Sojourners. 7 pp.
IT IS AN OPEN QUESTION whether the Bible’s status in Western civilization has improved much since the last millennium’s turning. Now, as then, it continues to provide grist for popular eschatological fantasy, self-serving rulers still too often cite it for political gain, and it remains overly captive to the interpretive authority of the clerical and academic elite.
Two important things have changed since 1000 C.E., however. On one hand, the advent of the printing press and the slow triumph of the vernacular in the church have meant that the Bible is widely accessible. On the other, since the Enlightenment the forces of modernity have steadily displaced the Bible to the cultural margins.
Full Article: Stories to Live By: Reading the Bible in the New Millennium SKU: L00-2-F
Ched Myers 