{"id":13883,"date":"2013-02-18T15:29:10","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T20:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=13883"},"modified":"2013-02-18T15:29:10","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T20:29:10","slug":"the-bible-steve-chalke-wilberforce-and-the-civil-war-as-a-theological-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/02\/18\/the-bible-steve-chalke-wilberforce-and-the-civil-war-as-a-theological-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bible, Steve Chalke, Wilberforce and ‘The Civil War as a Theological Crisis’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cHow has the whole Church found itself believing something about slavery which is so at odds with the Bible?\u201d prominent British evangelical Steve Chalke asks.<\/p>\n

Chalke asked that in his essay, \u201cA Matter of Integrity: The Church, sexuality, inclusion and an open conversation<\/a>.\u201d That\u2019s the essay in which Chalke argues for his fellow Christians to begin recognizing, and celebrating, same-sex marriages. It\u2019s the essay, in other words, that resulted in \u201cprominent British evangelical Steve Chalke\u201d being reclassified by many of his fellow Christians as \u201ccontroversial post-<\/em>evangelical Steve Chalke.\u201d<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>But let\u2019s get back to his question, because it\u2019s an interesting and important one. The whole Christian church has, indeed, come to believe \u201csomething about slavery\u201d that is \u201cat odds with the Bible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or, rather, that is \u201cat odds with the Bible\u201d as it is read and cited by most evangelical Christians<\/em>. Chalke\u2019s whole point in asking this question, and the whole point of his essay, is that this approach to the scripture \u2014 treating it as an almanac of clobber texts \u2014 inevitably produces a Bible that is at odds with the Bible.<\/p>\n

The question of slavery is the key example of this partly because it presents such a stark contrast between what the whole church now believes and teaches \u2014 unanimously and unambiguously \u2014 and what the text of the Bible manifestly and undeniably says. The question of slavery is also the key example because it was this exact question that created and shaped the approach to reading and interpreting the Bible that evangelical Christians today take for granted.<\/p>\n

For a vivid and entertaining consideration of Chalke\u2019s question, see also this fun video from NonStampCollector<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\n<p>(There\u2019s a <a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/nonstampcollector\/2013\/01\/30\/bible-slavery-totally-different\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">transcript at this link<\/a> for those who cannot watch video.)<\/p>\n<p>The God-as-<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Karl_Pilkington\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Karl Pilkington<\/a> business goes on just a bit too long there (much like the Karl Pilkington-as-Karl Pilkington business tends to go on just a bit too long), but the video hits on the main salient points raised by Chalke\u2019s question:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> Slavery is morally abhorrent.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2.<\/strong> Slavery is permitted, condoned and\/or commanded by multiple passages of the Bible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3.<\/strong> Yet slavery is also condemned by the Bible\u2019s repeated condemnations of injustice and oppression.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4.<\/strong> The same Bible that says \u201cDo not mistreat or oppress a foreigner\u201d also permits the lifelong enslavement of foreigners.<\/p>\n<p><strong> 5.<\/strong> The laws of Moses prohibited Israelites from enslaving one another in the way that they were permitted to enslave foreigners and outsiders.<\/p>\n<p>That last point is central to Steve Chalke\u2019s argument, what he refers to as \u201cthe nature of inclusion,\u201d a point we\u2019ll return to in a later discussion. Here we\u2019ll just note, again, that this message of ever-expanding inclusion is a central theme of the book of Acts and \u2014 as I\u2019ve argued repeatedly \u2014 the key given to Peter at Pentecost and again in his rooftop vision. From now on, God told Peter, <em>everybody<\/em> is an insider. \u201cGod has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean,\u201d Peter said. So whatever rules there might have been permitting us to treat profane and unclean people differently no longer matter because that category of people is now an empty set.<\/p>\n<p>The question of slavery is inescapable in Steve Chalke\u2019s argument because none of what he is saying is new. We Christians have been over all of this before, in great detail. Every word of Chalke\u2019s essay echoes an argument from an earlier generation, just as every word from his critics also carries such an echo. This is not new.<\/p>\n<p>Chalke acknowledges the existence of the clobber texts and engages them, resolutely going toe-to-toe in an exegetical debate with any who would say that this handful of biblical passages prohibits his conclusion for inclusion. But the real force of Chalke\u2019s argument is not from such narrow exegesis involving such a narrow set of passages. He\u2019s making a bigger, broader argument \u2014 that the overwhelming trajectory of scripture demands a hermeneutic of love and inclusion, and that no single verse or collection of single verses can properly be understood as contradicting or constraining\u00a0 that larger context.<\/p>\n<p>Again, this is not a new argument. Every step of Chalke\u2019s essay, every idea he promotes, is explicitly parallel to similar arguments from the earlier debate over slavery, in which many white evangelicals argued for precisely the approach to the Bible that Chalke advocates.<\/p>\n<p>And they were right. Everyone says so today \u2014 the \u201cwhole church\u201d is agreed on this point. There may still be some who privately disagree, but the anti-slavery side of the argument prevailed and the question is now regarded as so firmly settled that today few would dare to suggest otherwise in public.<\/p>\n<p>Go back 150 years, though, and it was a different story. In their day, the white evangelicals who argued that the clobber verses could only be properly understood through the lens of a hermeneutic of love were denounced as enemies of the Bible and deniers of the clear authority of scripture. \u201cInerrancy\u201d hadn\u2019t been invented yet, but the ancestors of the inerrantists of today decried the faithlessness of anyone who suggested that a face-value reading of the clobber texts did not authoritatively settle the matter in defense of slavery.<\/p>\n<p>The arguments of that side \u2014 the <em>losing<\/em> side, the side that everyone today agrees was deeply, repugnantly <em>wrong<\/em> \u2014 can be heard today in the condemnation directed at Steve Chalke and anyone who dares agree with him.<\/p>\n<p>Hearing those echoes sent me to my bookshelf for Mark Noll\u2019s terrific 2006 history, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Civil-War-Theological-Crisis\/dp\/0807830127\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.<\/em><\/a> (I wrote about that book last fall in a post called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2012\/10\/10\/the-clobber-verses-of-slavery-the-slavery-of-clobber-verses\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">The clobber verses of slavery & the slavery of clobber verses<\/a>.\u201d An article by Noll based on his chapter on white evangelicals\u2019 biblical arguments can be found here: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.religion-online.org\/showarticle.asp?title=3403\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Battle for the Bible<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s impossible to read that book without an eerie sense of how familiar all the arguments and debates are to the debates that continue even today among white evangelicals. Take for example this statement by a white Baptist from Kentucky:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>All that God teaches us in Scripture is right. Christ and his apostles do not indicate at any point that the Old Testament is immoral, and in fact say the opposite. To say otherwise is to indicate that God is not absolutely right, and his word is not trustable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtlife\/2013\/02\/can-a-messiah-college-ot-professor-really-teach-the-bibles-immoral\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Is that from 2013 or from 1863?<\/a> It could easily be from either. White Christians in the American South have been saying this same thing for centuries. That statement \u2014 exactly that statement \u2014 was how white Christians in the American South turned their defense of slavery into, as Noll writes, \u201ca defense of Scripture itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s more from Noll about the way the defense of slavery became a defense of the Bible in the American South:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The procedure, which by 1860 had been repeated countless times, was uncomplicated. First, open the Scriptures and read, at say <a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=228218513\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Leviticus 25:45<\/a>, or, even better, at <a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=228218533\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">1 Corinthians 7:20-21<\/a>. Second, decide for yourself what these passages mean. Don\u2019t wait for a bishop or a king or a president or a meddling Yankee to tell you what the passage means, but decide for yourself. Third, if anyone tries to convince you that you are not interpreting such passages in the natural, commonsensical, ordinary meaning of the words, look hard at what such a one believes with respect to other biblical doctrines. If you find in what he or she says about such doctrines the least hint of unorthodoxy, as inevitably you will, then you may rest assured that you are being asked to give up not only the plain meaning of Scripture, but also the entire trust in the Bible that made the country into such a great Christian civilization.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And here is Steve Chalke covering the exact same ground in his British context:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>William Wilberforce and friends were condemned by huge swathes of the Church as they fought for abolition. They were dismissed as liberal and unbiblical for their \u2018deliberate abandonment of the authority of Scripture\u2019. But, on the basis of a straightforward biblical exegesis of the Bible\u2019s text, their critics were right.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026 How then did Wilberforce and friends reach their conclusions? It was their view of the proper interpretation of Scripture. They saw that the biblical writers did not take blind dictation from God, instead, their personalities, cultural and social understandings all played a part in the formation of their writing. So, rather than basing their approach on isolated proof texts, the abolitionists built their stance around the deeper resonance of the trajectory of Scripture. Their compass for this re-calibration was Jesus who, through his inclusion of both women and various groups of socially unacceptable groups of his day, challenged social norms and perceived orthodoxy.<\/p>\n<p>The Bible does not always speak with one voice. It is a very diverse collection of books, written in many different times and cultures, containing an array of perspectives, not a few tensions, and even some apparent contradictions. Instead of pretending that this diversity does not exist, our task is to do justice to all these components as well as holding them together with a coherent theological approach.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026 Through my hermeneutical lens, the Bible is the account of the ancient conversation initiated, inspired and guided by God with and among humanity. It is a conversation where various, sometimes harmonious and sometimes discordant, human voices contribute to the gradually growing picture of the character of Yahweh; fully revealed only in Jesus. But it is also a conversation that, rather than ending with the finalization of the canon, continues beyond it involving all of those who give themselves to Christ\u2019s on-going redemptive movement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And the response to Chalke, today, is exactly the same as the response Noll described to antislavery Christians in the 1860s.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>“How has the whole Church found itself believing something about slavery which is so at odds with the Bible?” prominent British evangelical Steve Chalke asks. It’s an interesting question. Christians today unanimously condemn slavery as a grave moral evil. The Bible condones it. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Bible, Steve Chalke, Wilberforce and 'The Civil War as a Theological Crisis'","description":"\"How has the whole Church found itself believing something about slavery which is so at odds with the Bible?\" prominent British evangelical Steve Chalke asks. It's an interesting question. Christians today unanimously condemn slavery as a grave moral evil. The Bible condones it. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}