Biblicist churches that don’t read the Bible

Over at Plough Bonnie Kristian (my editor at CT and the very very best) has written a wonderfully incisive review of the newly published Anabaptist Community Bible. Here are the final three paragraphs of her piece (bolded emphasis mine):

One big reason I’m no longer a member of a Mennonite church is that I moved to another state. But another big reason is that I saw firsthand how unsteady Anabaptism becomes if it is not solidly grounded in [a] foundation of scriptural knowledge and authority. Other Christian traditions – those that also catechize with creed and liturgy and tend to concentrate instructional authority in ordained, seminary-educated ministers – may more reliably hold on to their convictions without intensive, universal lay Bible study.

But Anabaptism doesn’t work that way. It requires understanding, as Roth writes, that “Scripture – and especially the teachings of Jesus – [are] a road map for living,” a map to be constantly consulted because it is always “relevant and authoritative for the Christian life.” It requires us to read the Bible, in Roth’s words, “with the expectation that it will change our lives.” Anabaptism requires the hunger for and submission to Scripture that, five centuries ago, its progenitors modeled to the death.

If the Anabaptist Community Bible can encourage that hunger, enticing Christians to consume Scripture like a community feast, its makers have done well indeed. That would not only commemorate Anabaptism but extend its legacy for generations to come.

Something clicked for me here, especially this: “…without intensive, universal lay Bible study.” That phrase is a useful descriptor for a cross-denominational phenomenon common to any number of low-church biblicist (even “primitivist”) traditions that arose particularly on the American frontier in the nineteenth century.

Intensive, universal lay Bible study: if anything is a desideratum of non-creedal, non-liturgical, congregationalist churches, that is it. Yet what happens when local churches or whole traditions that remain non-creedal, non-liturgical, and congregationalist—biblicist, in a word—no longer practice intensive, universal lay Bible study? It’s not indulging nostalgia to say that there was a time when biblicist churches were full to the brim of adults (and young adults, and teenagers, and children) who read the Bible every day, to the point where they had whole swaths of it memorized or rehearsable by paraphrase. I’m just old enough to remember those days, and I caught only the tail end.

I recall, while serving at a shelter north of Atlanta circa 2010, a homeless man in his 50s reciting whole paragraphs of arcane scriptural passages to me in perfect KJV. This guy had been raised in a bona fide biblicist church that practiced—nay, enforced—intensive, universal lay Bible study.

Yet today, as I have documented almost obsessively, biblicist churches are moving in a post-biblicist direction while younger generations have utterly lost even the rudiments of biblical literacy, along with literal literacy. (Translation: They don’t read, period.)

Beyond such literacy—beyond intensive, universal lay Bible study (should we call it IULBS?)—there is nothing left; at least, not if you remain, on the surface or even beneath the skin, biblicist-primitivist-congregationalist in polity, doctrine, and practice. The rug has been pulled out beneath your feet, the branch you were sitting on has been sawed off, the pillars have all been thrown down: there is nothing left.

Besides, that is, the Zeitgeist. But discerning the spirits is no longer possible when the word of the Lord in Holy Scripture is no longer known, cherished, prized, read. Where else is there to turn? Either to tradition or to the culture. I see no third option.

Update (Feb 13): There is another option, one I’ve mentioned before but had forgotten to include here, which is the singular authority of a charismatic, entrepreneurial, popular pastor. I take it for granted that this is a bad option, but it’s not only a live one; it’s one many churches and believers have chosen and even sought out.

I should add, too, that for the kind of post-biblicist traditions I write about in this post, the “charismatic option” is a nonstarter. Not because it’s unattractive or unthinkable, but because the Spirit without the Word is as rudderless as the Word without the Spirit is lifeless. Hence my reference to discerning the spirits by the gospel of the incarnate Word, which is just what Saint John commends to us in his First Epistle. Modern-day Montanism is just as undesirable as it was in Tertullian’s day.