Slacktivist’s Fred Clark talks about how some conservatives are just willfully wrong when interpreting the Bible. Sometimes I forget there are some rational, thoughtful Christians who aren’t afraid of science:
One of my pet-peeve misconceptions is the notion that an illiterately literal reading of Genesis 1-11 is somehow an expression of “conservative” theology.
It isn’t.
Of course this “literal” belief in the six-day creation of a young earth isn’t liberal theology either. It’s just bad theology. Not orthodox, not conservative or liberal, justwrong — just a weirdly misleading way to read this text.
Bad theology and wrong theology shouldn’t be blithely equated with conservative theology. Yes, Al Mohler is a young-earth creationist and he’s right-wing politically. But just because he’s a political conservative doesn’t mean that his disrespectful abuse of Genesis is also “conservative.” His disrespectful abuse of this scripture is only just that — the disrespectful abuse of scripture.
That’s partly why I like this engaging short video on “Science and Genesis” (via here)– because it refuses to play this game of calling modern, illiterate literalism “conservative.” The video features a bunch of fairly conservative Protestant theologians treating the text with respect. This ain’t liberal theology, and it’s not some kind of radical new cutting-edge approach to the text.
This is how Christians read the Bible. The actual Bible — not the make-believe one of the make-believe “conservatives.”
Read the Bible as challenge to oneself, at least the New Testament with hippy Jesus and not the angry, old, Supremely white, patriarchal God of Old Testament. Jesus, help me keep my head from exploding when fascists–oops, conservative “Christians” when they blame violent media for recent massacres, ignoring the Psalm of David where he asks for help in killing enough enemies so as to walk ankle deep in blood.
http://empireofdirt77.blogspot.com/2012/07/sunday-bible-stuff-better-for-me-to-be.html