University of Chicago New Testament scholar Margaret Mitchell explores the common claim made by critics of the "religious right" that they are fundamentalists and literalists whose rhetoric has not changed in eighty years, and is simply "the Bible, the Bible, and more of the Bible."
To test this theory, she first posits the idea that the common conception of Christians being either "literalists" or "allegorists" is generally false; all believers generally use a combination of literal interpretation and allegory when reading scripture. (I believe that our denominational and doctrinal differences simply arise out of disagreements as to which passages are to be interpreted literally and which are to be understood allegorically.)
Dr. Mitchell then visits the websites of several well-known "religious right" organizations (e.g. Focus on the Family, Faith and Family, Family Research Council, etc.) and attempts to find evidence on those websites linking the social positions of those organizations directly to Scripture.
The article is long but I think it is worth taking the time to read. And you may be surprised at what Dr. Mitchell finds...
... On average it takes two or three and sometimes more links even to find a page that mentions the Bible or a biblical verse. Instead, the first noticeable thing about the Christian Right is that, even if they continue to read the King James Bible (or perhaps the NIV or NLT [this is hard to tell, because they rarely say]), they have been actively engaged in translation projects of another sort. Instead of Biblical inerrancy, or biblical authority, one finds a new, user-friendly and unifying lexicon: “family values,” “traditional values,” “family-friendly,” “Judeo-Christian heritage,” and a newfangled product called “the Christian world-view.”
... One clear example of the cyberspace Bible-as-sub-text hermeneutic can be seen on the family.org web site run by James Dobson (an American citizen who both sides will agree played an enormous role in the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process, and merited an infamous thank-you note from Justice Samuel Alito). From the “Citizen Link” tab (www.family.org/cforum/) one finds a range of topical headings (rather apples and olives) under “Focus on Social Issues”: Abstinence Policy, Life, Constitution and Government, The Courts, The Media, Education, Gambling, Homosexuality and Gender, Marriage and Family, Origins, Persecution, Pornography and Worldview and Culture. Only two of these categories have a sub-heading “Biblical View.” Can you guess which? Actually, I was surprised, but they are Abstinence Policy and Gambling.
... Southern Baptist Convention minister Richard Land presents no ... ambivalence about his role as interpreter of the Bible. His “For Faith and Family” web site presents the reader with a link to something called the “Ethics cripture Index,” defined as “a listing of Scriptures that relate to various ethical issues,” from “Abortion, Adoption, Bioethics, Homemaking/Domestication, to War, Wives, Women” ... First off, there is no explanation of what topics or which passages are chosen or why, and in the vast majority of cases all one sees is a citation, not the text itself (that also has the nice effect of not confusing people who read their Bible in a different translation, and hence might find rather different wording which might call into question the aptness of its place there). And this method presumes that the whole column speaks with one voice about the issue, which means that there is already a pre-determined decision about the “biblical view” on the given issue. No hermeneutical rule of thumb or guidance is given on such issues as the relationship between the Old and New Testament in Christian law or regulation, nor about how different biblical genres relate to divine teaching and biblical truth (law, narrative, parable, and proverb are all treated the same).
Read the full article here. (h/t SmartChristian.com)
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