How elite are biblical scholars? As an Anabaptist and a biblical-scholar-in-training, I have long wondered what my role is in my own (local and larger) community of faith. For example, Stuart Murray devotes a chapter of his Biblical Interpretation in the Anabaptist Tradition to “congregational hermeneutics” (find a summary of the book here). The idea is that (according to 16th century Anabaptists) only a local community, attempting to be truly obedient, could understand the meaning of Scripture together as a community. If I am signing up for the scholarly path, what does that mean for my connection to Anabaptism? Is my training going against the grain of such “congregational hermeneutics”? Where is my place at the Anabaptist table of interpreters?

As I am reading through Philip Esler’s Galatians volume, I was pleasantly surprised to find a helpful insight on this topic from someone thoroughly rooted in a social historical analysis of the biblical text (as I try to be). He discusses the “base communities of Latin America and local groups elsewhere” which reveal “a different pattern” of biblical interpretation than is found in the North Atlantic:

. . . one in which the correlation between scriptural interpretation and the scrutiny of the contemporary situation are conducted by the communities themselves, with some help from theologians functioning as consultants rather than creators of the theology. In these contexts the value of non-elite readings of biblical text becomes apparent. For, in the end, although New Testament interpreters may provide exegetical results which can be appropriated by local communities seeking to undertake correlations of the type just mentioned, it is only those congregations who can make the earliest Christian story, critically understood, their story. . . . The only realistic prospects of developing an intercultural understanding of New Testament experience are located in Christian communities. [27, emphases mine]

Just prior to this statement, Esler effectively critiques those who attack historical methods of interpretation. I can resonate with Esler’s perspective here. As scholars of the biblical texts, our interpretation must be rooted in an attempt to understand the social historical environment from which they come. Postmodern criticism does remind us that we are fallible and does warn us against absolute confidence in our own assumed objectivity. But I like the idea that my purpose is to immerse myself in the historical stuff and serve as a “consultant” to the interpretation of my community. My community as a whole takes whatever attempt at objective interpretation I have made and applies it our own subjective situation collectively.

This is not all just an idealistic pipe dream. Just in the past few months, for example, as my congregation (a Mennonite church in southern California) went through a membership discernment process, I taught a Sunday school session on “Boundaries in the Bible: Inclusion and Exclusion among God’s People.” I brought to my fellow congregants what I had learned from an in-depth review of the topic and they got into groups discussing it. They came up with insights of how the historical analysis of the Bible would apply in our own world. The session was part of a much longer process in which we explored membership issues from a variety of angles.

In the end, the community as a whole came up with the wording of the policy and decided together whether the statements accurately reflected our sense of the issue as a community. With the exception of a few, we came to a vast majority approval of our new policy. I played only a small role, but it gives me hope and a vision for finding a place outside the ivory tower of academia. I’d also like to note that I think my social historical approach offered a more transferable and applicable reading of Scripture in the process than might some other methods.