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How the Bible Works: An Anthropological Study of Evangelical Biblicism
What do evangelicals believe when they 'believe in the Bible?' Despite hundreds of English versions that differ in their texts, evangelicals continue to believe that there is a stable text―'the Bible'―which is the authoritative word of God and an essential guide to their everyday lives. To understand this phenomenon of evangelical Biblicism, anthropologist and biblical scholar Brian Malley looks not to the words of the Bible but to the Bible-believing communities. For as Malley demonstrates, it is less the meaning of the words of the Bible itself than how 'the Bible' provides a proper ground for beliefs that matters to evangelicals. Drawing on recent cognitive and social theory and extensive fieldwork in an evangelical church, Malley's book is an invaluable guide for seminarians, social scientists of religion, or for anyone who wants to understand just how the Bible works for American evangelicals.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 22, 2016
Some Helpful Insights, But Fewer than I Had Hoped For
Did his homework as a churchgoer and scholar. Writes in a stylistically formalized way. Speaks of evangelicals as objects of historical curiosity. Dismisses, it seemed to me, the important question of whether or not the Bible actually can carry divine authority.
The thing I liked the most was his careful rhetorical analysis of a portion of a real-live sermon. He showed how the Bible is used, well in this case I think, to demonstrate contemporary relevance for Americans.
Did his homework as a churchgoer and scholar. Writes in a stylistically formalized way. Speaks of evangelicals as objects of historical curiosity. Dismisses, it seemed to me, the important question of whether or not the Bible actually can carry divine authority.
The thing I liked the most was his careful rhetorical analysis of a portion of a real-live sermon. He showed how the Bible is used, well in this case I think, to demonstrate contemporary relevance for Americans.
July 29, 2013
I appreciate this book for a few thoughts that had not really been clear to me before:
I especially liked an idea conveyed in chapters 3 and 4 related to biblical interpretation, tradition, and biblical authority. Basically, as I understand its significance, what evangelicals CLAIM is that the bible contains a set of teachings. They are simply reading the bible, interpreting it, and accepting and applying these teachings, which form their beliefs. BUT what Malley claims is that that is backwards. REALLY what is going on is that evangelical Christians communities possess a set of beliefs which they are intent upon sharing/passing on. They seek to tie these beliefs to the bible in order to give the beliefs legitimacy. That is why it is beneficial for the Bible to be promoted as an "authority" because whatever beliefs are claimed to come from this authority of course people are much more likely to accept if they buy the idea that the bible is an authority.
This section I found pretty interesting and valuable because it does help to explain that deeply entrenched habit that evangelical Christians have of taking verses out of context in order to "prove" a point. It's like, it doesn't matter what topic the writer was actually writing about (like Paul on the fate of jews) if there is a sentence that can possibly be applied to a contemporary topic (like homosexuality being portrayed as "unnatural"), then that's fair game for winning a current argument. We don't really use any other book that way, and yet this community has conditioned its members through treating the bible as "special," that it is in effect written by god, etc., to think that's perfectly logical.
As far as the nature of biblical authority, I found helpful this sentence, "It is a curious situation when an unclear idea has clear consequences." what he is referring to is the evidence that the congregation did not really have a clear idea of "how inspiration works." When inspired? Who inspired? How inspired? Yet inspiration is the basis upon which the claim to the authority of the bible is founded. And that's very clear. Malley argues that in light of the clearness of the claim to authority and the vagueness of the claim to inspiration, the truth is probably that "psychologically," the authority of the bible is the community's prior, primary belief, and the claim of inspiration is a secondary belief developed to bolster the primary belief. This makes sense to me.
A final thought that I appreciated occurs on p. 140, in which he observes that all communities possess "ultimate sacred postulates." (based on Rappaport) beliefs that the group hold in common, that tie them together. The authority of the bible is such a belief for evangelical communities, and furthermore, it functions as a means of communication for hte community -- since everyone accepts it as an authority, they communicate and seek to persuade by appealign to it. Anyone who refuses to do this, to acknowledge the bible as an authority -- cannot be a part of the group, both because they would not be persuaded by another's appeal to it, and they would not themselves appeal to that authority which would be most likely to persuade the others of the group. So it's a useful tool of communicating and regulating within the group.
Some less significant but still notable points:
He writes a lot about how Christians treat the Bible as a special book and raise their children to think of it that way, say, by using a particular version that looks different from other books, "cheating" by inserting their teaching notes into a bible so it looks like they're actually reading from the Bible, teaching little 2 year olds a song about patting the bible. To me, these are all signs of treating the bible like an amulet or some other object of superstition. And yet, and I think this book acknowledges this, there is variety to the extent that Christians do treat the bible with reference, there all sorts of trashed looking Bibles due to being carried in backpacks and nobody has a cow over it -- it's treated with less respect than, say, an American flag, in some cases.
He points out that many in the community seem unaware and unconcerned that "the Bible" consists of differing contents depending on community: jewish, catholic, protestant, etc. I really don't think this is that significant. And that goes for a lot of things that he, as apparently a seminary-educated person, knows that the rank and file congregation did not know about the Bible, church history, etc. That seemed to be the upshot of a lot of his research, is pointing out what the congregation did not know that he did. But I actually thought the interviewees were MORE informed about the Bible, Christian doctrine, and church history than I expected. And I was left wondering, so what? We all "use things" without knowing "how they work" -- like electricity (for me, anyway) or our cars. We expect electricians and auto mechanics to be the experts on how they work and how things have developed, etc., but not the average joe who uses these things. So I didn't see the significance in his establishing what random congregation members DON'T know.
I especially liked an idea conveyed in chapters 3 and 4 related to biblical interpretation, tradition, and biblical authority. Basically, as I understand its significance, what evangelicals CLAIM is that the bible contains a set of teachings. They are simply reading the bible, interpreting it, and accepting and applying these teachings, which form their beliefs. BUT what Malley claims is that that is backwards. REALLY what is going on is that evangelical Christians communities possess a set of beliefs which they are intent upon sharing/passing on. They seek to tie these beliefs to the bible in order to give the beliefs legitimacy. That is why it is beneficial for the Bible to be promoted as an "authority" because whatever beliefs are claimed to come from this authority of course people are much more likely to accept if they buy the idea that the bible is an authority.
This section I found pretty interesting and valuable because it does help to explain that deeply entrenched habit that evangelical Christians have of taking verses out of context in order to "prove" a point. It's like, it doesn't matter what topic the writer was actually writing about (like Paul on the fate of jews) if there is a sentence that can possibly be applied to a contemporary topic (like homosexuality being portrayed as "unnatural"), then that's fair game for winning a current argument. We don't really use any other book that way, and yet this community has conditioned its members through treating the bible as "special," that it is in effect written by god, etc., to think that's perfectly logical.
As far as the nature of biblical authority, I found helpful this sentence, "It is a curious situation when an unclear idea has clear consequences." what he is referring to is the evidence that the congregation did not really have a clear idea of "how inspiration works." When inspired? Who inspired? How inspired? Yet inspiration is the basis upon which the claim to the authority of the bible is founded. And that's very clear. Malley argues that in light of the clearness of the claim to authority and the vagueness of the claim to inspiration, the truth is probably that "psychologically," the authority of the bible is the community's prior, primary belief, and the claim of inspiration is a secondary belief developed to bolster the primary belief. This makes sense to me.
A final thought that I appreciated occurs on p. 140, in which he observes that all communities possess "ultimate sacred postulates." (based on Rappaport) beliefs that the group hold in common, that tie them together. The authority of the bible is such a belief for evangelical communities, and furthermore, it functions as a means of communication for hte community -- since everyone accepts it as an authority, they communicate and seek to persuade by appealign to it. Anyone who refuses to do this, to acknowledge the bible as an authority -- cannot be a part of the group, both because they would not be persuaded by another's appeal to it, and they would not themselves appeal to that authority which would be most likely to persuade the others of the group. So it's a useful tool of communicating and regulating within the group.
Some less significant but still notable points:
He writes a lot about how Christians treat the Bible as a special book and raise their children to think of it that way, say, by using a particular version that looks different from other books, "cheating" by inserting their teaching notes into a bible so it looks like they're actually reading from the Bible, teaching little 2 year olds a song about patting the bible. To me, these are all signs of treating the bible like an amulet or some other object of superstition. And yet, and I think this book acknowledges this, there is variety to the extent that Christians do treat the bible with reference, there all sorts of trashed looking Bibles due to being carried in backpacks and nobody has a cow over it -- it's treated with less respect than, say, an American flag, in some cases.
He points out that many in the community seem unaware and unconcerned that "the Bible" consists of differing contents depending on community: jewish, catholic, protestant, etc. I really don't think this is that significant. And that goes for a lot of things that he, as apparently a seminary-educated person, knows that the rank and file congregation did not know about the Bible, church history, etc. That seemed to be the upshot of a lot of his research, is pointing out what the congregation did not know that he did. But I actually thought the interviewees were MORE informed about the Bible, Christian doctrine, and church history than I expected. And I was left wondering, so what? We all "use things" without knowing "how they work" -- like electricity (for me, anyway) or our cars. We expect electricians and auto mechanics to be the experts on how they work and how things have developed, etc., but not the average joe who uses these things. So I didn't see the significance in his establishing what random congregation members DON'T know.
January 6, 2009
This book is one of the only (if not the only) book I've found that looks at evangelical interpretive _practices_. I think he really gets it right by describing literalism as an interpretive tradition that is a species of belief tradition in relationship to a text (not necessarily an interpretive relation). He also points out that many scholars seem to take the avowal of literalism at its face value rather than investigating the practices. His theoretical analysis comes out of cognitive theories of religion, critiquing those theories where they need critiquing but adding to them. His theoretical method is certainly not the only way to reach his conclusions though. Recommended! I will probably teach from this text in the future because it is very accessible! P.S. In going over my notes I would just like to add for those who care that this isn't a very good ethnography and in fact his argumentation is more intuitive than evident, but it's still a useful book.
August 10, 2011
A close and objective look at how literacy and epistemology in a cultural setting interact. "The Bible" is viewed by people in our culure much as people in other cultures view "The Koran." It is very interesting how narrative forms mythic belief.
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