Like many people, I subscribe to a number of e-newsletters. They are usually a quick read and its easy to “unsubscribe” if I no longer find them helpful. (I’ve long since given up any hope of keeping my email address “private” convinced as I am that the luxury of privacy no longer exists in the age of the internet). One of the most consistently interesting and provocative is news and pews from the publisher, HarperOne.
HarperOne is a beacon of light in the vast wasteland of religious book publishing in America (a subject for another blog post!). Mickey Maudlin, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor at HarperOne, uses his monthly column to showcase new titles. But he also offers some interesting commentary on the current religious scene. What’s intriguing about Maudlin and HarperOne is that their publishing philosophy seems to be anchored in a belief that conservative and fundamentalist Christians—the market that most religious book publishers regularly target—are not the only ones who read or buy books. HarperOne appears to believe that there is large group of thoughtful, curious, spiritually committed, intelligent folks out there who are hungry and eager for more meat than the pablum that most religious book publishers are selling these days. To put it in Biblical terms, “May their tribe increase!” Maudlin and HarperOne have taken this philosophy to the bank by regularly featuring authors like Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, Barbara Brown Taylor, John Shelby Spong and many others who sell hundreds of books to this other-wise underserved market.
When I was teaching a weekly adult class, I often made use of these authors in an effort to reassure people in my congregation that it was OK for them to ask questions, have doubts, and to color outside the strict theological lines of whatever denomination they grew up in. It was not only OK, it was absolutely vital to a living faith. I have always believed that doubt is not the enemy of faith. Fear is. And its fear, I’m convinced, that keeps so many Christians from digging deeper into the Bible and their beliefs. Its also fear that keeps their pastors from sharing the fruits of their seminary education with their parishioners.
Nowhere is this more the case than when it comes to the Bible. Although historical-critical insights into the books of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament have been around for almost 200 years, they come as news to most people sitting in the pews. One major reason is that pastors have given up their role as the primary theologian and Biblical scholar in their parish to become the CEOs of their congregation. There are genuine reasons for this change but one result has been that lay people are not challenged to grow in their faith by their pastors.
Maudlin addresses this phenomenon in a recent column.
Despite the fact that more scholarship on the Bible accumulates and despite the fact that more information is accessible to more people today, there remains a chasm, a difficult-to-bridge gap between Christians who believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God and the best and deepest knowledge about that book. Why the gap?
Part of the reason is fear, of course. Evangelicals and other conservative Christians see themselves as emerging from the ashes of the modernist-fundamentalist wars of the twentieth century where “liberal” theology cast out the orthodox from mainstream institutions, such as seminaries and universities. So it is no wonder people are suspicious about what passes for “knowledge” about the Bible in these circles. The funny thing is, though, today many of those allegedly “liberal” scholars are the sons and daughters of conservative Christians who learned to love their Bibles at home and went off to universities to discover its history and deeper content. There are few truly hostile, anti-Christian liberals left.
And of the remaining hostility in this world, some of it comes from what I am getting at—namely, that some people treat as “enemies of the church” those who talk about the fruits of scholarly research of the Bible. Who wants to be the target of persecution? Who wants to be seen as a persecutor? Better to keep these two worlds apart.
But there are brave souls who are not content to leave matters alone—thank God.
You can read the entire article here.
You can read the entire article here.
Some of those brave souls are parish pastors who regularly make an effort to share the fruits of current Biblical and theological scholarship with their people in a pastorally sensitive way that refuses to patronize them. That’s what good teachers do. They stretch us and challenge our beliefs. They move us out of our comfort zones rather than simply re-enforcing our prejudices.
This is important work, more important than some of the other distractions that regularly compete for our attention as pastors. I want to quickly add that the pastor isn't the only one who can take a leadership role in adult education. Many congregations are blessed with all kinds of folks who can make this a vital part of any parish. But at the end of the day, no one is better equipped to serve as the resident theologian and Biblical scholar in most congregagtions than the pastor. That's what she was trained to do! Maudlin sums it up this way:
The church needs a mature and wise body of believers in order to live up to its calling in the world. But unless we put aside our fears and our us-versus-them thinking, we cannot become that body. Reading [and encouraging others to read] the works of those who are working hard to equip the church so that our beliefs match our collective knowledge of the Scriptures will help.
So will pastors recovering their roles as teachers. You can read Mickey Maudlin’s blog at newsandpews.com. jpr
