Reading the Bible Badly. Karl Allen Kuhn

      Reading the Bible Badly

      How American Christians Misunderstand and Misuse Their Scriptures

      Copyright © 2020 Karl Allen Kuhn. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-6698-8

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-6699-5

      ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-6700-8

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Kuhn, Karl Allen, author.

      Title: Reading the Bible badly : how American Christians misunderstand and misuse their Scriptures / by Karl Allen Kuhn.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020 | Includes bibliographical references.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-7252-6698-8 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-7252-6699-5 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-7252-6700-8 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Bible—Hermeneutics. | Bible—Evidences, authority, etc.

      Classification: bs480 .k75 2020 (print) | bs480 (ebook)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 08/31/20

      For Pastor Kim

      Acknowledgments

      Perhaps it is fitting that a book for the church should have its start in the church. Reading the Bible Badly began as a Monday night adult-education study of the same name at Grace Congregational United Church of Christ in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, in the winter of 2018. During our first session together, I noted how disturbing it was that so many of them were willing to come back to church on a cold winter night to learn how to read the Bible badly! But kidding aside, I am grateful for the many studies I have shared with this congregation over the years as together we have struggled to discern what it means to read the Bible, our faith, and the times in which we live well. I am also deeply appreciative for their continuing support of my ministry in the academy and the church, and the Grace Chair of Religious Studies which I am honored to hold at Lakeland University.

      The twenty years and counting I have served at Lakeland have been a tremendous blessing. This liberal arts college related to the United Church of Christ, nestled among the farm fields of rural Wisconsin, has shaped my ministry of teaching and scholarship in profound ways. I have learned much from my colleagues and students. A sabbatical leave the fall of 2019 enabled me to complete most of the manuscript for this book. Then, in spring 2020 I shared a draft of the text with students in my “Interpreting Sacred Traditions” course, whose comments and encouragement gave me the sense that the work was on the right track and led to several improvements. Their names are Nicholas Broder, Kyle Ericsson, Nicole Herda, Mark Schmitt, Erin Tomlinson, and William Young. I also very much appreciate Lakeland librarian Jamie Keller, for the scores of inter-library loan requests he processed to support my research.

      Others have also made valuable contributions to this book. My wife, Kathryn, a gifted UCC pastor and preacher, read through several chapters and encouraged my attempts to reach a general audience while cautioning me not to get too “gimmicky.” My sister, Louise Hubert, also commented on several chapters of the work. Her perspective was quite valuable as I sought to discern how the book might be useful to those on the more conservative side of our tradition. I am incredibly grateful for the tireless work of Kim Thimmig, who proofed and commented on the entire manuscript. Her efforts have improved the work in substantial ways.

      Finally, I thank Wipf and Stock for this opportunity to publish under their Cascade imprint, and for the able work of their staff, including editor Rodney Clapp, whose expertise further improved the book and guided it to completion.

      introduction

      Reading Glasses

      “I don’t interpret the Bible. I just read it!”

      The speaker punctuated his pronouncement with a dramatic fist pound on the heavy oak table.

      Gathered around were members of a Sunday morning Bible study I had been asked to lead for several weeks. Nods from a couple of others indicated that the gentleman speaking these words was not alone in his frustration. Perhaps I was being too pushy.

      These folk, after all, had been meeting long before I joined the congregation. Over the years, the group had established its own method for reading Scripture. In fact, their way of making sense of Scripture just seemed so natural to them it was not even a “method” at all. They just read it.

      My years of teaching biblical studies have led me to discern that there are many Christians for whom understanding Scripture is pretty much a matter of just reading it. What appear to me as rather complex arrays of assumptions about the character of Scripture and sophisticated interpretive dances with biblical texts become learned patterns of reading behavior that are absorbed—unconsciously it seems—by groups and individuals. They have trouble imagining reading Scripture any other way, because their way of reading Scripture is not a “way” at all. It is simply reading. Like breathing.

      I have noted another common tendency in how Christian readers engage the Bible. They look to faithful experts to tell them what the Bible has to say. Such folks recognize their own limitations in unveiling the truth of Scripture and in varying degrees rely on pastors, evangelists, scholars, and online bloggers to do the reading for them. Some will shop around and gravitate to those experts who read Scripture in a way that resonates with them. Others remain devoted to a particular pastor or teacher.

      But, in most cases, the “methods” of these experts are of little interest to those who listen to them and learn from them and even read the Bible like them. Followers may believe that the way their expert reads Scripture is the right way, as opposed to others. But the rightness of any way of reading Scripture is for most folks more about the results than the process. The results are the foreground. The method is the background. As background, it is easy to forget that it is even there.

      But as with nearly all things, what you get out of Scripture has a heck of a lot do to with what you put into it.

      The Necessity of Interpretation

      “I don’t interpret the Bible, I just read it.”

      I noted that not everyone in that Bible Study group was nodding in agreement with the fist-pounding but otherwise dignified gentleman sitting across the table from me. This gave me a ray of hope that some in the group might find what I had to say helpful. I had been attempting to explain the importance of reading biblical texts in relation to their historical and cultural contexts (which we will discuss in the next chapter). Looking back to that Bible study session, perhaps it would have helped if I had begun by talking about the necessity, the unavoidability, of interpretation.

      Perhaps that would be a good place for us to start.

      Making Meaning

      Any act of discerning meaning is an act of interpretation. Please do me a favor and reread that statement. It is really important.

      Any act of discerning meaning is an act of interpretation (okay, sorry, just to be sure).

      Few such blanket statements are to be trusted as true in every circumstance. But I think this