wfn.org | 'Faith Confronting Culture': Freeing the Bible from cultural

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

captivity

July 29, 1999   News media contact: Tim Tanton*(615)742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.     10-21-71BP{398}

NOTE:  A photograph of the Rev. Leicester R. Longden is available.

A UMNS Commentary
By the Rev. Leicester R.  Longden*

Everybody has an opinion about the Bible, and nearly everyone has found a
use for it.

Publishers make money on "Bible codes" and predictions of Armageddon.
Politicians quote it when they want to claim the moral high ground.
Religious leaders define themselves and their followers by their
interpretations of it.

Some years ago, prominent conservative theologian Harold Lindsell launched a
Battle Over the Bible in the religious press with a book by that title. In
recent years, the modernist Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote a book declaring
himself to be a prophet Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism.
     
The Bible has also figured prominently in the culture wars, either as the
guarantor of one's right to speak for God or as the enslaver of human
freedom. But this is precisely the problem. These contrasting views of the
Bible's authority caricature the way religious communities have read the
Bible and been shaped by it.

As Richard Hays puts it in his recently published book, The Moral Vision of
the New Testament: "One reason that the church has become so bitterly
divided over moral issues is that the community of faith has uncritically
accepted the categories of popular U.S. discourse about these topics,
without subjecting them to sustained critical scrutiny in light of a close
reading of the Bible."
     
Thus it is encouraging that the United Methodist Church has begun to turn
its attention toward a more nuanced communal struggle with scriptural
authority. This was evident in the theological diversity dialogue sponsored
by the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious
Concerns in November 1997 and February 1998. The diverse parties in that
dialogue discovered they could not reach consensus on contested issues like
homosexuality until they were ready to examine together their underlying
assumptions about revelation and scriptural authority.
     
Following the recommendations of the diversity dialogue, outlined in a
document called "In Search of Unity," the Council of Bishops recently held a
consultation on scriptural authority. Now the commission plans to sponsor a
consultation in December to explore United Methodist understandings of "the
authority of Scripture and the nature of revelation."
     
These steps to explore the authority of the Bible in the church are coming
none too soon for Methodism. If recent commentaries and news articles
published by United Methodist News Service are any indication, many public
figures in United Methodism speak of the Bible in ways that either
oversimplify the issues or demonize their opponents.
     
Take, for example, the recent commentary by Bishop Kenneth Carder, "Bible's
true authority lies in power to change" (UMNS #311, 6/2/99). He rightly
argues that Scripture in the church is a "means of grace" that has the power
to shape and change us. He denounces the use of Scripture merely as a source
of proof-texts for winning arguments. Unfortunately, the bishop then
dismisses the role of argument altogether, as if the Bible's transforming
power had nothing to do with truth and good arguments. He slips, perhaps
unintentionally, into a pietist perspective.
     
Or consider the commentary by the Rev. Neill McFarland, a professor emeritus
of Southern Methodist University. His column, "When use becomes abuse" (UMNS
#380, 7/21/99), attacks those on the religious right who use the Bible as a
weapon to validate their partisan stance. He pokes fun at their "graceless
judgmentalism" and "enslavement to the Bible" that make "a mockery of the
concept of scriptural authority."
     
While there is substance to his warnings about the misuse of the Bible,
McFarland's attempt to define "the very nature of biblical authority" is
itself a partisan interpretation. That he attacks only the Bible misusers on
the religious right betrays his unawareness of the partisan purposes of his
own argument. He can envision only two perspectives on biblical authority:
the "sanctimonious fantasy" of those he attacks and his own view of
"informed reasonableness."
     
Both the bishop and the professor are as bound by their presuppositions
about the Bible as the "partisans" they attack. One reduces biblical
authority to a pietist experience of spiritual change; the other relativizes
it as the "derivative wisdom" of "human experience." Neither of them escapes
that cultural warping by which arguments about the Bible are wrenched into
the predetermined shapes of right/left, liberal/conservative,
rigid/flexible, reasonable/irrational, etc.
     
No wonder the church is held hostage to extremists who submit every issue to
this relentless rhetoric. Whether it is the dissenters who call for
"ecclesiastical disobedience," the hard-liners whose "right doctrine" is a
thinly veiled rage, or the "centrists" claiming to be "neutral" - too many
voices in our church today are intellectually captive to the cultural
polarity of liberal/conservative.
     
The dialogue planned for December is a significant opportunity for our
denomination to put its best pastoral and theological minds to work to halt
the very real decline of scriptural authority in our church. In the midst of
numerous partisan theological proposals to reshape the church's scriptural
and doctrinal heritage, we must struggle together to hear the word of
Scripture, which teaches us not to be conformed to this age. 

Scripture says we are to be "transformed by the renewing of our minds so
that we may
rightly discern the will of God" (Romans 12:2). This will mean nothing less
than our best arguments, our deepest prayers and a sustained communal
attentiveness to Scripture. It will mean listening again for a Word that
challenges all our cultural commitments.

# # # 

*Longden is senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Lansing,
Mich. He is a clergy member of the West Michigan Annual Conference of the
United Methodist Church, where he serves on the Conference Board of Ordained
Ministry.

Commentaries provided by United Methodist News Service do not necessarily
represent the opinions or policies of UMNS or the United Methodist Church.

______________
United Methodist News Service
http://www.umc.org/umns/
newsdesk@umcom.umc.org
(615)742-5472