The 'Battle for the Bible'

Roger Olson on “When did evangelicalism start to go wrong (right)?“

The Battle for the Bible launched an evangelical heresy-hunt that reached epic proportions within just a few years.  …  One by one, evangelical and Baptist denominations and institutions imposed inerrancy statements on their employees and faculties.  Fuller is one evangelical seminary that did not give in to the pressure, although Fuller faculty members had to publish numerous defenses of their belief in the authority of Scripture to fight off the barbarians at the gates.  (I call them that because many of inerrancy’s advocates behaved like barbarians.  They were not interested in dialogue or understanding others’ actual views; they used the word “inerrancy” like a cudgel to beat up on people.)

Peter Rollins on “How to Cut Up the Bible Without Anyone Noticing”

There have been various attempts by the liberal tradition within Christianity to remove parts of the Bible that they don’t agree with (e.g. the Jefferson Bible), something that conservative Christians have vehemently attacked. However the truth is that the conservative Christians simply engage in a different, more clandestine, form of deletion. One that doesn’t require physically cutting up the text: they do the cutting internally.