The social power of the Bible in culture and politics

Introduction

Recently, in a small town in Texas, Mayor Eric Hogue invited members of a missions organization to lead a prayer at a city council meeting; included with this invitation, however, was the caveat that only men would be welcome to do so. His reason, he wrote in an email that was leaked, was that the Bible prohibits women from speaking in church. ‘I can’t go against my conscience,’ he stated, quoting 1 Corinthians 14.34–35 and 1 Timothy 2.11–12. His belief, he later added in comments to news media, is that the Bible teaches that women must not lead prayer or other religious activities in public. ¹

The social power of artefacts

To understand the social power of the Bible, as evident in this town in Texas and seen also in many other ways in contemporary culture and politics, work from science and technology studies on the sociological impact of technical artefacts provides a set of transferable concepts which, together with other social theory, can be used in developing a framework for tracing the action of biblical texts.

In his article ‘Do artifacts have politics?’, Langdon Winner argued that the low overpasses built over parkways in New York in the last century as part of Robert Moses’ development projects were designed to restrict the access of poor people and minorities to certain areas, such as Jones Beach public park. With a height clearance preventing buses from driving on the parkway, the bridges enforced a social reality: to travel to the beach one needed to be wealthy enough to drive there in one’s own vehicle. Through these kinds of exclusionary policies built into the roads themselves, the transportation infrastructure built by Moses continued to act on the social configuration of the city for many years. ²

This story, as presented by Winner and as retold many times here and elsewhere, may not in fact reflect either the intentions or the effect of Moses’ infrastructure projects. Nonetheless, whether factual or not, Winner’s analysis introduced a compelling notion: the things we build can exert social power, configuring human relationality, enacting forms of social stratification and otherwise shaping how humans live with each other.

Not only do physical things affect the humans who created them; ideas of things, too, have social power. Social theory since Durkheim has explored the way in which shared ideas function as social facts that configure human experience. Peter Berger and collaborators, for instance, made the argument that human concepts and ideas are turned into objects that in turn impact humans. ³ John Searle extended the notion of social facts to institutional facts, which he argued enable and constitute the world in which we live. ⁴ From social construction theory, then, together with work from science and technology studies, comes this awareness that physical artefacts such as bridges do things – and so do ideas and notions of things. ⁵ The things we build, whether artefact or social fact, act back on the humans who create them.

The action of artefacts and other non-human objects has been the focus of much of Bruno Latour’s work. In Latourian thought, action is woven between humans and non-humans, where non-humans, referred to as actors or actants, are thought to have a form of agency in which they modify, transform and sometimes betray the action they mediate. ⁶ This replaces a subject–object dichotomy with a conceptualization of action as distributed throughout an endless web of humans and non-humans, in which any single actor acts upstream and downstream of many others with which it is assembled. In actor-network theory, as this set of theoretical approaches and practices associated with Latour’s work came to be known, what matters is what things do, not why they do them.

Latour, like Winner, recognizes that artefacts can displace humans, taking their place and acting autonomously to configure the social. A speed bump, for instance, slows drivers and their vehicles even if the engineers, construction workers and city planners who were responsible for its creation are no longer present. ⁷ It makes no difference to Latour’s theoretical approach whether an object is human or non-human.

A second example from Latour illustrates this symmetry between the action of humans and non-humans: the action of a person paid to close a door, a written sign that asks people to close the door themselves and a technological artefact that closes the door automatically all function, for this analysis, within the same flattened plane of action. The human, the text and the technological artefact are each delegated some responsibility to keep the door closed, and each acts in some way to perform this task. ⁸ To be sure, different actors have different failure points – a human may need to go to lunch, a sign may be ignored, a door closer device may break or, as Latour notes, be set to require a level of strength that discriminates against the very old and young (p. 302). Nonetheless, all three – human, text and technological artefact – perform their delegated task even if each does so with varying levels of effectiveness and in their own way.

The social power of words

One might still argue that a written text itself cannot do anything; how can it hold social power? A notion from John Searle’s work on social construction, following from his work on J. L. Austin’s speech act theory, is illustrative here. To borrow Searle’s example, a military officer sitting at a desk has power precisely because others do what he or she says. Indeed, with a few words destruction can be brought to a battlefield. This power, however, is contingent on the action of others, and the person behind the desk at headquarters remains powerful only as long as he or she can rely on subordinates in a chain of command to follow orders. A general, in this sense, is a person but also an institutional fact, someone who has power because of the institution that recognizes and enforces that authority. ⁹

The Bible holds power in the same way. Its power is a contingent power in which the text must be recognized, heard, followed and interpreted. A general without institutional backing or with no one to command is no general, and a religious text that is unread and unacknowledged has no social power. Both are given social power by the institutions that recognize them and enforce their words.

Categories of delegated social power

A framework for analysis of the ways in which social power is delegated to artefacts, developed by Philip Brey following Latour, provides a set of concepts that can be adopted to explore how social power is delegated to the Bible. ¹⁰ A few notions reviewed by Brey are helpful to note here before borrowing his categories of delegated social power to analyse specific examples.

First, artefacts can extend power locally or at a distance. A knife can increase power at close range, for instance, while a gun would extend power at a distance. An automated weapons turret provides yet another category of power – one that functions at a distance and acts independently. It is this category of autonomous artefact that projects power untethered from its creator’s direct control – in effect, holding delegated social power – that is particularly relevant to the action of the Bible.

Second, it may be helpful to adopt a categorization of power in terms of power to and power over. The first is an enabling type of power, where one has the capacity or resources to get things done; the second refers to power as control over others. A knife used to cut vegetables would give you the first; used to threaten someone, however, the power provided by that same knife is the second type. The focus in this article is delegated social power as power over others, but it should be noted that the Bible is caught up in both categories of power. It is interesting, for instance, to think about how biblical texts enable humans to theologize, to articulate ethics, and to build a social world. The question addressed here, though, is one of how the Bible prevents humans from acting or makes us act in ways we otherwise would not, both of which belong to the category of power over.

Third, there is a difference between what Brey terms intrinsic and derived power. A speed bump has an intrinsic power to slow down vehicles – it simply is not possible to drive at a very high speed over a series of speed bumps, at least not without destroying your vehicle. A speed camera, on the other hand, slows drivers not by force but because they prefer not to be ticketed for unsafe driving. The camera’s action on the current speed of a vehicle, then, is contingent on human perception of the device for its enforcement of speed limits.

With these notions in place, we can turn to five categories of social power – force, coercion, manipulation, authority/leadership and seduction – adopted by Brey following Bachrach and Baratz, Lukes, Fay and others. ¹¹ The speed bumps and speed cameras discussed above, for instance, would fall within examples of artefacts that can coerce vehicles to slow down. A traffic light can provide automated authority or leadership, directing the flow of traffic. A vending machine placed in a strategic location may seduce thirsty humans to pay over the odds for drinks. Barriers force people to divert their path. Sound and lighting may manipulate shoppers into purchasing more than they intended. Latour draws on many examples like these; what Brey does is apply his five categories for analysis of specific ways in which fabricated objects are mobilized by humans in such a way that these artefacts then hold delegated social power and act back on the humans who created them.

It should be emphasized that to recognize that artefacts have delegated social power is not to take a deterministic view of what they do. This control via artefacts is contingent on a specific configuration of an artefact together with humans and other non-humans. Indeed, minor changes to the assemblage of humans and non-humans that constitutes an actor-network will sometimes reverse an effect or create new, unexpected effects. Moreover, as noted above, an artefact that functions solely by derived power requires some perception of it to have any effect; furthermore, for this reason, a change in its symbolic power or in what it is thought to say can have far-reaching consequences.

The social power of the Bible

Texts are thought to have meaning, and in many cases this meaning is reified to the extent that the interpretation of a text feels as if it were as concrete as Moses’ bridges. ¹² In effect, meaning and interpretation, as they emerge in an actor-network, are collapsed back into the text, creating a social fact indistinguishable from the text itself – and, as Durkheim argued, social facts can function to coerce or constrain individuals. ¹³

The story of the small-town Texas mayor excluding women from leading public prayers is one example of how biblical texts have effect extending beyond individual belief into broader culture and practice. To reveal something of the way in which biblical texts operate to configure the social in cases such as this, the five categories of social power adopted by Brey serve as a heuristic framework for analysis.

For example, when texts such as 1 Corinthians 5.9–13 are believed to call for exclusion from the community for certain types of misbehaviour, it could be noted that the text has the effect of forcing people to leave if they do not conform and coercing them to adhere if they want to remain part of the community. If all the shops are closed on Sundays, one may not believe oneself that Sunday is a holy day but one still has no option other than to participate in the community’s suspension of commerce, along the lines of what is described in the narrative in Nehemiah 13.15–22. A notion of hell thought to be derived from the Bible coerces people to perform Christian morality or Christian faith and, in evangelical terms, to accept Jesus as their saviour. This could also function as a form of manipulation if the threat of eternal punishment were a fabrication used to control people. The portrayal of women in biblical texts can manipulate in the way they enact patriarchal and even misogynistic configurations of gender relations, particularly when this happens without awareness that these texts are doing so. ¹⁴ Texts on tithing when tethered to a promise of material blessing – Malachi 3.8–12, for instance – may seduce people into giving generously. The Bible provides leadership and, within many Protestant traditions, is named as the ultimate authority for faith and practice. It not only tells people what to believe; like a traffic light, lane markers or a road sign, it tells people what to do.

These are not discrete categories: force, coercion, manipulation, seduction and leadership power are broadly defined and overlap in these examples. Manipulation, for instance, may involve coercion, and coercion itself often requires the threat of force; and a text cannot force people to act according to its words unless there are some who acknowledge its authority and enforce the social reality it constructs.

A distinction between power to and power over is also not entirely clear. Do biblical texts enable people to live with generosity or seduce them to give beyond what is rational, placing them at risk of prosperity gospel preachers? Indeed, it can be both; in this approach it should be recognized that artefacts enable humans to live together in a social world even as these same artefacts are concurrently a source of alienation.

One might also ask: is it the Bible that is really acting here? ¹⁵ Notions of hell, for instance, seem to exist apart from what can be traced directly to biblical texts. Here, again, actor-network theory enables this analysis. What the Bible does is contingent on the way it is embedded with others, human and non-human, and on the social knowledge and practices that emerge within this web of actors. Recognized, then, in this way of thinking is that the action of any single biblical text is entangled with notions about that text, notions of the Bible as a whole, notions of God, and with all the beliefs, practices and artefacts that together constitute the social world in which the Bible acts. It is the meaning that emerges within an actor-network, or a social fact, that is then delegated social power – even if tacitly – by those who see the Bible as the ‘word of God’.

Recall, also, that actor-network theory sees all objects, human and non-human, as mediating the action of others, upstream and downstream. The Bible, then, can be wielded to coerce other humans to act in certain ways even as it is seducing humans into wielding it.

The social power of Romans 1

To bring this framework to a specific biblical text, consider the first chapter of Romans. The text – at least in English translations such as NIV, NRSV and ESV – refers to homosexuality within a context of the wrath of God, idolatry, godlessness, wickedness and suppression of the truth, a discourse within which the text characterizes gay relationships as degrading, shameful and unnatural.

With this kind of language, the text operates to manipulate notions about sexuality. Framing gay sexuality around ‘lust’ and ‘sinful desires’ has the effect of introducing category mistakes: notions of love and romance are thought to apply to straight relationships while gay relationships are, by contrast, interpreted only in terms of lusts and carnal interests. At the same time, the text enacts binaries of straight male/straight female, in effect requiring that all – gay/bi/straight/trans – contort themselves into one of these two categories and that their experience then be interpreted through that binary. ¹⁶ Through this manipulation of how sexuality is defined, the human experience of non-straight, non-cisgender people is prevented from mattering in the first place. The manipulative effects of this interpretive framework may appear obvious, and thus ineffective, to those for whom LGBTQ categories already make sense, but for many who do not have the hermeneutical resources to conceive of gender that does not fall neatly within male/female binaries or to see non-heteronormative sexuality as also natural, then the categories enacted by Romans 1 manipulate how people can even begin to think about gay people and LGBTQ experience more broadly. ¹⁷

The text also operates with authority or leadership power. In many ways the success of the gay rights movements was possible only by enough gay people living openly and enough positive portrayals in popular culture for gay relationships to be widely seen as indeed loving and romantic, rather than lustful, erotic or deviant. Yet, for many Christians, Romans 1 requires that they place what they take to be the plain meaning of Scripture above that of lived human experience. One could argue, as many LGBTQ-affirming Christians would do, that this is not a fair interpretation of Romans 1 and other biblical texts; what matters here, however, is only what the text is thought to say. It is the social fact that holds power. Operative here also is the fact that if a notion is thought to be biblical, it is then recognized as what God said, and, in effect, set in stone. Even for many who would like to support their gay friends or family members, what they see as the literal or plain meaning of the Bible therefore acts to constrain them from doing so.

For those already inclined toward animus or homophobia, on the other hand, the function of Romans 1 may be best categorized as seduction. Where some would be happy to support gay marriage or full equality if they thought the Bible allowed them to do so, here it is the opposite. The text seduces those who hold Scripture authoritative into embracing their own sense of disgust, and sometimes cruelty, whereby these believers find comfort in the text’s – and thus, in effect, God’s – legitimation of their own disapproval if not outright hate and fear of gay people and homosexual behaviour. ¹⁸ Moreover, with its reversal of notions of who is wise and who is foolish (Romans 1.21–22), the text seduces via a suggestion that it is those who support gay equality or who hold any view of sexuality that does not agree with one’s own community’s notion of what is biblical that are in fact foolish.

The text also exerts coercion and force. The Bible enacts practices of exclusion through which openly gay people are unable to belong fully, if at all, within many Christian communities. ¹⁹ The possibility of a marriage ceremony, for instance, is withdrawn for gay couples unless they find an affirming church or secular location for a wedding, and in many cases gay people are excluded from attending seminaries or working for Christian ministries. When Romans 1 is trusted as an authoritative text on homosexuality, and its words enacted by the community, the text acts to coerce – and sometimes force – openly gay people to leave their communities, or never join these churches in the first place. The alternative, for those who stay, is to be coerced into conversion therapy, celibacy, or silence and secrecy.

Moreover, Romans 1 and other biblical texts act to dampen the possibility of social change. Scripture that is thought to condemn homosexuality holds social power, enacting a social world in which gay believers are coerced to deny their sexuality and straight believers are unable to see beyond their own belief that they need to convert gay people to straightness. Particularly with the portrayal of gay sexuality as sinful, corrupting and deserving of eternal punishment, Romans 1 and other texts have the effect of constraining straight believers – if they read and interpret the text in this way – preventing them from listening meaningfully and making them unable to engage with the lives, interests and hopes of gay people.

Conclusion

Scripture configures human social relationships, acting back on those who acknowledge the Bible as authoritative, and exerting its power into broader culture and politics. Like Moses’ bridges, the Bible holds social power, and the text together with notions of the text – in other words, artefact and social fact – configure human relationality and enact social change. It should be recognized that biblical texts also contribute to human relationality, configuring the social for good; in this sense, a critical, deconstructive analysis of the type performed here is only a job half done. Yet, even as this framework for analysing the social power of the Bible foregrounds specific ways in which Christian faith might be complicit in doing harm in this world, this approach at the same time enables a reflective, ethical approach to theologizing about the practice of interpretation.