USA Today says “Americans get an F in religion”
Most of your fellow churchgoers are Biblically illiterate. I have heard pastors harp on that point for nearly my whole life, so I am not surprised by this USA Today article – hot off the presses:
It is basically a book plug for Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University. But the main point is that most Americans don’t know Jesus from Adam. Prothero has a point. I do think it is important for all people, not just Americans, to know at least the basics of the major beliefs of the world. We are an increasingly global society, and unless we understand, and accept, basic beliefs of our neighbors, we will end up fearing them. With free information at most Americans’ fingertips, there is little excuse these days for not knowing.
I also have another theory regarding the Christians’ ignorance of their own scripture. I am a product of Calvary Chapel, where verse-by-verse Bible Study was emphasized. Nearly every other church I have been to, Protestant and Catholic, emphasizes anything BUT the Bible. At most, there are a few select verses from the New Testament followed by a sermon or homily of varying length. But the Bible is inserted, almost as a fifth wheel. There is no need to even reference the Bible in most of these sermons, yet the pastor will admit the Biblical ignorance of his congregation.
My theory is that most pastors secretly do not want their congregations to know the Bible, not very well anyway. Lately, as I began critically looking at the claims of the Bible, I was warned by my pastor not to make the Bible a god. Huh? Does he mean not to use knowledge of the Bible to draw me away from God? If not, then I have no idea what he was talking about. I have always admired Calvary Chapel’s exegetical approach to Bible Study. But I have personally seen Calvary Chapel pastors skirt around issues like the Rapture, the patriarchs each living in excess of 900 years, a 6 day creation of the universe, and the biggie, HELL. Many attempts were made to soften these topics, or to take them as allegory, probably belief in such things taught in our Bible are embarrassing as hell. The most embarrassing to me was the Rapture. The idea that when the fullness of the Gentiles come in, that the dead will be physically raised to meet our Lord in the air, join him in Heaven for the marriage supper of the Lamb, etc etc.. gag. I just could not admit believing that stuff to my friends, even though it is clearly taught in Scripture.
If Christians really knew what was in their Bible, I think there would be fewer Christians. That is an old saying, but I am beginning to believe it is true. What do you think?
March 8th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
I admire the blog heisisailing – I think it is important for someone who says they are a ‘Christian’ to read the bible (and not become all wacky – lol). The point I really like is the understanding of other religions of the world – global society and all – I am down with the idea…just had some Mormons over last night (and you wanna see someone that doesn’t know God from Adam – find some Brigham Young sayings – lol – all kidding aside). I respect the people of other faiths and the fact that some live such ethical lives – I appreciate them. On my shelf I have the Tanakh, NT, Quran, Gita, Atheist stuff (Harris), many denominational variants (including Mclaren), book of Mormom, and history books. I don’t find a single reason not to study and know about other religions (and I have even eaten with Sikhs and Universalists) – I admire the whole wack of them – and I might wanna learn some Tao next.
I personally find the gospels to be pure gold (with no mention of the rapture I might add) – and I take Paul’s works with a ‘grain of salt’ (but still important – since he knew Peter, James, and John). I am not sure the rapture is in the bible – and if it is – in what regards and for what time period (just don’t ask Hagee or Van Impe – man do they know it all – lol). But even the majority of Paul (and other letters) is quite good reading – but I think church doctrines have gone over the edge and offered a new translation of the bible – the one according to some church father they admire (like Calvin, Zwingli, Luther, Athanasius, etc). But they tried to make a doctrine from jumping book to letter to book etc…which isn’t always logical.
“If Christians really knew what was in their Bible, I think there would be fewer Christians”
I don’t think so. I think they would have to ask themselves some tough questions for once – but if taught in a manner of respect – they’d pull through it all with a great worldview. But you might be right here – maybe they would just walk away and call this religion BS. It’s worth a test – let’s teach someone the bible and see.
March 8th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
** That is an old saying, but I am beginning to believe it is true. What do you think? ** It’s possible. When reading some of the things that occur in the Old Testament, one can’t help but shudder (or, at least, I can’t).
But I do think that more Christians should actually read the BIble — for instance, if one is going to insist on returning Biblical morality to the country, cease teaching evolution, fight against abortion and homosexuality, not preserve the environment, promote war, all based on what a pastor told you … then you do look incredibly weak in your argument. ANd if you’re going to tell me that I’m going to hell simply because I believe something differently, but haven’t actually read the entire Bible, then that irriates me.
Something I read elsewhere said that if Jesus is that life-changing, and the Bible is the only way to know God and salvation, why would you only focus on it on Sundays? Why wouldn’t you read it every day? Why wouldn’t you be on fire to know the entire Bible?
March 9th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Heather, when I was leading Bible Studies, I used to keep it fairly democratic as to what people wanted to study. I was raised to just go through the Bible and see what it said, and I wanted to continue to do that. My group overwhelmingly voted to go through a ‘Purpose Driven Life’ workbook, or some other similar workbook. No offense to those books, but I really grew to despise those things, just because people took precidence with them over the Bible. It would blow me away that Christians by and large just don’t want to read that thing!
March 9th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Even when I was a very faithful Christian, I thought including Revelations in the Bible was a huge mistake. That is one silly book.
I read the Bible cover to cover twice. It’s hard to really get at the dirty stuff that way, as it tends to be buried in the most mind-numbing passages (except for Revelations, which again is just weird). Deuteronomy and Leviticus has an intriguing and disgusting (in my opinion) look at God’s law, but the bad parts are buried under tons of other, frankly really boring stuff. So, it’s easy to just glaze over some outrageous stuff. Similarly, most faithful I know who have read the Bible (including me) did not catch any significant contradictions, which reinforces the idea internally that the Bible is inerrant. This is because we read it “cover to cover” rather than, say, reading the Gospels in parallel. It’s hard to study the Bible unaided, but I think that those Bible study programs “by the faithful, for the faithful” are more propaganda than anything. I always liked the approach of going through the Bible slowly and serially, not skipping anything but getting outside commentary (both from believers and secular scholars) to enrich and experience and draw comparisons with other parts of the Bible.
March 9th, 2007 at 10:29 am
You know, Martin Luther thought Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelations should be considered more or less apocryphal. It is interesting how we consider the Bible to be a book. It is not. It is an anthology of ancient writings picked out of a number that some consider useful but not canonical (the Catholic Apocrypha). Even the lists we have that have survived from the early Church fathers have many discreptancies. So, why accept the 66 books? I think there are some valid concerns about the development of the canon, and, combined with the lack of knowledge of people based on intellectual laziness, it is no wonder the church is a mess in the west. My view is that the 4 Gospels are the foundational witness of the Christian faith. Acts and the epistles show the emerging diversity of this faith. The Old Testament serves to show the nature of God’s revelation in preparing for the ministry of Jesus. So, I guess I would like to see people understand more about Jesus, and not necessarily how many kings of Judah were good vs. bad or what Magog refers to in prophesy. My guess is that if it was Jesus who was made alive by preaching in the churches from the gospels, the church would grow quantitatively and qualitatively.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:44 am
But Ed, the argument for Jesus’ divinity as Messiah comes from the OT books of prophecy, as summarized in the later epistles. If Christians wish to accept the central tenet of faith that Jesus was the Messiah as opposed to just a blessed prophet for any reason other than “my preacher said so”, don’t they need to understand the OT? Shouldn’t they understand what the OT said the Messiah would be like, so they can judge for themselves based on the Gospels whether or not Jesus fulfilled these prophesies? After all, a huge number of very learned religious Biblical scholars have done so, and concluded that Jesus was not the Messiah (we call them “Jews”). Shouldn’t the believer read and understand the OT to make the same determination for him/herself? Otherwise, why shouldn’t we teach the Jefferson Bible from the pulpit?
March 9th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Ed, Shygetz,
Just statements like John 5:39,
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me”
made me believe that the OT spoke, or prophicied about Jesus Christ. So one of the ways I read the OT was as a model of the work and ministry of Jesus.
I know that Martin Luther considered at least James to be apocryphal, and you know that I did to. I never could reconsile it’s teachings with the rest of the NT. Ditto that with Song of Solomon. Having just said that I interpreted the OT as prophetic of Jesus, I thought the Church’s interpretation of the book, as an allegory of Christ’s love for his church, to be just .. just nasty. It is a book of erotic love – and not something I wanted to be associated to with Jesus.
I think I will have to write an article about that someday.
March 10th, 2007 at 11:30 am
**just because people took precidence with them over the Bible. It would blow me away that Christians by and large just don’t want to read that thing! **
I’m wondering if that’s because there are a lot of things in the BIble that we’d find horrific today, behavior-wise. If taking that literally, it might be hard to reconcile that with how Jesus presented God in the New Testament. Honestly, the God in the Old Testament was just as likely to smite you as He was to help you.
**I never could reconsile it’s teachings with the rest of the NT** Is that because of the faith vs. works concept?
*8Shouldn’t they understand what the OT said the Messiah would be like, so they can judge for themselves based on the Gospels whether or not Jesus fulfilled these prophesies?** What’s interesting about that is when reading a lot of the OT verses that the NT uses, I found that the OT weren’t actually prophecies at all. And could understand why Judaism didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah.
March 10th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
“I know that Martin Luther considered at least James to be apocryphal, and you know that I did to. I never could reconsile it’s teachings with the rest of the NT” (Heissailing)
James? How so exactly? I read James and compared it closely with the gospel of Matthew – and I found that it reads fairly well beside that book (as in consistency). But if it is ‘off a bit’ – I would ask – ‘how so’?
“What’s interesting about that is when reading a lot of the OT verses that the NT uses, I found that the OT weren’t actually prophecies at all. And could understand why Judaism didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah.” (heather)
I would tend to agree with this on the basis of context – from OT books like Isaiah – where these prophecies could of meant something in their day and society – when spoken. However, there was some mass belief amongst rabbinical schools of the Tanakh in a ‘messiah’ – from certain passages from the OT – which is captured in the MIdrash. I think rabbi’s to this day still think there is a ‘Messiah’ figure to come – which holds true to the fact they read something into a lot of these old texts – which we might not. So on that basis, I also think when the early church calls Jesus the Messiah – they have some historical grounds with which to stand upon.
March 12th, 2007 at 6:59 am
“So on that basis, I also think when the early church calls Jesus the Messiah – they have some historical grounds with which to stand upon.”
Well, Judaism certainly does have a belief in the coming of a Messiah–it’s part of the central 13 tenets of faith. But it isn’t someone like Jesus. That’s a big part of the reason that Christianity remained a cult within Judaism rather than the overwhelming practice; Jesus was nothing like the Messiah the Jews were expecting. Which is probably why the OT verses quoted on Jesus’ behalf are often…odd. The more explicit verses don’t jibe with what Jesus was and did (ingathering of the exiles; restoration of the religious courts of justice; an end of wickedness, sin and heresy; reward to the righteous; rebuilding of Jerusalem; restoration of the line of King David; restoration of Temple service; etc.). Christians usually say that these prophecies will be fulfilled when Jesus returns (to which Jews often retort that the Messiah was supposed to do this when he came, not when he came back–therefore, Jesus will have to wait until he comes back and does these things before the Jews can recognize him as Messiah).
March 12th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Shygetz – I agree with you on this point – as far as the whole Messiah thing is concerned I can’t say too much in that regards – I haven’t studied under a single Jewish teacher yet (which would be kind of cool to do) concerning the Tanakh.
March 13th, 2007 at 7:40 am
SocietyVs – There are actually excellent websites that various Jewish organizations have set up to counter the Christian attempts to evangelize Jews away from their traditional faith. The one that I find most readable, with usable references, is
http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/
It is an interesting thing to learn about the traditional beliefs in the Messiah (before Christianity moved the goalposts for almost the entire Western world) as well as to read about previous Jewish Messiah candidates.