First in a series of sermons contra fundamentalism, or 21st Century Theology for Thinking Christians
Texts: Deut. 30:11014; John 1:1-5; 2 Timothy 3:14-17
Everyday in Petersburg, Kentucky, thousands of people flock to a so-called museum, called the Creation Museum, to see portrayed in animatronics, scenes from the book of Genesis, along with dinosaurs and people co-existing in ways that scientists insist they never did. Attendance has far outstripped predictions, and now the owners of this establishment are building an actual life-size replica of Noah’s Ark, as a theme park nearby, making Kentucky look somewhat absurd to the scientific communities of the world. For the founding corporation, Answers in Genesis, the world is a little over 4000 years old, and the stories in Genesis of creation, of Noah and the ark, are all to be understood as historically, scientifically, factually true in every detail. Despite the fact that the Bible does not mention dinosaurs at all (other than Leviathan who sports in the seas and might have been a whale or porpoise), they have human beings living side by side with these ancient extinct reptiles.
Recently, on NPR, a story was aired about debate amongst evangelical Christians whether Adam and Eve were real, factual human beings—the very first human beings, from whom all other homo-sapiens have descended. Some evangelicals dared to suggest that Adam meant simply “man”, a play on Hebrew words where adamah means dust from the ground, and Eve, a name not used at al in the Genesis text, comes from the word “ishah”, deriving from “ish” which means man. These two, in the Genesis accounts of creation (of which there are two, by the way), were, they argued archetypes of the first human beings and not real.
Immediately, Albert Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Seminary up the road in Louisville, got into the debate insisting that “the denial of a historic Adam means not only the rejection of a clear biblical teaching, but also the denial of the biblical doctrine of the Fall, leading to a very different way of telling the story and the meaning of the Gospel.” For Dr. Mohler, if you don’t have a “fall” of Adam and Eve into sin, then you don’t have need of the redemptive acts of Jesus. The whole biblical narrative depends, for him, on Adam and Eve being real, singular individuals who lived in time and space and were directly created by God, and did not evolve from some other species of bi-pedal mammals.
A Gallup poll taken this past year says that 3 of every 10 Americans interpret the Bible literally as inerrant (without error). The high point in the percentage of Americans favoring a literal interpretation of the Bible was 40% recorded in 1980 and 1984. On the other hand, a Rasmussen poll taken in 2005, said that 63% of Americans believe the Bible is literally true; with 77% of Republicans believing in the literal truth compared to 59% of Democrats. I know that it often feels like the Rasmussen poll is the more accurate, but I suspect that the recent Gallup poll of nearly 1/3 holding to the literal truth of the Bible is actually more accurate. Gallup said further that of those who attend religious services on a weekly basis, 54% believe in the literal interpretation, more than twice the percentage of those who attend church less often. As one might expect, belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible declines as educational attainment increases.
I have neighbors, both college educated however, who insist that the billion year old fossils found and reported each year were created only 4000 plus years ago, and placed on the planet earth to “test our faith”. They thus deny the philosophical and scientific principle known as “Occam’s Razor” which says that given a multiplicity of explanations, the one most likely to be true will be the one that is most simple and straightforward, that is—these fossils are in fact millions of years old, and the earth itself some 4.5 billion years old, and homo-sapiens seem to be somewhere between a million to a million and a half years old as a species, and have occupied less than 2% of the entire history of the planet.
Why should we be concerned that these basically good and decent people hold a belief to us that seems antithetical to science, geology, and anthropology? What is at risk? Quickly, let me suggest, that such a position becomes an impediment to science and the teaching of science to our children, first of all, and hence a major obstacle to looking for solutions to the earth’s problems. Rep. Jim Gooch of the Ky State Legislature is representative of people who hold these views becoming problematic. Gooch believes quite sincerely that we need not worry about depleting the earth’s resources or damaging the environment through the use of fossil fuels, because God, according to Genesis, has given human beings dominion over all the earth, and God will provide…according to the Noah story, so that the earth will never again be destroyed as the story says it was at the time of the flood. Thus efforts to legislate regulation of air pollution, mountain top removal, the protection of water—are all blocked by Rep Gooch who chairs the natural resources committee in the state house. God has promised in the Holy Bible to take care of things, so we need not.
Second, we should be concerned from a Christian/religious perspective because many experts on religion, and many religious leaders think that we have no more than one generation left, before the Bible and the biblical view of life will be cast aside like the gods of Olympus. If we do not rescue the Bible from the literalists, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong suggests that “the result will be a revulsion that will accelerate the total secularization of the life of this society, putting an end completely to the religious traditions of our past. That process,” he says, “will move us beyond the reach of a revival.”
And it may be even more serious: An American population that is fed pablum, feel-good religion, security and certainty—based on an assertion that the Bible is literally, factually, historically, scientifically true in every jot and tittle—will lose much of its capacity for moral reasoning and moral decision making. Take a look at the column in today’s paper by David Brooks. A Roman Catholic on Transy’s staff asked me what I thought of this column several days ago. I remarked that I think the problem is not limited to the young, but to a generation of people, say 50 and younger, who at least in their church life, do not know the Bible and what’s in it at all—despite what they say they believe about it—and have been fed religion that makes them comfortable. I can’t tell you how many times denominational leaders at the Ky Council of Churches would say: “oh, let’s not get into that topic. It’s too controversial. I’ll be answering phone complaints non-stop.” Rather than seeing difficult issues as opportunities for Christian ethical reflection, these church leaders wanted to bury all such thorny issues as sexuality, evolution, the death penalty, and so on for the sake of making people happy, and not upsetting them.
When you have a population of people who do not understand themselves to be in need of, much less possess values that transcend the self and the self’s narcissistic advancement, the democratic experiment that exists to promote the public welfare will fail.
A literal interpretation of Sacred Texts leads to prejudice, arrogance, bigotry, and fanaticism. A literal interpretation of Scripture offers certainty; and thereby does not require having to struggle personally and communally with ambiguity to find what is right and good. The people lose their capacity for civic engagement and moral politics.
The insert in your bulletin this morning contains the 7 doctrines that must be ascribed to by those wishing to advertise in the “answermag’s Christian business directory. They represent the basic arguments of modern day Christian fundamentalism. Similar creedal statements could be outlined for fundamentalist Judaism and Islam.
What then should be our belief about the Bible, as Christians? I put the list of former ministers of New Union Christian Church on the back of your bulletin for a reason today. I want to tell you a story that is tied directly to the history of this congregation and to events in Lexington.
In March of 1917, a group of students attending the College of the Bible wrote a circular letter addressed to approximately 300 ministers of the Christian Church. The letter began: “I address you as one who has the interest of the College of the Bible at heart to ask you to do all you can to take it out of the hands of the destructive critics.” Who were those “destructive critics” and what was meant by that phrase? They were none other than Alonzo W. Fortune, Elmer E. Snoddy; William Clayton Bower; George Hemry (brother-in-law of E.E. Snoddy) and Richard Crossfield, then president of Transylvania College. These individuals had replaced the faculty of that institution who after the death of J.W. McGarvey in 1911—a notable leader in the Christian Church for nearly 50 years, and one who clung fiercely to the principle of the literal truth of the Bible—had themselves died or retired due to illness. In his latter years, McGarvey had pulled away from the Main Street Christian Church (because of its liberal tendencies) and became the founding pastor of Broadway Christian Church; and later left them when they decided in the early part of the 20th century, to add an organ to accompany their singing in worship. Snoddy and Fortune came from the University of Chicago in 1912 and were known to be part of a “radical group” known as the Disciples of Christ. Bower was a graduate of Butler University in Indianapolis, and Columbia University in New York City, and was greatly influenced by the work of John Dewey in public education and the psychology of learning. At some point nearly 100 years ago, Snoddy and Fortune each served New Union Christian Church as its minister. Fortune would later spend over 20 years as the minister of Central Christian Church in Lexington.
The letter written in March, 1917, charged Snoddy, Fortune, Bower and the others with deluding the majority of the student body into discarding the true faith, and opposed to the “new theology” and the new forms of Biblical interpretation—textual criticism; literary criticism; and historical criticism—splitting off to become the Independent Christian Churches; and those who opposed the mechanical instrument of the organ in their churches, to split in another direction to become the so called a capella Churches of Christ.
The Trustees of the College of the Bible were forced to call a special session to hear the charges against Pres. Crossfield and the faculty members, and they met for 9 days to hear testimony about the “heresy” that was being taught. Dr. Bower refused to be tried for heresy on the basis of two primary principles: first, academic freedom; and second on the long-standing tradition of biblical study advanced by Alexander Campbell in the Disciples Church, who believed in reading and interpreting the Bible through the use of human reason and the tools of history, literature, archeology, and an understanding of human psychology. The movement itself had begun in opposition to creeds that could define people who didn’t adhere to them as heretics, and had turned to the Bible alone as the source for “restoring” the New Testament Church, and hopefully, bringing “union” to a badly divided Christendom. Thus, the seminaries of the denomination that began at Cane Ridge and in and around Bethany, West Virginia, did not study theology and doctrine, but studied the Bible. Which is why our seminary was known as the College of the Bible for many years.
Following the 9 day “trial”, the Board of Trustees acquitted the accused of all charges. Interestingly, I found that in 1922, these same faculty members became embroiled in a public debate about whether evolution could be taught at the University of Kentucky, where President McVey was trying to get the legislature to advance more money to expand the various colleges within the university of Kentucky. Dr. J.W. Porter, now remembered as the founder of the Porter Memorial Baptist Church, went on the offensive to get the teaching of evolution removed from the curriculum of the University and from that of public schools. Thanks to Dr. Fortune and others, Porter and his literalist colleagues lost that battle.
I think that when people say that they want to “take their country back”, they are saying that they wish to denounce much of the science—except of course when it comes to medical science that will help them with their own diseases—of the 20th century, and return to the seeming “homogeneity” of white, bible-believing Christians, where blacks were segregated, and immigrants were shoved into urban ghettos, and kept out of sight of “mainstream” America. The sciences of the 20th century argue that all meaning is contextual, and that truth must be understood has having a huge subjective component.
In 1926, William Clayton Bower, who lived to be 104 and died in 1982 here in Lexington, wrote a book called “The Living Bible”. We Disciples of Christ have always been a people of the Book. Where the Bible speaks, we speak; and where the Bible is silent, we are silent.” was one of our early slogans. The Bible was seen as a way to remove all “human made” doctrines that had been added to the Gospel through creeds and confessions, and to bring about unity by a return to the New Testament, in particular. Campbell, well trained at the University of Glasgow in enlightenment philosophy, and the new sciences of history and linguistics, insisted that one had to know the historical circumstances of books of the Bible, and that interpreting the Bible belonged to the whole church. The Bible was believed to be inspired, written by people across long centuries who were themselves inspired by God, but the Bible was never presented as without error or infallible. Those who argue for infallibility often quote the passage we heard earlier of 2 Timothy which reads “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” But the meaning of the word for “inspired” in this text has no relationship to inerrancy or infallibility. The meaning of the word is “breathe”. So one interprets scripture believing that God has breathed Godself into it, and we breathe in the words that become words of life for us. We are, in other words, people OF the book, but not BY the book.
85 years ago, Dr. Bower, suggested that we use the Bible the way Jesus did: 1. He did not start with Scriptures, but with the experiences of living people. 2. Jesus thought of religion as a quality of everyday life rather than an experience that was separated from these events or limited to ceremonial acts; 3. Jesus did not give people ready-made solutions to their problems, …but threw them back on their own resources to find those solutions; and 4. Jesus “placed his emphasis upon action as the outcome of thinking and purposing.” So the Bible is the Living Word as it is brought into relationship with our own experiences as living members of the continuing Christian community in the contemporary world.”
For Bishop Spong, and many contemporary Christians, the Bible contains too many terrible things to believe that a God worthy of worship meant for them to be taken as literal examples or as infallible guides. We have only to mention the genocide of the Canaanites as one example; and the anti-Semitism of the Gospel of John as another. “What the mind cannot believe the heart can finally never adore.” Bishop Spong argues. The way to find the Bible’s meaning is for us—as Dr. Fortune and Snoddy and Bower believed—and as Spong suggests—to try to enter into the mind of the writers of our Bible, understanding their context and language, but driving to the heart of the human and divine relationship that they were trying to describe, and to re-interpret it for ourselves. In such a way, the Bible becomes for us not a dead book of irrelevant, and sometimes horrifying stories—but a living Book helping us to be in touch with the holiness in all of life and the love that can transform even death itself. The literalists make an idol of the Bible. We must continue to make it a living book of thinking people. Amen.
