Bible-Mindedness and Episcopalians

In recent days, the press has been covering the American Bible Society's (ABS) annual survey on the use of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament in the United States today, performed by the well-known Evangelical pollster, George Barna. Barna literally defines the term, "Evangelical" more than any other American by engaging a continuous series of polling of Evangelicals as a group contrasted with the rest of the American population.

Most of the attention has been dedicated to the rating of metropolitan areas as more or less "Bible-minded." By Barna/ABS criteria, the least Bible-minded part of the United States is Providence, RI and New Bedford, MA, while the most "Bible-minded" is Chattanooga, TN. (Knoxville won last year).

While I appreciate the ammunition to argue that Tennessee rather than Oklahoma is the true "buckle of the Bible Belt," I must critique the standards by which the calculation was made. The ranking was by "percentage who report reading the Bible during the past seven days and who agree strongly in the accuracy of the Bible." "Reading the Bible" was limited to reading outside of church or synagogue. It is not clear what standard of belief in Biblical accuracy, but I infer from the ABS site that, "the inspired Word of God with no errors" was the minimum standard. Therefore, the poll merely has determined who reads the Bible the way George Barna does (primarily outside of liturgical worship) and agrees with Barna's standards of Biblical inerrancy. In effect, Barna would exclude most of the inhabitants of England in 1603, who were illiterate, yet whose hearing of the Word in twice-daily acts of liturgical worship would be the major textual experience of their lives.

+Bishop Knisely of Bible-mindless Rhode Island had this to say,

"A biblically minded person is someone who deeply understands and lives the values of the Gospel, not someone who merely reads it often."

He then observed,

"That said, I'm certainly in favor of people engaging in a regular way with Holy Scripture. Another recent study pointed out that while Episcopalians are not as likely to read their Bibles individually during the week, they are the people who read the Bible the most, together in Sunday and daily worship. Our lectionary takes us through the entire Bible together, every three years. We read the Bible, we just read it differently. That's true of all the liturgical churches, which are the largest expression of Christianity here in Rhode Island."

The charity of bishops to their flocks aside, I'd say that the ideal is that Christians in liturgical churches read through the Bible every three years in the course of Eucharistic and Office readings. The lived reality is that the Office has fallen by the wayside wherever you go.

As a segueway to why I think Episcopalians should read the Bible more (and talk about it), let me note an interesting conversation I overheard during the spring. I was sitting in a coffee shop near Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, listening to two women in their mid 20s reading through Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians. I initially assumed that these young women were Evangelicals. However, further listening to extra biblical conversation indicated that they were Roman Catholics. Since the late 1970s, social issues have brought Evangelicals and Roman Catholics closer together in the political realm. Could it be that the habit of Bible study (so rare among my Roman Catholic relatives) had been transferred at least in the cultural milieu of the Religious Right? I have no idea, but the thought is intriguing.

Why Episcopalians Should Read and Discuss the Bible More

1. Your children have no idea what you believe.

Children, by necessity, have living memories similar in magnitude to one liturgical cycle. And chances are, they're hearing the readings only on Sunday. In the same way you discuss confidently what your children are learning in school, you need to be able to discuss confidently what they are learning in Sunday School and what is being said in church. My father discussed the sermon with me every Sunday when I was growing up. A solid grounding in the Bible (and how living, breathing Episcopalians read it) will give children a foundation for committing to Christ and practicing Christianity in the future and resist the attractions of more authoritarian approaches to following Christ. And if they don't come to believe, they will have a new appreciation for history, culture, and literary analysis.

2. We need a credible word spoken into our lives

In Paul Zahl's Grace in Practice , he writes about a ritual he suggests for every married couple. The first thing they should do in the morning, before they listen to the radio, check their e-mail etc. is: (1) read a short portion from the Bible together; (2) exchange prayer requests with one another; and (3) pray spontaneously. How very Evangelical. Anglo-Catholics may prefer an abbreviated Morning Prayer.

The reading of Scripture first thing in the morning is the important part. Zahl talks about the importance of a word being spoken into the marriage outside of it. Human communication inevitably is a place of struggle, as our incurvatus in se selves seek to be known and heard more than to know and listen. And indeed, the Bible (as long as the passage is from the Lectionary or chosen by a good random number generator with a key (there are 31,102 verses in the King James Version…) is ideally such a word. All the other words in our lives have an uncertain agenda. The ones we speak are ultimately self-promoting, and so also are the ones we hear from those like ourselves. We believe that the source of Scripture has an agenda that is to our benefit and speaks credibly, even if we do not hear Scripture credibly. Scripture is the foreign word we need to hear.

3. We need to discuss what he have in common beyond the institution

The fastest-growing churches are the ones to which people want to belong. That point may sound trivial, but it's not. The fastest-growing churches are the ones that find people who bring together those who belong together. One parish to which I belonged realized that there were a whole group of people interested in political Progressivism and liturgical worship. People drove there from fifty miles away. Their Christian Education hour was typically focused on politics, social ills, and culture. The most Bible was discussed might have been in the 20s and 30s group, which was mostly composed of Evangelicals who wanted to be Progressives and/or had been alienated by Evangelicalism.

If we want to create vital churches that are genuinely inclusive, we need to find affinity groups beyond politics, race, and class. And if we are Christians, the affinity group we need to seek is those who love and follow Jesus Christ. And the Holy Scriptures ultimately point to him.

Too many times when I am with church people, I find myself discussing politics, either that of the civil authorities or that of the Church (at the parochial through international levels). And when I bring the Bible into these discussions, I often hear, "I disagree with that." I don't hear, "I do not interpret that verse, passage, entire book in that way and here's why." So we devolve into the mere exchange of opinions and very little insight into Jesus.

I think Episcopal churches would be stronger (growth is another issue) if we could discuss the Bible with another in a way the demonstrated mutual engagement with the text. The Bible and the Sacraments are the most obvious foci of our unity, and they are the healthiest ones to discuss as well. Grounding ourselves in Scripture will make it easier to have conversations about the difficult institutional issues we often face.

4. We need to be able to talk with Barna's "Bible-minded" Christians as fellow disciples, not as the Other

This past Sunday, I was at an ecumenical service. The hosting pastor said on a couple occasions that he thanked us, "that we thought it not robbery" to attend. I guessed that it was a Biblical allusion, but I had no idea the reference. Google told me that it is the King James rendering of the phrase from the kenotic hymn of Philippians 2, "who being in the form of God, did not think equality with God something to be snatched at." (I admit that my memory of rendering this verse comes from translating it from the Vulgate.) I am still not sure how I feel about this allusion, but I recognize it as an incisive comment on ecumenism. To participate in a service like that does require that we humble ourselves. In the future, I will have something to discuss with the pastor in the future that does not dwell on the competition for souls or service opportunities that otherwise engages the visibly disunited Body of Christ.