By the Way | But Is It ‘Biblical’?

Having spent the first quarter century of my life embedded in the evangelical subculture, I learned to ask the question at almost every turn, “Is it biblical?”

It’s a peculiarly Protestant affectation, and evangelicals are especially vulnerable. Whereas devout Catholics typically defer to the authority of the church (Roman Catholic, of course), Martin Luther’s assertion that the Bible alone was our authority (sola scriptura), coupled with his notion of the priesthood of believers, that everyone should interpret the Bible for herself, sent each of us to the Bible for guidance on everything from politics to clothing styles.

Is it “biblical” for men to wear their hair long? (This was the 1960s, after all.) Or, is it “biblical” to listen to rock music or imbibe alcohol or enlist in the military? Is capital punishment “biblical”?

We were consumed by questions like these, especially during late-night conversations in the dormitories of evangelical colleges. 

Proof-texting was all the rage. If you could vindicate your position by quoting a Bible verse, no matter how obscure or wrenched out of context, you scored debating points and sent your interlocutors back to the Bible for a counter reference.

In truth, although we all claimed to read and interpret the Bible for ourselves, we generally outsourced our biblical interpretations to professionals–theologians or charismatic preachers.

Some of the logic about what was “biblical” or not was, to say the least, a bit strained. The proscription against alcohol consumption, to cite a major example, owed more to the temperance movement of the nineteenth century than to the scriptures. And no, Jesus did not serve Welch’s grape juice at the Last Supper.

The best the experts could come up with concerning alcohol was the admonition that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Presumably, a sip of wine somehow defiled that temple.

All this comes to mind because a reporter called last week and asked how white evangelicals justified their support for Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies. What was the “biblical” justification, he asked, for mass deportations or separating immigrant children from their parents?

I was stumped. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are pretty clear about the mandate to welcome the stranger and treat the foreigner as one of your own–not to mention Jesus’ broader injunction to care for “the least of these.”

And that, of course, led to larger questions. Do evangelicals care any longer about what is or is not “biblical”? Do they even ask the question?

They’ve invested a lot of energy into asserting the doctrine of “biblical inerrancy,” the notion that the Bible was entirely without error in the original manuscripts. (Full disclosure: I wrote my seminary master’s thesis in defense of biblical inerrancy.)

I understand the impulse behind biblical inerrancy, the assertion of immaculate original manuscripts as a kind of Platonic ideal. It provides an epistemology–however fragile, given that the originals no longer exist–for evangelical theology.

But doesn’t biblical inerrancy beg the larger question? Sure, you can posit the inerrancy of the Bible, but if you don’t bother to read it or allow the teachings of scripture to inform the way you live or the policies you support, what’s the point?

I suspect that evangelicals stopped asking the “biblical” question sometime in the 1980s. As the Religious Right began to enjoy political success, beginning with the 1980 presidential election, leaders of the movement pointed white evangelicals in the direction of conservative ideologues or the Republican Party rather than the New Testament.

How else do you explain the lack of protest when the Reagan administration enacted massive tax cuts that enriched the affluent at the expense of those less fortunate? How else do you explain why evangelicals stood behind Ronald Reagan’s support for the apartheid regime in South Africa, even as it was collapsing beneath its own weight?

How was that “biblical”?

Or George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, which didn’t meet even the barest criteria of a “just war.” Or his authorization of torture?

Was that “biblical”? And did anyone in the Religious Right even ask the question? (When I was writing “Thy Kingdom Come,” I contacted eight Religious Right organizations to inquire about their positions on torture. Not one condemned the Bush administration’s use of torture.)

Perhaps it’s time for American evangelicals once again to ask the “biblical” question. I suspect that a sincere effort to do so will raise some unsettling questions about the policies and the politicians they support.

It’s one thing to assert the inerrancy of the Bible, but if the contents of the scriptures don’t influence our daily lives or our politics, the Bible becomes irrelevant, a relic rather than a guide for believers.