The Bible in America

This past week, February 9 to be exact, marked the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis, a former US Army officer, sworn in as president. One month later, Abraham Lincoln became the 16th president of the United States of America. A month after that, with shots fired at Fort Sumter, the Civil War began. In the halls of government, schools, museums and playhouses across the country, Americans are spending 2011 looking closely at this defining epoch in our country’s history, its lasting lessons and what, if any, are the ongoing reverberations for us to consider.

So today, on Lincoln’s birthday, I want to weigh in and throw my hat (or yarmulke) into the ring. Not so much about the war itself – I know as much or as little about the Civil War as anyone else who spends too much time and money at Barnes and Noble. Rather I want to talk about one particular aspect of the Civil War – the Bible. Specifically, what impact did the Civil War period have on the status of the Bible in America? Because whether or not we know much about the Civil War, I do believe that the perfect storm of events surrounding 1861 rendered the Bible ever changed in the eyes of Americans.

Before I explain myself, or more precisely, in order to explain myself, I need to take you back even further to another event, 250 years earlier, in 1611. It was in that year, exactly four hundred years ago, that the King James Version of the Bible was first printed. It has well earned the right to be designated “the Authorized Version,” having sold over a billion copies. More significant than sheer numbers, the King James Bible has shaped the very cadences of how we speak the English language. From stock phrases like “my brother’s keeper,” “writing on the wall,” or “the blind leading the blind;” or apropos of today, “a house divided against itself cannot stand” to so many other turns of phrase, the impact of the King James Bible cannot be underestimated. Régis Debray once wrote that “without the alphabet…there would be no God.” I don’t think it is a stretch to say that without the King James Bible, an awful lot of what we know to be English would not be English.

In order to truly appreciate the impact of the King James Bible, you need to consider the watershed date of its publication. It was less than twenty years later that the Arabella set sail to America to establish what John Winthrop would call a “City on the Hill” – a phrase, incidentally, made possible by the King James Bible. Long before the Internet and other social media, it was the King James Bible, not Facebook or Twitter, that was the primary vehicle by which to spread a message. As the English-speaking world shifted westward, the Bible went along, and whether it was with the Puritans, the Colonialists or the founding fathers of our nation, it was by way of the Bible that our country took shape.

Unlike the French Revolution and its militant secularism, for all its enlightenment ideals, America’s ethic was never anti-religious and certainly not anti-Biblical. From the Puritans understanding their mission as an “Errand into the Wilderness,” to the colonialists referring to themselves as “God’s New Israel,” to the seal proposed by Franklin and Jefferson to include a crossing of the sea, to the Urim and Thumim of Aaron’s breastplate mentioned in this week’s Torah reading that sit proudly on the seal of Yale University, biblical typology was the common coin of American discourse. For antebellum America, the sacred aura of the Bible provided the right blend of pietism and populism in a way that could be both devotional and democratic. The Bible was, in the words of the historian Perry Miller, as omnipresent as the air people breathed.

And with minor exceptions, America’s Biblical foundations stood firm until the events leading up to and including the Civil War. And here is where the problem begins. Mark Noll, the great historian of religion in America, explains that the Civil War was the first time Americans saw that scripture could be quoted and used towards opposite ends – to decry or to justify slavery – depending on the preacher at hand.

In high school you may have had to read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that galvanized the anti-slavery movement. One scene in the novel describes a steamboat carrying passengers and slaves and they start quoting biblical texts to one another:
“It’s undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race should be servants, – kept in a low condition,” said a grave-looking gentleman in black, a clergyman, seated by the cabin door. “‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be’ the Scripture says.”…A tall, slender young man, with a face expressive of great feeling and intelligence, here broke in, and repeated the words, “‘All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’ I suppose,” he added, “that is scripture, as much as ‘Cursed be Canaan.’” (Chapter 12)

Stowe’s insight, that the Bible can be used to justify opposite agendas, can be demonstrated time and time again simply by studying church sermons of this period in American history, or for that matter, the synagogue sermons as well. The point is made directly enough in Lincoln’s second inaugural address, making reference to the North and South: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.” The Civil War forever changed the Bible in America because Americans found themselves trying to square up the Bible’s spirit and letter on the issue of slavery. Ultimately, of course, the North won the war, but when that happened, the Bible lost its potency. From that point on, the most trusted religious authority – the Bible – became increasingly uncertain and suspect.

There are two more important things you need to know. The 1860’s were significant in American Biblicism for two other reasons. One may be obvious, the other perhaps less so. First was the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. If the Civil War divided devotees of the Bible as to what the Bible really said, Darwin’s evolutionary model raised the question of whether people should listen to the Bible at all. It is a sermon for another day, but suffice it say that Darwin’s proposals regarding creation remain some of the most vexing questions for anyone who wishes to take the Bible seriously.

Second, and this I will mention only in passing, is the rise of historical criticism in America in the 1860’s. The question of “Who wrote the Bible?” was not really actively taught in American universities until the German literature on this topic of the 1820’s arrived on American soil in the second half of the 19th century. American Bible scholars sought to treat the Bible as sacred, but also as a document of the Ancient Near East. My alma mater, for example, the University of Chicago, was founded during this time by William Harper, as a place where the Bible could be studied devotionally and critically. Famous debates took place on whether one could study the Bible with both intellectual openness and spiritual devotion, the heresy trial of Charles Briggs at Union Theological Seminary and the open debates between Kaufman Kohler of HUC and Solomon Schechter of JTS to name but two of many such eruptions.

All of this is to say, that the second half of the 19th century was a perfect storm of events for the stature of the Bible. The combination of the Civil War, Darwin and biblical criticism collectively dethroned the King James Bible. Each of these challenges by itself may not have been enough, but together, the combination meant that that the Bible in America would never be the same. I am reminded of the insight of the great Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas who once wrote that historical criticism of the Bible only poses a challenge to those whose faith is already shaken.

Four hundred years after King James, one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, we are still struggling with these questions. In no small way, the story of American religion of the last century, from social gospel, to liberation theology, to feminist theologies, to debates on abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality, may be understood as attempts to figure out how to take the Bible seriously, even if you are not sure who wrote it, what it says and whether it is true. Even the rise of Evangelism is in no small way an extension of, or more accurately, a reaction to the crises of 150 years ago – a counter-reformation of sorts taking place. And while I am making sweeping generalizations without footnotes, I also think that when this sermon is given twenty years from now – there will be one more anniversary to mention: 9-11-01. It is too soon to do so, but I think no one can have an intelligent discussion about religion in America – the rise of both militant atheism and fundamentalism – without considering the lasting effects of that dark day on how we view all faith traditions.

Anyone who opens up a paper today knows that as important as ideas may be, the real game changers are the social forces by which those ideas are communicated. As sure as I am that the Protestant reformation couldn’t have happened without the invention of the printing press, I am doubly sure that without the internet, the events of the Middle East would be taking place on vastly different terms, if at all. So it is with the Bible itself. As steady as its message may be, that message changes all the time based on who is preaching it and what is going in the world. The King James translation was one such turning point, the Civil War another and while nobody has a crystal ball, I can promise you there will be many more turning points to come. As Jews and Americans, we are twice bound to the Bible, struggling between its authority and our need for personal autonomy, the constant truths it contains and the contrary truths of our moment; we turn it, and ourselves, over and over again. Most of all, we commit to taking the Bible and each other seriously, for in so doing, hopefully, we have a chance to be taken seriously by the God who created us all.