Way In
Averse to politics

'You must defend those who are helpless and have no hope. Be
fair and give justice to the poor and homeless'. A quotation from
the book of Proverbs, as any Third Way reader would be
quick to point out. But in a recent poll on biblical literacy in
the US, more people believed that the words came from Barack Obama
than the Old Testament.
To be fair, US voters are used to hearing quasi-biblical
language issue forth like a flood from their politicians. Any
legislator wanting to be all things to all people would do well to
remember that many are called but few are chosen. George Bush, for
example, was keen on combatting men of evil designs, and Ronald
Regan famously said of Soviet leaders that they 'reserve unto
themselves the right to commit any crime'.
Of course, these phrases often owe more to the 17th century than
actual scripture, the authorative echoes mattering more than the
content. Recently, however, Senators have been competing to take
ownership not of the apocalyptic good in the war against evil but
of the Bible's moral imperatives towards poverty.
Professor Timothy Beal, author of Biblical Literacy: The
essential Bible stories everyone needs to know, has monitored
the changing use of the Bible in different political eras. 'In the
current healthcare debate', he says, 'both sides claim to be caring
for "the least of these." The debate is over who they are. Is it
the elderly? Is it children? Is it the uninsured children? The
uninsured? The immigrants?' Meanwhile the President argues that
opponents of his proposals are 'bearing false witness' against his
ideas.
Elsewhere, the recession has invoked Amos, Isaiah and Micah in
condemning predatory lenders who might take advantage of the
vulnerable.
Beal even knows of a project aimed at helping people avoid
predatory loans that has been named after prophet Nehemiah. 'I
think you can't be culturally literate without being biblically
literate,' he says. 'These stories are all over our culture, from
Michelangelo to the Simpsons. When we don't know them, when we
don't hear these resonances, and we're not familiar, we're really
missing half the conversation.'
A shame, then, that over at Ohio's Ashland University, Professor
David Aune has graded the nation's overall biblical literacy as low
and feels Bible reading has declined over the past decade. A
problem of creeping secularism and strident atheism? Apparently
not. Aune blames the drop on a megachurch trend toward prepackaged
PowerPoint sermons instead of Bible-based preaching.