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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.
…
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
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