The Contemporary Scene: 1975 - Present
--Lecture Notes for Topic 2.3- Religion 492

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Go directly to topic: 2.3.0 Introduction 2.3.0.1 Cultural Background 2.3.0.2 Religious Background 2.3.0.3 Interpretive Trends Bibliography

        This chapter in Prof. Bray's book begins his Part Three of the history of biblical interpretation, and covers the period from approximately 1975 to the present. From this launch pad of background discussion the remaining three chapters in the book with split out the interpretive history into three streams of tendency: (1) Academic Trends; (2) Social Trends; and (3) Evangelical Trends. As he acknowledges, these labels are relative rather than absolute. Evangelical scholars are going to lap over into the first two streams of interpretive orientation. Whether this way of dividing up the history for this period is the best approach is an open question. But the studies that concentrate on the twentieth century, especially the latter segments, will typically either ignore completely the evangelical side or else merely tip their hats to it, often in sarcastic ridicule. As an evangelical theologian himself, Prof. Bray feels compelled to treat this part of biblical scholarship with the same balance that is given to other segments. This is to his credit, and enhances the value and helpfulness of his writing.
        The last three decades of history have become less that of western history and more that of global history. Powerful cultural trends in those countries where Christianity is a significance presence have shaped the expression of religious faith profoundly. One major impact has been the expanding diversity of religious expression that calls itself Christian.
        This chapter will attempt to explore the background that has set the stage for the patterns of interpretive approach during the last three decades. Two aspects need particular attention: the cultural and the general religious climate. The dynamics are going to have differing effects. In the more confessional areas of theological education, you will find one general pattern of impact. But in theological education with the more ecumenically oriented schools, there will typically be a very different impact. And again, in the rapidly growing religious studies departments of state universities across the U.S. another kind of impact will take place. These need exploring since they will play important roles in interpretive trends for biblical scholars.

2.3.0.1 Cultural Background
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        One of the major shaping influences on not only biblical interpretation but almost every segment of life during the past three decades has been the dominating influence of the English language world wide. As basic linguistic theory suggests, the emergence of a particular language to the status of a linga franca has a lot to do with the political, economic, and military power of an individual society. The United States emerged after World War II as one of two super powers globally. The Cold War era from the late 1940s to the 1980s witnessed the dueling of the two powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, for world dominance. When the Soviet Union began collapsing internally during the 1970s and 80s, the United States emerged largely unchallenged for world dominance. The U.S. military has bases established on every continent with a military presence that has been occasionally expressed in vigorous manner when it was deemed in the self interests of the U.S. But more important than its military power has been its economic power and influence over world economy. Couple these influences with exploding technology that has shrunk our world, communications and travel wise, and the United States has been able to exert these influences more easily and forcefully than any other country in human history. Add to that the powerful impact of American pop culture, largely through the movie world of Hollywood. Few, if any countries, have not felt a strong impact from the United States during the past several decades.
        With this clout behind the American version of English, the language has increasingly become the one language that most people study when learning a foreign language. Thus English, at least the U.S. version of it, has emerged as the dominant world language, almost achieving the same status of linga franca that ancient Koine Greek did under the impact of Alexander the Great's conquest of the eastern Mediterranean world. Or that Latin achieved from the six through the fifteenth centuries in Europe, largely through the political cloud of the Roman Catholic Church. An additional factor in this has been the eclectic nature of American English. A careful study of the evolution of this language will uncover its tendency to easily and quickly adopt words and grammar patterns from other languages. Thus, the version of American English that young people use today is a very different language than that of their grandparents and especially of their great grandparents.
        The dynamic between language and its culture is important to recognize also. Language is driven by its culture and represents a mirror of  how that culture perceives reality. But language also defines culture in so many ways, as it imposes its conceptual limitations on a culture and thus at times restricts how a particular culture can perceive reality.
        One of the major interactions during the past three decades especially has been the acceleration of a trend toward simple expression of ideas. Our U.S. "fast food" oriented culture has pushed us toward the simplification of expression in American English. Just a surface comparison of both popular and formal levels of writing between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century will reflect dramatically the changes not just in vocabulary, but also in grammar patterns. The sentences even at the formal level of writing have become much shorter. Paragraphs contain far fewer words now than then. The embedding of ideas inside of ideas with secondary elements such as phrases and dependent clauses is much less common today.
        All this has had substantial impact on Christian thinking. When an American biblical scholar sets forth his or her interpretation of a scripture text, that viewpoint is profoundly shaped by the English language vehicle that expresses it. The perception of religious reality is shaped by American English, especially in its tendency towards simplification over these past three decades. But when a German scholar or even a British scholar attempts to address an English speaking audience, those ideas, even though expressed in some form of English, take on entirely different tones. The conceptual world is shaped by the originating culture, as well as the thought patterns determined by one's mother tongue. What I have witnessed personally time and time again through living in Europe, especially in German and French language settings, is the profound difference of understanding even though a common language such as English is used to vocalize the thoughts. Even when the same terms are used, seldom are the ideas identical between, say, a German and an American scholar dialoguing about the meaning of some biblical text.
        But, in spite of the cross cultural communication challenges, English is becoming the dominant language of the theological world. This is true partially because of the dominant American role in our world today, but also true in part because U.S. biblical scholarship has 'come into its own' internationally in the last decades of the twentieth century. With literary critical approaches being the stronghold of American scholars, some really pioneering contributions to both the historical and theological understanding of scripture have been made on this side of the Atlantic. Often times the European scholars are reacting to U.S. based positions, rather than the reverse flow that typified the scholarly world up until recently.
        One caution, however, needs to be noted. The sustained U.S. dominance of world economy etc. is generating growing levels of resentment against our country internationally. The anti-American attitude frequently surfaces not just among European scholars, but increasingly from Christian scholars in other parts of the world as well. Couple this with a continuing demographic shift of Christianity out of the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere globally and the future doesn't bode well for the influence of American scholarship, at least at present levels. Most futurists have been predicting for some time that by the middle to the end of the twenty-first century, the basically Christian oriented countries in the world will be in the southern hemisphere of our planet. North of the equator, especially in North America and in Europe, Christianity will increasingly become a minority religion with shrinking per centages of the populations of both continents. With growing influence, Christian scholars will come from South America, Africa and other parts of the world. Their religious conservatism will have a major impact on Christian thought in the coming decades. Only time will tell whether North American scholarship can maintain an influence, or whether it will sink into a highly diminished role in biblical studies internationally.

        A second type of cultural shift, mostly in the United States but no limited to it, has been the rise of ethnic and gender issues both socially and politically. The Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s led to significant social change in our country. Afro-Americans began asserting themselves in political life as never before. This has produced a growing number of first class biblical scholars with Afro-American heritage. Additionally, in more recent times our country has seen a surge in the Hispanic population, bringing with it a growing impact in U.S. political life as well as in its social orientation. Likewise, some significant Hispanic biblical scholars are beginning to make their presence felt. What our country, as well as most European countries and Britain, are experiencing is a wave of immigrants from so-called third world countries into their borders. Thus, a explosion of pluralism is underway, particularly in the United States. Unlike previous immigration patterns, which typically meant the importation of versions of Christianity, this new pattern is bringing non-Christian religions into the United States in staggering numbers. The present generation of Americans are growing up in a very diverse religious culture in which Christianity is having to compete vigorously with other religions for the loyalty of Americans. The impact of this on biblical studies is beginning to be felt and will continue to grow as time passes. Comparative studies between religious traditions, formal structures of dialogue between representatives of different religions -- these and many other acitivties will shape how the Bible is approached in the future.
        Lastly, but certainly not least, is the rising influence of women on American culture. Their influence has always been felt, but mostly from the background. But with the feminist movement of the past several decades in U.S. society, women now occupy top positions of power in political life, in corporate business life, and in church life. And their numbers are growing. Out of this has come a feminist biblical hermeneutic. Women biblical scholars approach the text with different insights and often draw different conclusions. One only has to glance at the faculties of most of the seminaries and divinity schools in North America to see how the number of female biblical scholars has grown over the past thirty years. In fact, some divinity schools now have a majority of women students. Feminism hasn't yet made the impact on the east side of the Atlantic that it has in North America. But its influence is growing in Britain and Europe, just slower than in the United States.

2.3.0.2 Religious Background
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        Prof. Bray correctly identifies a number of trends in the Christian religious world that have played an important role in shaping biblical interpretation over the past three decades. But these patterns, although usually with somewhat similar general contours, have taken shape in very distinctive ways on both sides of the Atlantic. The British and European tradition of a state-supported church, over against the U.S. tradition of separation of church and state, have created very different contours. The preoccupation of Europe with recovery from the second world war through the 70s, coupled with intense disagreement with the United States in its involvement in the Vietnam War, have impacted the direction of biblical studies on the eastern side of the Atlantic. The internal division of U.S. society over the war in Vietnam, along with the civil rights movement and other things, have shaped theological issues and thus biblical studies on the western side of the Atlantic.
        Christianity in general in the United States has experienced substantial shifts over the past thirty years. During the post-WWII era of the 1950s and 1960s most groups of Christians grew in numbers. But toward the end of that period, a couple of trends began setting in and gradually having an impact. Roman Catholicism in North American exploded in its influence, often times largely through Hispanic immigration into the United States and Canada. Even in the so-called Bible Belt of the southeastern part of the U.S. the influence of the Roman Catholic Church over society has grown enormously. In the southwestern and western parts of the U.S. the RCC has become the dominant Christian presence, like it had previously become through Irish and southern European immigration in the northeastern U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth-century. Add to that the impact of Vatican Council II during the 1960s, which opened up Catholic biblical scholarship as well as the Church itself, to dialoguing with Protestant Christians in ways never before experienced. Increasingly, the line of distinction between Protestant and Catholic interpretation and ways of interpretation has become blurred substantially.
        On the other side of the Christian spectrum has been the explosive growth of evangelicalism in the United States. Conservative Protestant groups have now become by far the largest segment of American Protestantism in the United States. This has come often at the expense of the so-called 'mainline' denominations in the U.S., whose membership has been in a consistent decline for the past several decades. Connected to this has been the steady decline in the number of seminary/divinity school students in these denominations during the same period. But at the same time, enrollments in conservative evangelical seminaries/divinity schools has exploded. The school that I formerly taught at in Texas, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, went from barely 1,500 students in the middle 1960s to a height of over 5,500 students in the late 1980s. This kind of explosive growth was not atypical during this period. With evangelical churches growing, and traditional churches declining, time would bring about a powerful impact on how the Bible is interpreted in American culture. Professional organizations of evangelical biblical scholars have gradually begun making substantial impact. Closely related to this has been the explosion of conservative oriented Christian publishing agencies. The religious publishing market has become a multi-billion dollar business in the U.S., simply because evangelical Christians seem to be more inclined to buy books etc. than their fellow Christians with other viewpoints. The impact of this on biblical interpretation has been huge.
 

2.3.0.3 Interpretive Trends
Assigned Readings for This Topic:

Resource Materials to also be studied:
 
 

Check Bray's bibliography in appropriate chapter of the textbook.

Check the appropriate Bibliography section in Cranfordville.com