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Probing Scripture: The New Biblical Critics

Once upon a time biblical studies was focused almost exclusively on historical questions. Scholars’ primary concern was with the history of the texts and with the history of the cultures which produced the texts. Since the 1970s, however, the field has witnessed a proliferation of different approaches to the Bible. These can be roughly grouped under three categories: literary, social -- scientific and cultural hermeneutical.

Literary Approaches: A popular appreciation of the narrative art of the Bible has always existed. Its stories were represented in the sculpture and stained glass windows of medieval churches, and Western literature has been profoundly influenced by its characters, themes and symbols. In both Judaism and Christianity the reading and retelling of the stories in devotional and liturgical contexts made them deeply familiar. Yet even though biblical Hebrew poetry had been the subject of academic study since the 18th century little attention had been paid to the poetics of biblical narrative.

One impetus to the interest in biblical narrative was the creation in the 1960s and ‘70s or departments of religious studies in nondenominational colleges and public universities. In such contexts the study of the Bible "as literature" was deemed especially appropriate to a secular curriculum. Giving further impetus to literary study of the Bible was the work of several scholars of English and comparative literature, who extended their expertise in the analysis of literature to biblical texts. Most prominent were Northrop Frye (The Great Code: The Bible and Literature), Robert Alter (The Art of Biblical Narrative and The Art of Biblical Poetry), and Frank Kermode (The Genesis of Secrecy: A Study of the Gospel of Mark). Alter and Kermode later collaborated to edit The Literary Guide to the Bible.

This literary approach differed from historical study in significant ways. Whereas historical study tended to be concerned with the prehistory of the text (oral traditions and written source materials) and with its development through successive redactions, literary study focused on the final form of the text. Whereas historical study was interested in the world referred to by the text, literary study directed its attention to the world constructed in the text. Nevertheless, there were certain historical dimensions to this early work in biblical literature. Both Alter and Meir Sternberg attempted to isolate distinctive features of ancient Israelite narrative art (such as modes of characterization, the use of type-scenes, techniques of repetition. forms of plot development) which were not necessarily the same as the techniques used in modern Western narrative. Similarly, New Testament literary study has included a strong interest in the comparative analysis of Greco-Roman literary genres and techniques and those used in the Gospels, Acts and early noncanonical Christian literature.

Much of the early literary study of the Bible was influenced by the New Criticism, an approach that had dominated Anglo-American literary scholarship from the 1930s through the 1950s. For the New Critics the literary text was considered an autonomous work of art, to be studied independently of its authors intentions and of the sociopolitical currents of the time in which it was produced. As the literary study of the Bible was gaining ground, however rapid changes were taking place in the larger field of literary study, changes that were quickly reflected in biblical studies.

Structuralism was the first of these new movements to make its impact. The origins of structuralism lie in the work of the early 20th-century linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who attempted to analyze the system of relationships within a language that makes acts of speech possible. In particular, he stressed that meanings are produced not so much by simple definition as by network of contrasts (e.g., a tree is a woody plant that is not a bush or a shrub). The anthropologist Claude Lévi Strauss argued that symbolic structures within human societies, including their kinship systems and their mythologies, could be analyzed in the same way, as systems of differences structured according to binary oppositions (e.g., life/death; male/female; hunting/farming; outside/inside). In a parallel development A. J. Greimas attempted to use Saussure’s insights to develop a "grammar" of narrative in much the same way as Saussure attempted to develop a grammar of sentences.

Biblical scholars, anthropologists and literary theorists were quick to apply these approaches to the Bible. The mythic narratives and genealogical accounts of Genesis, the symbolic geography of the Gospel narratives, and even the theological vocabulary of Paul offered opportunities for analyzing the patterns of binary opposition that structuralists argued were the key to the meaning of the texts.

Even as structuralism was being adapted for the study of biblical literature, its assumptions and claims were being challenged in the wider world of philosophical and literary studies. Structuralism claimed that the binary oppositions that structure human thought are essentially universal and unaffected by culture or history. Though the surface features of texts might vary with different societies and over time, the underlying structures did not. Such claims proved difficult to sustain. Just as structuralism dispensed with history, so it also had no place for the reader in the production of meaning. Structuralism understood itself as a kind of scientific method. Yet different readers regularly reached different understandings of the same text. Finally, though structuralism seemed to lend itself well to myths, folktales and highly formulaic texts, it seemed unable to deal with more complex narratives.

In opposition to narrative criticism, with its focus on the supposedly objective and stable text, and in opposition to structuralism’s focus on impersonal and universal codes, reader-response criticism arose to argue for the essential role of the reader in the process of making meaning. Structuralism tended to display its results in terms of charts -- an implicitly spatial understanding of the text. But reader-response theory insisted that reading is essentially a temporal affair. In reading, one only gradually gathers information that is progressively organized and reorganized by the reader to produce meaning.

Moreover, the text often contains "gaps" which the reader, consciously or unconsciously, fills in (e.g., details concerning characters, aspects of motivation or causality connections between events). As the reader becomes actively involved in the process of reading, what he or she engages is not simply the issues of plot and character but also matters of norms and values, which the reader may embrace or resist. Reader-response criticism thus accounts for the different understandings of and reactions to the "same" text by different readers by claiming a necessary place for the subjective element in reading. Subjectivity is limited, however, by what the reader’s community considers to be a plausible or implausible inference. Thus it is not so much individual readers as "interpretive communities" who set the parameters according to which interpretation takes place.

One of the consequences of the focus on the role of interpretive communities has been a renewed appreciation for the forms of interpretation practiced by Jewish and Christian communities before the rise of modern biblical studies during the Enlightenment. Instead of seeing such traditional readings as naïve or simply wrong, interpreters now ask about the assumptions and values that govern the reading practices of Christian typological and allegorical exegesis and of Rabbinic midrash. Midrash in particular has engaged contemporary literary scholars, because some of its interpretive practices bear an intriguing resemblance to forms of post-modern interpretation (for example, the acceptance of multiple, even contradictory, interpretations of the same text; the interpretation of one text by another without regard to historical influence).

If reader-response criticism represented one reaction to the limitations of traditional narrative criticism and to structuralism, a more pervasive critique emerged under the rubric of poststructuralism, or deconstruction. This movement, associated with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, is above all a critique of the metaphysical assumptions of Western philosophy, and only secondarily an analysis of the nature of texts and tile interpretive process. Derrida noted the attempt of philosophy to posit a central term (God, reason, the human being) in relation to which all of reality can be organized. This organization characteristically takes place by means of binary oppositions (e.g., rational/irrational, oral/written, presence/absence), in which the first term is accepted as superior to the second. Deconstruction attempts to dismantle such structures in order to show their artificiality and the inevitable ways in which any such structure of thought implicitly "decenters" its central term and undermines itself through internal inconsistency and contradiction.

When applied to texts, deconstruction begins with the perception that language is inevitably incomplete and surprisingly fluid. It then analyzes how even an ostensibly logical argument is rendered problematic and even self-contradictory by extraneous details or slippages in meaning which at first appear peripheral and unimportant. For deconstruction. the point of reading is not to restate the meaning intended by the author but to engage the text in creative thought, often by means of punning play with the text. Deconstruction’s very style serves to undermine the binary opposition serious/frivolous, for its aim is in part to uncover the ways in which various forms of thought attempt to inscribe power and privilege.

The perspectives of deconstruction have been combined with other intellectual currents (most notably Freudianism and Marxism) to produce a variety of related approaches that are often referred to comprehensively by the term postmodernism. Along with Derrida’s deconstruction, Michel Foucault’s study of the complex nature of power and truth and Fredric Jameson’s neo-Marxist analysis of ideology have been deeply influential on postmodernism in biblical studies. For an overview of these trends as well as other forms of postmodernism, see The Postmodern Bible by the Bible and Culture Collective.

Since one of the features of post-modernism is its tendency to dissolve boundaries, it is scarcely surprising that its characteristic approaches have combined with a wide variety of other impulses within biblical studies, most notably feminist criticism, but also various forms of ideological criticism (as we will see in the later discussion of cultural hermeneutics).

Social-Scientific Criticism: Another form of biblical criticism that has arisen in recent years applies insights and methods from the fields of sociology, anthropology and ethnography to describe aspects of ancient social life manifested in the biblical texts and to reconstruct the social worlds behind the texts. To a certain extent historical criticism has always had a social dimension, since it has been interested in nations, states, social groupings and religious movements. Yet self-conscious social-scientific investigation has come into its own since the 1960s.

In studies concentrating on the Hebrew Bible, several areas have proven fruitful for analysis. The first issue to be examined, and one still sharply debated, is that of the socioeconomic and political nature of the formation of the Israelite tribal confederacy. Social historians rejected the conquest model of Israel’s entry into Canaan as it is described in the biblical narrative. Both George Mendenhall and Norman Gottwald argued that Israel’s origins were to be sought instead in a peasant revolt against urban Canaanite overlords. The peasant movement was a revolt against the hierarchical socioeconomic structure and developed as a retribalization along egalitarian lines in the central highlands. Although both proposals have been sharply criticized for relying more on presupposed models than on textual or material evidence, they served to open the question of Israel’s origins for fresh investigation.

Since the 1970s archaeology has also generated increasing information concerning population patterns, forms of domestic architecture, agricultural practices and trade patterns for the period preceding the monarchy. This information, together with a wider array of possible comparative models for the development of noncentralized peasant societies, has begun to generate new ways of understanding early Israel, though none has yet achieved consensus.

Social-scientific approaches have also been used to investigate the significance of purity laws and kinship patterns and the social context of prophecy. They have proven useful too in studying the movement from a loose tribal confederation to the eventual formation of royal states. Social anthropologists have documented the development of chieftainships as an intermediate stage between these two forms of social organization. A chiefdom is a hierarchically organized society that lacks the strong central governmental apparatus characteristic of a true state. Though some aspects of the process are still debated, it is now generally thought that Saul’s "kingship" and at least the early stages of David’s rule should be thought of as chieftainships.

In the field of New Testament, insights from sociology were first used in the 1970s to analyze the nature of the early Christian movement. One of the watersheds in the use of sociological and anthropological analysis was the publication of The First Urban Christians, by Wayne Meeks, which was a comprehensive attempt to describe the social context and organization of the early Pauline communities. Also significant were studies of the roles honor and shame played in Mediterranean societies, and of patron-client forms of social relations. Slavery, as social phenomenon and as metaphor, has been an important topic, as has the role of prophets and prophecy, the practice of magic, and the class status of early converts to Christianity. As in the field of Hebrew Bible, the social study of family structures and gender roles has yielded important insights.

Although disputes concerning appropriate methodology for social analysis have not been absent in Hebrew Bible studies, they have been particularly prominent in New Testament studies. Even the terminology has been contested. Some scholars prefer to describe their work as social history -- that is, as an extension of traditional historical criticism that is informed by categories and questions from sociology and cultural anthropology. Others have insisted that their work is social-scientific in the strong sense of the term -- that is, as work guided by the correlation of models and data, as are more purely sociological and social-psychological studies.

More significant than the disagreement over terminology however, has been the issue of which sociological or anthropological methods and approaches are most suitable. The school of social functionalism examines the ways in which society, considered as an organism, attempts to contain and manage conflict, integrating disparate members and subgroups into the whole. This approach was used by Gerd Theissen to explore the earliest stages of the early Christian movement amid its subsequent evolution. By contrast, conflict models in sociological theory emphasize the ways in which different groups in a society pursue their own interests and the ways in which different ideologies struggle with one another. More recent work in the sociology of early Christianity has favored conflict models over social functionalism.

The nature of the textual sources has also influenced the choice of methods. Since much of the early Christian literature is self-consciously theological or ideological, cultural anthropology and the sociology of knowledge have proven particularly fruitful. Both of these approaches pay attention to the way in which societies create "symbolic universes by which to negotiate issues of identity, legitimacy and the creation or resolution of conflict. This focus on the social functions of language has drawn together literary and social criticism toward something of a convergence on what might be termed ideological criticism, an issue also central to the third methodological movement to be discussed, cultural hermeneutics.

Cultural Hermeneutics: Classical biblical criticism understood itself as objective, disinterested and even scientific. In recent years this stance has been questioned. Many now insist that the enterprise of historical criticism is unconsciously shaped and informed by cultural assumptions specific to the time and place in which that method was developed. Pure objectivity is an illusion. In the interpretation of texts and cultures, there is no "view from nowhere." All interpreters, whether or not they are aware of it, frame their questions and perceive the data from some perspective, which helps to shape their understanding of the text or culture in question.

Rather than seeing the influence of the interpreter’s social and cultural location as a problem, some have claimed it as a positive value. Thus "cultural hermeneutics" serves as an umbrella term for a variety of approaches to biblical criticism in which the social location of the interpreter is not only made explicit but serves as a principle in interpretation. The primary categories which have figured in such interpretation are those of class, ethnicity and gender.

The earliest and most methodologically self-conscious of these approaches is that of Latin American liberation theology, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. This approach did not begin as an academic perspective but rather emerged out of the concrete experience of the poor and of the pastors who lived and worked with them. They insisted that the starting point for reading and interpreting the Bible be the experience of the crushing poverty and oppression of the lowest social classes. Interpreted from the perspective of material poverty, the Bible discloses itself as a text of liberation and serves to further a revolutionary process of emancipation.

The interpretation developed in the base Christian communities was paralleled by the work of theologians and biblical scholars, who articulated the principles of liberation hermeneutics in a series of important studies (see, especially Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology, and J. Severino Croatto, Biblical Hermeneutics: Toward a Theory of Reading in the Production of Meaning). Liberation theology has tended to place special emphasis on certain portions of the Bible, notably the story of the Exodus, the social criticism of the prophets, the figure of Mary, Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God, the depiction of the liberating Christian community in Acts, and the struggle against evil in its imperialist and cosmic guise in the Book of Revelation.

In the wake of Latin American liberation hermeneutics, religious communities and academics in the various countries of Africa and Asia have developed analogous forms of biblical interpretation that work from the particular experiences of those nations. A related movement, which is indebted to liberation hermeneutics but which also draws on other sources, is postcolonial hermeneutics (see Voices from the Margins Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, edited by B. S. Sugirtharajah). Not only have the colonizers’ interpretations been examined and critiqued (e.g., the use of the Exodus/Conquest story in North America and South Africa to justify the displacement of the indigenous peoples), but increasingly attempts have been made to recover the forms of interpretation developed by the newly Christianized indigenous peoples themselves. Elements of "hybrid interpretation." that is, the mixing of indigenous traditions with Christian biblical narratives, are not only identified but often encouraged as a continuing creative practice.

Within North America, several ethnic communities, including Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Native Americans, have also developed self-conscious traditions of biblical interpretation. The earliest and most developed of these is African-American biblical hermeneutics. Afro-centric interpretation has drawn attention to the historical role played by African countries (especially Egypt and Ethiopia) and by Africans in the biblical text. But African-American biblical hermeneutics has also attended to texts and issues that have been important to the lives of the African-American community: for instance, the Exodus narratives, the place of slavery in Israelite and early Christian reflection, and the preaching of Jesus.

Whereas the various perspectives discussed so far under the rubric of cultural hermeneutics are distinctively Christian, the same cannot be said for feminist biblical hermeneutics. The emergence of the women’s movement in the 1960s and its criticism of the role of the Bible in the oppression of women posed a challenge to those who identified themselves as both Christian and feminist, or both Jewish and feminist. One early position, which still continues to be important in the evangelical community, is to affirm that the Bible, when correctly interpreted, affirms women’s full humanity. Other feminists, more critical of the Bible itself, have attempted to expose and analyze the patriarchal elements in the biblical text in order to show how the patriarchal values can be separated from the essentially liberating values that form its primary message. More radical feminists, however, have attempted to show that the biblical traditions are thoroughly and irredeemably antifeminist.

Feminist interpretation of the Bible has embraced a variety of methodologies. Some of it utilizes historical-critical and sociological biblical scholarship, since it attempts to recover and reconstruct the historical reality of women’s lives in ancient Israel and in the Greco-Roman world of early Christianity and early Judaism. Certain Christian feminists, in an attempt to make a case for the liberating nature of early Christianity, played off the egalitarian message of Jesus against his Jewish background. Jewish feminists challenged the accuracy of the representation of Judaism, and as a result, considerably more nuanced pictures of gender relations in both early Christianity and Judaism have been developed.

Not all feminist interpretation has been concerned with historical reconstruction, however. A significant strand of feminism has used literary methods, exploring the ways in which biblical texts construct and represent an image of women that may function in the service of particular ideologies. In many cases this literary approach has involved reading against the grain of the text. For instance, a figure whom the text treats as a subsidiary character may become for feminist analysis the central character of the text (e.g., Jepthah’s daughter in Judges, chapter 11, or the Levite’s concubine in Judges, chapter 19). And African-American women, to take another example, have complicated the Anglo-European interpretation of the Abraham/Sarah narratives by focusing on the character of Hagar, the ethnic outsider, the slave, the surrogate wife. Similarly, Latina, African and Asian women have taken up the challenge of understanding the ways in which the practices of reading and interpreting the Bible serve to constrain or to emancipate women in their particular social and cultural contexts.

Finally, canonical criticism, which often describes itself as a theological mode of interpretation, may also be considered as a form of cultural hermeneutics, since it also puts into the foreground the community context within which the text was created and from which it is to be read. Though the forms of canonical criticism developed by its two major proponents, Brevard Childs and James Sanders, differ, one can identify common elements. Specifically canonical criticism is concerned with how scripture’s final form was created within a believing community and how the meanings created by that final form continue to guide the reading practices of the community. The canonical shaping of the Jewish Bible, for instance -- which places the writings in the final position and concludes with the call of 2 Chronicles for the exiles to go up to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple -- tells a different story from that produced by the shaping of the Christian Old Testament, which places the prophets last and concludes with Malachi’s reference to the return of the prophet Elijah to announce the coming day of the Lord.

In one sense canonical criticism is an extension of historical criticism’s interest in the development of traditions. But in contrast to historical criticism’s tendency to investigate the earliest stages of development, canonical criticism explicitly privileges the latest stage, the canon in its final form. This concern with reading the text of scripture in its final form gives canonical criticism some similarity to the literary approaches of the "New Criticism." Thus, where historical criticism, reading the Book of Isaiah, tries to distinguish which materials come from the eighth-century prophet, the sixth-century prophet and the fifth-century prophet, literary and canonical critics focus on how the final form of the book has created the context within which all of its materials are now to be read, as a movement from judgment to salvation.

If anything ties together the various strands of new approaches to biblical interpretation, it is a concern for the relationship of language, meaning and power. More historically oriented literary and social methods increasingly examine the ways in which issues of conflict and access to power can be traced in the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. And cultural hermeneutics, though not uninterested in historical reconstruction, also focuses on the ways in which access to the power to interpret the text and construe its meaning serves to empower those who have traditionally been marginalized.

Falwell and Followers

The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics

By Susan Friend Harding. Princeton University Press, 352 pp., also in paperback.



Many of us expect perfection from America’s religious leaders and then quickly pounce on them when they are inevitably revealed as no better than human. The discovery of Jesse Jackson’s adultery provided the most recent example. His perennial opponents gleefully exulted in having public proof of the preacher’s imperfection, and even those who usually support Jackson’s efforts wondered aloud at the speed with which his sins were acknowledged and pushed aside. Meanwhile, Jackson’s flock rallied around him, eagerly providing a supportive backdrop for the televised melodrama of confession and forgiveness.

The cultural elite is often befuddled and outraged when followers continue to support those involved in scandal. What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they understand what this hypocrite has done? Only religiously deluded simpletons, some conclude, could be hoodwinked into forgiving and forgetting so quickly and completely. What such critics fail to understand is that the credibility of religious leaders like Jackson does not depend entirely, or even mostly, on their flawlessness. Focusing upon Jackson’s missteps and contradictions leads cultural observers to read the story of Jackson’s life much as literalists read biblical tales, as stories whose authority and credibility depend upon empirically verifiable moral purity and the absence of contradictions between messenger and message.

But this is not the reading strategy used by followers of Jackson and other public religious leaders. Through the eyes of Christian adherents, a leader’s imperfections -- though no less real or upsetting -- are viewed against the backdrop of the Bible, a world full of unreliable heroes and morally ambiguous saints. Followers are not indifferent to Jackson’s failings or ignorant of the crevasse between his ethical exhortations and his own deeds, but they are able to locate him in a religious tradition that has long taught that God can and does act through the most imperfect of servants.

That same backdrop informs the interpretive landscape for the disciples of another famous, often morally ambiguous Baptist preacher, Jerry Falwell. His longstanding public prominence may suggest that there is nothing new to say about him (and indeed, a weary public may hope this is true), but Susan Friend Harding disagrees. An adviser to the excellent documentary series With God on Our Side and a cultural anthropologist at the University of California - Santa Cruz, Harding explores the rhetorical world of Falwell and his followers. Those who join this expedition into the heart of American fundamentalism will return with fresh insights and a new map that will prove indispensable for future journeys.

The return of conservative Christians to political activism in the ‘70s and ‘80s informs Harding’s work, but the author is less concerned with history as such than with the language comprising and creating that history. She ventures into a religious subculture’s rhetorical world and returns with a thick description of fundamentalist vernacular. To gather her data, Harding plunged into Falwell’s evangelistic empire in Lynchburg, Virginia, by attending worship services, mingling with congregants, visiting Falwell’s Liberty Baptist University and interviewing other pastors. She sealed her baptism into conservative Christianity by immersing herself in Falwell’s words, from his books and sermons to his pamphlets and public statements. Her field work, she says, allowed her to stand in a liminal place between salvation and damnation, in the fundamentalist world but still not quite of it. "Standing in the gap between conscious belief and willful unbelief, in a place I call ‘narrative belief,’ opens up born-again language and makes available its complexity, its variety and creativity, and its agile force."

She begins her book with a fascinating and lyrical account of her interview with Melvin Campbell, pastor of Lynchburg’s Jordan Baptist Church. Harding quickly finds herself smack in the middle of full-bore witnessing. As she reconstructs what happened during her lengthy encounter with Campbell, she tells the story of losing her initial naïveté about being able to remain both in and outside of the community she’s chosen to study. She learns that there is no such fence-straddling position in the fundamentalist world: one is either born-again or not, saved or lost, with nothing in between.

In her description of her encounter with Campbell, Harding gives us a key to discerning the reasons for, or the mechanics behind, the process of witnessing. The story illustrates one of her strengths: her willingness to let fundamentalists, generously quoted throughout the text, speak for themselves. Campbell isn’t threatened by the presence of Harding’s tape recorder; in fact, she thinks he’s glad she’ll have a record of their session so that I might listen to it again and again should I prove too hard-hearted that afternoon to receive the help he offered me."

What happens over the course of their session is an education in "pure fundamentalist ritual, shorn of almost all distractions." Witnessing, she concludes, "is the plainest, most concentrated method for revealing the Word of God, one in which language is intensified, focused, and virtually shot at the listener."

Harding describes beautifully the effective, sometimes subconscious ways in which Campbell uses language as a means of conversion. In the process of telling both biblical and contemporary stories, Campbell constantly co-opts her into them with subtle cues. The use of "we," for instance, refashions his stories of others into stories about her. Those tales inevitably result in the lost being saved, thus setting up a theological road map for her -- as one of the lost -- to follow. Through his storytelling and "supple mastery of biblical conventions," Campbell opens a window of access for Harding into a divine pattern of history. Joining the ranks of Christian fundamentalism means also submitting one’s own story to the biblical lens; conversion is really conversion into a particular narrative tradition.

Harding’s most original contribution to our understanding of fundamentalism is her analysis of the process of generativity. Fundamentalists sincerely claim to be biblical literalists, to understand the Bible as literally and unchangingly true. But Harding finds that, in expounding that literal text and the lives of its prominent interpreters, they are constantly creating new truth.

Harding makes a compelling case for generativity as the key to understanding Falwell’s -- and fundamentalism’s -- continuing appeal. She has closely examined fundamentalist rhetoric in several "texts": Falwell’s own biography, fund-raising for Liberty Baptist College, the public language used by conservative Christians during the 1980s, Falwell’s "stump sermon" on morality and politics, pro-life writings, interpretations of Israel and the end times, and the telescandals. Harding paints a portrait of Falwell as a master preacher constantly engaged in a (literally) creative dialogue with his audience. Televangelists like Falwell, we learn, are masters of "narrative instability." Faith traditions which carve out space for supernatural activity are inherently unstable, Harding finds, in the sense that "they depend on faith constantly constructed out of intrinsically dubious claims. They are built on ambiguous figures and events composed of narrative gaps, excesses, and indeterminacies which the faithful must ceaselessly close, suppress, and fix in the name of God."

Followers of Falwell must also address the narrative instability inherent in their leader’s own biography, a theatrical tale ridden with attention-grabbing, often ethically dubious episodes. A brief list includes his calculated stealing of his college roommate’s girlfriend (his eventual wife, Macel); an investigation into his enterprises by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the 1970s; the founding (and eventual disbanding) of the Moral Majority and the hubris such a title implied; his suing of pornographer Larry Flynt; his somewhat hostile takeover of Jim and Tammy Bakker’s PTL enterprises at the height of the televangelism scandals; his visible support for "The Clinton Chronicles," an irresponsible, rumor-mongering pseudo-documentary; and his attack on Tinky-Winky the Teletubby as a closet homosexual.

In all of this, critics see nothing but subterfuge, hypocrisy and sensationalism. But to the consternation of these critics, Falwell’s followers -- though always aware of his grandstanding and personal contradictions -- continue to support him. Harding helps us understand just how this "complex, mercurial, irreducibly ambiguous man of God" maintains his leadership role. In the fundamentalist world, the biblical narrative and his own biographical narrative stream into and reinforce each other. His followers, Harding contends, rely upon the same narrative strategy to process both stories, and it is that interpretive practice that ultimately grants Falwell his authority.

Harding identifies several "story cycles" that constitute Falwell’s version of his own biography; each opens up for listeners gaps between his suspect motives and actions and his calling as a religious leader. His supporters harmonize the discrepancies and reconcile the ambiguities as they do when treating the Bible: "It is as if Falwell, in his varied storied manifestations, were telling his followers, ‘Read me as you read the Bible. I appear in many versions. There are differences between the versions, and there are awkward silences and anomalies within them. My tales are troubled and they are troubling. Harmonize my discrepancies. Close my gaps. Overcome my troubles. Make me whole. Make me true."’

During the ‘80s, Falwell raised doubts among his followers in a variety of ways: financial troubles, mismanagement of Liberty Baptist College, an attempt to institute a "tithe-or-quit" policy for his thousand-member staff in 1989. His followers rarely accepted him uncritically; instead they were left to grapple, interpretively, with their doubts. By coming to accept their leader provisionally, once again, Falwell’s flock reaffirmed their faith and his own identity by engaging in "an ongoing, collaborative work of rhetorical art." By the end of this analysis, Harding clearly intends "art" to mean both artifice and skill: Falwell generates and constitutes an original narrative, and he does it masterfully.

Harding’s own mastery is on display throughout her book. The author provides multiple variations on analytical themes, thematically circling and probing in the style of a saxophone soloist, soaring above, around and behind the notes on the page to provide a fresh interpretation of an old standard. By the end of the song, she has skillfully shown the myriad ways in which fundamentalist rhetoric created and transformed both the fundamentalist community itself and the wider American culture. Her work should be required reading not only for students of American religion, but also for anyone who wishes to study sympathetically and fruitfully a different religious culture.

Wheat and Chaff (Is. 11:1-10; Rom. 15:4-13; Matt. 3:1-12)

John the Baptist’s fiery call to repentance sounds harsh when we’re in the midst of preparations for the baby Jesus. The birth of a child is usually preceded by joyful expectation. But the child envisioned by John will come with an axe, with a winnowing fork and with purging flame.

Although John is most severe when he is warning the Pharisees and Sadducees, he calls all to repent, and when they are baptized in the Jordan, to confess their sins. No one, it seems, is righteous. All need to repent and be cleansed from sin. And then they must live a changed life. It is not enough to claim membership among God’s chosen people; our deeds must be in accord with our stated commitments.

While John the Baptist emphasizes harsh judgment, Isaiah offers a different picture. A branch will grow from the root of Jesse, he says, a new king greater even than the beloved king David. With the spirit of the Lord resting upon him, this king will reign with righteousness and justice. A new day of harmony will dawn, a time when born enemies, predator and prey, will live together in peace.

The two prophecies sit side by side, but sound discordant when heard together. "The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie clown with the kid." "Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." Yet these are two sides of the same judgment. Isaiah promises not only that the king will judge with righteousness, but also that lie will kill the wicked. John the Baptist not only threatens that the chaff will be burned in an unquenchable fire, but also promises that the wheat will be gathered into the granary. Both outcomes are held before us in each text.

It is easy for us to know which outcome we desire. Who doesn’t want to be gathered into the reign of God? Who would prefer to burn in an unquenchable fire? But we need only remember that John singled out the religious leaders for his harshest criticism to know that we dare not rest easy in our affiliation with the body of Christ.

Yet our Christian hope is in our participation in the body of Christ. We are baptized not only with water but also with the Holy Spirit. We are born anew incorporated into Christ.

Isaiah’s prophecy lists gifts of the Spirit that will be bestowed on the king who descends from Jesse: wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, the fear of the Lord. As early as the fourth century these gifts were enumerated in a prayer for the Spirit that was part of Christian rites of baptism (and later of confirmation). Given the Christian interpretation that Jesus is this descendant of Jesse, how audacious it is for us to claim the same gifts for ourselves!

Yet this is our claim: that we become members of Christ, putting on Christ, participating in Christ’s royal priesthood. Christian mystics over the centuries have described their experience of the unitive state, where the Christian soul becomes one with God. Most of us get only’ a glimpse of this full union with God. In our mundane existence, we know God only partially, and the gifts of the Spirit appear to be more promise than fulfillment.

The path to the unitive state, the mystics tell us, includes purgation, an encounter with the transforming love of God that cleanses and purifies us. We are both wheat and chaff, and the chaff must be burned away’. The axe must cut out whatever in us does not bear good fruit. The same Spirit that empowers us also cleanses us with a purifying fire.

Even though I know the truth of purgation in my own life as a Christian, I hesitate to write of it. The scriptural command to die to self has been used for centuries to reinforce social systems that limit the ability of women, people of color, poor people and other oppressed people to claim their full human dignity. Those in less privileged positions. whether because of race or class or sex or some other characteristic, are told that their suffering is required by the gospel and are urged to accept that suffering passively and graciously.

The besetting sins of oppressed people may include self-denial, passivity and complicity in their own oppression When purgation reinforces our sinful tendencies toward self-destruction, it is not life-giving not of God. Purgation may mean claiming one’s voice and burning away complicity in oppression, rather than passively accepting suffering.

Isaiah prophesies a king anointed by the Spirit who will bring righteousness and establish a peaceable realm where predator and prey, oppressed and oppressor, live together harmoniously. Both oppressor and oppressed are transformed -- the chaff burned away branches not bearing fruit cut away. Once they are made new by the purging fire, predator and prey become companions eating together in peace.

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul envisions a similar harmony. Through Christ, Paul tells us, Jew and gentile alike are offered salvation. just as Christ has welcomed them, they must let go of the barriers dividing them anti welcome one another.

In Advent, as we prepare again to welcome the infant Christ, we are reminded of purgation, our need to repent and be cleansed. We are also reminded that we are empowered by the Spirit, who bestows gifts of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Live Into Hope (Is. 2:1-5; Rom. 13:11-14; Matt. 24:36-44)

"Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility." The ancient Advent collect still echoes deep within my soul. When I was a child, our nightly family Advent ritual included singing "O come, O come Emmanuel," lighting the Advent wreath and praying this collect. Night after night, as the evening shadows lengthened and the cold December darkness deepened around us, our family gathered around the dinner table to sing, to light candles, to pray, to eat.

Each time I hear this prayer or the passage from Romans upon which it is based, I am drawn back to those evenings. Flickering candles remind me of the light of Christ, the celebration of Christ’s birth just a few short weeks ahead. The lessons appointed for the first Sunday of Advent, however, point not to the nativity, but to the Second Coming. "Wake up! Be alert!" Matthew and Paul tell us. The day of the Lord is near, and though we cannot know the day or the hour, we must be ready.

Isaiah gives us a vivid image of that day. People are streaming to a holy mountain from every corner of the earth. They carry with them the weapons of war, and as they climb the mountain, they cast swords and spears into the furnace. A blacksmith stands by with a hammer, patiently pounding weapons into tools for cultivation. The din of the forge grows louder, hammer clangs on anvil as more and more people arrive weary of war, drawn by the light, ready for a new day of peace.

"Imagine," John Lennon sings. In a world weary of war, it is difficult to imagine. Palestinians and Israelis take a few halting steps toward peace, only to have violence flare anew and hopes dashed once more. Hatred simmers between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Combatants cling to their weapons, and do not trust one other enough to yield to peace. When terrorists turn planes into bombs, the United States and Britain respond by turning their weapons on a country they claim harbors the terrorists. How, indeed, are we to imagine a world of peace?

In the midst of the violence of this world, the beginning of Advent invites us to hope for a different world. As the days grow ever shorter, we light candles to remind us of the salvation given through Christ.

But it is not enough to light candles and carry on with our rituals. "Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light," we pray. As followers of Christ, we are to arm ourselves not with swords and spears, but with Christ, the light of the world.

Last spring our seminary community gathered for a conversation about peacemaking. How do we make peace in our lives and our world? I offered my own experience as a parent. In my conflicts with my son, now a teenager, I have sometimes come face to face with the urge to do violence. Over the years, I have relied upon the grace of God (sometimes embodied in the listening ears of empathetic friends) to help me restrain myself and to transform my desire for violence into a tender embrace of my son. As I told my story that day, I was surprised by the nods of people around the room. Others shared similar stories, and people told me later that they related to my experience.

Learning to be a peacemaker at home is just one dimension of the transformation to which Christ calls us. At the seminary that day, we became so caught up in discussing our own families that our moderator had to gently remind us to look beyond our immediate experiences and consider the world around us.

In our world violence is never far away -- it’s in our own households, our communities and certainly in the nations of the world. My efforts to be a peacemaker often seem futile. Who am I in the face of such powerful forces? Even if I join other peacemakers, how can we possibly make a difference?

Advent invites us to live in hope and not in despair, for our hope rests on a firm foundation: Jesus Christ. The violent death of Jesus on the cross was not the end, for in Jesus’ resurrection we are assured of new life. Violence will not have the last word. We look toward the holy mountain, where weapons of war are hammered into tools.

The vision given to us on this first Sunday of Advent is a vision for the end of time. "In the last day, when Christ shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal." For now, we wait expectantly, protecting ourselves with the armor of light, clothing ourselves with Christ.

At celebrations of baptism, it is becoming common to present the newly baptized with a candle. "Receive the light of Christ," we say. The newly baptized then becomes a part of the community of believers who walk in the light of Christ and seek paths of peace in a violent world. Be it a baptismal candle or an Advent candle, the flickering light reminds us of Christ, the light of the world. This Advent, may we receive grace anew, cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Christ For The World (Is. 7:10-16; Ps. 80:1-7, 17-19; Rom. 1:1-7; Matt. 1:18-25)

When I think of the Christmas story, I see the crèche that was displayed each year in the front hall of my family home. The manger scene began to take shape during the last week of Advent, when we cut fragrant pine branches and spread them on the hall table, then placed figurines of oxen and cows in the center. Mary and Joseph took their places amid the creatures. Off to the side, shepherds began to gather with their sheep, including my favorite shepherd, who carried a lamb on his shoulders. On Christmas Eve, the baby Jesus appeared in his bed of straw, the shepherds moved closer to pay homage and an angel arrived to watch over the scene. As we journeyed to Epiphany, the magi and their camels arrived and joined the scene.

Those of us expecting this familiar Christmas story are surprised when we hear Matthew begin abruptly with, "Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way." Where is the introduction to the homeless couple seeking shelter as the woman prepares to give birth? Where is the description of the stable, crude and bare, with cattle lowing and the baby Jesus lying on a bed of hay? Where are the shepherds in the field, the angels announcing the good news and singing God’s praises?

If we read further in Matthew, we find the familiar story of the wise men, following the star and carrying gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. But the story of Jesus’ birth is told from a very different perspective. Luke focuses on Mary -- her encounter with the angel, her birthing and wrapping of Jesus in bands of cloth, her reflections on the events. But Matthew’s story centers on Joseph.

Like another Joseph who was a dreamer, Mary’s Joseph had a life-changing dream too. Instead of quietly ending his engagement to Mary when he learned of her unplanned and untimely pregnancy, Joseph went ahead with their marriage, and agreed to become the adopted father of her child. When the child was born, Joseph, still obeying his dream, named him Jesus, or "Savior."

Perhaps Matthew and Luke are not so different. Each tells the story of an unplanned pregnancy and of the fear and dismay that initially accompanies the announcement of that pregnancy. Each tells the story of an encounter with an angel who offers encouragement by foretelling the mission of the child who will be born. Each tells the story of a parent accepting this astounding news in humble obedience to God.

The promise of a savior is astonishing news for the people who were desperate for a savior. In Isaiah, when King Ahaz was beset by foreign powers, he looked for an alliance with one of the foreign kings. But Isaiah counseled trust not in foreign governments but in God. Isaiah promised the birth of a child named Immanuel, "God with us." In Matthew’s story, the child Immanuel is Jesus, God with us, the one who will save people from their sins.

Hope for a savior echoes in the psalm appointed for today: "Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved." In our times of trial, the cry of the psalmist rings in our hearts.

In our country, our sense of safety and security has been shattered. Rowan Williams, Anglican archbishop of Wales, was a few blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11. As he recalls: "I remember feeling, ‘Now I know just a little of what it is like for so many human beings, Israelis and Palestinians now, and Iraqis a few years ago.’" God shares the experience of terror and death and answers not in the language of hatred and rejection, but in giving us the Word made flesh, God with us.

Part of the astonishing surprise of the announcement of the Savior is how inclusive it is. On the one hand, Jesus is a Hebrew descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a man of royal lineage descended from the renowned King David. On the other hand, the salvation incarnate in Jesus extends beyond the people of Israel to include the gentiles. This is implicit in the genealogy that introduces the narrative of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s Gospel. The genealogy names not only Abraham and David but also Rahab and Ruth, gentiles who married into the Hebrew lineage. Paul highlights the inclusion of the gentiles in his Letter to the Romans, telling them that he was sent to the gentiles, including those in Rome.

For us, the distinction between Jew and gentile does not have the significance it had in the first-century world of scripture. But what about contemporary distinctions created by national borders or racial and ethnic identity? What of the distinction between Christian and Muslim? To whom is God’s salvation extended?

The narrative of Jesus’ birth does not provide a ready answer to such questions. At the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel, the risen Jesus sends the disciples out to all nations, directing them to carry the message they have received from him. Perhaps in the story of Jesus’ unconventional birth (born of Mary yet conceived by the Holy Spirit), we get our first inkling of miracle -- that in Jesus God comes to all of us. Perhaps, as we hear again the story of Jesus’ unconventional birth, we may be open to God’s salvation appearing in new and surprising places.

A Desert in Bloom (Is. 35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matt. 11:2-11)

Since I live near Lake Michigan, I take frequent walks along the lake and gaze out at the water, which stretches to the distant horizon. Sometimes it’s still, sparkling in the sunlight, an oasis of calm soothing me on a hectic day. On other days, gray clouds gather overhead, waves crash against the breakers below my path, and water sprays high into the air. One day the water is a deep green, another day murky gray and yet another day dark blue -- any of an array of hues and moods. My walks refresh and restore me, giving me new energy for work and family and play.

The water near my home contrasts sharply with the high plains of north central Wyoming where I spent several summers when I was a young woman. In that semi-arid climate, I lived amid sagebrush and dust. Days were long and hot. When the rain did come, it was as a violent thunderstorm that passed through quickly and turned dirt paths into mud. But by the next day, the hot sun turned mud back to dust.

Isaiah describes a desert climate dry and barren as the northern Wyoming plains. In Isaiah’s prophetic vision, waters gush forth in the desert, and the dry, parched land springs to life. In the early summer in the Wyoming plains, the cactus blooms, offering a brief glimpse of lush color, a promise of life in the midst of desolation. I used to hike in the Big Horn Mountains, up beyond the plains, and come upon meadows filled with wildflowers, crowded fields of vivid color. Isaiah sees the desert come alive this way, sees its blossoming abundance as new life announcing the glory and majesty of God.

The new life in the desert signals the presence and power of God. Those who are weary, enfeebled or fearful can take heart because God comes to save. This means healing and transformation in specific ways: sight for those who are blind, hearing for those who are deaf, speech for those who are mute. So great is the joy and so profound the healing that those who were lame now leap and those who were speechless now sing.

Isaiah’s prophecy promises restoration to a captive people, and this prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus. John the Baptist has promised that one is coming who is greater than he. Then John is imprisoned. Hearing of Jesus, John wonders whether this is the one. Jesus doesn’t answer directly, but instead lets his deeds speak. Through Jesus’ ministry the blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, the speechless speak. Jesus’ deeds inaugurate the reign of God as they fulfill Isaiah’s promises.

We live, however, in the tension between the reign of God established by Jesus and the final fulfillment of that reign. Despite Jesus’ healing presence, we still have among us those who cannot see, hear, walk or speak. Neither the wonders of modern medicine nor the power of prayer can restore these abilities to all who lack them, nor keep any of us from death.

Yet we live in the hope of resurrection. We proclaim Christ’s death and resurrection, and we proclaim that he will come again. Advent turns our hearts and minds to all of these "comings" -- Christ coming as a baby born to Mary and Joseph, Christ coming to be baptized by John, Christ coming to heal and inaugurate the reign of God, Christ coming at the end of time. The Letter of James invites us to be patient just as a farmer is patient in waiting for crops to ripen. It is the rain, both early and late, that waters the crops and enables them to shoot forth and then mature. It is the rain, unexpected in the desert, that allows new life to blossom in the midst of barrenness.

In recent years I have discovered the delight of cultivating the earth, coaxing beauty out of the wild overgrown corners of my yard. Last summer I planted an herb garden, and then went away on vacation for almost two weeks. I was surprised on my return to discover herbs stretching up and spilling over the borders of the bed I had prepared, their fragrance enveloping me as I passed by. I was reminded that gardening is as much about patience, trusting the fertile earth and nourishing rains, as it is about my labor. Like the farmer, I must be patient with my crop and with the earth.

The needs of the world cry out to us. On some days, the prayer list of those who are sick and suffering seems endless, and I know that they are but a few of the many in the world in need of healing. Hunger, poverty and homeless-ness are ever present, even in this affluent nation. With the exiles of Israel and the disciples of John the Baptist, we yearn for salvation, for one who enables new life to blossom.

The promise held before us offers God’s love and mercy, God’s power to heal and restore. Through Christ, we are immersed in the waters of new life, transformed and made whole. Creation joins in this transformation, water in abundance bringing forth life, the barren desert blossoming with fragrant flowers. Those who are transformed sing and dance for joy. Will we join them?

All in the Family

"What kind of relationship do you want to have with your teen in five years?" Tim Tahtinen, youth leader at the United Methodist Church of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, likes to pose that question to parents and then add, "What’s your plan? I have a plan that works."

Instead of segregating youth from their parents in a "youth" program, Tahtinen says, churches should focus their energies on putting parents and youth together in family-based youth ministry. He wants to make use of the power that parents have to nurture and influence their teens toward maturity in faith.

Tahtinen’s family-based program grew out of Faith Incubators (FINK), a Lutheran organization started by Rich Melheim. Melheim began Faith Incubators after a tragic experience as a youth pastor. Two young men he had pastored through high school committed suicide after their first year in college. The tragedies convinced Melheim that he had to do something differently -- that the Pied Piper method of youth pastoring wasn’t working anymore. He needed "more help, a better network of care. A relationship with him [as youth pastor] wasn’t enough."

Melheim knew that parents were more committed to their children than anyone else could be. He decided to give a gift to parents -- more time with their children to build strong relationships. If he could foster sharing between the two groups, he reasoned, he could "build commitment and relationships brick by brick."

He developed a confirmation curriculum that keeps parents and teens together, then an educational curriculum called Total Sunday School (TSS). Instead of isolating teens from the rest of the church community, TSS places each teen in a small group of people of different ages. It extends the popular concept of building relationship and accountability through small groups, but emphasizes the inclusion of young people.

FINK has sold licenses for use of its curriculum materials to 2,000 churches in Lutheran, United Methodist, Episcopal and Presbyterian denominations. "FINKthink" material, for example, presents itself as teaching "head to heart" instead of "head to head." FINKthink is "community instead of classroom," and "opening up the kid instead of the book."

FINK parents are expected to show up and participate with their teens in everything from teen-style praise and worship to Bible studies and personal sharing to camping trips. According to youth pastor Debbie Streicher at Abiding Presence Lutheran Church in Burke, Virginia, teens don’t mind having their parents present -- as long as other parents are on hand too.

Another organization that is promoting family ministry is the Youth and Family Institute at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. David Anderson, director of faith formation, says the main focus is the "wholeness of the church as the body of Christ." The concept of family is larger than the traditional nuclear family. "No matter what the type of family, it can be included in this ministry," Anderson emphasizes.

He and other youth leaders are basing their work on research reports from the Search Institute of Minneapolis focused on faith formation. Search has endorsed the notion that families, particularly parents, are the primary source of faith development.

Youth pastor Mark Devries of the First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, author of Family-Based Youth Ministry, believes that the long-term effectiveness of youth ministry depends upon families. He’s convinced that any youth program that has long-term effectiveness is doing family-based ministry "whether they know it or not."

Devries notes that evangelicals have been slow to adopt family-based ministry, perhaps because they don’t want to return to routines that bore teens, "like sitting in pews with their parents." Mark Watson of El Montecito Presbyterian Church in California suggests that leaders of megachurch youth ministries are reluctant to try family-based programs because they have had phenomenal short-term success with their age-specific programs and are reluctant to change that formula. Many leaders believe they must keep the teen programs filled with plenty of "teen-specific" entertainment." But DeVries claims that when teens graduate from these youth-centered ministries, they often graduate from God as well.

Youth leader and writer Mike Yaconelli explains that he is reluctant to adopt the family-based approach because there aren’t enough parents available who place their faith high as a top priority for their children. They are in favor of Christianity, he says, as long as they think it is going to make their kid into a nice person. But as soon as it becomes genuine Christian faith, they start to worry. This generation of parents is ambitious for its children, and can’t let anything get in the way of their future "success."

Rick Harmon, who works with a family-friendly youth group in Vandalia, Ohio, has fewer reservations about the family approach. "The family is already fragmented," Harmon says, "and then we bring them to church, the one place we expect to bring families together, and we separate them." That does not happen in his church. Harmon tells parents, "I will never try to take your place."

At a Wednesday night youth happening called Oasis, Harmon leads a lively group of 40 teens and 16 parents as they sing songs of praise and worship, pray, listen to a straight-talking sermon, then play a game. Two youths and one adult link arms in a back-to-back circle, then lower themselves -- with groans and laughter -- to the floor. The winner is the first team to stand up on a count of three -- without breaking the link. Later, everyone celebrates a birthday with chocolate cake.

"Having parents at Oasis makes it more fun, depending on the parents," says Ryan Garber, 13. "The parents who come are really cool," he adds with a smile.

Jordan Sharp agrees. "When you go on trips, all the parents start acting like kids. But if there’s a problem, they make sure it gets solved. If people aren’t getting along, they make it better."

Fred Barber, Ryan’s father, says that if the kids sense acceptance from someone, even someone much older, the barriers break down. Kids can tell if you really care about them, he says, as one of them tackles him from behind.

Mark Watson at El Montecito Presbyterian is not surprised by this response. He believes that the idea that teens need to separate from parents has been modified. "Now it is recognized by psychology that if parents drop out, kids will default to a personality that is really not them. They’ll find their identity in being a cool kid, in a generic stereotype identity. Parents have been taught to step back, and they need to change that thinking.

"The easy way to create a group is to make an enemy -- being against something is the easiest way to form a movement. But if the parents and church staff are working together, it makes a real difference. There’s a safeness to it."

Youth leader Janie Tinklenberg, who invented the popular WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) bracelets, agrees. "If you isolate parents from their kids, you are working against the kids," Tinklenberg says. "They care about one thing -- relationships." And they need the affirmation from relationships with parents and other adults. Their primary relationship should be with Christ, she adds, but that will come as they mature.

David Anderson, at the Youth and Family Institute, thinks mainline and evangelical churches have all "slipped" in reducing parents to chauffeurs and time managers. He says it’s time to stop giving in to the social trend of specialization. Youth pastors are not meant to be the experts in the spiritual life of other people’s children. Youth ministries must be redesigned to help parents do the wholistic job that they must do in order to be effective.

"What are our youth ministries passing on to our youth?," these leaders are asking. If we want to pass along the Christian faith, then parents must be reflections of that faith and spend time with youth. Youth leaders are saying, Let’s step back a little, and make use of what God has given us to help pass along the faith. Let’s put parents and the congregational family to work with our youth.

Children of Divorce

The parable of the Prodigal Son is often used to illustrate the gracious and steadfast nature of God’s love. Most of us can recognize and even identify with the characters -- the younger son who strikes out on his own and makes costly mistakes, the responsible elder son who always does what is expected of him, and the long-suffering father, who shows love and constancy. But for some people the father figure in the story is unrecognizable. Many people feel that one or both of their own parents were never there for them, and as a result they may find it difficult to apprehend the parable’s message about the all-embracing love of God.

Certainly there have always been troubled family relationships, including in Jesus’ time. Many people have experienced the kinds of conflict with a parent that might influence their understanding of scripture. Yet unprecedented family changes have marked the past few decades. Since the 1960s we have witnessed a precipitous increase in the number of marriages ending in divorce. The rate of divorce stabilized in the mid-’80s at its present number of almost one out of two marriages. Consequently, many of today’s 20- and 30-year-olds have experienced the divorce of their parents. This entire generation of young adults has been deeply affected by living in a society in which the possibility of lasting commitment is viewed with suspicion and sometimes despair.

Yet our culture and our churches have asked relatively few questions about the experience of children of divorce. At most, we have assumed that divorce affects children during the first months or years after their parents part. We have failed to recognize that their parents’ divorce shapes the spiritual journeys of people throughout their lives. Ministries that have assumed a two-parent, intact family structure may not work well for people who did not grow up in such families. In order to welcome young adults -- to teach, counsel and comfort them -- the church must do a better job of understanding and including their distinctive experience and perspective.

Over the past several years I have conducted formal interviews with adult children of divorce and held informal conversations with many more. During these discussions I often ask them to reflect on specific biblical passages such as the parable of the Prodigal Son or the commandment to honor one’s father and mother. Frequently the responses of children of divorce differ greatly from the way religious leaders approach these texts.

At a Protestant seminary one student whose parents were divorced told me that the parable of the Prodigal Son held little resonance for her. She said, "I was always kind of the dutiful one -- the one traveling distances to be sure I saw my mother, traveling distances to be sure I saw my father." She had friends for whom the story meant a great deal because "they feel like they’ve gone away and rejected their families and come back. But my family didn’t even give me anything to reject. There wasn’t a stable enough thing to go away from or come back to." An evangelical Christian told me that he sees his father in the role of the Prodigal Son, leaving the family to seek his own fortune elsewhere. This child of divorce saw himself in the role of the father, waiting at the door for his loved one to return.

When I asked the ministry student to reflect on the Fourth Commandment, she shook her head and said, "It means nothing to me. I don’t have any concept of my parents as authority figures. I don’t know if this is because of the divorce, but I came to know them as completely fallible human beings." A young man who is Roman Catholic told me, "If you want to be a believer and you’re a kid of divorce, you really have to reflect on that commandment. You have to ask, Are they honoring each other? Did they honor you? Did they even ask you before they decided to divorce?" Another Catholic told me "I have a hard time with that one. I honor my parents because I love them, but there are things they do I don’t believe in, there are things they do that make me very angry, things I can’t honor."

A young man who considers himself spiritual but doesn’t identify with any particular faith tradition observed: "Well, in theory the commandment makes a lot of sense to me. But if your mother and father are not honorable people, then they don’t deserve to be honored. My father doesn’t think about the people who rely on him. He made a commitment to a spouse. He had a child. And then he didn’t find a way to honor his commitments to them."

Clearly, children of divorce bring a complicated feeling of loss to their encounter with biblical texts. Those who continued to see both parents after the divorce in a sense still "had" their parents, but family life was forever changed. After divorce children lose easy, unplanned access to at least one parent, and can almost never be with both parents at the same time. A reunion with one’s father involves a parting from one’s mother, and vice versa. As a teenaged boy told Newsweek, "When you’re a child of divorce, you’re always missing somebody." Divorce often strains and sometimes even completely severs the child’s relationship with at least one parent, often the father.

Children of divorce also experience many other kinds of loss. Often divorce means moving to another house, neighborhood or community. Children lose their homes, neighborhoods, friends and favorite places. Divorce changes children’s relationships with their extended families and family friends, whom they may see much less frequently or not at all after the divorce.

One adult told me about the strong relationship he had had with his father’s secretary and her daughter before his parents’ divorce, recalling that "they were really like an extended family." But after the divorce, "They were uncomfortable and didn’t know what to do, and they just disappeared." Since remarriages end in divorce more frequently than first marriages do, the child may also lose the world that comes with a new marriage -- stepparent and siblings, home and new routines.

Grief, the natural human response to loss, is hard for people to navigate alone. Children, especially, need people to help them understand and name the confusing mixture of emotions that grief produces. The grief precipitated by the changes brought by divorce continues to surface during subsequent stages of children’s lives -- at the beginning of adolescence, at the time of leaving home, during courtship and marriage, at the birth of one’s own children and so forth. One young woman whose parents divorced when she was two told me that she first cried about that divorce when she was 22. She was imagining her wedding day and wondering whether her father would walk her down the aisle. When she considered asking both her mother and father to walk with her, she found herself overwhelmed with tears.

Children of divorce often also experience anger, another natural response to loss. Anger is a threatening emotion. Most people fear its potential to wreak havoc and to hurt people. It is an emotion that we seek to regulate as adults and that few adults will tolerate in children. The anger children feel about their parents’ divorce is further complicated by the vulnerability of those parents and the children’s desire to protect them. One young man said, "I was definitely initiated into adulthood in a way that was totally inappropriate, and if I had been really aware of what was happening, I would have been, like, this sucks." When I asked him if he had expressed his feelings, he said, "At times, but I was also really protective of my parents. I just did not spend a lot of time complaining about them." Not surprisingly, many children of divorce suppress their anger.

Left unrecognized and unacknowledged, this grief and anger lead to despair and contribute to the high rates of clinical depression, suicidal thoughts and actual suicides among children of divorce. One young man remembers that in the years following his parents’ divorce, "I really thought about suicide a lot. There was a lot of angst and pain and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I really seriously thought about just turning it off." Even young people who are neither clinically depressed nor suicidal may feel isolated by their grief and anger. They experience childhood differently than do children in intact families, but no one thinks to ask them about their experience. As they grow older, children of divorce often feel set apart and very much alone. This makes it especially important to welcome them into the church.

A theological metaphor that richly describes the complex experience of children of divorce is the biblical story of the exile. As divorced parents are swept up into rebuilding their lives, their children often feel relegated to the margins. As parents take on new jobs, lovers or spouses, their children lose the attention they one received from their mothers and fathers. Like the Israelites grappling with exile, children of divorce experience a baffling range of emotions. Yet the biblical story does not stop with exile. God promises a return home, a deliverance from isolation, a restoration of wholeness. How, then, might children of divorce experience this journey?

How might the church welcome and aid them? Following are some practical suggestions for how to reach out to and include this generation of young adults more fully in the life of the church.

Preaching and teaching. The understanding that different family experiences produce different interpretations of biblical texts should mark preaching and teaching. There has been very little discussion of family issues, especially divorce, in liberal Protestant churches. Many of these churches are afraid to talk about divorce for fear of alienating divorced people. Yet it is fully possible both to emphasize the importance of marriage and to affirm the experiences of single and divorced parents.

Counseling. While some marriages are so destructive that they must be ended for the safety of those involved, many low-conflict marriages may be saved. A recent study based on national data demonstrated that about a third of divorces arise out of marriages characterized by violence or abuse, and the children of those marriages did better after those divorces. But two-thirds of divorces arise from low-conflict marriages characterized mostly by boredom or unhappiness, and the children of those marriages did worse after those divorces.

An array of marriage-education courses exist to guide couples in rediscovering or strengthening intimacy and enjoyment in their relationships. (A full listing of these courses may be found at www.smartmarriages.com.) Recommend these opportunities in premarital and marital counseling sessions and make sure that the members of your congregation know where to find them.

Be aware that children have a fundamentally different experience of divorce than adults do. The adult who has decided to end a marriage may see divorce as liberation and a chance for a new beginning. But children inevitably experience divorce as loss, since it means the end of their families and familiar ways of life. If parents must divorce, encourage them to maintain as much continuity as possible for their children, perhaps by raising them near grandparents and other extended family members and by maintaining strong connections to family friends.

Also, encourage the parents to stay connected to the church. Among the many disruptions of divorce, church attendance is often a casualty. Be careful not to subsume the child’s perspective under that of the adults and to give the child the special support that she or he needs. Also, remember that a person whose parents divorced five, ten or more years ago may still need special attention.

• Liturgy. Some churches are trying to develop liturgies and prayers that can be used at the time of a divorce. While these efforts are well intentioned, they are often woefully neglectful of children’s perspectives. For example, the Book of Worship in the United Methodist tradition contains a prayer to be used at the time of divorce that ends with the words "in the name of the One who sets us free from slavery to the past and makes all things new." This sentiment may reflect the experience of some adults, but children do not experience the breakup of their families as being "set free from slavery to the past," nor do they long to have their families "made new.

More appropriate might be a liturgy in which parents vowed to remain loving, involved parents to their children. However, a liturgy for the time of divorce might be intimidating rather than comforting to children. Often we are eager to write new liturgies to rectify the church’s inadequate response to some issue. But when vulnerable people, especially children, are involved it might be wise to make sure we understand their experience before we develop new liturgies for them. Nevertheless, we might wish to consider formulating liturgies for the adult children of divorce, or perhaps adapting existing rituals to more adequately reflect their experience.

Reaching into the community. Children of divorce may have lost their faith traditions when their parents’ marriages ended. They may never have been part of a faith community. Or they may have fallen away from the church because they did not find their experience addressed there. But they constitute a substantial part of the young adult population. Those who have experienced the loss of vital relationships know how important and sustaining close relationships can be -- with other people, with their communities, with God. In what specific ways can congregations show these children of divorce that the church recognizes and welcomes them? Churches that acknowledge these young people’s experience and reach out to them can become places of wholeness and healing for them.

No Good Divorce

In her book Between Two Worlds; The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce. Elizabeth Marquardt examines the impact of divorce on children. Her book is based on a survey of 1,500 young adults which allowed her to compare the experiences of children of divorced parents with the experiences of children of married parents. Marquardt, a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School and a researcher with the Institute for American Values, calls the study the most comprehensive ever undertaken on the subject. We talked to her about her findings and about the impact of divorce on children’s moral and spiritual lives.

The title of your book suggests one of its major themes: that in divorce a child is caught between two worlds. Why did you choose this metaphor and why is it so important a theme?

One of the big challenges for any marriage is to bring together two worlds -- two people with different back-grounds and often different values. The rubbing together of these two worlds is often not neat or pretty, but some kind of unity is established.

After a divorce, the job of making sense of the two worlds and the conflicts that arise between them doesn’t go away -- it gets handed from the adults to the child. The child has to negotiate by himself or herself the different beliefs and values and ways of living that the child finds in each world. And these two worlds often become more different as each year goes by and the divorced parents develop new relationships, new jobs, new interests.

You refer to children of divorce as "early moral forgers•" What do you mean by that?

Children who grow up traveling between two worlds feel early on the need to confront -- alone -- the big moral questions: What’s right and wrong? What do I believe? Where do I belong? Is there a God? What is true? They feel the need to confront these questions because they see dramatically contrasting answers in each parent’s world. In fact, they’re much more likely to see their parents as polar opposites even when they don’t fight. Any answer they glean from one world can be undermined by looking at the other.

Many people have noticed that children of divorce often seem independent. They tend to help around the house or travel between parents’ homes alone or take care of their younger siblings by themselves. They also have to become independent moral thinkers. Some people might say: Well, this need to be independent is a good thing. But while some children certainly can rise to the occasion, they lose their childhoods, and I think that that’s something that we should mourn, not celebrate.

And some children cannot rise to the task. This helps explain why children of divorce are two to three times more likely than other children to end up with very serious social and emotional problems. The ones who cannot handle the difficulty of making sense of two worlds might be the ones who numb their pain with addictions or early sexual activity, or who suffer from depression.

How has your own experience as a child of divorce shaped your investigation?

I’m now 35. My parents split up when I was two years old. When I was in divinity school in the mid-1990s I went looking for resources on the moral and spiritual impact of divorce on children. I found there were none. That was remarkable, given that the divorce rate had been quite high for quite sometime. It seemed to me, as a child of divorce who was struggling with questions of faith, that there is a huge connection between one’s family experience and one’s approach to questions of faith, including the images and stories of the Christian faith.

A lot of the questions we asked in the national survey were ones that came from my experience. They were questions no one had asked these young people before -- questions like: Did you feel like a different person with each of your parents? Did you see your parents as polar opposites? Did God become the father you never had in real life?

The survey results have given me the confidence to claim to speak for a generation that for the first time is telling the story of divorce from its own point of view. Until now the discussion has been conducted as if divorce is only about and for the parents.

What is the impact of divorce on children’s religious lives?

We discovered that children of divorce are far less likely when they grow up to say they are very or even fairly religious. They’re far less likely to attend a house of worship frequently. There is about a 14 percent difference in this area between children of divorce and children of intact families. They’re also less likely to be a member of a house of worship or to be a leader there.

Partly this is because the children are less likely to have been involved in a community of faith as a child. Divorce itself makes it difficult logistically for parents to stay connected to any kind of community.

But there are deeper issues. For example, when children of divorce hear that God is like a father or a parent because God’s always there for you, they experience a disconnect. For them, parental absence is as common an experience as parental presence.

It’s remarkable to talk to the children of divorce about the parable of the prodigal son, in which the father waits for his errant son to come home. They recognize the act of leaving home, but in their experience it was the parent who left, not the child. It was the parent who left the family, or who was always leaving to go to work or out on dates. If anyone was staying home waiting for someone to return, it was the child waiting for mom and dad to come home.

The parable is about the patient love of God. This means that children of divorce see themselves in the role of God in the story. What a scary, strange feeling that is for such children -- especially if no one around them in the community of faith understands how they’re seeing it. These kinds of disconnects are what keep the children of divorce as they grow up more distant from church.

Yet the findings overall are somewhat complicated. Though generally the grown-up children of divorce are substantially less religious than those from intact families, a portion of them become much more religious. And I have heard anecdotally of many children of divorce who seek out the church because they’re looking for the meaning and stability they find there.

What would you say to pastors about ministering to children of divorce?

First, questions of truth and of belonging are central in the minds of these children. Even as young teenagers, even as preteens, they’re attuned in many ways to paradox, to suffering, to the deep questions of faith.

I think the story of the exile is really powerful for children of divorce. Exile describes for them their sense of being fragmented inside, of feeling like divided selves, torn between two worlds. They feel like they have multiple places to call home, none of which really feels like home.

In the Christian tradition, exile is not the end of the story. Those in exile can come home to God and find healing and wholeness in God’s presence. Preach a good sermon on that theme and I guarantee that people will be touched.

Do you think a more realistic understanding of the impact of divorce on children would have a measurable effect on divorce rates?

I don’t think it would slash it in half or anything like that. But I do think we would see some correction in the divorce rate.

I think this understanding would encourage people to save marriages that could very well be saved without undo pain on the part of the adults. I’m thinking of marriages that are ending because of boredom or because of a desire for a new partner or not being sure you really love your partner, or because you feel that you’ve grown apart. Those issues are troubling to adults, but they are not that apparent to kids.

That’s where the "good divorce" language can be so damaging. It makes parents think that divorce won’t be a big deal so long as they do it right. There’s such a thing as necessary divorce, but there’s not such a thing as a good divorce.

Isn’t it important that a divorcing couple gets along amicably after divorce and that each parent stays involved in the child’s life?

Obviously it’s better for a divorced couple to get along and be involved in the child’s life. But from a child’s perspective, the fact that the divorced parents are getting along reasonably well and are staying involved makes the divorce in a sense more inexplicable. The child still feels the weight of a big burden -- to make sense of two very different worlds -- and if the burden feels overwhelming, the child feels that she has only herself to blame. That’s the moral drama that no one has ever talked about, and it’s a drama that faces children even when their divorced parents don’t fight a lot -- and most of them don’t.

What qualifies as a "necessary" divorce?

There are high-conflict marriages characterized by abuse, violence, or serious and frequent quarreling in which divorce is a vital option. What most people don’t know is that two-thirds of divorces end low-conflict marriages.

Does the ending in divorce of many low-conflict marriages suggest that people have inappropriate expectations of marriage?

There is an interesting historical background to this issue. When the divorce revolution took off with the advent of no-fault divorce in the 1960s, experts predicted that marriages overall would be happier because all the unhappy people would get divorced. Studies have shown, however, that as the divorce rate grew, the marital happiness rate fell. As marriage became easier to get out of, the threshold of what constituted a problematic marriage was lowered.

At one time, society made it too hard to get out of a horrendous marriage. But we have gone too far in the other direction. We have adopted a trickle-down notion of happiness: if the parents are happy, then the children will be happy. By that reasoning, if the parents need a divorce to be happy, that’s fine, because everybody will be happier if the parents are happy.

That idea has no bearing on children’s experience. Children’s happiness is not simply a product of adult happiness. Frankly, if theirs is not a high-conflict household, children in many ways aren’t all that concerned if their parents are happy.

Some people, including pastors and other church people, may be reluctant to raise the issue of children’s experience of divorce because they don’t want to add to the guilt or shame felt by divorced parents.

I know that people are sensitive al)out this issue. But even if we were to grant that every single divorce in this country is necessary, it would still be important to study the experience of children -- just as we study the experience of heart patients after surgery. We don’t say, "Well, the surgery was necessary, so whatever happens afterward is irrelevant."

Too often the debate on children of divorce gets turned into a debate on whether parents should be getting divorced in the first place. That move silences the experience of kids.

I imagined the first audience for my book being the grown children of divorce; it’s aimed at helping them understand and articulate their experience. The second audience I imagined is married parents who may have considered divorce. I want to help them understand not just what divorce does to a child, but what marriage does for a child. And finally, for divorced parents I think this book illuminates the inner experience of their child in ways they may not have considered. If they can better understand their child’s inner world, they can help their child feel less isolated.

Reality Show (Mk. 9:2-9)

Not far from where I live is a geological oddity. Stone Mountain is a bald and rounded mass of granite a mile and a half long and nearly a thousand feet high. Eons ago, molten rock pushed up from the earth’s core to the surface, then bubbled out and hardened into a monolith. Given the flat landscape around it, what one notices first about Stone Mountain is how unexpected it is. This isolated mass of stone stands all alone, sticking out like a blister on a thumb. It is as if an unneeded chunk of the Rockies was carelessly tossed over the shoulder of the Creator and landed improbably in a Georgia pasture.

So it is with the Markan account of Jesus’ transfiguration on a high mountain. Nothing in the immediate topography of Mark prepares us for it. Earlier, Jesus went up a mountain to call his disciples, and he ascended a mountain to pray, but after that the landscape of Mark flattens out. Jesus has been doing ministry in the lowlands of rural Galilee, with no mountain in sight. Suddenly and without warning, the grade in Mark’s narrative turns sharply upward, and we find ourselves with Peter, James and John on a "high mountain apart.’ So abrupt and unexpected is this change of landscape, geographically and spiritually, that some scholars have suggested that the transfiguration story is actually a post- resurrection story.

But this misses the point. The transfiguration story is not a wandering Easter account that makes a clumsy entrance into the middle of Mark’s Gospel. Rather, it is a summons to look at what is happening around us from a different angle of vision. The fact that we suddenly encounter a high mountain where we least expect one is crucial. Put simply, this abrupt appearance of a soaring mountain is an invitation to scale its heights with Peter, James and John so that we too can see what we cannot see in the valley. Do not look for this mountain on a Bible map. This mountain juts out not from the topography of Galilee, but from the topography of God. This is the mountain of revelation, the mountain of transformed vision, the mountain of true seeing.

What we see first, of course, is Jesus. Yes, we also see dazzling clothes, the cloud of divine protection, Elijah and Moses. We hear, "This is my Son, the beloved." But as Morna Hooker has commented, the transfiguration account can best be understood as a "christophany," a moment when we see "who Jesus Christ really is." What gets transfigured is not Jesus but our perception of him. Our vision changes; we see Jesus for real.

One of the things we see is that Jesus is beloved by God. We could never have seen that down in the valley, never have guessed that he is beloved by anybody. Already he has been misunderstood by his disciples, rejected by his hometown, drained of his power by his neighbors’ scoffing unbelief and plotted against by the authorities. Even more powerful winds of hell are about to be unleashed. Jesus knows that he "must undergo great suffering and be rejected." Jesus beloved? Hardly.

But if we see Jesus for real on that mountain, we see ourselves for real too. The Markan community would surely have recognized the parallels between themselves and Jesus. If Jesus’ ministry experienced rejection, failure and violence, so did theirs. Down in their own valley, all they could see was their life and hope slipping away. But up on that mountain they could see themselves in Jesus’ light. They could see their own baptismal garments dazzling like the sun, see the cloud of God’s care hovering over them, hear God calling them "beloved." Once again they could trust the promise that "those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it."

And so it is for us. Sometimes nothing is more discouraging than ministry in the messy middle of things. Trying to speak a word for peace in a war-mad world. Trying to promise hope to a culture that mistrusts what it cannot grasp, that takes no checks, only cold cash. Down in the valley, it is often hard to see how ministry in Jesus’ name can be sustained.

In his memoir A Dresser of Sycamore Trees, lay Episcopal minister Garret Keizer describes a Holy Saturday vigil held in his tiny Vermont parish. When Keizer arrived at the church, he found that only two other people, a husband and wife, had come for the service. As the three of them huddled together in the old church, Keizer lit the Paschal candle and extinguished the other lights, a symbol of hearing God’s great promise of hope "in darkness, longing to hear it in the light of day."

Together they prayed: "Grant that in this Paschal feast we may so burn with heavenly desires, that with pure minds we may attain to the festival of everlasting light."

The Paschal candle sputtered in the dimness. As they prayed, the worshipers could hear cars passing by outside, travelers in a secular age oblivious to the ancient hopes being spoken in the little chapel. "There we are," Keizer wrote, "three people and a flickering light." This act of worship was, he said, "so ambiguous because its terms are so extreme: the Lord is with us, or we are pathetic fools."

That says it well. Either the Lord is with us or we are pathetic fools. Down in the valley, with our faith buffeted by storms of disregard, doubt and disdain, our eyes can tell us only one thing: we are pathetic fools.

But up on the mountain there is another angle of vision. Up there, in the light of Christ, we can see for real.