Fixing biblical ignorance: 9-29-11

Biblical literacy -- which is to say biblical illiteracy -- is a serious problem among American Christians and Jews.

The standard joke about this is that many people think Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

But the problem goes deeper than people who simply have no working knowledge of the Bible. The problem extends to what theologians call hermeneutics -- which is to say how one interprets sacred writ.

As one of my pastors is wont to say, you can take the Bible literally or you can take it seriously, but you can't do both.

OK, but if you don't take it literally, how do you decide how to interpret what you're reading?

Prof. Russell Pregeant's great new book, Reading the Bible for All the Wrong Reasons, should help everyone with this question.

It is a brief, reasonable, intelligent, careful and understandable book that makes clear, for starters, what the Bible is not. It is not a fortune cookie full of aphorisms, not a book full of historical or scientific facts, not a book of systematic theology, not a crystal ball, not rule book and not a weapon with which to beat on people who don't believe what you believe.

Rather, the Bible is a library full of books written by many authors over hundreds of years as a witness to the love and on-going creative and redeeming power of God. For Christians, it is a fully adequate revelation of who Jesus Christ is.

When you hear the Bible being used as a high-powered rifle in today's hot-button social issues, you can be pretty sure that the reasonable methods of interpretation (and even literalists interpret the Bible; there's no other way to read it) that Pregeant proposes are being damagingly violated.

It would be enormously helpful if Bible studies in churches and synagogues began with this book.

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AH, THE EXCITING LIFE OF THE CLERGY

Who says the lives of Christian pastors are dull? That's certainly not the case with Tracy Bernard Burleson of Houston. Get this: He's facing capital murder charges for the 2010 slaying of his wife, not because he pulled the trigger but because he allegedly got his stepson to do that. This would be the same stepson who also was in love with the pastor's mistress, it's reported. If I went on, you wouldn't believe it, so I won't. Hope your clergy folks are in less trouble than this.

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P.S.: At 9:30 a.m. this Sunday I'll be speaking at St. Thomas Episcopal Church of Overland Park, Kan., with Father Gar Demo and Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn about "Israel Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow." The three of us will be leading a Christian-Jewish study trip to Israel in April. We'll do the same class at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 13, at Second Presbyterian Church in Kansas City. And on Friday, Oct. 21, Father Demo and I will speak about what Israel means to us as Christians at Rabbi Cukierkorn's congregation, Temple Israel of Greater Kansas City.