and we are all the worse for it.

As a teacher, I think that my greatest teaching skill is my ability to help my students think differently, by nudging them to see beneath their own assumptions. This kind of probing after assumptions cannot happen as soon as anyone tags someone else with a label. Tell an evangelical: ”You practice bibliolatry,” and the discussion is over before it starts.

This reminds me of another story. Several years ago, I attended an internet seminar in Orlando on marketing information products. After the day’s session, the hotel provided a bar at the back of the meeting room, where people could buy drinks.

I noticed a man—I’ll call him Pete—standing in the middle of the room, holding a bottle of beer in his hand. I had met Pete at a previous seminar and even had lunch with him. He was a retired history teacher, and we had talked about teaching. So, as someone who is not a natural schmoozer, I was glad to see someone I had already met, and went over to talk with him.

Very early in the conversation, I said that the last time I was in Orlando, I was there to attend the “Annual Joint Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and The Society of Biblical Literature.”  These are two professional societies for scholars and graduate students in all areas of religion and Bible. I have been a member of both societies for years.

Pete held up his beer bottle and said: “I bet they didn’t have any of this at that meeting.” And then he began to laugh the kind of laugh that can only be described as guffawing.

I was momentarily speechless. I was truly surprised that a retired history teacher would jump to such a conclusion. He heard the words “religion” and “Bible” and apparently decided that anyone who would attend such a meeting was a teetotaling goody-goody at a Temperance Society picnic.

For a moment, I thought of telling him that the registration packet for the meeting came with two drink tickets for the annual reception, where both wine and beer were served along with the raw carrots, celery sticks,  cheese, and crackers.

I thought of telling him about the Lutherans and Episcopalians and Roman Catholics who use wine as part of the Eucharist.

I even thought of telling him that he had completely misunderstood that a scholarly meeting of academics is not a church service.

I could have told him that both societies comprise scholars who hold just about every imaginable religious belief and no religious belief, and just about every identity group or “ism” you can think of—from Jewish, to Buddhist, to Native American,  from Asian and African theologians, feminists and womanists, black liberation theologians, textual critics and archaeologists.

But then I decided it was not worth my time or effort to cut through his smug ignorance.

Instead, I thought of the words I read in a class on English poetry in college. They are from the poem by T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

And I have known the eyes already, known them all–  
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,   
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,   
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,   
Then how should I begin   
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume? 

 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock By T. S. Eliot

The words—”eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase” and the image of being “pinned and wriggling on the wall”— have stayed with me ever since. How do you begin to explain anything when you have been labeled, formulated, and pinned up?

And so, I ended the conversation and walked away, letting Pete drink his beer secure in the belief that Bible scholars at professional meetings don’t drink beer.

This is why labels kill any chance for real conversation.  Christianity Today took the most inflammatory word it could take from the professor’s paper, and claimed far more than he intended.

Unlike my decision to walk away from guffawing Pete, Professor Moreland did respond to the slew of comments posted on the Christianity Today blog about his paper. I have quoted parts of the first two paragraphs below. The entire comment is available here.

My paper was read at an academic conference for an audience of professors. Thus, precision was a premium. It was not intended for a lay audience because lay folk have a tendency—and this is not meant to be harsh—of running with ideas beyond the context in which they were originally given.
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While I am sure it was well intended, the CT editor’s summary of my paper is generally fair (though the use of “bibliolatry” in the title is a bit sensationalistic—I used it once in my paper and clarified it’s meaning by the over-commitment claim), but it is still a summary, and as such, did not and could not provide the needed context for understanding my paper. What followed was a large number (but by no means all) of misleading, irrelevant and tangential comments that had little and, often, nothing to do with my paper. Professor Moreland Comments

This paragraph expresses the frustrations of an academic. I understand in my bones what Moreland is saying here. In each paragraph, Moreland uses the word that most defines what scholars do. It is the word “context.” The paper was read in the context of an academic meeting. An academic meeting is a context in which people are supposed to pay attention to the intention behind the paper, and not make it be something it was not meant to be.

My blog is, more than anything else, my effort to bring what I know as a biblical scholar to the intersecting dimensions of religion, politics and the Bible, and to do it without resorting to cheap shots, easy caricatures, and simplistic statements. I do it as a teacher—nudging people to consider their unconsidered assumptions—with an intention to be as kind as possible in the process.

I want to acknowledge that evangelical Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary—despite the harassment from students and professors who were sure they knew exactly what God intended—was also the place where I began to learn my skills as a biblical scholar from professors who were passionate about scholarship, committed to their faiths, and good and kind men. From them, I learned that there was so much more in the Bible than the restrictive vision of God and church that I had learned from Bible verses taken out of context.  My intention is to pass some of that liberating vision to you. 

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

written by Kalinda \\ tags: Bible, biblical scholarship, bibliolatry, evangelical, Evangelical Theological Society, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, inerrant, infallible, J P Moreland, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, media, news media

The Bible as Word of God—inerrant, infallible, and solely the work of God—remains the single most important distinction between evangelicals and other Christians.

In an interview with Stephen Mansfield, author of the new book, The Faith of Barack Obama, this is Mansfield’s answer to the question:

“So, where do you think Obama fits in the spectrum of Christianity?

I think Barack Obama believes about Jesus and about conversion what your average evangelical does. He believes that Jesus is the son of God and that he died for the sins of the world and God raised him from the dead again. Where he begins to depart from orthodox evangelical Christianity probably begins with his view of scripture. He believes some of it might be of human origin, and some scriptures may be of more weight than others. So in a sense, [his is a] traditional theological liberalism that tends to treat scripture as being at least partially of human origin. Stephen Mansfield Interview with Jessica Ramirez

This is a revealing quotation, both in what Mansfield claims and the language he uses to claim it. He says that Obama believes about Jesus “what your average evangelical” believes.

Mansfield then asserts that Obama “begins to depart from orthodox evangelical Christianity” with his “view of scripture” because Obama believes that some of scripture “might be of human origin.” According to Mansfield, this “view of scripture” is evidence of Obama’s “traditional theological liberalism.”

(In this post, I won’t even begin to address the second part of the claim: Obama believes that “some scriptures may be of more weight than others.”) 

There is so much going on in this paragraph that I hardly know where to begin. It is full of code language with specific meaning for evangelicals.
   
As a student at Gordon-Conwell, I had to learn three new languages: Biblical Greek; Biblical Hebrew; and a code language that I will call “evangelicalese.”
 
In evangelicalese, the phrase: “view of scripture” carries particular weight. On many topics, evangelicals fluent in “evangelicalese” will base their actions and opinions upon “a high view of scripture.”

A “high view of scripture” is that God is the sole source of scripture. Any suggestion that human beings played a part in the origin of scripture is evidence of a “low view of scripture.”

In my seminary years among the evangelicals, I heard a variation of this statement dozens—maybe even hundreds of times: “I would like to support the ordination of women to ministry, but I can’t, because I hold a high view of scripture.” 

Although Mansfield doesn’t use the word “high,” he is clearly contrasting the “evangelical high view of scripture” about the solely divine origin of scripture with the “liberal low view of scripture,” which asserts that human beings might have had some role in the writing of the Bible.

And so, Barack Obama—whose belief in Jesus is the same as “your average evangelical”—has a “view of scripture” that sets him apart from evangelicals. Obama’s belief that “some of it might be of human origin” turns Obama from “evangelical” into “liberal.”

Notice also the contrast between “orthodox evangelicalism” and “traditional theological liberalism.” “Orthodox” is a theological designation of correctness, in contrast to ”traditional theological liberalism,” with its implied “unorthodox” view of scripture.”

(At some point, I’ll explore how a perfectly noble word, “liberal” got such a bad reputation among evangelicals, but that will wait until another day.)

The key point is that Obama’s belief that human beings “might” have played a role in the origin of scripture makes him a theological “liberal with a low view of scripture.” This opinion about the Bible sets him apart from “orthodox evangelical theology” and its dedication to the belief in the Bible as the inerrant, infallible, Word of God.

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

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Do you know that you are the product of all the stories you have learned throughout your life? Most of us try to live with stories that don’t serve us. This is especially true with Bible stories. To find out why most of the Bible stories you learned about Jesus and money are not true, be sure to visit Going Broke With Jesus.

written by Kalinda \\ tags: Barack Obama, Bible, evangelical, Faith of Barack Obama, high view of scripture, inerrant, infallible, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Obama, scripture, Stephen Mansfield

The role of human writers in the Bible is probably the most debated, contested, and complicated topic in the evangelical world. Although I am making a complicated topic too simplistic, the basic question is this: Did God write the Bible all alone or did God have human help?

This is the question that definitively separates evangelicals from non-evangelicals. It is also the question that continually roils the evangelical world, as evangelicals dispute among themselves how human beings played a part in writing the Bible.

When I enrolled as a Master of Divinity student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I was so ignorant of the evangelical world that I didn’t even know that this question was the heart of the matter.

My enrollment at Gordon-Conwell is an object lesson in the wisdom of that old adage. “Look before you leap.” This is wise advice…and if I had heeded that advice, I would never have enrolled in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I am embarrassed to admit that I tend to be more of the leap-before-you-look type–the kind of person who dives off the diving board before checking that there is water in the pool.

Actually, I’m not that foolish about diving into swimming pools. But when it came to enrolling as a student at an evangelical seminary, based solely on the recommendation of the minister of the church I was attending, I took a giant leap into a swimming pool without checking out the pool before I jumped in. The pool did have water. However the water was filled with prowling, hungry sharks. (By the way, this is the same minister who told me in my second year of seminary that I no longer had the right to pray because I was disobeying God by attending seminary.)

And so, I enrolled as a student at an institution that defines itself by its relationship to the Bible as the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God.

The sixty-six canonical books of the Bible as originally written were inspired of God, hence free from error. They constitute the only infallible guide in faith and practice. Article I of Gordon-Conwell’s Statement Of Faith

My sink-or-swim immersion into an evangelical seminary made me painfully aware that the nature of scripture as the inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word of God was the central defining issue of the evangelical world.

Since then, I have observed how rarely non-evangelical Christians understand the power of this claim in the evangelical world. Non-evangelicals often caricature evangelicals as simply “fundamentalists,” without understanding how either evangelicals or fundamentalists define themselves.

I’ll leave the shark tank metaphor to use a metaphor from photography. The claim that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God becomes a polarizing filter in the evangelical world.

A photographer puts a polarizing filter in front of the camera lens to reduce glare. The polarizer also has the tendency to turn so-so pictures into spectacular ones. If you see a dramatic photo with stunning white clouds against a brilliant blue background, you are probably seeing the effect of a polarizing filter.

The filter blocks some reflected light rays. This means that the filter enhances some light rays as it blocks others. This is also what happens with the polarizing effect of the doctrine of the Bible as “solely” the Word of God. The claim that God is the sole author is dramatically enhanced. The claim that humans had any part as authors is blocked.

Despite the faith claim of the evangelical world that the Bible is solely the word of God, based on the 1646 “Westminster Confession of Faith,” many evangelicals are not so willing to deny any role to human authorship. This is especially true for biblical scholars.

I’ll end this post here by introducing a recent situation involving the evangelical seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, and one of its tenured professors, Dr. Peter Enns. Professor Enns wrote a book, Inspiration and Incarnation, in which he urges readers to understand the Bible as both divine and human. As a direct result of this book, the trustees suspended Enns as a professor.

“Trustees said it appeared that Enns had defied the school’s founding principle, based on the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith, the core creed of the Presbyterian tradition. It says that Scripture is solely the word of God and proclaims the “infallible truth” and “entire perfection” of the Bible.” Westminster Trustees

I will continue with this story in another post.

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

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Do you know that you are the product of all the stories you have learned throughout your life? Most of us try to live with stories that don’t serve us. This is especially true with Bible stories. To find out why most of the Bible stories you learned about Jesus and money are not true, be sure to visit Going Broke With Jesus.

written by Kalinda \\ tags: 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith, authority of scripture, Bible, Dr. Peter Enns, Enns, evangelical, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, inerrant, infallible, Inspiration and Incarnation, inspired, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Westminster Theological Seminary

Of all of the differences–large and small–that separate various Christian groups from each other, the most crucial difference is the location of God’s authority. If we compare the Roman Catholic Church and the multitude of Protestant traditions, the fundamental difference between them comes down to the location of God’s authority.

For Roman Catholics, God’s highest authority is located in the role of Pope, who has been invested with the “ex cathedra” (“from the chair”) authority to speak for God.  (In a later post, I’ll come back to the Pope’s authority to speak “ex cathedra.”)  

The Protestant Reformation was fundamentally a relocation of God’s authority from roles within the Church to the Bible itself.  In the process, the Bible made its own transition. It was no longer simply sacred scripture.  It became “the word of God.”

At this point, I want to go back to my story about my first day in theological seminary.  I started with this particular story because it gets to the essence of the location of God’s authority within the evangelical tradition.   For the young man of my story, the highest authority on Earth is the Bible.  But it is important to recognize, that he did not refer to the Bible.  He referred to “The Word of God.”  This name is profoundly significant for understanding the evangelical world view and what evangelicals regard as most important. 

My post, “Is The Bible A Book?,” makes the point that the Bible has undergone a fundamental transition from a collection of writings contained within distinct books (originally separate scrolls) to a single book that contains all of these separate books.  It made the transition from “the books” to “the Book.” 

Within evangelicalism, we have another giant transition.  The Bible has become the “Word of God,” with a capital W. The original multiplicity has been reduced down to a single voice, the voice of God.  This designation is the heart of the matter for evangelicals.  They are not reading a book.  They are reading God’s own word.  In the particular vocabulary of evangelicalism, the Bible becomes “the Word.” The multiplicity of books becomes the singularity of one Word.

This distinction is what sets evangelicals apart, not only from Catholic and Orthodox traditions, but also from other Protestant traditions.  This is the place of distinction and this is the place of conflict.  This distinction lies behind any evangelical approach to social and political situations.

It’s easy enough to caricature Bible-thumping preachers who quote “the WordaGod” but I’d rather not take potshots at such obvious targets.  My aim is to go deeper to get to the essence of what people believe and how their beliefs either serve them or lay obstacles in their paths.   

Let’s go back to the young man who was absolutely, utterly convinced that the “Word of God” prohibits women from positions of authority within the church.  From his perspective, the words in the Bible are ultimately authoritative, because they are the very Word of God. Any challenge to the words of the Bible are disobedience to God, because the Bible is the location of authority.  

Meanwhile, there I was, completely unaware of any of this.  My own church tradition had no place for “the Word of God” as the ultimate source of authority. I am the descendant of Puritans, who was born about thirty miles from Plymouth Rock on Cape Cod.  (According to the story I was told, ancestors of my father’s mother arrived at Plymouth in 1621, on the boat after the Mayflower.  My grandmother proudly claimed her heritage as a member of the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution)

I grew up in a Congregational Church that was founded in 1747.   No one in that church ever toted a Bible to church on Sunday morning, and I never heard anyone refer to the Bible as “the Word of God,” (with or without the capital W.)

Congregational Churches evolved from the Puritan Separatist Movement. Each church was its own authority, which meant it was a religious movement that wanted no part of religious hierarchies and state churches. Each church was its own authority, governed by meetings of the members of the congregation. 

In addition, Congregational churches went through a whole series of theological conflicts, especially related to the divinity of Jesus. Many Congregational churches became part of the new Unitarian-Universalist movement.  Other Congregational churches kept “Congregational” in their names, but became fundamentally Unitarian in theology. 

(Congregationalists played an important role in much of the early history of the United States, and shaped much of what we regard as essentially American notions of self-government. If you want to know more, this “Congregational Church article is a place to begin.  You can also see these conflicts  in the history of my home church, the First Congregational Church of Harwich, Massachusetts. ) 

Although I never understood any of this when I was a child growing up in the church, my study of church history in seminary revealed to me that I grew up in a Congregational church with a Unitarian view of Jesus.

Here is the statement of faith I recited when I joined the church as a full member at the age of fourteen. 

Article IV. STATEMENT OF FAITH:

We believe in God and Man. We believe the relation between God and man is best defined and exemplified in the life and character of Jesus Christ.

We accept the Bible as sufficient rule of faith and practice, and believe that each member of this church has the right to follow the word of God according to the dictates of his or her conscience.

I have always remembered the first statement.  You will notice that this statement does not proclaim the divinity of Jesus or refer to salvation from sin.  This Jesus is worthy teacher, not a savior, and certainly not the Son of God.   

I don’t remember reciting the second part.  Maybe it was not part of the statement of faith when I was fourteen, especially since the church is now part of the United Churches of Christ.  Or maybe I just don’t remember it. But this statement about the Bible locates authority for obedience within each member. 

I have not looked at the statement of faith since I was fourteen, and was surprised to see that the Bible is referred to as “the word of God” (without capitalizing “word.”)  In any case, there is difference between “the word of God” and “the Word of God.”       

In the distinction between locating authority in a role in the church or locating it in the Bible, The First Congregational Church of Harwich, Massachusetts was neither hierarchical nor particularly motivated by notions of obedience to biblical authority.

And so, whatever else was going on in that hateful encounter between the young man at seminary and me on that beautiful September morning in 1973, it was a clash between two dramatically different perspectives on the location of authority. 

For my evangelical inquistor, his only choice was to obey the Bible, as the singular Word of God, and demand that others do the same.  

For me, with more than 350 years of resolute New England Congregationalist independence bred deeply into my genes, obedience was not located in the Bible, but in my sense of call. 

There can be no resolution to such conflicts as long as the conflict is framed in these terms.

Once again, I leave this story with the promise to return to it.  I have barely begun to mine the depths of this story, and what it means for religion, politics, and the Bible for those of us who are seekers. 

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

written by Kalinda \\ tags: Congregational Church, evangelical, ex cathedra, God's authority, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Word of God