The best way for conservative churches to produce \u201cliberal\u201d biblical scholars is to keep encouraging young people to read the Bible\u2026Reading the Bible is a terrific cure for fundamentalism. That\u2019s exactly how many of us so-called liberal Bible scholars got our start.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Those quotes are from near the beginning and end of the article, \u201cWhere Do \u2018Liberal\u2019 Bible Scholars Come From?\u201d at the Huffington Post<\/em><\/a> (HT John Byron<\/a>).<\/p>\n
Carey\u2019s perspective is worth comparing and contrasting with that found in two recent posts at Unreasonable Faith, one about Ken Ham<\/a>, the other about four ancient assumptions about Biblical interpretation<\/a>. What I would add or comment in response to those posts is that for Ham and other fundamentalists, there is a higher authority than the Bible, and it isn\u2019t God, but rather their doctrine about Scripture being inerrant. If one has that bulwark in place, it often turns out that nothing, not even an avalanche of evidence provided by the Bible itself, can persuade someone to change their mind. (See my recent post, about needing to choose between inerrancy and the Bible, for more thoughts on this topic<\/a>).<\/p>\n
As Carey notes, reading the Bible carefully often results in our noticing what\u00a0isn\u2019t<\/em> there \u2013 such as the idea that one will need to get the mark of the beast<\/a> in order to obtain school lunches<\/a>\u00a0(if you haven\u2019t heard about this, click through or Google it to read about new palm vein scanners that would allow lunch lines in Louisiana schools to move faster \u2013 if those in line can get around the fundamentalist protesters). The whole notion of the mark of the beast as microchip or UPC code is as absent from the Book of Revelation as clues to its reference being to the ancient Roman empire are present.<\/p>\n
But discovering that takes reading carefully, not in a purely superficial, impressionistic sort of way. And that careful reading does indeed contribute to people becoming liberal Biblical scholars \u2013 not only in Greg Carey\u2019s case, but also my own.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Today\u2019s \u201cQuote of the Day\u201d comes from Greg Carey: The best way for conservative churches to produce \u201cliberal\u201d biblical scholars is to keep encouraging young people to read the Bible\u2026Reading the Bible is a terrific cure for fundamentalism. That\u2019s exactly how many of us so-called liberal Bible scholars got our start. Those quotes are from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,131,17,139,43,81,88],"tags":[255,1140,1148,1311,1848,3678,4207,6527,6739,6778,7017,8644,10847,10866,13322],"class_list":["post-8985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-christianity-religion","category-education","category-fundamentalism-religion","category-inerrancy","category-revelation-bible","category-society-of-biblical-literature","tag-255","tag-bible","tag-biblical","tag-book-of-revelation","tag-christians","tag-fundamentalists","tag-greg-carey","tag-liberal","tag-louisiana","tag-lunches","tag-mark-of-the-beast","tag-palm","tag-scanner","tag-scholar","tag-vein"],"yoast_head":"\n
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