Getting good with the Good Book
Some time back, Time ran an article on the case for teaching the Bible in public schools. I think this is a good idea because it worked out so well for me, but I can see how some would be nervous about leaving others in charge of it, like hiding a wondrous scientific discovery for fear it might fall into the wrong hands. I agree with the author, at least, that our nation’s general ignorance of the Bible leads to a lot of uninformed conclusions, such as the following:
In 1995 a federal appeals court upheld the overturn of a death sentence in a Colorado kidnap-rape-murder case because jurors had inappropriately brought in extraneous material — Bibles — for an unsanctioned discussion of the Exodus verse “an eye for eye, tooth for tooth … whoever … kills a man shall be put to death.” The Christian group Focus on the Family complained, “It is a sad day when the Bible is banned from the jury room.” Who’s most at fault here? The jurors, who perhaps hadn’t noticed that in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus rejects the eye-for-an-eye rule, word for word, in favor of turning the other cheek? The Focus spokesman, who may well have known of Jesus’ repudiation of the old law but chose to ignore it? Or any liberal who didn’t know enough to bring it up?Before I even got to the question — “Who’s more at fault here?” — I was already thinking of the part in Matthew. That’s not supposed to sound like bragging, but an example of how a fairly minimal amount of studying the Bible (a few months here and there in public high school, a bit in Sunday School, and some reading on my own time) can help contribute to a conversation.
As I said earlier, I can understand why some people would be uncomfortable leaving others in charge of the task of teaching the Bible in public schools. I mention Fred “Slacktivist” Clark around here a lot as someone whose writing and thinking I admire a great deal, and he is one such dissenter to the idea of Biblical education in public school. Responding to a similar call for “Biblical literacy” in the LA Times by Stephen Prothero, Fred writes:
I rather doubt, despite Prothero’s assurances, that it would be so simple to teach biblical literacy without repeatedly stumbling into questions that would force the teacher and the students to take sides. Consider, for example, the literal crux of the New Testament, the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. Why was Jesus executed? The question is inescapable, and any answer to it is inescapably value-laden and sectarian. That is not a question I am comfortable withI’m going to have to ultimately disagree with Fred on this one (just this once, maybe). This was really not a problem in the sophomore English class where I learned about the Bible, and the knowledge I gained from that class has proven time and again indispensable. We were taught parts of the Bible ostensibly to help us understand literary allusions, and it worked, at least for me. We were not taught to make moral conclusions, but being taught the basics gave me just barely enough material to draw my own conclusions when those questions have come up since.Caesarthe state providing the official answer for.
Granted, Fred rightly criticizes Stephen for a major slip in his claim that the Bible could be taught in a value-neutral, academic way. I do agree with Stephen’s basic assertion knowing the Bible is key to being able to participate in political discourse, whether we like it or not:
Biblical illiteracy … is a civic problem with political consequences. How can citiczens participate in biblically inflected debates on abortion, capital punishment or the environment without knowing something about the Bible?Clearly, you can’t argue with a biblically knowledgeable person on his or her own terms without knowledge of your own. However, Stephen flummoxes his own argument when he goes on to state outright that some interpretations of the Bible are flat-out “incorrect”; and, we must infer, that teachers would teach the “correct” version. Fred responds:
So part of Prothero’s supposedly value-neutral, “academic” approach to teaching the Bible will be to clarify, among other things, what the Bible says about war and homosexuality. See if you can figure out a way of doing this that does not involve a public school student’s grade depending on the “correct” answer to this question: “True or false? The Mennonites are wrong.”
There is a way of teaching the Bible, and it is to teach that no single interpretation is “correct.” In my own class, our performance was assessed based on whether we could write coherently and offer evidence for our arguments, not on whether we were “right.” Two papers with contradictory approaches could both get A’s. We got some historical context for certain parts, but we were never told “this part must be interpreted this way.” In fact, one of the most useful things about teaching the Bible this way in public school is that it provides such an excellent example of the difficulty of interpreting a text when the author isn’t around to explain the original intent.
Nobody ever taught me in my high school class that the Gospel of Matthew is more “right” than Exodus on matters of capital punishment, but I did learn that the Bible has more than one thing to say on such matters. I would like to think that I learned enough that I would have been able to derail the conversation that went on in that jury room. Do I think my interpretation is more “correct” — that “turn the other cheek” (and, while you’re at it, “let he who has not sinned cast the first stone”) trumps “eye for an eye”? Well, yeah. I picked a side and I can defend it. But you could pick the opposite and defend that, too, and in a well-run class, we’d both walk away having demonstrated our knowledge of the text.
The greater concern, I would think, would be what happens when you get teachers with a religious or moral agenda that they believe must take priority over their duty as a neutral instructor — when you disagree with Mr. Prothero, perhaps, on what the Bible says about homosexuality. As a teaching assistant, I’ve given high grades to students who write and argue well even on points I disagree with, but admittedly, this may be relatively easy for me because the papers are about Fight Club and Crossroads (starring Britney Spears). Would I be able to remain so neutral for papers interpreting the Bible?
And suddenly it occurs to me that maybe it was a good thing for my own education that my sophomore English teacher had been treated so poorly as a child in Catholic school. He told some pretty detailed stories, such as when he had his head smashed against a desk — blood on his face, fiberglass showering down his shirt. After experiences like that, perhaps you’re not so invested in what the Bible “really” says, and you really can treat it like a source of literary inspiration rather than a moral document. When even the nuns beat you up, perhaps that’s evidence enough that living the life of scripture is all a matter of interpretation.
