Confronting Critical Issues in Church

I’m using “critical” here in two senses: 1) critical study of the Bible, as in using the methodologies of the historical-critical method and 2) critical in the sense of “of key importance.

I believe that issues such as the inspiration of scripture, the nature of scripture, historicity (or not) of various passages, and creation and evolution should be addressed in church. They should be addressed in Sunday School, starting very young. In the modern world, we cannot expect children, not to mention older church members, never to be exposed to various alternate ideas.

I think that would, in itself, make a good case for seriously addressing these issues in church. If you can’t restrict the flow of information, it’s counterproductive, in the long run, to try. I believe it would be a bad idea to restrict this information in any case. People, including young people, should be encouraged to make a fully informed choice. But the fact that the nature of the world means they will get all that information just makes the idea of narrowly indoctrinating them on a particular view, and/or hoping that certain questions won’t come up, impractical as well as just plain wrong.

Ken Schenck brought this issue to my mind with his post How to Create a Fundamentalist. He notes: “All you have to do is bring history and context into the chemical process in a confrontative or combative way.” (You really need to read his whole post to get the context for this! He makes an important point.) Now trust me. If a young adult first encounters critical scholarship in a secular college, he or she will certainly encounter it in a confrontational or combative way.

Now don’t misunderstand me. A certain number of readers will probably assume that I mean we should somehow inoculate church members against the attack on their faith by critical methologies. I think that is going to be a failure as well.

Too often when we teach about other faiths in church, it becomes a matter of teaching them the most common stereotype of people of that faith and how to convert them. Just go to any Christian book store and look at short guides to other religions. Most of them will be of this type. It’s almost guaranteed that if a 100 page book covers several faiths and supposedly tells you how to “reach them for Christ” the description will be limited. Supposing someone learned about Christianity in 10 pages or less. Would you think they were ready to seriously address Christians?

I bring this up by analogy, because another approach to teaching something about biblical criticism and the myriad of related topics in church is to have a class that would be best titled “Biblical Critics and How Bad They Are.” This is the same sort of approach. I don’t think one has an adequate idea of critical methodologies, even for a layperson, unless one has actually worked with the texts looking at the process and results. (I have a brief series on my other blog, Threads from Henry’s Web, touching on some of the basics of biblical criticism, along with another series on basic ideas about origins.) But frequently what we hear is a litany of “silly” results (from the viewpoint of the speaker) so that we can laugh at critical scholars and go back to believe limited things.

But I think liberals and progressives are often weak in this area as well. They very often teach results of critical scholarship, supported largely by the authoritative credentials of particular teachers or speakers. I recall one Sunday School class that invited me to discuss the Jesus Seminar. They generally accepted the results of the seminar, and were pretty sure that conservative critics were wrong, but they actually had no idea how the seminar produced its results. So I took them to a pericope, looking at how one finds the boundaries, and then examining some of the criteria for authenticity. It was complex but enlightening.

I could have said that I disagree with significant portions of the Jesus Seminar methodology (I do) and cited other scholarship that opposes it, but instead I chose (and will always choose) to break things down to nuts and bolts, if I can possibly find the time. There are, of course, many other methodologies to look at in studying the historical Jesus, and I think if one puts in the effort, one can teach a lay audience a great deal more than we do.

Instead of this, I think we tend to teach biblical studies (lite) and theology (very lite), repeating the same sort of shallow things. There is plenty out there to teach, and if we’re afraid of discussing the major issues, we (in the mainline protestant churches especially) will continue to lose.