Bible literacy

Excellent article in this week's TIME magazine about Bible literacy, The Case for Teaching the Bible. It is a topic I can go on for days about, but I won't, just taking a moment here.

As a Christian, I have read the Bible, cover to cover, in more than one translation. The sad thing is, that makes me an oddity. Most Christians I know, be they Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist or some other denomination (or non-denominational) have not. Oh, they may have taken a course or two that over a period of several weeks hammers homes a ook here or a them there, but to actually sit down and read the entire thing? We're too busy checking our horoscope or watching Judge Judy to be bothered.

I see the Bible being, daily, abused as a source of pithy quotes, underlying purposes and extreme idolatry by politicians, lay people, ministers and individuals who seem more than willing to pick and choose which parts to follow. I guess the two favourites nowadays seem to be the issues of war and peace and that of abortion (a topic that is never mentioned in either the Old Testament (God's covenant with his nation Israel and the people thereof) or the New Testament (God's revision of the covenant for all people, predicated on the death and resurrection of his son, Jesus). As a Christian (a Quaker, specifically) I cannot support war (or capital punishment) as both violate Jesus' direct teachings on the topic. That many who claim to be Chistians do support war, often quoting from the Old Testament to back their beliefs, is an abomination.

The masses get suckered everyday by politicians and ministers who will twist and invoke the teachings in the Bible. I have had people quote excerpts of Polonius' speech to his son in William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" to me and claim they are quoting from the Bible. They get really bent out of shape when I correct them. I see entire pseudo-denominations rise up around notions of nationalism or material gains (God wants you to be rich! WTF?) and to sell the product they will perch on a single twisted verse, lacking context and frame.

As essential as the scriptures are to Western civilization I see nothing wrong with classes on Bible literacy being available in our schools. Whether the students are atheists, Christians, Jewish or Bible-curious they might benefit from knowing more than what is thrown at them by leaders of both the secular and the spiritual world, seeking to pick and choose carefully their quotations, content that so few people have actually really looked inside the Temple of Western culture.