Still “People of the Book”?

Classical Protestantism

What is the change I believe has come over Protestantism in our part of the world on the crucial matter of our relationship to the Bible? To explain I make use of a concept that has been invented by historians and theologians to identify the form that Protestant Christianity took in its formative period (16th and 17th centuries). ³ That concept is “Classical Protestantism.” As an ideal this form continued to exist long after its foundations were laid, persisting well into the 19th century. But in that century it began to lose strength, and it has continued to do so ever since. It has never entirely disappeared from our consciousness because the ideals that were constitutive of Classical Protestantism are the basis of many of our traditions; and in some sense we probably still respect those ideals. But the farther removed we have become from the conditions that gave rise to those ideals, the harder it has been for us even to understand (much less actually fulfill) those ideals in practice.

To make sense of the particular part of Classical Protestantism, which is my interest here, I want to remind you of a most significant challenge our spiritual forebears faced at the time of the Reformation. This challenge came from Catholic critics, who said roughly the following: If you translate the Bible into the vernacular and put it in the hands of ordinary people, telling them to read and interpret the text for themselves, the result almost certainly will be moral and spiritual chaos. Even though you defend this practice in the name of the authority of Scripture, the practical effect will be to make each person an authority unto himself; and for all practical purposes that means doing away with authority altogether.

The Protestant response to this, especially in Reformed circles, was to say and do the following. As true as it may be to say that we want lay people to have access to the Bible in a form that will allow them to make sense of the text for themselves, that is only a part of what we have in mind. Another part is that we also want and expect Christians to be part of worshipping communities in which, on an ongoing basis, the members seek to make sense together of the meaning of the text for their lives. We expect this to happen, of course, with the help and leadership of educated clergy, but we regard the task as a collaborative one. Furthermore, we want people’s thinking about the Bible to be shaped and guided by the results of the community’s ongoing deliberations about the meaning of that text. That is why we have creeds, confessions, and catechisms, which provide a framework for us to make sense together of what Scripture teaches.

Not only did Reformation-era Protestants answer the Catholic challenge in this way in their words, but on the whole they did so with their deeds as well. So in its formative period and beyond Protestantism was not in fact radically individualistic. It was a blend of individualism and a rather strong communalism; for a long time that provided a workable solution to the problem that had been posed by Catholic critics. That did not prevent the proliferation of Protestant denominations, but it did make the idea that Protestants were incapable of acknowledging or respecting authority seem like a caricature.

A God of One’s Own

For some time now, however, the set of ideas and practices that made this way of being a Christian possible have been in decline. We still give them lip service, but the day is long since past when they had anything like a strong hold on our lives. That has especially been true in the past half century, when in the industrialized world at least, our societies have experienced a dramatic turn away from the “old time religion,” and our churches have scrambled to accommodate the resulting mood. The way we have done this has typically been at the expense not only of creedal knowledge but biblical knowledge as well. Or, at least, it has been at the expense of the particular kind of biblical and theological knowledge on which our forebears prided themselves. By the standards of Classical Protestantism, most lay people in our part of the world are biblically illiterate. No less important, this state of affairs has come to be taken for granted as normal in our church life, even in the selection of church officers. Nor is this confined just to the so-called “mainline” churches. Not if Christianity Today is to be believed, at least, which paints a picture of the evangelical world that suggest the difference between mainline Protestants and those from more conservative churches is only a matter of degree. ⁴

Surely this is anomalous. And it gives rise to certain obvious questions, such as: How could this possibly happen? and Why do we accept it so matter-of-factly? The most common answers to these questions, I have found, disparage our professions of respect for and interest in the Bible. They say that even though we claim to be a people of the Book, our attachment to the Bible is now rather weak. I think there is some truth to that claim, but I do not think it suffices as an explanation. I think something else is going on, and it has to do with changes that are taking place in the nature of religious experience in our time. Our comparative lack of biblical literacy as Protestants today is a product, I submit, not of a lack of interest in the Bible as such, but rather of disinterest in a certain way of reading the Bible—that is, as a source of doctrinal claims. Among lay people (and even among many clergy as well, I suspect) that way of reading and using Scripture which was so characteristic of Classical Protestantism has gone out of style, and it has been replaced by other ways of reading the text that are more in keeping with the highly individualized forms of religiosity that are in vogue these days.

How did that happen? How did we get into this situation? Part of the answer is given by Harvey Cox, the Harvard theologian, in a book called The Future of Faith, ⁵ which reflects the mood of this development well. The disinterest and even distaste for religious doctrine that some religious people now have is a result, he says, of the fact that we are living through an epochal development in the long history of religion. The technologically advanced societies are passing from an age of “belief” (when people worried about objective truth in such matters as predestination) to a time when people no longer worry about such things. Feelings tend to be much more important than beliefs in religious life these days, Cox says. Many doubt whether such thing as “truth” even exists in religion, except in the sense of what matters to each of us as individuals.

Cox does not try to explain this development, other than to imply that the age of belief is coming to an end because people are fed up with the conflicts and even violence to which creedal differences can lead. There may be some truth to that, but I don’t think it is the whole story. A better account, in my view, is provided by a German sociologist named Ulrich Beck, who has argued in a provocative recent book ⁶ that the demise of doctrinal religion is a natural by-product of the drift toward ever more radical forms of individualism in our time. ⁷ He concedes that spirituality has made quite a comeback, but he says this is happening in a manner that makes doctrinal claims increasingly beside the point. Claims of that sort just do not fit the current mood (or zeitgeist), which inclines and even encourages each of us to think of our spiritual lives as intensely personal and private matters. And that applies, of course, to our reading of sacred texts as well, with each person feeling that she has a right to read such texts in her own way.

The Price

As a sociological account I find this type of analysis quite persuasive. It captures well what appears to be happening. But as I have indicated above, unlike both Cox and Beck, I do not look favorably on the developments in question. I acknowledge that the turn away from doctrinal religion in the direction of forms of spirituality that are more privatized has certain advantages, and I can understand why someone who was not a believer or disliked “organized religion” would find movement in that direction appealing. Like so many things in life, those advantages come at a price, and it is not clear to me at all why those of us who are believers and are serious about the practice of our religion would want to pay that price, especially not if one has any respect at all for the achievements of those who have gone before us.

What do I have in mind when I say that? What sort of thing is likely to be lost—or at least marginalized—if we allow ourselves to be carried ever farther in the direction of privatized, non-creedal religion?

First, doctrinal religion has tended to be intellectually serious and had real intellectual substance. ⁸ The kind of individualism Cox and Beck favor almost certainly works against that, despite their claims that the opposite is true. Why? Because when religion is privatized and belief is deemphasized, the truth question is bracketed. Yes, the sort of people they have in mind can (and do) still read books and go to lectures. If they choose, they can even enter into conversation with one another about the books and lectures in question. But they are under no obligation to engage in the sort of conversation about the merits of their beliefs that is meant to lead to shared conclusions about the merits of those beliefs. In fact, when the ethos is really one of live-and-let-live, such engagement is actually discouraged. The likely effect, I suspect, would be a loss of intellectual seriousness about religion on the part of lay people.

Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the loss of intellectual seriousness in religion is morally debilitating as well. After seeing “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway some years ago, David Brooks, for example, argued in The New York Times (“Creed or Chaos,” April 2, 2011) that the sort of “vague, uplifting, nondoctrinal” religiosity celebrated in that musical (as an alternative to Mormonism) tends not to last, and that it also tends to lack the capacity to move people in the manner that rigorous creedal religion has been known to do. I am not prepared to go that far, but I do share Brooks’s belief that the relationship between religious creeds and moral energy is more complex than those who celebrate the decline of creedal religious are inclined to say. ⁹

Second, doctrinal religion, as the product of a communal activity, has provided believers with a robust experience of community, derived in part from the intellectual exchanges it has entailed. In the Protestant case, this has meant exchanges that have included no small amount of participation on the part of lay people. That too is surely threatened when religion is privatized and belief deemphasized. That does not mean that community is threatened in all forms. But in the absence of serious conversation about the things we believe as Christians and the reasons why we believe them, we are deprived of an experience that historically has been one of the most valuable sources of community in Protestant churches.

I recognize that such terms as “doctrine” and “creed” evoke unappealing images in the minds of many. Most of that thinking appears to me to be based on a caricature of the way in which the Protestant version of creedal religion, at least, has actually functioned. By that I mean the following: the formulation of doctrine in our form has been almost as much about ongoing conversation as it has been about the conclusions. When that conversation has been conducted at all well, it has knitted people together in ways that are difficult to achieve any other way. In the process it has also empowered them, by giving them a sense of shared beliefs and purpose that has proved to be a source of great strength in their attempts to influence the course of events in the wider world. ¹⁰

Finally, there is the matter of articulacy—or, the ability to express and explain what people believe. On that score, too, the turn toward privatism can be expected to have adverse effects, some of which we are already experiencing. I say this, I should add, without any illusions about the relationship between articulacy and the actual practice of Christian discipleship. It is a complex subject. We all know of people who are good at talking but not at action. We also know that the best witness to our faith is often the actions we take, not the words we speak. But still, articulacy does matter, and not just in communicating with others. It also is helpful to believers themselves in enabling them to understand and practice their faith, which is one of the reasons why Protestants historically have placed such emphasis on the spoken word.

In our worship services we still have that emphasis, of course, in the form of sermons, which still typically occupy an especially privileged place in our public worship. But it is done by clergy. Except for the scripted parts, the rest of us are largely silent—in that part of our church life as in others as well. So not having much experience in speaking about matters of faith, we tend to have a difficult time expressing what we believe, even on the most basic questions, and all too often our children inherit that. ¹¹ They are articulate about many things (just as we are), but not usually about religion, which is why the demand we make of them at the time of confirmation that they express what they believe in some public form often comes as a shock. I might add that in making that demand, we are imposing on them, curiously, a requirement that we rarely make of adults when they join our churches.

Resistance

I spoke earlier about resistance to the cultural situation I have been discussing in this piece, and I promised there to say something about the form that resistance might take. So let me now attempt to make good on that promise, acknowledging at the outset that this is a subject that requires considerably more time and space to discuss adequately than I am able to devote to it here. I can offer a few comments designed to give the reader a sense of how I, as a life-long educator, would approach the task of enabling lay people to acquire anew the ability to read the Bible through a confessional lens today.

Reading the Bible that way presupposes, admittedly, some knowledge of the theology that is articulated in our various creeds and confessions, and for that reason it might be thought that the best way to proceed in pursuing this project is to proceed immediately to a study of the relevant documents. I do not oppose that approach in principle, but it is not the one I favor. Precisely because we are living in a time when the value of creedal statements cannot be taken for granted (and when, in fact, all too often the opposite is assumed), I think it makes better pedagogical sense to approach the task of confessional education indirectly by finding ways of enabling lay people to discover the value of creedal theology by other means, including the study of the Bible itself.

In thinking about this matter I have been heartened by an observation made by a clergy friend whose views on these matters I greatly respect. It has been his experience, this man has told me, that when lay people express an interest in doing Bible study with a pastor (which, he has assured me, is still a routine occurrence) often what they actually have in mind is an opportunity to discuss theology. I have expressed doubts about that claim on the grounds that lay people have many reasons for wanting to do Bible study, some of which appear to have little or nothing to do with theology, and it has not been my experience that a desire to “do theology” is much in evidence in the Bible study that does now in fact occur under church auspices. But even if that is true, my friend has replied, there are still a good number of people in our churches who would in fact like to study the Bible in a manner that allows them to think seriously about theological issues and would value an opportunity to do so if only it were provided to them.

Needless to say, I hope he is right. But there are many ways of doing theology, and often what takes place under that rubric is nothing more than a sharing of personal opinions—which serves only to reinforce the cultural tendency I have been criticizing in this article. I have the impression that this practice is often encouraged by pastors on the assumption that lay people are not much interested in knowing what others (especially authority figures) have had to say about the relevant topics. My pastor friend has assured me that even if that is sometimes true, it is by no means always the case. His contention is that if, again, laity are given a reasonable chance to learn about the views held by some of the more influential figures in the history of our religion, not only do they find the experience interesting but often the things they learn in that process also end up significantly influencing their own thinking. What happens, in other words, is that they begin to learn how to go about thinking theologically in a manner that is grounded in something more than just their own life experience.

It takes leadership for anything like this to happen, however, and it helps that my friend is himself a learned man who knows a great deal about the history of Christian thought. But even if a pastor did not have the level of erudition my friend has, it would not be that difficult for such a person (assuming he or she was a properly educated seminary graduate) to acquire the kind of information it would take to do Bible study in the manner I am proposing here. ¹² Keep in mind that it is Bible study I am talking about and not the history of doctrine, and all one would need to have in order to be able to guide the inquiry in the desired direction is knowledge of the things that a few key figures in the past have had to say about the biblical texts under review. One would need to know something about the history of the exegesis of the texts in question, in other words, and then to be willing to share that information in a manner conducive to serious discussion of the relevant theological issues.

I suppose someone could have an experience of Bible study in this form and come away thinking it was a waste of time. I doubt that would be the common reaction, not if the classes were taught at all well. I am persuaded by my friend’s insistence that exposure even to a small part of the biblical exegesis done by such figures as Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and Barth tends to enhance people’s respect for the way of thinking those folks represent while at the same time enriching their own ability to think theologically. At the very least those who learn to approach the Bible in this way are stimulated to think afresh about the texts they are studying, and more often than not they also end up with a richer understanding of the meaning and significance of those texts than they otherwise would have had. This is especially true if the preaching to which they are exposed also has some of the same quality.

This is, however, just one example of the sort of thing that could be done in our churches to address the problem I have sought to identify in these pages, and in dwelling on it as I have I do not mean to suggest that it deserves to be treated as anything more than an illustration of the type of initiative that could be taken by those who share my belief that the pressures drawing us in the direction of ever greater individualism need to be resisted. It is one that has the virtue of making very clear what it means to stand in a particular tradition of thought, and that is the reason why it appeals to me. I know there are other ways of cultivating the sort of mentality I believe is needed that could be utilized for that purpose, and I am also confident that there are still others that could be devised, if only there were a desire to do so. Especially would I like to see such a desire awakened among members of the clergy, for they above all are in a position to take the sort of action that is called for. Hopefully the argument I have sought to make in the preceding pages will serve that purpose.