The Bible in the Twentieth-Century Anglophone World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark P. Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Public Knowledge ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Billy Graham ◽  
Anglophone World

This chapter looks at the tensions between biblical interpretation and the political, social, and cultural context of dissenting Protestant churches in the twentieth century. It notes that even a fundamental category, such as the ‘inspiration’ of Scripture, shifted across time as the nature of public debates, social and economic structures, and Western definitions of public knowledge shifted. The chapter progresses by looking at a number of examples of key figures (R. J. Campbell, Harry Emerson Fosdick, H. G. Guinness, R. A. Torrey, and R. G. McIntyre among them) who interpreted the Bible for public comment, and their relative positions as the century progressed. Popularization of biblical interpretation along the lines of old, new, and contemporary dissent, is explored through the careers of three near contemporaries: Charles Bradley ‘Chuck’ Templeton (b. 1915, Toronto, Canada), William Franklin ‘Billy’ Graham, Jr (b. 1918, North Carolina), and Oral Roberts (b. 1918, Oklahoma).

The Fundamentalist Menace

2021 ◽  
pp. 241-254
Author(s):  
George M. Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Scopes Trial ◽  
The Bible ◽  
William Jennings Bryan ◽  
The University

Nothing did more to strengthen determination for academic freedom than the fundamentalist attacks of the 1920s. In opposition to Darwinian evolution, fundamentalists found an issue that combined their alarm over the secular direction of modern culture, their reverence for the Bible, and populist appeals. William Jennings Bryan was especially effective in promoting these concerns. A number of states, especially in the South, adopted legislation banning teaching of evolution in schools. States became focal points for controversy. That is illustrated at the University of North Carolina, where, after a major controversy, antievolution forces did not prevail. Bryan helped trivialize the issue with his populist appeals at the Scopes Trial. The antievolutionist argument that if Christianity was not taught in schools, then neither should anti-Christianity be, effective earlier against Jefferson, pointed to the problem in the twentieth century of maintaining a bland blend of Christian and secular thought.

scholarly journals Culture in Biblical Interpretation: The Use of Yoruba Cultural Elements in Adamo's African Cultural Hermeneutics

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Adekunle O. Dada
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Average Reader ◽  
Descriptive Approach

African Cultural Hermeneutics is an approach in biblical interpretation that makes African socio-cultural context a subject of interpretation. This article shows how Adamo has deployed effectively Yoruba cultural elements in the development of this interpretative grid. This is done with a view to determining the extent to which he has engaged successfully the biblical text in a way that has translated to a better understanding of the Bible in Africa. A descriptive approach is adopted as the basic methodology for the article. Yoruba cultural archival resources such as traditions, songs, oracles, folklores and incantations (potent words) are appropriated to make the Bible come alive and relevant. For Adamo, these traditional resources have helped to elucidate the Bible and make its message meaningful for its average reader in Africa. Employing African cultural elements in the interpretative process should however be done with some measured caution.

scholarly journals La Chute: teks en intertekstuele verhoudinge

Literator ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-94
Author(s):  
E. Snyman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

This article aims at making an intertextual analysis of Albert Camus’ second-last work of prose. La Chute, with the question of how meaning is structured by the act of reading as its point of departure. Based on the theories of Julia Kristeva and Jonathan Culler on intertextuality, the article tries to point out to what extent a knowledge of other texts influences the way in which the reader receives La Chute. Attention is given to the different ways in which other texts, first-person narratives, the Bible, Dante’s Inferno, Camus’ L ’Homme Révolté and the social-cultural context of the twentieth century, are integrated in La Chute. The degree to which a knowledge of these other texts and contexts is necessary for reading La Chute is also touched upon.

Facilitating Speech and Discourse: Biblical Interpretation and the Emergence of a Concept of Gender Equality

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-235
Author(s):  
Jorunn Økland
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Christina Rossetti ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Elizabeth Cady Stanton ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Court Of Appeal ◽  
Authorial Voice ◽  
Intellectual Environment

Abstract The article is a case study demonstrating that the Bible at the end of the 19th century could still function as a common rhetorical tool, a frame of reference, and a common court of appeal in important public debates. The case in question is the Anglophone debate over women’s rights, voice, and vote on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean around 1890. The article analyzes three different lay positions represented by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Christina Rossetti, and Heber Hart. They represent three different directions that reception of the Bible with regard to gender equality and women’s authorial voice could take in this period. The article also argues that a concept of gender equality goes several centuries further back than what is often thought, and that the early development of the concept in a pre-secularized intellectual environment needs much further scholarly attention.

Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Biblical Interpretation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Treier ◽  
Craig Hefner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Theological Education ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Historical Awareness ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
Bible Reading ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Formal theological education underwent a twentieth-century revolution that both enriched and fragmented popular Bible reading. Its legacy includes deeper understanding of the Bible and its contexts, new professions of teaching and scholarship, more professional clergy, and liberating critiques of oppressive ideas and practices. Yet its legacy also includes significant fractures, between academy and church, Bible and theology, and so on. Biblical interpretation became marginal to American intellectual life as it became more informed. Theological education’s hermeneutical story highlights the practical-moral agenda of professionals: they sought to inform, frequently even to reform, how Americans approach their Bibles—with historical awareness and various theological-political agendas ideally displacing literalist private application. The mutual popular and professional tensions in this story, given their impact on its interpretation, call for more generous scholarly attention to popular aspirations for understanding the Bible.

Some Theological Reflections on Religious Education

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. D. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Christian Education ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Day School ◽  
Factual Knowledge ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Prime Objective

At the beginning of the twentieth century two theological influences could be traced in the provision made within the Protestant churches for the Christian nurture of youth.1 The first was the Calvinist emphasis on saving knowledge. For the Reformers themselves such saving knowledge was the fruit of faith. But the perils of controversy led later Protestant theologians to regard faith as orthodox doctrine about God rather than personal response to Him. This Calvinist emphasis on knowledge was reinforced by contemporary educational theory. The influence of Herbert was strong and intellectual instruction was regarded as the main concern of the day school. It was natural, therefore, that a sound factual knowledge of the Bible and of Christian doctrine should be accepted as the prime objective of Christian education.

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