\u201cExperts say Bible has role in American life,\u201d ran the dog-bites-man headline in the Duke Chronicle. \u201cContrary to popular belief,\u201d the article begins, \u201cthe Bible affects people\u2019s everyday lives because of its influence on the political and social realm, experts said.\u201d The experts were on hand for a day-and-a-half conference on \u201cThe Bible in the Public Square\u201d sponsored by Duke\u2019s Center for Jewish Studies (with help from the Religion Department and Southern Methodist University). <\/p>\n
Panels ranged from The Bible and Popular Culture to the Bible and Middle East Policy. (All sessions were videotaped and can be viewed in their entirety on the conference website\u2013eventually.) Jacques Berlinerblau, a wisecracking former jazz vibraphonist from Brooklyn who now teaches at Georgetown, opened the conference with a paper on the Bible and presidential politics, reminding us that how scholars read the Bible and assess Biblical literacy is very different from how politicians (and ordinary Bible-believers) read and deploy the Good Book. He also plumbed the mystery of why no one has succeeded in organizing a voting coalition made up of all the religious folk left out of the Religious Right\u2014most Catholics, mainline Protestants, non-Orthodox Jews, Unitarians, Quakers, Pagans, seekers, and so on. These modernists would number some 90-100 million and be electorally decisive.<\/p>\n
Politics was a concern throughout, from a session on the Bible and America\u2019s Founding Era, which included a stem-winding talk from John Fea (Has this man ever considered running for office? He\u2019s got the stature and vocal chops to make a fine congressman at the very least), who took on the work of David Barton, explaining that though the American Revolution was surely drenched in Biblical language the literalists were actually on the Loyalist side. Shalom Goldman delivered a paper on \u201cGod\u2019s American Israel,\u201d which detailed the centuries-long American fascination with the Hebrew language and tropes (not so much actual Jews), evidenced most strikingly in Mormonism<\/a>. \u201cIf Israel hadn\u2019t been created,\u201d Goldman asserted, \u201cthe U.S. would have had to invent it.\u201d \u201cExperts say Bible has role in American life,\u201d ran the dog-bites-man headline in the Duke Chronicle. \u201cContrary to popular belief,\u201d the article begins, \u201cthe Bible affects people\u2019s everyday lives because of its influence on the political and social realm, experts said.\u201d The experts were on hand for a day-and-a-half conference on \u201cThe Bible in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"