Why is the Christian Right So...Un-Biblical?
by Faithful Progressive

 http://blog01.kintera.com/christianalliance/archives/2007/01/why_is_the_chri.html

Nearly two years ago, I wrote a series on the Christian Right that began with my effort at defining what the Christian Right meant as a historical phenomenon. What was most striking to me was that the movement on the Right seemed to utterly ignore the parts of the Bible that meant the most to me personally: the Gospels and the Jewish Prophets. I wrote in part: It is a fundamentalist movement that largely rejects any modern method of Biblical interpretation; it focuses a lot of energy on End Times prophecy, which accounts in part for its ease in ignoring the Gospels, the actual ministry of Jesus... It seemed to me that, for all their claims of being Bible-based, huge parts of the Bible were missing in their ministry.

The Christian Right asserts for itself the mantle of biblical literalism and fidelity to the text of the Bible. Many people, on all sides, uncritically accept this premise, or "frame" (to use the buzz mot du jour.) But University of Chicago Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature, Margaret M. Mitchell has found that there are gaping holes--chiefly the Gospels and the prophets of Israel--in the Bible cited by Christian Right organizations on their own websites. For me, these missing parts strip the Bible of its central meaning.

The article, part of University of Chicago Religion & Culture Web Forum series is entitled, How Biblical is the Christian Right? Her conclusion-- is the Christian Right really... Biblical? Yes and no. Biblical in the sense of seeking biblical support for an agenda? Yes. Biblical in the sense of reading the whole Bible? No. Biblical in the sense of reading the Bible literally? No, not consistently. Biblical in reading parts for the whole, and in using the Bible as a source of weapons to define themselves against their enemies? Yes. Wrestling with the possible plural meanings and complex legacies of Bible itself? Not in public, at any rate.

In other words, the Christian Right "cherry-picks" the Bible to serve its political agenda. This is exactly what the Christian Right accuses progressive Christians of doing--maybe with some justifcation. Many progressive Christians do in fact give more weight to the words of the Gospels, to the Sermon on on the Mount (Plain) or the Great Commandment, than to, say, the erotic poetry found in the Song of Solomon. There is a reason many Christians stand when the Gospel is read--this is the heart of the ministry of Jesus. It would appear that this tradition does not obtain for many groups associated with the Right--perhaps they stand instead when obscure portions of Judges and Leviticus are read. These groups appear to favor those texts and utterly ignore the Gospels on their own websites.

Dr. Mitchell writes:

Conventional wisdom—on the right and on the left—in a rare show of agreement, believes that the Christian Right is the political face of a movement that is quintessentially biblical. The Christian Right equals Christians who are biblical literalists or fundamentalists who wish to reshape American culture and political life in the biblical image. Whatever else the Christian Right is, surely it is steeped in the Bible, and in a particular, literalistic reading of the Bible...But is this actually true? (snip)

Mitchell explores the websites of all the best known Christian Right groups. For example, Southern Baptist Convention minister Richard Land...

His “For Faith and Family” web site presents the reader with a link to something called the “Ethics Scripture Index,” defined as “a listing of Scriptures that relate to various ethical issues,” from “Abortion, Adoption, Bioethics, Homemaking/Domestication, to War, Wives, Women.”14 For a student of biblical interpretation, this is a simply fascinating document, both in form and in effect. It is both like and unlike the ancient “testimonia” lists, such as we find at Qumran (4 QTestim), which contain a chain of excerpted quotes about the nature and identity of the true prophet, for instance. But, tellingly, this list is inconsistent in form. Let me explain. First off, there is no explanation of what topics or which passages are chosen or why, and in the vast majority of cases all one sees is a citation, not the text itself (that also has the nice effect of not confusing people who read their Bible in a different translation, and hence might find rather different wording which might call into question the aptness of its place there). And this method presumes that the whole column speaks with one voice about the issue, which means that there is already a pre-determined decision about the “biblical view” on the given issue. No hermeneutical rule of thumb or guidance is given on such issues as the relationship between the Old and New Testament in Christian law or regulation, nor about how different biblical genres relate to divine teaching and biblical truth (law, narrative, parable, and proverb are all treated the same). But one gets some glimpses of the interpretive work behind this list (and the rhetorical effect it is designed to have) because sometimes a paraphrase or explanation is appended to one or more items in each categorical list.

If we take these as indicative of some higher level of interest, investment or possible debate on the topic, it is quite interesting that under “Hunger,” for instance, only fifteen citations are given, but no comments (obviously not an important issue). Astoundingly, Luke’s second beatitude (“Blessed are those who hunger now” [Luke 6:21]) did not even make the list. By contrast, “Gambling” receives double the references “Hunger” has (thirty—Land does not have the same problem as the Dobson site in acknowledging that the Bible does not mention gambling), as well as some interpretive comments (my favorite: next to 1 Cor. 16:1-3, Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians on putting money aside each week for the saints in Jerusalem are glossed, “can’t give to a collection if your money is gambled away”!). The category that had by far the most listings was “Money”: 123 citations, but not a single interpretive comment.

The contemporary significance of these strategically-placed comments seems clear when one looks at the category “War” (there is none for “Peace”). Of sixty-six citations, fully fourteen were singled out for comment:

Gen. 14:13-16 Abram rescues Lot through warfare
Deut. 2:5, 9, 19, 32-35 God’s sovereignty in war
Josh. 6-12 aggressive in God’s plan for victory
1 Sam. 15:1-3 total annihilation of enemy
2 Sam. 5:17-25 preventative, consulted God beforehand
Luke 6:27-36 [sic; possibly 7:2-10] Jesus did not command the centurion to abandon his job now that he was a Christian

While it is easy to think of this as a literalistic proof-texting, it is not just that, but a highly creative rearrangement of selective pieces of the biblical record to justify a previously reached conclusion (in this case, apparently, the invasion of Iraq). Sometimes Land does include passages that might complicate the picture, but his own interpretive comments draw attention away from them. For example, we read “Rom. 12:2 our ways are separate from the world’s ways,” but would hardly realize that under the listing Rom. 12:17-21 lies a text that contains both the actual word peace (Rom. 12:2 does not) and a command related to it: “if it is possible by your agency, live in peace with all people” (Rom. 12:18). It bears noting, in relation to my larger thesis, that it is Christian peace-makers of various stripes—not the Christian Right—who are the literalists when it comes to the latter verse. (SNIP)


How is the Christian Right Biblical?

Thus far we have examined the modes of biblical interpretation found in the web-face of the Christian Right. My thesis is that what makes the Christian Right biblical is not a literalistic hermeneutic so much as a mode of argumentation by reference to a deliberately selective set of biblical passages, annexed to the predetermined cause through a variety of exegetical moves, which are usually unexplained because they depend upon prior agreement of the ends of interpretation. And I have shown examples where there is a lot less biblical study going on than one might expect. The Christian Right represents biblical interpretation in a conjunction of two selective circles: of what are the key issues in the political realm and what are the central passages in the biblical record. It represents an odd alignment of each. The canonical delineation is striking—a focus on the Old Testament, with special prominence given to Judges and 1 and 2 Chronicles, as well as to Genesis and Leviticus; and in the New Testament, to selected moralizing passages of the Pauline letters and Revelation. It is easy to see then what is missing: the prophets of Israel and the teachings of Jesus (the Gospels). Along with them go concern with social/political issues such as economic inequality, peace-making, love and forgiveness, and critique of religious hypocrisy (just to choose a few!).

The key to this selectivity is the wholesale adoption by the Christian Right of one strand of biblical thinking, apocalyptic. And apocalyptic is indisputably in the Bible, though it is not everywhere in the Bible, or necessarily quintessentially biblical.