Nicole M
02-16-2010, 11:04 PM
Last night I heard Stephen Prothero give a lecture. He's the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- and Doesn't. What a delightful man! I have not yet read his book, but am working through The Bible and Its Influence with my boys, so I do plan to get to Prothero's book eventually.
A couple things struck me, about the history of Biblical literacy in the US and our changing depictions of Jesus in the last century. Prothero argues that our illiteracy did not begin in the 1960s with the Supreme Court decisions about prayer in school, but rather, had roots in the Bible Wars from the 1800s. (I was a religion major, and had no idea. I know far more than necessary about religion in the middle ages, but post Enlightenment? Not so much.) Apparently, public education in the US was all about creating an educated, moral citizenry, and you couldn't be a moral citizen without a good working knowledge of the Bible. So schools included devotional time in their days. Once the cities began to have a larger population of Catholics, there was suddenly a more vocal questioning of this practice, not because Catholics had a problem with the idea of devotions, but because the schools were using the wrong Bible. Eventually Catholics and Protestants decided that no Bible was better than the wrong Bible, so devotions were phased out.
(This is the super cliff notes version, by the way.) The other dynamic that was at work at that time was a shift from the Calvinist idea of faith being the business of head and heart to a more heart-centered, evangelical idea of a personal relationship with Jesus. This is when we started seeing images of Jesus change from pictures of him in a story to head shots, or "yearbook" pictures. And those changed from Jesus looking into heaven to Jesus looking right at you, babe. (In a sexy voice) "I care about you."
I can't wait to read these two history chapters he discussed. He mentioned that the reviewers of his book spent a total of "zero percent of their time" reading the history chapters so during the lecture he was going to spend "fifteen percent" of his time recapping. He told the audience that the ones of us who hate history because, you know, it happened a long time ago and doesn't have anything to do with us, could zone out, and a neighbor could nudge us when it was over.
His descriptions of how the biblical texts have been co-opted by both political parties was new to me, too, and compelling.
Since we have discussed this before, I thought y'all might be interested. Also, I would be curious to know if anyone here has read his book, and what you thought of it.
A couple things struck me, about the history of Biblical literacy in the US and our changing depictions of Jesus in the last century. Prothero argues that our illiteracy did not begin in the 1960s with the Supreme Court decisions about prayer in school, but rather, had roots in the Bible Wars from the 1800s. (I was a religion major, and had no idea. I know far more than necessary about religion in the middle ages, but post Enlightenment? Not so much.) Apparently, public education in the US was all about creating an educated, moral citizenry, and you couldn't be a moral citizen without a good working knowledge of the Bible. So schools included devotional time in their days. Once the cities began to have a larger population of Catholics, there was suddenly a more vocal questioning of this practice, not because Catholics had a problem with the idea of devotions, but because the schools were using the wrong Bible. Eventually Catholics and Protestants decided that no Bible was better than the wrong Bible, so devotions were phased out.
(This is the super cliff notes version, by the way.) The other dynamic that was at work at that time was a shift from the Calvinist idea of faith being the business of head and heart to a more heart-centered, evangelical idea of a personal relationship with Jesus. This is when we started seeing images of Jesus change from pictures of him in a story to head shots, or "yearbook" pictures. And those changed from Jesus looking into heaven to Jesus looking right at you, babe. (In a sexy voice) "I care about you."
I can't wait to read these two history chapters he discussed. He mentioned that the reviewers of his book spent a total of "zero percent of their time" reading the history chapters so during the lecture he was going to spend "fifteen percent" of his time recapping. He told the audience that the ones of us who hate history because, you know, it happened a long time ago and doesn't have anything to do with us, could zone out, and a neighbor could nudge us when it was over.
His descriptions of how the biblical texts have been co-opted by both political parties was new to me, too, and compelling.
Since we have discussed this before, I thought y'all might be interested. Also, I would be curious to know if anyone here has read his book, and what you thought of it.