{"id":25978,"date":"2014-12-18T18:57:53","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T23:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=25978"},"modified":"2014-12-18T18:57:53","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T23:57:53","slug":"the-bible-used-to-get-a-lot-of-things-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/12\/18\/the-bible-used-to-get-a-lot-of-things-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bible used to get a lot of things wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Amanda Marcotte writes at Salon about \u201c10 things conservative Christians got horribly wrong<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking over the long history of people claiming to be speaking for God\u2019s wishes, it quickly becomes evident that Christians are frequently on the wrong side of history. Here are 10 things that American Christians of the conservative stripe got completely wrong when they were so sure they were speaking on God\u2019s behalf.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I realize that Marcotte\u00a0is both an atheist (gasp!<\/em>) and, even worse, a feminist<\/em>, and thus she\u2019s not someone that conservative Christians are inclined to listen to. So let me point out that many politically conservative white evangelical men would agree with her on at least some of the items in her list.<\/p>\n

For example, the first item on Amanda Marcotte\u2019s list of \u201cthings conservative Christians got horribly wrong\u201d is slavery. Southern Baptist spokesman Russell Moore agrees with her. Here\u2019s what Moore recently said<\/a> on that topic:<\/p>\n

The founders of the Southern Baptist Convention were wrong and wickedly wrong on the issue of human slavery. And the problem wasn\u2019t just that they were on the wrong side of a social issue; they were on the wrong side of Jesus and the gospel when it came to brothers and sisters in Christ made in the image of God that they treated with injustice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moore would probably (I think<\/em>) agree with about half of Marcotte\u2019s list. I\u2019m guessing he\u2019d also agree that conservative Christians who defended segregation were \u201chorribly wrong.\u201d And I\u2019d guess he would agree\u00a0that Prohibition was a mistake, and that opposing women\u2019s suffrage was wrong (but not opposing women\u2019s ordination). And I\u2019m pretty sure he would say now that evangelicals\u2019\u00a0hostile anti-Catholicism during\u00a0the 19th and most of the 20th centuries was something that shouldn\u2019t have happened.<\/p>\n

But he would likely disagree \u2014 strenuously \u2014 with the other half of Marcotte\u2019s list, which includes things like evolution, official prayer in schools, contraception and marriage equality.*<\/p>\n

On all of those points, of course, Moore and his fellow \u201cconservative\u201d Christians would insist that their own opinions aren\u2019t the issue here. What matters, rather, is what the Bible clearly says.<\/em> It\u2019s not that \u201cconservative Christians\u201d reject evolution, but that the Bible<\/em> insists it\u2019s wrong. And same-sex marriage is anathema not because \u201cconservative Christians\u201d think so, but because that is what the Bible clearly teaches.<\/em> And contraception is wrong because the Bible clearly<\/em>\u00a0says so (right there in \u2026 um \u2026 I\u2019ll have to get back to you with chapter and verse on that one).<\/p>\n

These conservative Christians would object to Marcotte\u2019s assertion that they are wrong on these matters. What she\u2019s really saying, they would say, is that the Bible<\/em> is wrong about such things.<\/p>\n

The problem with that argument is that this is exactly what those earlier conservative Christians said about slavery, segregation, women\u2019s suffrage, Prohibition, and the Papist Menace.\u00a0If Russell Moore\u2019s Southern Baptist predecessors had been confronted with Moore\u2019s claim that they were \u201cwrong and wickedly wrong on the issue of human slavery,\u201d they wouldn\u2019t have defended their opinion \u2014 they would have said it wasn\u2019t about their opinion, but about the clear teaching and inerrant authority of the holy Word of God. And then they\u2019d have viciously attacked Moore for his refusal to accept the clear and unambiguous authority of scripture.<\/p>\n

\"You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you ...\"<\/a>
\u201cYou shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you \u2026\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This isn\u2019t speculation about how they would respond. This is what they actually did. Those pro-slavery Southern Baptists were \u2014 regularly and repeatedly \u2014 accused of being wickedly wrong about slavery. And their response \u2014 documented in thousands of volumes \u2014 was always to attack their accusers for infidelity to the clear teaching of the Bible.<\/p>\n

Anti-slavery Christians, in response, insisted they weren\u2019t criticizing\u00a0the Bible itself, only the way that pro-slavery Christians had chosen to interpret<\/em> the Bible. The problem isn\u2019t with what the Bible says, they argued, but with how the pro-slavery Southern Baptists were reading it and misusing it.<\/p>\n

But that response only made those pro-slavery Baptists angrier. There can be only one way<\/em> to read the Bible, they insisted. There can be only one way<\/em> to interpret it. More than that, really what they were arguing was that the Bible didn\u2019t need to be interpreted at all.<\/p>\n

That claim is the identifying characteristic of the people Marcotte identifies as \u201cconservative Christians.\u201d They all share this idea that the Bible is uniform and unambiguous \u2014 that despite being a diverse collection of ancient texts written over a period of centuries in diverse contexts for diverse audiences, it never displays a diversity of perspectives. The Bible, they insist, never contradicts itself and never presents opposing views, and thus requires little interpretation for a contemporary reader.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, while this view of the Bible is horrifically misleading, it\u2019s also widely accepted not just by conservative Christians, but by many of their critics. Thus we see things like Marcotte writing \u201cthe Bible clearly has a positive view of slavery\u201d \u2014 uncritically accepting\u00a0not just the illiterate anti-hermeneutic of the fundies, but even their favorite thought-suppressing\u00a0adverb (\u201cthe Bible clearly \u2026\u201d).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Bible does, in fact, contain a great deal of material that endorses various forms of slavery. That is undeniable. Slavery is, in various parts of the Bible, commended and commanded. In some places in the Bible, an abundance of slaves is presented as evidence of God\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n

But the Bible also does, in fact, contain a great deal of material that attacks<\/em> slavery. That is also undeniable. Slavery is, in various parts of the Bible, condemned as contemptible. In some places in the Bible, an abundance of slaves is presented as evidence of wickedness, disobedience and rebellion against God.<\/p>\n

Such contradictory arguments can be bewildering if you haven\u2019t got some way of determining which part of this biblical argument is the winning side. (Jubilee,<\/em> people, it\u2019s always about Jubilee. All of it.)<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no way of doing that if you\u2019ve decided ahead of time that such intra-biblical disputes cannot be allowed to exist. Pretending they don\u2019t exist doesn\u2019t make them go away. Refusing to acknowledge their existence doesn\u2019t make them vanish in a puff of smoke \u2014 no matter how much \u201cconservative Christians\u201d wish that it were so.<\/p>\n

This is a huge problem for 21st-century white evangelicals. Like Russell Moore, they\u2019re mostly\u00a0convinced \u2014 now \u2014 that white evangelical support for slavery had been a terrible mistake. Yet they still want to cling to the pro-slavery Christians\u2019 insistence that the Bible is uniform and unambiguous and that no interpretation is necessary to understand what it clearly says.<\/p>\n

So while they\u2019re pretty sure those earlier, pro-slavery Christians were wrong, they\u2019re not\u00a0able to explain how<\/em> or why<\/em> they were wrong. And thus, today, they are also unable to explain how or why they themselves are right about all the things they claim \u201cthe Bible clearly says.\u201d<\/p>\n

If those early Southern Baptists were wrong about slavery, then they were wrong about the Bible \u2014 wrong about how to read the Bible. <\/em>They were wrong about slavery because<\/em> they were wrong about how to read the Bible.<\/p>\n

Contemporary white evangelicals\u00a0want to retain the same approach to reading the Bible, but not the same conclusions about slavery. That doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

If you want to retain the anti-hermeneutic of the early Southern Baptists while rejecting their pro-slavery views, then you can\u2019t say, \u201cThe founders of the Southern Baptist Convention were wrong and wickedly wrong on the issue of human slavery.\u201d You have to say, instead, that the Bible itself<\/em> used to be wrong and wickedly wrong on slavery, but somehow isn\u2019t anymore (even though it never changed).<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not willing to reject that anti-hermeneutic, then you have to say that the Bible itself used to be wrong about a lot of things.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* I\u2019m a bit worried about mentioning item No. 4 on Amanda Marcotte\u2019s list:<\/p>\n

4) Pain relief for childbirth.<\/strong> The Bible explicitly lays out pain in childbirth as Eve\u2019s punishment for sin, so unsurprisingly, that\u2019s what many Christians in the 19th century believed had to be so. Once reliable pain relief in childbirth began to be developed, therefore, there was a lot of resistance to it from Christians who feared it defied God to let women have some relief.\u00a0\u2026 Eventually, the argument that women owed it to God to suffer through childbirth faded to the fringes of right-wing Christianity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s true that this was once conventional wisdom \u2014 a widespread argument that shaped common practice. Childbirth was seen as something that ought<\/em> to be painful, because Eve. Today,\u00a0though,\u00a0that argument is a mostly forgotten relic of history.<\/p>\n

But today we also have a reflexively polarized religious right that trips over itself in a rush to oppose anything and everything that we evil liberals and baby-killers view approvingly. Just by mentioning stuff like this, we may be giving them ideas. If Amanda Marcotte approves of reliable pain relief in childbirth, that probably means that Barack Obama does too. And Sandra Fluke and Rachel Held Evans and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Brian McLaren and Planned Parenthood. Probably even Rob Bell.<\/p>\n

And once they realize that, they\u2019re likely to start angrily opposing such pain relief as another evil symptom of women\u2019s lib and the sexual revolution. After all, if bearing children isn\u2019t as painful and dangerous as it was back in the Golden Age, then it\u2019s like we\u2019re giving these wanton hussies permission to go out and do the sex without the fear of pain and suffering that God intended to accompany such filthy behavior, etc., etc.<\/p>\n

If you think that\u2019s an exaggeration, keep in mind that this is exactly what has happened in recent years when it comes to the abruptly newfound white evangelical opposition to contraception \u2014 a position that has surged to prominence without any\u00a0credible biblical, ethical, scientific or logical argument to support it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If those early Southern Baptists were wrong about slavery, then they were wrong about the Bible — wrong about how to read the Bible. They were wrong about slavery because they were wrong about how to read the Bible. Contemporary white evangelicals want to retain the same approach to reading the Bible, but not the same conclusions about slavery. 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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 SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Bible used to get a lot of things wrong","description":"If those early Southern Baptists were wrong about slavery, then they were wrong about the Bible -- wrong about how to read the Bible. They were wrong about slavery because they were wrong about how to read the Bible. 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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\/25978","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=25978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}