I thought of the similarity between *their* debate and *our* debate when I read this short piece on Mark Noll's new book. (Not that we're about to have another civil war.)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 26, 2006
Slavery, Scripture: An explosive mix
John Blake - Staff
Before the Civil War was fought on the battlefield, it was fought in America's pulpits.
Southern ministers claimed Scripture sanctioned slavery. Abolitionists
said it condemned the practice. The colossal political issue of
mid-19th century America might have been the preservation of the Union,
but it turned on a deeper question: What does the Bible say about
slavery?
Those positions form the basis for author Mark Noll's "The Civil War
as a Theological Crisis" (University of North Carolina Press, $29.95).
The "book that made the nation was destroying the nation," because the
Bible could not provide a moral consensus on slavery, said Noll, a
professor at Wheaton College in Illinois.
"The political standoff that led to war was matched by an interpretive
standoff," Noll writes. "No common meaning could be discovered in the
Bible, which almost everyone in the United States professed to honor
and which was, without a rival, the most widely read text of any kind
in the whole country."
Noll, speaking by phone from his Wheaton office, said he was drawn to
the subject because few writers had explored the theological conflict
that preceded the Civil War. Deeply felt Christian beliefs drove
participants and leaders on both sides.
"This was far and away the most religiously engaged conflict in
American history," Noll said. "There's a strong religious dimension in
the American Revolution ... but nothing like that of the armies and
populace in the Civil War."
It may be difficult for people today to understand how Christians could
use the Bible to support an institution as brutal as slavery, but Noll
said the power of the pro-slavery position was its theological
simplicity. The Old Testament and New Testament were filled with
passages that sanctioned slavery. In a nation where most people
believed in the infallibility of Scripture, those passages settled the
debate.
"You had very serious people who said the Bible certainly supports
slavery, and any attack on the slave system was therefore an attack on
the Bible," Noll said.
The difficulty in the abolitionists' position was its nuance. They had
to reject an inerrant approach to the Bible and appeal to the broad
sweep of Scripture, which opposed the oppression of a group of people.
Those arguments, however, never gained traction among ordinary people
who were accustomed to treating the Bible as infallible, Noll said.
Noll said he grew depressed while writing the book because
unprecedented reverence for the Bible led not to peace but to the
bloodiest war in history.
"Once positions hardened," he said, "the Bible became a bullet rather than a book."
_______________
mp
The NYT today chronicles a substantial glass ceiling for women pastors, even among the denominations that do ordain women.
Lisa
There was an interesting article in our local paper today about a film coming out later this year, "The Nativity Story," telling the story of the birth of Jesus from Mary's perspective. The Protestant screenwriter, Mike Rich, says, "Not much anymore in our lives is black and white. But this is a young woman who made a black-and-white decision: She was willing to have the faith to follow the most remarkable of directives."
The article discusses the resurgence of interest in both the historical and the spiritual significance of Mary, not only in the Catholic Church, but also in Protestant churches.
. . . Mary, already revered in Islam as the mother of the prophet Jesus, has been finding her way into Protestant churches, too. In recent years, many non-Catholic Christians have reclaimed parts of her tradition that once seemed too Catholic to consider. They remember her as a witness of Jesus' crucifixion, perhaps as one of the women who found the tomb empty on Easter morning. Many who saw the film "The Passion of the Chirst" were touched by scense of Mary remembering her son as a child."
More support for continued exploration of the Marian dimension of CLT?
Lisa
Friday, August 25, 2006
Over at First Things, Ryan Anderson offers some additional thoughts on the premature embrace of the new method of obtaining stem cells, including discussion of two alternatives that merit further exploration.
Rob
This might speak more powerfully to those of us who emerged from the evangelical subculture, but here is a useful dissection of the exploding marketing phenomenon known as Christian kitsch. (HT: Evangelical Outpost) And yes, pictured below is the latest in evangelistic beach wear.
Rob
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a statement to clarify the media coverage of the new method of obtaining embryonic stem cells for research:
Initial news reports have misrepresented a study published August 23 in the online version of the journal Nature. The study, conducted by researchers at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts, has been described as showing that a single cell can be obtained from an 8- to 10-celled embryo, and used to create an embryonic stem cell line without harming the original embryo. Some even speak of each child receiving his or her own “repair kit” of stem cells upon birth.
“The reality is very different. Researchers did not safely remove single cells from early embryos, but destroyed 16 embryos in a desperate effort to obtain an average of six cells from each one. This experiment left no embryos alive, and solves no ethical problem. From the resulting 91 cells, they still only managed to make two cell lines. Their study shows nothing about the safety of removing only one cell, which in fact is something they never did – partly because their own earlier experiment in mice indicated that “co-culturing” several cells together might be needed to develop a cell line.
Rob
