Calvin Synod Herald, 2014 (115. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2014-09-01 / 9-10. szám

6

CALVIN SYNOD HERALD

A Plea to Teach Bible Literacy

See how many mistakes you can find in this excerpt from Nicolas Kristof’s Op-Ed Column of the New York Times (p. SR11, 4/27/14): (Hint: There are 20 errors.)

Noah of Arc and his wife, Joan, build a boat to survive a great flood. Moses climbs Mount Cyanide and receives 10 enumerated commandments; for all the differences among religious denominations, the Ten Commandments are a common bedrock that Jews, Catholic and Protestants agree on.

Sodom and his wild girlfriend, Gomorrah, soon set the standard for what not to do. They are turned into pillars of salt.

The Virgin Mary, a young Christian woman, conceives Jesus immaculately and gives birth to him in a Jerusalem manger. Jesus, backed by the Twelve Apostles and their wives, the Epistles, proclaims what we call the Golden Rule: “Do one to others before they do one to you. ” The Romans repeatedly crucify Jesus—at Calvary, Golgotha and other sites—but he resurrects himself each time.

Christianity spreads through the gospels, which differ on details but all provide eyewitness accounts of Jesus ’s life from birth to death. Finally, Rome tires of throwing Christians to lions and becomes thefirst country to adopt Christianity as its religion. The Bible is translated from the original English into countless languages.

I had such a devout Grandmother who so adored Billy Graham that I grew up seeped in Bible stories. Then, as a teen, I played the old pump organ and taught Sunday School each Sunday morning. I just assumed others had as much Bible literacy education as I did, but was I ever wrong. When I met my Catholic husband, I discovered he knew less than I although he attended Catholic school in Ireland after leaving Hungary in 1956. Recently, when we viewed the world’s largest "Annunciation" at Ave Maria University in Florida, which was carved by Hungarian sculptor Marton Verő, my husband whispered to me, “What’s an Annunciation?” I was shocked. Then, I read about the long-ago Texas Governor whom I won’t name who was opposed to Spanish instruction in the public schools and commented, “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.” And if you think Americans are pretty illiterate when it comes to Bible literacy, ask them about other faiths from Islam to Hinduism to Judaism. A few days after 9/11, a vigilante shot and killed an Indian-American Sikh because someone wearing a turban to him meant that person was Muslim. Also, most don’t know the difference between Evangelicals and Pentecostals. When I recently asked an ordained minister to tell me the difference between Calvinists, the Church of Christ and the Reformed, I received such a convoluted answer that I’m still confused.

Without a doubt, Americans are profoundly ignorant about religion and the Bible. Author Stephen Prothero noted in his book, Religious Literacy, that in the U.S., faith is almost entirely devoid of content. He writes, “One of the most religious nations on earth, the U.S., is also a nation of religious illiterates. Nearly 2/3 of all Americans say they believe that the Bible holds the answer to

all or most of life’s basic questions, yet only 1/3 know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and 10% think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.”

Teens’ Biblical ignorance is even more pronounced. When I taught high school English, students had no idea what writer John Steinbeck meant when he claimed his novel THE PEARL was a “parable.” When a character in Lorraine Hansberry’s RAISIN IN THE SUN said, “Thirty pieces of silver and not a coin less,” students had no idea to what she was referring. “Forty days and forty nights” in the title of Iyania Vansant’s book, ONE DAY MY SOUL JUST OPENED UP: 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS TOWARD SPIRITUAL STRENGTH AND PERSONAL GROWTH, were only numbers to my students. Not one student knew what Helen Keller meant when she wrote, “Words made the world blossom for me, like Aaron’s rod with flowers.’

As a result, many of us English teachers lobbied to have the “Bible as Literature” taught as a small unit within the English curriculum during students’ sophomore year. But after we initiated the unit with input from college religion professors and area pastors, the unit soon became controversial because so many parents felt it smacked of “religious indoctrination.” Thus, within two years, the unit was abruptly dropped from the curriculum. The Bibles purchased for the unit were donated to the Gideons.

Now, students aren’t learning Biblical allusions anywhere— not from home, school or church—so they don’t even know what a “parable” is. To them, “Aaron’s rod” means his “hot car.” “Forty days and forty nights” lacks any meaning whatsoever. In Maryland, students must perform 75 hours of community service in order to graduate. As the school’s volunteer coordinator, I had to determine whether their submitted hours of service included “religious indoctrination.” If student taught Bible school, sung in the church choir or served as acolytes, I couldn’t give them credit. But if they built a home in Costa Rica with their church group, collected food for the needy through their churches or sung with the school chorus in a Lutheran retirement home, the service counted. It was a matter of splitting hairs, and I, along with a faculty committee, spent a great deal of time deciding such cases and explaining the requirement to confused parents.

Thus, is it any wonder that parents are opting for home schooling or private schools when teaching any sort of “values education” is forbidden? Now that parents are alarmed at the language students use in public schools, the repeated incidences of violence, and the lack of respect students show their teachers and school administrators, some are calling for “character education” to be reinstituted. But I’d like to dust off the old curriculum guide and get those Bibles back from the Gideons to reinstate that Bible as Literature unit. I’m willing to bet that that unit was one my former students remembered long after their grammar, vocabulary and writing assignments were forgotten because it’s still the best “character education” I know of. But with the present pressure on teachers to cover more mandated material to help students pass state exams, anything that smacks of religion won’t even be part of a discussion on material that’s part of general knowledge. Thus, Biblical references that enrich our lives, civilize us, provide context for understanding the world around us and help us to appreciate religions throughout the world will continue to be ignored. Thus,