It's In the Code Ep. 92: "A Biblical House of Cards"
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In this final episode exploring the idea that the Bible is without error, that it is “inerrant,” Dan looks at what happens if this doctrine is abandoned. The doctrine of inerrancy appears as a key foundation supporting high-control religion’s house of cards. When that foundation is removed, that house collapses, paving the way for communities where disagreement and dissent are affirmed as valuable faith dimensions. Inerrancy is bad theology, and like all bad theology, it has the potential to hurt people. Check out this week’s episode to learn more.
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If you subscribe, you'll get ad-free listening, access to our 500 episode archive, a premium episode every month, Check it out now in the show notes or go to www.axismoondi.supercast.com As always, welcome to It's in the Code, a series as part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
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Diving into today's episode, we're sort of wrapping up, finally, this kind of mini-series, a series within the series, on biblical inerrancy.
We've been here for a while, those of you listening who know this, and what we've been considering, really in sort of a deep dive, is what a certain kind of Christian community means when they claim to be biblical or to be Bible-based, etc.
We've explored that with the idea that the Bible is inerrant, literally that it is without error.
And we've been exploring that by looking at a number of points.
We started with some considerations about the incoherence of the doctrine.
I've argued that the very concept of inerrancy, as it operates within the kind of religious discourse where it operates, is incoherent.
It's nonsensical.
I think there are all kinds of theological problems with it, philosophical problems.
We've also considered sort of pragmatic reasons why it's unconvincing, even if one sets aside the incoherent elements of it, you know, the issues related to interpretation and the mediations of the Bible, all that sort of stuff.
Okay, we've considered that.
In the past couple of episodes, we shifted our focus to the way that the doctrine is actually used.
And for me, these things connect together, and the connection is this.
The doctrine is incoherent.
It is fundamentally unconvincing on any factual or empirical level.
There just simply is not a doctrine that can be sustained without a lot of intellectual gymnastics, and yet it persists.
It is a very significant central feature in one of the most mainstream religious articulations in American society.
And the question then arises as to why, and one of the things that I have argued is that part of the reason why the doctrine of inerrancy holds, or has the hold that it does, is that it functions to enable coercion and control within a certain kind of high-control Christian context.
We talked about the fact that the supposed access to God, the supposed knowledge of God that individuals can have because they can read the Bible and trust its authority and so forth, That while that's implied in the doctrine, the way the doctrine actually works, the use that it's put to, it masks the fact that what it really enables is the exercise of religious authority by those who control its use and its interpretation, the kind of gatekeepers of biblical meaning, as it were, and divine truth.
And so the argument that the Bible is without error, what it functionally does is translate into a claim by those in authority that they are without error, that they can advance whatever interpretation they have claim biblical authority for it, and it puts their interpretation or their position above question.
It puts it out of any reach of regular people to question, to rethink, to dissent, and on and on and on.
Okay?
So this is a central reason why, in my view, the doctrine of inerrancy plays such a crucial role within the context of high-control Christian articulations within our context.
I think it is a doctrine that is ready-made for contexts exactly like that.
And that's sort of where we've been, but I don't want to end the series on just doom and gloom and just focusing on the negative aspects of this doctrine.
And so that brings us to what I want us to think about today, this kind of final reflection on this.
And it is the question of what happens if we abandon the notion of inerrancy?
Because on a popular level, I think If you ask a lot of people, you know, what do Christians think about the Bible, or they link together notions of Christian identity in the Bible, I think there's a sense that inerrancy is just sort of baked in.
That all Christians are inerrantists, that Christianity being a scriptural tradition and so forth, that this is just what Christians as such think about the Bible, And it's not always, right?
There are many, many other ways to understand the Bible, and that's been true historically.
It's true sort of culturally and geographically.
But here's the key.
It's true even of those who continue to use the Bible in the context of religious practice and theological interpretation now.
And so I want to think about that, and I think what this continues to illustrate is the tie of inerrancy to high-control religion.
And what do I mean by that?
Here's what I mean.
If we abandon the doctrine of inerrancy, if one calls that doctrine into question, in my view, we undercut a central pillar of high-control Christianity.
Certainly in this country, and American Christianity is not the only articulation of Christianity that holds to a doctrine of inerrancy, okay?
And I don't mean to overstate this point.
Feel free to email me, contact me if you think I'm wrong about this, or if you've got counterexamples.
I'm sure that they exist, okay?
But I have never encountered a high-control Christian context that didn't claim biblical authority.
Now maybe I should say a high-control Protestant context, because again, in the Catholic tradition, The Bible has never played quite the role that it does in Protestantism, and so you can certainly have high-control Catholic contexts, and that can lie in areas like papal authority or ecclesiastical authority, the explicit authority of what's known as the magisterium, the edifice of Catholic authority, the history of Catholic teaching, and so forth.
So that could be an exception.
And if you're listening and you're somebody who's, I don't know, really tuned into the Orthodox tradition, I think that's different too.
But within Protestant Christianity, I have never encountered a high-control religious context that didn't claim biblical authority.
And here's the flip side, and again, my knowledge is not exhaustive, my experience is not exhaustive, I obviously have never, you know, been to every Christian community or church that exists, but I have never encountered more open Christian communities, Christian churches, Christian congregations that are not high control in their sort of expression.
I've never encountered one of those that would claim biblical inerrancy.
They may appeal to scriptural authority, they may use that language, they will almost certainly use the Bible in worship and practice and liturgical use and so forth, but you're not going to find, in my experience, the same claims to biblical authority and to being biblical and so forth that you'll find in those high-control religious contexts.
And so if somebody asks me why conservative, high-control Christians cling so tenaciously to the doctrine of inerrancy, why they'll go through all those intellectual gymnastics, I will maintain that it's not just about theology.
It may be that they want to be able to trust the Bible.
It may be that they accept or believe that if we can't affirm everything the Bible says, we can't affirm anything that it says.
It may be that they believe that God is the kind of being that would ensure that people have knowledge of God, and so we have to have some repository of that knowledge, and that's what the Bible is and so forth.
They may believe all of that, but I don't think that that is The sole or oftentimes even the primary reason why they actually hold to that doctrine.
So that can be a reason.
I don't think it's the only reason.
Here's what I think is another reason.
It is because questioning the doctrine of inerrancy threatens the authority of those who get their authority from the doctrine of inerrancy.
In other words, it's the people with a vested interest in having an inerrant Bible who are the most rabid defenders of that inerrancy.
It's easy enough to illustrate.
It is no surprise that straight, cisgender white men, the sort of subgroup of humanity who gain legitimacy and authority from the doctrine of inerrancy, It is no surprise that they are also the same people, by and large, who develop the doctrine and fight tooth and nail to defend it.
And I think all of us can recognize, or if not, you're going to know that I'm going to say, that any time the people who benefit most from some ideological position, theological position, some practice, some institution, when the people who benefit from it the most Are the ones who are its most ardent defenders?
I think our antenna should be up.
Doesn't prove that there's something nefarious going on, but it's something we should pay attention to.
It's something I think we should listen to.
If it raises red flags, we ought to see why.
And this is one of those things that raises red flags for me.
Those who fear, in other words, that the edifice of American evangelicalism is going to collapse.
And again, American evangelicalism as one of the dominant forms of high-control religion in America.
And we talked in an earlier episode about how widespread the doctrine of inerrancy is within white evangelicalism.
Those who fear that the edifice of white American evangelicalism will collapse without the doctrine of inerrancy, to call inerrancy into question does threaten that edifice.
It threatens that structure.
Theologians, we've been considering theologians like Wayne Grudem and Millard Erickson, they recognize that.
My former boss, the pastor of the church where I worked, who threatened to fire me at the mere idea that I might not be an errantist, he recognized that.
And in my experience and the experience of lots and lots of other people that I know, that I've talked to, people who write about this, it was a central part of my movement out of evangelicalism, to abandon the doctrine of inerrancy and the things that came with it is a significant part of what led me out of that movement.
Okay?
So they're right that the edifice of white American evangelicalism might collapse, that that doctrine is undercut.
But what that also means is that one of the most central forms of high-control religion in American society is threatened if inerrancy is called into question.
Okay?
The challenge to inerrance is a challenge to high-control religion.
It's not the only challenge, and not, again, all high-control American religion is Biblicist.
I'm focusing on forms of Christianity.
I just noted a minute ago that not even all Christian, high-control Christian contexts are Biblicist.
There are high-control Jewish contexts.
There are high-control Muslim contexts.
There are high-control contexts of all different kinds.
So this is not an exhaustive list, okay?
But, to challenge this view of the Bible, to challenge this use of the Bible, is to challenge one of the most dominant forms of high-control religion in America.
This kind of Christian high-control religion is a house of cards, and it's a house of cards that uses inerrancy as one of its primary supports.
You pull that support, knock that card out, the entire thing loses its integrity and will tumble down.
The patriarchy, the cis-heteronormatism, the gender essentialism, the gender and complementarianism that structure that house of cards, they are all given the veneer of immutable truth by the doctrine of inerrancy.
If you want to take a look at this, I just direct you to the same Wayne Grudem and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood that he helped found.
Google that.
Go take a look.
You'll see the kinds of ideas that come from this from the same guy that insists that we have to be inerrantists.
All of that is threatened.
All of that is undermined within that kind of high-control American Christianity if we call the doctrine of inerrancy into question.
So with that in mind, here's something to think about, sort of coming at this from a different perspective.
What might a Christian community that is not structured around the doctrine of inerrancy look like?
And again, these communities exist, folks, they do, but they are not very culturally visible.
I spend a lot of my time talking to people who have no idea that there are other articulations of Christian practice in American society.
That's how dominant white evangelicalism is in this country, that it sort of has a lock on the market.
If you factor out that, and Catholicism for most Americans.
That's their understanding of Christianity.
There are other forms, and this is the question.
So what might a Christian community that isn't structured around a high-control context and the Doctrine and Covenants, what would it look like?
How can we recognize a Christian community that is not high control?
The biggest markers of these communities, for me, with regard to the Bible—and again, this is true of these communities even if they use the Bible, even if they have somebody who stands up and preaches from the Bible on Sundays, even if they have scripture readings that come along with a lectionary or whatever it is—the biggest markers of these communities is that questioning and disagreement and dissent play a prominent role.
And I think, in my experience, this is true, but I think that this is a broader marker.
Questioning and disagreement and dissent are not only sort of allowed or tolerated, they are encouraged actively.
From the pulpit on down, there is typically not the inerrantest presupposition that the Bible presents timeless truth.
Not only will they not say that it's just simply timeless truth, they will often recognize that the Bible presents no single teaching on multiple topics.
Oftentimes, when they use the Bible in preaching, they may even read against the biblical text in many ways.
Not only might they preach against the Bible or pose really open questions about the Bible, there's not going to be any expectation that everybody in the congregation holds the same view on the Bible or on the issues about which it speaks.
That difference of opinion, the idea that there are lots of people in that congregation and they're in different places and they bring different perspectives and they have different backgrounds and they read the Bible in different ways, that won't be taken as an issue to be resolved.
It'll be viewed as a reality to be affirmed and celebrated and incorporated into the communal use of that text.
The different views that congregants bring about the Bible, they'll be understood not as a threat, but as a reminder that no one, clergy included, has an absolute perspective or can pretend to speak for God.
Like all understandings of what the Bible is, or how it works, or how it should be used, the doctrine of inerrancy presupposes a particular community of interpreters.
And when you have a community that is not around a doctrine of inerrancy, you're going to have a community that is open and informed by theologies and interpretations that are different from the community that sort of generated this doctrine.
In other words, you're going to have a use of the Bible and approach to the Bible that listens to voices that are not just straight, cis, white men.
They will learn to read the Bible in new ways by engaging with liberation theologies from the two-thirds world.
They will learn to read the Bible in new ways by engaging with biblical traditions developed within communities of color.
They will learn to read the Bible in new ways by hearing the voices of feminist and womanist theologies.
They will learn to read the Bible in new ways by hearing the voices of queer communities of faith.
They will recognize That the Bible has always taken shape in the life of contemporary, real-world religious communities that are trying to articulate the meaning of God as they understand it.
That the Bible has never been this kind of timeless repository of truth.
It has always been this kind of a living engagement of communities of faith with what they understand the divine to be.
And that is something that you will find in contemporary communities.
So again, there are communities that are going to affirm questioning.
There are communities that are going to affirm disagreement.
There are communities going to affirm dissent.
People often ask me—we talk about high-control religion a lot.
We talk about it in Straight White American Jesus.
I talk about it in this series.
I encounter this a lot as a practitioner with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, working with people processing religious trauma.
And people often ask you, how do we recognize high-control religion?
How do we recognize if a church that I'm part of or somebody else is part of is a high-control religious context?
And people, I think, have a view of this with, you know, quote-unquote cults and that.
But here we're talking about really mainstream forms of religion, and there are a lot of things to look for.
But I believe that appeals to an inerrantist Bible are one of those things.
They are one of the markers of a high-control Christian context.
And I think that that is particularly true if those appeals are aimed at regulating behavior, at dispelling disagreement, at quashing dissent, at privileging historically dominant interpretations at the cost of those that have traditionally been excluded.
Interpretations offered by communities of color, by queer folk, by the two-thirds world, by those who have been on the receiving end of Christian Euro-American imperialism and so forth.
Inerrancy is a defining feature of conservative Protestantism in the U.S., which means it is one of the most deeply entrenched features of this kind of religious community.
It is one of the most deeply entrenched and, in my mind, defining features of a predominant form of high-control religion in this country.
So it is unarguably, the doctrine of inerrancy is, a theological feature of a very mainstream expression of American religion.
And the reason I highlight that is I have had conversations with conservative Protestants, inerrantists, who've said, you know, you're really critical of this doctrine.
I mean, this is a really mainstream doctrine.
If you're criticizing that, you're criticizing one of the most dominant forms of Christianity in this country.
That's a lot of people you're saying are wrong.
That's a bold statement to make.
Well, yeah, I guess it is.
It is a core theological commitment of millions of American Christians, but folks, it's bad theology.
It's a theology that doesn't make intellectual sense.
That was the first part of this series, looking at that.
It's a theology that persists because it feeds into deep-seated fears and anxieties that come with the condition of being human.
It's a way of trying to claim knowledge and information that we simply don't have in the human condition.
And it's a theology that persists because it licenses high-control religion.
So, the doctrine of inerrancy, yeah, it's theology.
It's core theology for millions of Americans, but it is bad theology.
As I'm fond of saying, bad theology hurts people.
The doctrine of inerrancy hurts people.
It is damaging.
And communities that claim to be biblical, meaning inerrant, appealing to an inerrant Bible, Communities that claim to submit to biblical authority, again, these are codes for inerrancy.
Churches that boldly proclaim that they preach the Bible, again, typically code for holding to an inerrant scripture.
They are communities that risk hurting people by adopting that theology.
Is that always intentional?
Nope.
Can it be well-meaning?
Yes, it can.
Does that make a good theology?
Do good intentions make good theology?
Good Christian practice?
In my mind, no, they don't.
Those are my reflections on inerrancy.
I want to thank everybody, if you've been listening to this series, for giving it the time and listening to it, for the questions that I've been getting and comments, and I've responded to some of those.
Some of you will recognize questions that you've asked or comments that you've made sort of reflected in some of the episodes.
If not, I will get to your questions and comments and respond to them.
But I want to thank everybody for listening.
This has been an interesting exercise for me.
I've never reflected on the doctrine of inerrancy in quite this way or to this extent before, so thank you for giving me that opportunity.
Upcoming episodes, we're shifting back to—I've got a couple interviews, some interviews that I've done that I want to put in that I think will be really, really relevant to the themes and topics of It's in the Code.
I also have a number of upcoming topics that I've gotten from all of you, but I need those to keep coming, so please reach out.
Daniel Miller Swadge, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
Continue with the comments, the questions, the images of church signs that you see, the photos that you take of a church bulletin.
Whatever those things are that you send me, I love those.
Treasure those.
So much food for thought there.
Keep those coming.
Things that you're struggling with in terms of understanding American religion and the codes that operate it.
All of those things.
Keep them coming.
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