Many Conversions in Process (Part 2)
In my previous post, I mentioned how I have thought about conversions this quarter. Since it is relevant to my vocation as a scholar and educator, I would like to reflect a little bit on my “intellectual” and “sociopolitical” conversions. I can point to a definitive moment when I had my major moral conversion (see my last post) and also my Christian conversion (at Christian youth event in high school). But for my intellectual and sociopolitical conversions, it is more difficult to nail down. In Donald Gelpi’s book, Committed Worship, he describes his own intellectual conversion:
Then came the day when I realized that I did not believe some of the things one of my professors taught. . . . I finally decided to formulate my own position on the subject. With that decision, I believe, I began to come of age intellectually. [25]
Something like this happened to me a couple of times. In my last post, I mentioned how I was a pretty bad kid in early adolescence. Not only did I cause trouble, but I was a very poor student. My dad told me that I made one of my elementary teachers cry because I was not living up to my potential. That was only the beginning. My academic low point was probably eighth grade (the same year I made my moral conversion).
My mind was truly captured for the first time after I became a Christian at 16 and attended weekly Bible studies. It was the first topic that I was so excited that I actually began to read . . . a lot. I read as much of the Bible as I could and asked lots of questions during the studies. What I didn’t realize was that I was being spoonfed a particular brand of biblical interpretation (some may call it fundamentalism).
Then, when I (barely) made it into college and began my study as a Bible major, I was introduced critical thinking. The Bible was no longer simply an “answer book,” a repository of information at my fingertips, but a complex compendium of documents written in vastly different historical and cultural contexts than my own. My early studies at Messiah nudged me out of my high school fundamentalism. Later, I began to develop the tools to question what my undergraduate professors were telling me.
Like Gelpi, I started to find my own intellectual voice. During this time, I became Anabaptist. Reading Anabaptist literature profoundly affected my intellectual outlook, but I also found that I was not walking in lockstep with all Anabaptists. I eventually found a way to be both committed to my Anabaptist faith and live with tons of intellectual questions.
I won’t go into the whole of my sociopolitical conversion, but suffice it to say that my inquisitiveness led me to question not only theological, historical, or literary ideas, but also present day cultural and societal norms. In turn, I’ve become an activist of sorts, perhaps a mild activist (e.g., I’ve never been arrested for civil disobedience), but I am engaged.
As I connect the dots with another earlier post on holistic teaching, I imagine these are the sorts of stories that I will meet as a pastoral kind of educator. My hope is that I can the kind of guide that my professors have been for me in my intellectual and sociopolitical conversion process.
Many Conversions in Process (Part 1)
I have thought a good deal about conversions this quarter, which I didn’t expect to happen when it began. In my preaching practicum, “Making Doctrine Live,” I was assigned the text of Acts 16:25-34 (conversion of the Philippian jailer) and instructed to relate it to the doctrine of conversion. A few weeks before I was supposed to preach the sermon, we talked about conversion stories in my “Congregation as Learning Community” (CLC) course.
I have always thought of conversion as a process, more than the instantaneous transformation of one person from unbeliever to believer. When we discussed conversions in CLC, Mark Lau Branson pointed to the work of Roman Catholic theologian, Donald Gelpi. Gelpi outlines five areas in which conversion has both an initial moment and an ongoing process: affective (emotional), intellectual, moral, sociopolitical, and Christian (or religious). Branson adds “local congregation” as a sixth category. In these categories, Gelpi borrows from secular definitions of conversion, in which conversion constitutes:
“ . . . change from irresponsibility to responsibility that includes accountability, in which persons acknowledge a duty to render an account of the motives and consequences of their decisions to someone or to some community of persons. Conversion is possible in natural and supernatural spheres, which are interrelated.” (“Branson on Gelpi on Conversion,” in-class handout).
In other words, conversion is not as simple as we might believe if we listen to most television preachers. For example, I actually had a moral conversion before my Christian conversion. As it happens, I was a pretty bad kid as an early adolescent. In those junior high years, I shoplifted and generally got into lots of trouble with a buddy of mine that was my partner in crime (literally). During this two year phase of mine, my parents couldn’t do anything to change my behavior. Then, one day, my buddy and I got picked up at a local department store for shoplifting some junk food. It wasn’t the first time I got caught, in fact it was the second time that week, but this time was different.
Rather than pick me up herself, my mother decided to let the police escort us home. The officer that came to pick me up happened to be my DARE officer from sixth grade. I had tremendous respect for this man, who had taught me to “just say no.” So, when I saw the look of disappointment on his face and heard it in his voice, I was suddenly transformed. I stopped hanging out with my fellow hoodlum and concentrated instead on singing in school choir. I stopped my criminal activities and became good friends with a fellow choir member who eventually introduced me to the Christian faith.
This is an example of how one conversion was both “initial” and “ongoing,” while it also led down a path towards other conversions. Thinking about these conversions in class not only helped me see new and interesting things in the jailer’s conversion in Acts as I planned my sermon. The exercise also helped me consider what it means that conversion is a process in my own life.
This theme stood out so strongly to me, I think I will write a second post on some of my intellectual and sociopolitical conversions. The two categories are intimately connected for me.
Dynamics of the Classroom/Congregation
During this quarter, part of the home stretch in my seminary career, I have been thinking about education in the context of a congregation. In “The Congregation as Learning Community,” we’ve been emphasizing a holistic kind of education, using buzzwords like “discipleship” and “missional church.” I came into the class thinking that we’d be mostly covering practical aspects of education within a church. But we spent a great deal of time thinking more about the purpose of the congregation and the people who fill it. We should not merely be dumping information into people’s minds, but educational leaders in the church should be guiding and equipping people in becoming transformed disciples.
It makes me wonder: how do we conceive of the student in the classroom? It seems like its easy to forget that students are whole human beings and not just warm bodies behind desks, or numbers on an excel spreadsheet. I have often thought of my pursued vocation as not only a professor, but as a pastoral kind of professor. If I connect the dots, then, I should broaden or deepen my understanding of the people I will be teaching in the future. I should also broaden or deepen my understanding of what my role is as a future educator.
“Disciple,” after all, is just another word for “learner” or “student.” Isn’t it natural to connect the dots between the two? Just like at any church, there will be a hundred different things on the minds of those who show up. Just like at any church, those who come are hoping to “get something out of it” for themselves. What if we could transform a classroom in the kinds of ways that the “missional church” movement is trying to transform the church? How can we not only engage the minds of students but provoke them towards action? How do we not only impart information but also help students to grapple with cultural implications to what they are learning? How do we make contextual connections inside and outside the classroom? I am certain the answers will differ from one topic or classroom to the next. But I think it’s good for me to start asking these questions before I dive headfirst into life as a full-time educator.
Considering Intrapersonal Learning
One of the classes I’m taking this quarter is “The Congregation as Learning Community” where we discuss issues related to education in Christian congregations (as you might expect). In this past week, our primary assignment was to present on a book in small groups. Each group was given not only a book (ours was Practicing Our Faith edited by Dorothy C. Bass), but also a learning method to drive our presentation (ours was “intrapersonal”). This presented a challenge: how does one “present” anything conducive to intrapersonal learning. Should we integrate intrapersonal reflection within the classroom setting itself?
Fortunately, my partner and I had a topic that worked well here. The idea of Bass’ book is that we need to “practice our faith” in tangible ways in everyday activities. So, we started our 20 minute presentation with a meditation exercise where people found another place in the room (“body” learning) to pray and reflect on the calm images of nature that we were projecting on the screen (“visual” learning). After a couple minutes, we asked them to slowly and quietly return to their seats (“body” again).
Then we asked them to consider the shift in imagery when we showed them video of busy images taken from the streets of Tokyo (“visual” again). The point was: this book helps us to unite our intrapersonal reflections and experiences with our interpersonal practices and activities. I think the reflection time in that moment was appropriate and, as parenthetically mentioned, was appropriately combined with other learning methods (body and visual).
The issue for me is the fact that “intrapersonal” reflection is directly related to the topic here. My question is how easily one might allow for intrapersonal moments within other class settings. This course is intended for congregational learning, where times of prayer and meditation may be more appropriate than a college classroom. I’m not sure I will use similar techniques when I teach Christian origins.
The exercise is nevertheless a reminder that educators should move beyond the old standard lecture style and consider new ways of reaching multiple learning modes within a single classroom session. How do we impart information while also promoting critical engagement with the course materials?
Obama Going to Messiah College
This is just an update that Obama accepted the invitation to the Compassion Forum that will be held at Messiah College on April 13th. See my earlier post about Clinton’s announcement to attend.
Reading the Bible "literally"
When I was in high school, I spent a couple years as a fundamentalist. To be honest, apart from the horror I caused my parents and the damage I did to my friendships with “unbelievers,” I am in many ways happy that I had this time. Not only did my close-minded bibliolatry (that is, worshiping the Bible) lead me to the kinds of probing questions that now drive my career in academic biblical studies (in many ways, I am often disproving assumptions I once ardently held), but it also gives me an “insider’s” point of reference for speaking of those we call fundies. One point that often confused me in those days was the need to read the Bible “literally.” My pastor mentioned that we need to read the Bible “literally” rather than “allegorically.” Apparently, “liberals” (i.e., any person who was not a fundamentalist) read the Bible “allegorically.”
Hmmm. I thought to myself: Maybe I misunderstand what an allegory is. Is it not a story in which each character, figure, or event could function as a representation of some abstract idea? Perhaps some “liberal” Christians read certain texts symbolically, such as the resurrection as a symbol of some kind of hope, rather than a historical reality. But allegorically? This is an allegorical interpretation:
The table made from acacia wood is the Holy Scripture composed out of the bold words and deeds of the holy fathers. . . . This [table] has length, because it suggests to us perseverance in religious undertakings; width, because it suggests the amplitude of charity; height, because it suggests the hope of the everlasting reward. (Bede, On the Tabernacle [Holder trans.], 21)
That didn’t seem to be what “liberals” were doing. Indeed, I left fundamentalism when I started studying the Bible academically as an undergraduate, and after making the shift, I have never taken a text “allegorically” that I didn’t think was supposed to be taking allegorically. Revelation, for example, has allegorical elements. Many parables are something close to allegories. But, after my transition, what set me apart from my fundamentalist brothers and sisters was my desire to locate the biblical texts within their own social, cultural, and historical environment. In Paul’s interpretation of the Greco-Roman “household code” in Ephesians, for example, I saw something quite revolutionary. Paul was not going to “rock the boat” and change the lingo for headship and submission in marriage, but instead he redefined it. What does it mean for a husband to be the “head” of his wife? To love her sacrificially . . . not to “tell her what to do” or “make the tough decisions” or “be the spiritual leader.” The verse 5:21 sets up the passage: Submit to one another. He doesn’t need to spend much time saying how wives submit to their husbands because this is an accepted cultural reality. He does spend some time, though, showing how being a “head” in marriage can actually mean submission. So, which reading is more “literal”? Mine? Or the endless horrid wedding sermons on this passage that talk about the husband being the “spiritual leader” of the household? Actually, I feel that my reading more accurately considers what the text “literally” meant for the author and his readers/hearers. My fundamentalist friends understand the “literal” meaning (or the “plain sense”) of the passage to be how these particular words sound today.
Whomever we decide is more “literal,” the fact remains that “literalness” is not the main distinguishing characteristic here. The main difference is how willing one is to contextualize the words of the Bible within their original situation. True, many fundamentalists work with the original context and do scholarship in this area, but usually (forgive me for my broad generalizations) with the intent of proving their understanding of the “literal” meaning is correct. So, let’s drop this whole litmus test of who “reads the Bible literally.” This is a remnant of the Protestants reacting against what they saw as convoluted allegorical interpretations of parts of the Roman Catholic Church of the time (something like what I quoted above) [Note: I'm not dissing Catholics here]. But the dichotomy has changed! I read literal texts literally. I read symbolic texts symbolically. I try to make sense of the evidence that we have as best I can, without trying to “prove” some particular doctrine. I’m not claiming that I am without an ideology or that I am some saintly or infallible interpreter of the biblical text. No, but I try to be willing to let the biblical text and its environs challenge my ideology, to let the text read me. And I think that’s the difference.
Permitting all goes as planned, I will be taking my third doctoral seminar next quarter while at Fuller for my MDiv. It is a class on the “History of New Testament Scholarship” taught by Donald Hagner. That’s why I’m thinking about interpretation these days. It strikes me that the study of the history of scholarship is the interpretation of interpretation. It is difficult to wrap my mind around how many interpretive layers we have to deal with to think about the Bible, in its many forms. I think we would all do well to remember just how much interpretation is going on and hope that it gives us a little humility as we try to be our own interpreters.
Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and . . . Rodney Stark??
This shot is from a book display in the Religion section at Borders. I guess some Borders employee thought this was their “atheist” shelf, but one of these things is not like the others. Or did said employee imagine that Stark was enough to take on the atheists all by himself?
Actually, someone (presumably someone who does not like to read differing opinions) had flipped the books over so you couldn’t see the covers (including Stark’s) . . . as if these books were pornographic and they don’t want little children to see them inadvertently.
The Bible calls liberals fools…
Or so one person would have you believe. I noticed on a discussion board related to Barack Obama, a conservative gentleman first declared that “so-called bible using liberals” are “nut jobs, liberals dont have religion.” To prove his point, he quoted Ecclesiastes 10:2: “The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.”
Sometimes I am so immersed in academic biblical studies and am a part of such a vastly different Christian community than this gentleman, that I forget that this kind of Bible usage is out there and won’t ever go away. I don’t suppose there is anything I could ever say to someone who uses the Bible like this to convince them otherwise. Someday I’ll have to blog about some of my encounters with such “Bible-thumping” in public places.
The Bible for elites?
Jim West is the biblioblogger of the month and you can read his entertaining interview over at biblioblogs.com. One thing that he said particularly captured my attention, as Dr. Jim West’s blunt statements are wont to do. I am actually quite disturbed by this one, as it gets to the heart of one of my greatest concerns vocationally. Brandon Wason asked, “Are you an elitist, or do people just get that impression?” Jim replied:
I am something of an elitist in that I think only persons with proper qualifications ought to set hand to the Bible to interpret it for others. People are free to interpret the text as badly as they wish for themselves, but when it comes to offering opinions on its meaning for others, the unqualified should remain silent.
I am quite conflicted about this. As one of the “trained,” I do find myself frustrated when I hear great violence being done to the text by radio talk show hosts, politicians, and even pastors. On the other hand, as an Anabaptist, I have a strong conviction for empowering the laity. I am going to be leading our church small group on how we should approach the Bible as everyday Christians (incidentally, it is a lesson that I need to learn as well… to not focus too much on the academic issues per se, but allow myself to be challenged by the text). I’ll be doing a Sunday School series in a few months on a similar topic. So theologically, I’m tremendously opposed to an “elitist” view of the Bible, but from an academic perspective, I understand the need that teachers have proper training (and I think that the laity should be involved in teaching). It is a discomfort I just have to live with, I think.
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Elsewhere . . .- Blog titles beginning with "A" to "Z" on your reader Mark Goodacre
- Of making many books there is no end Chris Brady
- Free Online: The Liddell-Scott Jones Lexicon S and C
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? II agathos
- Steven J. Friesen and the Identity of Satan’s Throne in Pergamum alan
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? agathos
- Bloomsbury buys Continuum Mark Goodacre
- Imperial America Peter J. Leithart
- C.F.D. Moule on the Birth of the New Testament d. miller
- Responding to Kostenberger (with comparisons to Marshall) Jeremiah
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