Who Is Afraid of the Bible?

The Bible

(Photo by Samantha Sophia via Unsplash)

 

 

 

 

The Good Book has gained so much critical mass as a required read in U.S. public schools—most notably in Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana—that we could almost mistake it for a Marvel Movie franchise if not for its age.

One of the first symptoms of texts as old as the Bible is that they have accrued far more time to be mistranslated, mischaracterized, and generally misunderstood than even the classics of literature, which are young by comparison. Yet it is often said that the Bible is unique among books because everyone thinks they know it despite never having read it.

The Bible is so hugely influential that even when passed along second-hand, third-hand, or after its millionth time around the block of citation, it never loses the force of its influence, despite being diluted, quoted out of context, or even disfigured. You can credit God, the supposed author, or not.

A book as big and full to bursting with history (alleged, or “folk-myth”), allegory, poetry, and doctrine is bound to be challenged. If you came of age in the 1980s, you might remember the many TV talk-show appearances of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists, with her son Garth in tow, describing the Bible as a “horrid book” full of slaughter, conflict, and obscenities, such as Lot downing wine until he was drunk enough to sleep with his daughters (Genesis 19: 30-38) after daring to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their, as they said back then, “alternative lifestyles.” The O’Hairs played a great game, consternating or outraging Christian believers until those same believers basked in the schadenfreude of learning that O’Hair, Garth, and a granddaughter were murdered by their office manager, a fellow atheist, six years after being reported missing in 1995. God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform, even if His wrath is slow to strike!

Today’s crowd of Bible-believing enthusiasts probably have no memory at all of the O’Hairs and their ilk, which is just as well. Instead, these enthusiasts have the far meeker crowd of opponents who worry that placing the Bible on the public school curriculum impinges on the freedom of secular and non-Christian students. Fair enough. However, as arguments go, this one has become painfully stale and untenable, especially when a thrice-married adulterer is deemed sufficiently righteous and “Christian”—at least compared to his available political opponents—to lead our “Christian nation.” Bible believers, meanwhile, argue that their favorite book forms the spine or “foundation” of Western civilization and narrative. Again, fair enough. (But let us also ask why we cannot include ancient Greece and pre-Christian Rome for required study, too. Presuming, of course, that the ancient Greeks and Romans already get short shrift compared to time spent on U.S. or European history.)

The chief strategy of every salesperson is to emphasize a product’s many advantages. The first job of any consumer is to make certain they are, in fact, getting the best deal before they buy. Given our current political era, and in the face of such insistent salespeople, is it not finally time to, as they say, “kick the tires”?

Critics have every right to expect that, with all Ten Commandments hanging on the blackboard, our public school classrooms might well erupt in student arguments about whether the Sabbath falls on a Saturday or Sunday, or what it means to “worship graven images” when everyone’s nose is buried in cell-phone screens. By the time the dust settles, the least that can be said is that, as a nation, we have had this argument out at last. How can that be bad?

You might be shocked to learn that in the UK, the Bible is taught in state-funded schools as part of a compulsory subject of Religious Education (RE), albeit with the proviso that it is “not part” of the national curriculum. Parents also have the option of withdrawing their children from RE. It is an odd arrangement, but it is in keeping with a country that maintains “state religion,” The Church of England, along with “official religions” or churches in Scotland and Wales. If you know the UK at all, though, you will not be shocked to learn that less than 8 percent of its citizens attend a Christian church of any kind regularly. So much for the power of making religion “official.” The record of church attendance in Scandinavia and Finland, where the Evangelical Lutheran Church is official, is even more dismal, with weekly church attendance between 7 and 3 percent of the population.

In true British style, many in the UK approach the Bible with a certain friendly affability. “Maybe I do not believe in it so much, but that does not mean it cannot be worth the read,” the attitude goes. So even avowed “progressive” publications choose Psalm 23 as a “Poem of the Week.” Certainly there is nothing wrong with the Bible as literature. If you are a publisher you can get creative, publishing chapters as single, stylish volumes. “Brilliant!” as the English are fond of saying.

Secular Americans, by contrast, seem to believe they are taking a brave stand against dreaded “fundamentalist thinking” when what they are really avoiding is a necessary discussion. If they cared about knowing the Bible at all, they might discover that this discussion is easier to win than they thought.

Are we as a nation really prepared to discuss the Good Book? If so, a whole host of issues await resolution, provided that secular and religious students alike keep an open heart and mind. (Easier said, harder to do. But still.)

Can we at last discuss the matter of public, or “performance,” prayer, a practice no less than Jesus himself opposed (Matthew 6:5-8)? Can we explore the question of how modern readers are supposed to trust the Bible’s doctrines when its historical record of translations from ancient Koiné Greek to Latin and, finally, English vernacular is itself so full of pitfalls? What about the central issue of Christianity itself: the debate over whether believers must adhere to Mosaic law, i.e. keeping kosher, circumcision (Matthew 5:17-18), or are free to believe based on faith alone, as Paul outlines in Galatians and Romans? If abortion and the murder of children is an abomination and undocumented immigrants must be spurned, why does the Good Book seem to contradict both of those assertions? (Numbers 5:11-31; Hosea 13:16; Leviticus 19:33-34; Hebrews 13:2) If women are better off in a subservient role to men, as the Southern Baptist Convention has for years asserted, which is the true creation story, that of Genesis 1, in which Adam and Eve are created together and, assumably, equally? Or Genesis 2, in which Adam’s rib gets the starring role?

Finally, in educating our children in public settings about this book, can we also discuss the history of early Christians who debated it so passionately that not even murder, the violation of the Sixth Commandment, was off limits? Conversion to Christianity did nothing to stop Emperor Constantine from boiling his wife Fausta alive. Even after the bloody debates about the nature of the trinity and the divinity of Christ, as arguments raged between the Bishop of Alexandria, the priest Aurius, the Gnostics, et al, conflicts over the proper way to believe in God raged. The Council at Nicaea calmed the waters only temporarily until the slaughter between Christians could cycle again, against the Cathars, the Marcionites, Nestorians, and others, until centuries of warfare broke out on the European continent following the Reformation.

Do professing Christians truly believe that teaching the Bible or hanging the Ten Commandments will somehow infuse enough righteousness into future generations of Americans to keep us unified as “One Nation, Under God”? If so, let them prove just that once and for all. Do secular Americans really believe teaching the Bible or listing the Ten Commandments will subject our nation’s youth to sectarian strife and conflict? The record of religious instruction in the UK belies that fear. Nevertheless, let secularists prove their argument as well. If every U.S. public school taught the Bible and even carved out time for prayer, the likely result is that students in almost every instance would wonder instead about what popped up on their phone screen in the interim.

Through centuries of existence, in a multitude of translations, and in myriad versions and bindings, the Bible has never mustered victory in any battle besides sheer force of influence. Even then, and up against all the glories and benefits its believers promise, it still finds plenty of ways to fall short. Put both of those qualities together, and you get a book everyone should read, even in taxpayer-funded public schools.

Ben Fulton

Ben Fulton is managing editor of The Common Reader. Before moving to St. Louis he was editor of Salt Lake City Weekly, Utah’s alternative newsweekly. His work has been published in New York’s Newsday and has garnered regional awards, including Best of the West and Top of the Rockies.

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