As John Wesley instructed, I “plunder the Egyptians” to get ideas for communicating about the church and Christian faith by reading lots of news from various sources. Recently an email newsletter on U.S. identity from The Washington Post bore the headline, “Dear White People: Your 911 Calls on ‘Living While Black’ Are Getting Out of Hand.” (It’s also published online as “The Criminalization of Blackness and What We Can Do About It”).
Hamilton Uniting Methodists
The Rev. Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, gives a keynote address to the Uniting Methodists conference July 17, 2018 at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. (UM Insight Screencap of Uniting Methodists Video).
I didn’t read the full article by University of North Carolina sociologist Megan R. Underhill, but it struck me that it touched on the same topic that the Rev. Adam Hamilton broached in his presentation to the Uniting Methodists conference here in Dallas. When talking about whether The United Methodist Church should split over our differences about homosexuality, Rev. Hamilton said: The problem really lies in the assumptions we bring, both to scripture and to the people involved.
As someone who has professionally observed the church for 30 years, I concur with Rev. Hamilton’s viewpoint unreservedly.
For traditionalists, the Holy Bible is “inerrant” and “infallible.” In other words, it contains no errors and can always be trusted. Traditionalists’ unshakeable belief in these assumptions was underscored at the Uniting Methodists’ gathering when a panelist asked if the Bible can be wrong, and an unidentified participant shouted out, “No!” For those who hold these “inerrant” and “infallible” assumptions, to question the Bible in any way is to reject faith in God and Jesus.
Trouble is, such a stance regarding scripture’s nature – an assumption, as Rev. Hamilton put it – fails when confronted with the cognitive dissonance of the Bible’s contradictions and the observed evidence that such belief doesn’t always translate into the transformed life that faith in Jesus should produce. By way of example, Rev. Hamilton said: “I’ve encountered a man who insists the Bible is both inerrant and infallible, and he’s the meanest SOB I’ve ever met. I see no fruits of the Spirit in him.”
For traditionalists, progressives lack a “high view of scripture” because they don’t subscribe to the inerrancy and infallibility assumptions. Progressives respond with their own assumptions that traditionalists “pick and choose” only those scriptures that support their theology.
What we so often fail to acknowledge is that we all pick and choose scriptures according to our preset assumptions about what the Bible is and what it’s supposed to mean and do in our lives, Rev. Hamilton told the Uniting Methodists. After all, if you’re committed to a certain pre-supposition about the text, you can make it work to support whatever your view is, he said.
Furthermore, we extend our assumptions to the natures of people who hold beliefs opposing ours. Rev. Hamilton said he has found that many progressives reject the idea that there are traditionalists who love LGBTQ people as much as they do. By the same token, I’ve found that there are progressives and LGBTQ people who believe as strongly as traditionalists do in personal holiness standards and who practice monogamy (“having one wife”) and monoandry (“having one husband”) within committed unions and legal marriages.
In addition, those with a genuinely “high view of scripture” are found across all ideological and theological lines, Rev. Hamilton added. By his definition someone with a high view of scripture
- reads her or his Bible daily,
- listens for what God says to them through the text,
- studies the scriptures in the light of their historical and cultural contexts, and
- seeks to live out the Bible in their daily lives.
“Is it possible that sometimes, biblical authors are telling us what they heard, or what they thought, about God?” Rev. Hamilton asked the Dallas gathering. He suggested that a way to address this question – especially as it relates to the many instances of violence committed in God’s name – is to contrast the picture of God presented in the scriptures with the picture of God revealed in Jesus, who is “the true, inerrant, infallible, unmitigated Word of God,” said Rev. Hamilton. “Jesus gives us the clearest picture of who and what God is,” he said.
To counteract preconceived notions about the Bible, Rev. Hamilton has changed a familiar worship ritual. Rather than ending scripture readings with the traditional sentence, “The word of God for the people of God,” he says he tells his congregation, United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, “Thanks be to God for the gift of scripture.”
For Rev. Hamilton, the ultimate standard for interpreting the Bible – which he reiterates is the real difference among United Methodists in our conflict over human sexuality – ought to be how well a passage fulfills Jesus’ Great Commandment in Matthew 22:37-40, and how well it presents Jesus as “the unmitigated Word of God.” Using such a standard doesn’t ensure that Christians’ debates over Bible interpretation will cease, because every book in the Bible is born out of conflict, said Rev. Hamilton. However, our efforts at discerning what a Bible passage means for us today – whether it’s a time-bound text such as not eating shellfish or a timeless truth such as God’s love – could become less acrimonious if we drop our assumptions about both people and scripture.
No matter what meaning we derive from the Holy Bible, a “high view of scripture” involves recognizing humbly that any of our interpretations could be wrong. May God give us all humbler spirits as we move toward the 2019 General Conference.
For more of the Rev. Adam Hamilton’s views on biblical interpretation, read his book, “Making Sense of the Bible.”
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.