Reading the Bible Responsibly in a Polarized Church & World – Part 10

Opening Prayer

As daylight breaks the darkness of night, as the first movements of morning pierce the night’s stillness, as a new waking to life dawns within us, so a fresh beginning opens. In the early light of this day, in the first actions of the morning, let us be awake to life. In our soul and in our seeing, let us be alive to the gift of this new day, let us be fully alive.

• John Philip Newell, Sounds of the Eternal – A Celtic Psalter, p. 26.

Reading the Bible Responsibly in a Polarized Church & World:

The Bible’s content in many ways engages its readers – puzzling, angering, challenging, and inspiring them. How has the Bible historically been used, including with the issue of slavery? Can readers navigate the use of biblical texts that are quoted across the political spectrum? What principles exist for interpreting these texts that support conflicting viewpoints? Together, we will explore a way forward: reading the Bible with each other guided by the rule of love.

The Bible and Racism in the United States (cont’d)

“While modern Bible readers would agree that certain parts of the Bible contain some amount of historical information, this particular interpretation is strange to most of us because it rests on assumptions we are not prepared to agree to: that Noah and his sons were historical people; that the biblical stories about them are factual; that Noah’s three sons are the literal ancestors of all the peoples of the world; that Ham is the ancestor of Africans; that the curse of Canaan as punishment for his father’s sin also extended to his three brothers, Cush, Egypt, and Put. Nevertheless, this reading has a long history of use by White Americans. [Author] Stephen Haynes details how proslavery readings of Genesis 9-10 also played into the Southern fears of dishonor, sexual transgression, and a disordered society, which reappear in the debate around the Civil Rights movements in the 1950s and 1960s.”

“These assumptions all accept that the Bible is accurate in historical and scientific matters, in this case that there was a flood and that humankind is descended from three brothers. Modern historical and scientific study shows this view of the Bible to be wrong, but for proslavery readers, any part of secular knowledge that contradicted the Bible was a sign of infidelity to God and God’s Word. This is still the case today for many regarding [various] issues.”

“How did the abolitionists respond to the proslavery advocates’ use of the Bible to support the practice? As [author] Mark Noll describes, there was no way to escape the fact that the Bible accepted the practice of slavery in its own historical contexts. Some abolitionists, including the Protestant minister Henry Ward Beecher, were ready to leave the Bible behind and write it off as a useless, out-of-date guide for modern morality. In one sermon, Beecher referred to the Gospel story of Jesus condemning the Temple when he drove out the money-changers and compared that to his own condemnation of the Bible being used to support slavery. In other words, two things meant to be sacred (the Temple and the Bible) were corrupted by evil people. The Temple was therefore destroyed. And the Bible? Well for Beecher, perhaps it ought to be abandoned and left in the past too.”

“But this radical approach wasn’t the norm, and while Beecher’s is an important voice in the history of abolition, I want to highlight and center the voices of the enslaved. Among the most well known of those voices is that of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery in Maryland around 1818, Douglass surreptitiously taught himself to read with the King James Bible, whose pages he sometimes found in the street and picked

up to read later. He escaped to his freedom in 1838, and until his death in 1895, he was one of the most inspiring and eloquent voices for equality in the United States. If slaveholders charged abolitionists with being against the Bible and true religion, Douglass made a sharp distinction between what he saw as true Christianity and the Christianity of the slave holding South. His autobiography, published in 1845, contains an appendix that deals specifically with the religion of slavery. Noting that, as a slave, he was treated far worse by churchgoing Whites than he ever was by nonreligious ones, Douglass condemns in no uncertain terms what he sees as the diabolical corruption of Christian faith by all in the North or South who call themselves Christian but do not oppose slavery. He writes, ‘For, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest, possible difference – so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.’”

(Thomas M. Bolin, An Inspired Word in Season – Reading the Bible Responsibly in a Polarized World, 2025.)

For this week: For reflection: Have you personally experienced anyone call for the enslavement of Black Africans on the basis of the Bible passages in Genesis chapters 9 & 10?

An invitation to our virtual participants: Discussion and comments are very much encouraged and welcomed. Online discussions can be held in the comments section in the upcoming post on Social Media for this week’s Deacon’s Reflection which is part of adult formation at St. Francis Episcopal Church.

Some Suggested Study Resources:

• The New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV, with the Apocrypha; 5th edition.
• The Harper Collins Study Bible, NRSV, Fully Revised and Updated (Including Apocryphal Deuterocanonical Books); Society of Biblical Literature; (e-book).
• The Jewish Annotated New Testament, NRSV, 2nd edition, Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors; Oxford University Press.

Closing Prayer – Prayer of Blessing

The strength of the rising sun, the strength of the swelling sea, the strength of the high mountains, the strength of the fertile plains, the strength of the everlasting river flowing in us and through us this day, the strength of the river of God flowing in us and through us this day.

May the light of God illumine the heart of my soul.

May the flame of Christ kindle me to love.

May the fire of the Spirit free me to live this day, tonight, and forever. Amen.

• John Philip Newell, Sounds of the Eternal – A Celtic Psalter, p. 29.

“Reading the Bible Responsibly in a Polarized Church & World,” Deacon Joe Dzugan, St. Francis Episcopal Church,
2026.”