There’s been quite a bit of buzz going around about an article on the Huffington Post titled “Frequent Bible Reading Tied to Social Justice, Openness to Science“—
What daily practice may help American Christians become more concerned about issues of poverty, conservation and civil liberties? Reading the Bible…
…[Research] found frequent Bible reading predicted greater support for issues ranging from the compatibility of science and religion to more humane treatment of criminals.
…The study, one of the first to examine the social consequences of reading Scripture, reveals the effects of Bible reading appear to transcend conservative-liberal boundaries.
The article then goes on to describe how the more frequently people read their bibles, the more likely they are to hold both morally conservative and socially liberal values… values which, unfortunately, can’t seem to coexist in one political party today.
I’ve always been pretty frustrated with voting, because no matter who I choose I feel like I have to concede one set of values for another. I realize I’m using an overgeneralization, but overall it seems that if Christians are to walk a conservative party line, they’d have to give up the more “liberal” social values supported by the Bible; conversely, if they are to walk a liberal party line, they’d have to give up the more “conservative” moral values.
This leaves us having to choose which is more important— am I more concerned with moral values to the point that that I’m willing to let a number of social injustices prevail, or am I going to seek social justice to the sacrifice of some of my moral values? Can I even make that choice?
I appreciate that the writer stressed so well that we shouldn’t assume all conservative values = Christian values (and visa versa). Then, the article ends on a poignant note, stating:
Perhaps the larger issue is not whether Christians are influenced by Bible reading, but how many of them read the Bible enough for it to make a difference. In the Baylor Religion Survey, less than a quarter of respondents said they read Scripture weekly or more.
As C.S. Lewis once observed: “Odd, the way the less the Bible is read the more it is translated.”
This is and should be pretty convicting. If I’m going to call myself a Christian, I better know enough about what I believe to have a worldview that is informed not by assumed platitudes but by what the Bible actually says.
A good portion of the religious-conservative rhetoric you hear is assumed to be based in Biblical Christian values when really it’s based on pseudo-Biblical ideologies that have been forced into a conservative worldview because it is assumed they are synonymous, and whenever they don’t mesh up, Scripture is twisted to fit that worldview instead of the worldview being conformed to Scripture as it should be.
So if we’re going to fight misrepresentations of our faith, while also seeking justice on both moral and social grounds, we better actually know what we’re talking about instead of regurgitating something we’ve heard somewhere before and assumed to be true. Oh, and we should actually do something about it too.
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If, as believers, we shy away from certain organizations because we don’t like the moral stands they endorse and thus miss out on helping with the social issues they address, perhaps we should evauate the need to create new ministries that allow us both. I’ve observed that many (of us) lack the will or ability to start these new groups and end up vacilating between existing ones. You point out correctly the frustrations many of us feel with “party-lines”. The biblical examples of helping “social ills/justices” often seem to be one-on-one ministries. But when we try that approach it seems like we aren’t making much progress “on the big picture/scale”. maybe the comment “just a cup of water in my name” intends to call attention not just to the “just a cup” but to the intimacy of the service.
“…no matter who I choose I feel like I have to concede one set of values for another. I realize I’m using an overgeneralization, but overall it seems that if Christians are to walk a conservative party line, they’d have to give up the more “liberal” social values supported by the Bible; conversely, if they are to walk a liberal party line, they’d have to give up the more “conservative” moral values.”
I think you’re spot on there, theologigal. I would say that as Christians we’re called to walk a Christian line, and a specific party line may or may not intersect with that on any given issue.
I realise that may not be terribly useful in the voting booth, but anyway…
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