Tag: Tripp Fuller

Biblical Studies, at least in its critical form, has a death-drive. Let me explain. On the one hand, there are those who study the Bible academically “for the church” (but as I discussed in my last post, the church is declining, at least in North America and Europe). Their goal is to preserve the relevance of biblical studies for religious reasons. If they were successful in their mission, not only would interest in the Bible spread but more importantly Christianity would. For many Catholic and Evangelical scholars, the study of the Bible is part of the mission. Globally, they might be a success, but not in North America and Europe, which is my focus here.

On the other side, you have critical scholars who hope to deconstruct the Bible’s meaning and message. While they may not be aware of it, there’s an attempt to demystify the Bible which means to normalize it. Once it’s normalized, its significance will fade. As its significance fades, fewer people from future generations will be interested in studying it, especially in a professional capacity. College and university administrations will find little reason to fund biblical studies because, well, why? They want their schools to be attractive and this means highlighting the programs that are en vogue.

And these two poles need each other. As much as critical scholarship may despise Evangelicalism’s biblicism, there’s little relevance to critical scholarship without Evangelicalism’s biblicism to deconstruct. Be honest: as much as I respect and admire Bart D. Ehrman‘s scholarship, does it mean anything without fundamentalism and Evangelicalism? Will there be a place for future Ehrman-types in a post-Christian America in say 2040 or 2050? Without the Green Family, the Museum of the Bible, Evangelical voters, etc., there’s an argument to be made that the Bible does’t mean much anymore. Paradoxically, some of the more toxic means of preserving the Bible’s cultural relevancy simultaneously keep critical scholars in the news.

(And in some sense, we might say that Evangelicalism and fundamentalism are feeder programs for critical scholarship. Our current selves reacting to our past selves. While I know of no such poll, I wish there was data on how many members of the Society of Biblical Literature entered biblical studies because they had religious questions they needed addressed. Even if their current study of the Bible is for purely professional reasons, I doubt they found their way to an academic study of the Bible primarily because they had interesting historical, literary, linguistic, etc., questions divorced of any religious/spiritual curiosity.)

Let me provide an analogy. My friend, the religion scholar James McGrath, alongside Charles G. Häberl, published an English translation of the Mandaean Book of John back in 2020. Objectively, this is a great scholarly accomplishment. Will this text receive wide-spread, long-term attention. Unlikely. Why? Because there are probably no more than 100,000 Mandaeans globally and Mandaeanism is a dying religion. Most of them won’t be reading English-language scholarship on their religion, if they’re reading any scholarship on their religion at all. The broader public may be curious about Mandaeans for a moment but only for a moment. For this reason, few people will pursue advanced degrees in “Mandaean studies” (presuming any such program exists even now). There are a handful of scholars globally who are experts on Mandaeanism at the moment, and I don’t foresee their ranks growing.

Why do I mention the plight of Mandaeanism? Christianity’s global population sits at more than 2 billion. This is comparing apples to something even less apple-like than oranges. But biblical scholarship is centered in North America and Europe. In North America and Europe, Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, seems to have entered an irreversible decline. Without something to deconstruct, there won’t be many jobs for critical biblical scholars of the future.

Of course, there are mainline Christians who want to show that you can be scholarly, and secular, and pluralistic, and value the role of the Bible within “communities of faith” while also being Christian. But this middle ground, even as I try to stand here with all its complications, lacks population and influence. We want our cake and we want to eat it too. Reality seems to favor polarization and extremes at the moment. Trying to reconcile critical scholarship with an active Christianity bores many. Drama sells!

And this makes sense. When your Christianity lacks an oppositional stance to culture, future generations can’t see why dedicating themselves to something like the study of the Bible or ordination in ministry is important. Yes, Jesus said to choose between God and Money, but it appears that I don’t have to do this. Yes, Jesus said to put our treasure in heaven rather than on the earth, but it appears I can have treasure in both places. Why dedicate myself to the study of Scripture, theology, sacraments, etc., when I can be “just as Christian” working for a Fortune 500 company. We’ve demythologized ourselves to death, and I’m not saying it was wrong to do this. But it is to say that there is cause-and-effect. We’re so much a part of culture that there’s no reason to dedicate ourselves to Christianity and the institution of “the Church”. (I can hear the screams of Kierkegaard, Wesley, and others as they realize that “western culture” and Christianity are beginning to return to this synthesis even as “western culture” distances itself from Christianity!)

This isn’t to say that Catholic and Evangelical culture is otherworldly; it’s to say Catholic and Evangelical culture does a better job of presenting itself as such so that people may be just as materialistic, just as this-worldly as we mainliners, but they don’t think of themselves this way. They still have a sense of mission. They still see themselves as outsiders who must “save” what is “lost”. (And if I learned anything from Harvey Whitehouse’s dense book The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity, it’s that people often bond closer to each other when their subculture is demanding and entry and preservation is difficult, even traumatic—think fraternity hazings or joining the Marines.) If you’re a young Evangelical, there’s a better chance that you’ll see a reason for dedicating yourself to professional ministry than if you’re a young mainliner. And the statistics support this, I think. In the interview that Tripp Fuller did with Ryan Burge that I mentioned in my last post, Burge pointed out that all of the largest, still growing seminaries are Evangelical save Duke Divinity (see around 13:00-50:00-ish for that discussion).

This may be good news for critical biblical studies, even if it makes critical biblical scholars cringe. But it’s temporary, I think. Even as Evangelicals have a sense of mission, even as it may draw them closer together, and even as it serves to feed their academic institutions, their numbers will continue to decline unless for some reason “the great de-churching” reverses. This seems unlikely. Millennials are secular by greater numbers and even as they age and have children, they’re not returning. This seems to be the probable trajectory for Gen Z as well. Many who left Evangelicalism did so because of how Evangelicals treat LGBTQIA+ people and because of the nature of their involvement in politics (see the PRRI graphic below). These things don’t appear to be bugs in the Evangelical system but instead features. Therefore, while Evangelicals will outlast the mainline, this doesn’t mean they won’t fade as well.

If the Bible isn’t the sacred text of our culture, even a sacred text that we pretend to read, what takes its place? What provides us with unifying language and symbols? What provides us with something to deconstruct and reject as we grow older? Maybe nothing. Maybe STEM textbooks will be peak literacy! But I digress. Returning to my main point: those of us participating in the project of critical scholarship on the Bible since the 19th century have collectively begun to accomplish what we set out to do: we’ve naturalized the Bible. This is likely a good thing considering how the Bible has been (ab)used throughout history. But we appear to have been telling people that our own irrelevancy is a goal. And maybe it has been. If it has been, we need to be ready for the closing of our departments. We should expect fewer students to show interest in our programs and our scholarship. We shouldn’t be surprised as our publishers close up shop. It was the inevitable consequence of our collective demythologizing project. It was the predetermined end of our death-drive.