I often find myself stuck between two extremes in our religious culture. Either 1) take the Bible literally and thereby ignore much of what modern disciples – whether science or history or others – have taught us about the way the world works. Or 2) dismiss the Bible entirely because it doesn’t always conform to what we’ve learned about the world and thereby ignore the wisdom of our faith. I don’t think I’m alone feeling this bind. I think, in fact, that lots of faithful Christians want an alternative to the false dichotomy of faith or reason, head or heart, fundamentalist Christianity or outright atheism. Much of our dilemma...

Heated conversations about homosexuality have been occurring in the church for the better part of the last twenty-five years, reaching a fevered pitch in my own denomination with a vote to recognize same-gendered relationships and ordain ministers in such relationships in 2009. Since then, the issue has not abated and, given the number of states voting this fall to define marriage, in some ways has only grown in significance. Given all these discussion, I have been regularly surprised by how little Christians seem to know about what the Bible actually says about homosexuality. For this reason, and in light of ongoing conversations and the...

Last week I offered four reasons not to read the Bible literally. But what’s the alternative? I mean, isn’t reading it literally taking the Bible at face value, taking it most seriously? Actually, I’m not sure it is, and in this post I want to begin to offer an alternative. To do so, we need to begin with just a little bit of history. Many of our categories for thinking about truth in relation to facts developed about three and a half centuries ago, but were relatively unknown to biblical authors. You see, disillusioned by the religious fervor that fed the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the early architects of what would later be called...

I’ve gotten a number of questions of late about the conservative, or literal, way of reading the Bible. It’s that way of reading the Bible that’s maybe best summed up in the bumper sticker, God Said It. I Believe It. That Settles It. Most of us, it seems, have at least one friend or family member who reads the Bible this way and although we may covet their confidence, we often don’t feel like that way of reading the Bible “fits” with us or “works” for us. I use quotation marks to name these feelings because it’s often hard to describe what doesn’t seem accurate or faithful about...