As some of you know, I am gathering ideas for a book about teaching the Bible to undergraduates. At the moment I’m pondering the fact that serious study of the Bible seems to be a thing of the past and that today’s undergraduates, even those from Evangelical churches, have minimal knowledge of Scripture.

Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of Christianity Today and former high official in the Southern Baptist Convention, has an interesting observation about this matter. He was interviewed by NPR yesterday, stated that US Christianity is in crisis, and explained how he came to this view:

It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — “turn the other cheek” — [and] to have someone come up after to say, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?” And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, “I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,” the response would not be, “I apologize.” The response would be, “Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.” And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.

I used to teach an adult Sunday School course. One time we were studying Ezekiel 16, with its (to put it euphemistically) rough language. The class was shocked at the frank language–it didn’t seem right that God should use those kinds of words.

In the case of students who know the Bible, or who believe they know it, one of the tasks of the teacher of scripture is to de-familiarize the text–to try to get students to feel the Bible’s strangeness. This is one reason why ministers should still be required to tackle biblical languages. Trying to read the OT in Hebrew or the NT in Greek forcibly reminds the reader of the Bible’s foreigness.

Of course, these days, with decreasing knowledge of scripture. the Bible is automatically foreign to many readers and the teacher has to build a case for the Bible’s importance.

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192663920/southern-baptist-convention-donald-trump-christianity