The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality - International Voices in ...

Betwixt Text and Nature, God and Evolution 143
synodal regions within denominations, parishes/congregations, and
individuals self-identify themselves, often strongly, in such terms.
These fault lines in the contemporary United States run not, as in
the European churches from the eighteenth century onwards, along
issues such as the historical probability of the occurrence of divine
miracles or the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus, 10 but along
contentious current questions such as abortion, the death penalty,
and homosexuality. Although in both cases the nature of the
authority of the church’s Scriptures stand central, 11 the debates are
constituted in quite different ways. Whereas in the European
context these debates were conditioned by the problems of a
historical cultural awareness 12 —and hence critical exegesis was
practiced for the use of the Bible as a source for spiritual
nourishment 13 —the US is characterised more by a divergence on
socio-political viewpoints.
As an arm’s length observer, one of course has a different perspective of
a culture/society than people who daily live in it do; however, both the “insider”
and “outsider” perspectives are valid interpretative stances—cf. M. E. Rabe,
“Revisiting ‘Insiders’ and ‘Outsiders’ as Social Researchers,” African
Sociological Review/Revue Africaine de Sociologie 7, no. 2 (2003), 149–61.
My thanks particularly to Mrs. Marian Seagren-Hall and the adult
education group of the First Presbyterian Church, Wausau, Wisconsin, United
States of America, for offering critical remarks.
10 Initially, though, these were also the issues against which American
conservatism reacted; see e.g., J. G. Melton, “Critiquing Cults: An Historical
Perspective,” in Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America,
Volume 1: History and Controversies (ed. E. V. Gallager and W. M. Ashcraft;
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006), 127; Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs,
25–69; C. H. Lippy, Being Religious, American Style: A History of Popular
Religiosity in the United States (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994) 167–68.
11 W. S. Hudson, Religion in America (4th ed.; New York: Macmillan, 1987),
250–52.
12 Cf. J. H. le Roux, “The Nature of Historical Understanding” (or:
“Hermeneutics and History”), Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae XIX, no. 1
(1993): 35–63.
13
Usually when a statement to this effect is made, its intent is to criticise
historical-critical exegesis. That is in no way the purpose here. On the contrary, I