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Obama-Dobson clash a fertile topic in Jesusland July 7, 2008

Posted by Zack in Uncategorized | write a comment

Obama’s willingness to engage the Christian Right directly in biblical terms has caused a lot of excitement among theologians and bloggers (and blogger-theologians). When the Democratic nominee can hold his own with James Dobson on the Bible, that’s a man-bites-dog story.

First, here’s a reminder of what Obama said recently in his engagement with Dobson. Then below, a post by popular born-again writer and theologian Scott McKnight. And this is a great example of the intellectualism of Jesusland. With these guys, a discussion of a CNN-style political dust up instantly takes us back to the Civil War and complex issues of race, class & theology.

Obama, as reported by the Washington Post:

“And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount — a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles now. Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles.”

Here’s McKnight:

Some thought Barack Obama’s comment about which passages we should choose if our country was to follow the Bible was messing with the authority of Scripture. What wasn’t clear in the criticisms of Obama was this: it was when Obama mentioned Sharpton and Dobson as folks at the ends of the interpretive spectrum that perhaps the most significant issue came to light. In other words: OK, let’s follow the Bible, but whose interpretation will we follow? You might want to know that the dean of American evangelical church historians, Mark Noll (formerly a mainstay at Wheaton and now at Notre Dame), has weighed in on this with a brilliant book many should read; the book is a set of lectures.

It is called The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.

In essence, Noll argues that the Civil War precipitated a crisis, a major theological crisis. What the Civil War illuminated was that economics, race and slavery were so intertwined that discerning what was biblical and what was American and personal and denominational became confusing. When many thought they were fighting a slavery debate, they were so tied to their economic theories and blinded by their racism that they simply could not see their way to the Bible clearly.

Two options emerged from the Civil War: First, hand the business of theologians to the military generals and judge that the one who wins is also right theologically. Second, forget trying to base public policy on any one’s interpretation of Scripture. America, Noll argues, did the former during the Civil War and, ever since, has lived and dwelled in the second view.

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Read whole McKnight post here.

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