It's in the Code Ep 102: “Where the Bible Speaks, We Speak”
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“Where the Bible speaks, we speak.” Maybe this phrase is coming from your pastor, maybe it’s coming from Uncle Ron at the family cookout, maybe it’s coming from a Christian friend or coworker. No matter who is saying this to you, it almost certainly communicates their defense of the their religious and social views on the grounds that they have their origins in the Bible. But is this always the case? Is this how Christian identity actually takes shape? In this episode, Dan argues that it’s not, and looks at what this claim to “speak where the Bible speaks” is really doing.
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Welcome, as always, to It's in the Code, a series as part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller.
As you likely know, I'm professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
Pleased to be with you, as always.
I want to welcome all of you who are listening.
Subscribers, thank you.
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Everybody who emails me, danielmillerswaj, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com, I thank you as well.
You are the ones that keep this series going.
The topics that I pick are topics that you contact me about.
As some folks know, I've been dealing with some family health issues, and so I have not yet closed my gap on emails, as I had hoped to by this point, but I am closing that.
All of which is to say, please keep reaching out.
I so appreciate the comments, the ideas, ideas for new topics, questions or clarifications, points of disagreement, you name it, I want to hear it.
I want to hear how the codes of American religion are circulating, what stands out to you, things that don't make sense, things that just get under your skin, whatever it is.
So, thank you for listening, thank you for doing this.
As I say often, I know that there are a lot of things you can do with your time besides giving me 20 minutes or so, and so I thank you very much.
I want to dive in here.
A slogan, I guess we could call it, this week is what I want to talk about.
I've heard it from several people, and here it is.
It's the phrase.
I call it a slogan.
It can even be a rallying cry.
We're going to talk about it playing a kind of apologetic focus, or excuse me, an apologetic function.
It plays a lot of different roles, but the statement is this, where the Bible speaks, we speak.
Okay?
And this is a statement, obviously, that's going to be coming from somebody who is, you know, justifying what they're saying on the basis of the Bible or articulating, if they're appealing to the Bible, they're likely Christian.
They are articulating their understanding of Christian identity in terms of the Bible.
And I know I talk about the Bible a lot in this series, but it is such a central part of the rhetoric and the practice of high-control American Christianity, which is what we focus on most here, that it sort of just comes up over and over and over again.
So I'm going to work really hard today.
I'll reference some of those other discussions I've had about the Bible and inerrancy and things like that, but I'm not going to rehash all of those.
This really is sort of a different phrase, and it resonates with me because I'm really familiar with this particular formulation, and I know, obviously, those of you who've reached out are as well.
I have heard more evangelical preachers than I could possibly remember say this from the pulpit or say something like this, right?
Where the Bible speaks, we speak.
I have read it on church signs and programs.
I've read it, that is, on, like, you know, the flyers that they would hand out on Sunday.
It would be just part of, like, the sort of byline that would be under the church's name.
I've read it on, you know, those church signs where you replace all the letters and put up some pithy little quote.
I've seen it there.
I have heard it leveled as a kind of rallying cry for grassroots conservative Christians to carry out their spiritual warfare in culture, right?
Because they have a calling to, quote, speak where the Bible speaks.
I have used this phrase as a young evangelical in particular, as a pastor I use this phrase.
So it's not uncommon, and like most of the things we look at, It's sort of straightforward surface meaning is plain enough, okay?
So let's start there.
If we were to sort of expand and translate this phrase to get at what those same conservative evangelicals might call the plain sense of the statement, it'd be something like this, right?
This is the logic of it.
I'm a biblical quote-unquote Christian, okay?
Now, I've talked a lot about what it means to be a biblical Christian.
People who call themselves this way, who use that adjective biblical in this way are communicating something about the kind of Christian they are and how they understand the Bible.
Again, I'm not going to go into all of that.
I invite you to go back, take a listen, okay?
What they're saying is, I'm a biblical Christian.
I base my faith and practices on the teachings of a Bible that they understand to be inerrant, without error, right?
So I am called.
As a good Christian, to speak out on whatever it is that the Bible says.
This is part of my Christian calling.
And I think the implication is when we use to speak, where the Bible speaks, we speak.
I think that that is its own sort of shorthand for not just literal speech, but for action, for acting on what the Bible says and so forth.
So I think that's the basic straightforward meaning of this.
And I think there's also tied in with this, An apologetic dimension that I mentioned a minute ago, right?
So let's say you go to a 4th of July picnic that's coming up here.
You go to a 4th of July family cookout.
Here's Uncle Ron, right?
And he, you know, starts talking and says something about his opposition to same-sex marriage, right?
Everybody knows.
Everybody knows Uncle Ron.
They know this is going to come up, but he says something about it.
And somebody who's there is offended.
Right?
And they say something like, God, how can you say that?
Or, what gives you the right to judge other people?
Or, well, you know, Cousin Sarah just married her female identified partner.
You're judging her, right?
Or something.
Uncle Ron gets pushed back.
And Uncle Ron throws up his hands and says, hey, this isn't just my opinion, right?
I only speak where the Bible speaks.
I have no choice but to affirm what God has said.
Okay?
And I use that example because I think the people who appeal to this slogan often mean it.
When they say, you know, where the Bible speaks, they speak, they mean that.
And there is a sense sometimes, and I think sometimes this is sincere, I think sometimes it's an affect that people take on.
Where they will say something that they know is not popular, or people don't agree with, or they themselves, very frankly, may not love.
And they'll say, hey, I don't have a choice.
You know, I wish I could say that men and women could have the same social roles and the same role in the family.
I wish I could do that.
But you know, where the Bible speaks, I have to speak.
I have to go with what it says.
And again, as a pastor, I said this, and I meant it.
There were times where I adopted or affirmed positions that I really was not comfortable with, but because I felt constrained that this is what the Bible said, so I needed to say it, too.
I needed to hold to it.
Okay?
So I think that for many Christians, when they say this, it's not just an act of, you know, they're not just trying to be polemical or adversarial.
There is a sense in which, for them, they are constrained to hold this, and that's what I mean by calling it a kind of apologetic dimension.
Another example that I mentioned, or that's related to what I said a minute ago, I've had lots of people who, you know, are really uncomfortable with certain notions of patriarchy, and so I'm not just trying to be patriarchal, but this is what the Bible says, I have to affirm it.
Okay.
So when a lot of just regular church-going folks like Uncle Ron say this, they're not just trying to impose their views on others.
I think that's a part of it.
But they also recognize that their views are unpopular.
They recognize that these views set them apart.
They, like all of us, are often uncomfortable being marked as different because they hold some position that's not culturally appropriate or that's not widely accepted or whatever.
And so this gives them a way to kind of lean on an external authority and sort of pass off the responsibility.
It's a way, I think, for them psychologically to comfort themselves that they're not just being exclusionary or judgmental, but that they're affirming what God affirms and so forth.
Okay?
So, all of that, I think, is a pretty surface-level analysis of what this phrase means, what people mean when they say it, some of what might lead them to say it, the kinds of religious expression where I think you're going to hear this, because again, I think you're going to hear this more, much more commonly in conservative, high-control Christian contexts than you will in, say, liberal or progressive contexts.
But there's more to it than this.
There is more to this slogan, masked under those sentiments that we've been looking at, than they would show us.
And I think most people who encounter this slogan, I think most people who have ever heard this, lots of people I've talked to, I don't know if it's true of most people, when they have heard this, it is because they are having a discussion with somebody with a particular Christian identity from a particular Christian context, And they're debating something, or they're discussing something, and they're asking why they say it, and maybe things are getting heated, and somebody throws up their hands and says, you know what, where the Bible speaks, I speak.
And they have a sense that something is going on there, that there's a kind of rhetorical sleight of hand, or they feel that this is like a conversation stopper, right?
We were here, we were actually discussing it, and all of a sudden discussion's over, right?
And they can't always put their finger on exactly how that works.
And here's what I think is at the heart of it, okay?
The same Christians who say they speak where the Bible speaks, who are at least implying and often explicitly claiming that they say and do the things they say and do because the Bible constrains them to do so, those same Christians also do and say a hell of a lot that the Bible doesn't seem to say anything about.
Stuff that just, you know, I'm a pretty biblically literate person.
Like, I don't know where you would find that.
Or stuff that the Bible is just not very clear about.
Or things that the Bible is contradictory, says contradictory things about.
You can look in one place and trot out a few verses that you could interpret one way and trot out some verses from another place you could interpret another way.
So there's this sense that they're like, hey, I'm just saying it because the Bible says it, and you want to be like, yeah, but you say and do a lot of shit that the Bible doesn't say anything about.
And I think that that's where we get that spidey sense, tingling, that there's something more at work here than just, you know, I'm constrained, I have no choice but to affirm what the Bible affirms, and so forth.
So, to get at that, I want to think about something I've talked about a lot before, and if people are tired of hearing it, I apologize, but it has to do with identity.
I talk and think about identity and what social identity is.
How it forms and how it shapes who we are and all of that a lot.
But I've said before that our social identities, and this is a big our, like we, all of us, social identity as such, tends to operate as a kind of package deal, particularly when it comes to the beliefs or the really firm convictions that we hold.
Okay?
So for example, if I know somebody and I know that they strongly support LGBTQ plus inclusion and equality, And not just in an abstract sense, if I know that this is an issue that really matters to them, it's an issue that they would say, you know, defines them, they donate money, they march in parades, they probably have friends and families and maybe they themselves who are queer identified, it's what I would call a salient feature of their identity.
If I know that about somebody, Then if I were a betting person, and I'm not, but if I was, I would bet a month's salary that they also affirm, say, abortion access for people who are able to be pregnant.
That they favor the imposition of more limits on gun rights.
That they have a pretty, what, they would favor a relatively accepting and open policy toward refugees from other places, right?
I would be willing to bet that all of those things come together.
Will there be exceptions?
Sure, there are always exceptions, but in general I would predict, and be very comfortable predicting, that those things come together.
On the flip side, If I know that somebody strongly opposes abortion access, for example, and again, we're talking about somebody for whom this is not an incidental thing.
They don't have to be pressed on.
This is something that really matters to them.
It's the kind of thing that keeps them up at night.
It's something that is salient to their identity.
Then I would bet another month's salary that they also oppose increased restrictions on gun ownership.
I would bet a month's salary That they favor tight border and other immigration restrictions, and so on.
You get the idea, okay?
What I'm trying to say is that if we know one salient feature of somebody's identity when it comes to issues like this, we can with a high degree of confidence predict their position on other identity features.
Okay, why do I bring all that up?
Because unless you've been living under a rock and have just crawled out and like this is the first podcast you've ever listened to on this or something, if you pay any attention to contemporary American culture, you know there are millions of conservative Christians who fit that second profile.
All you have to do is look at our political discourse and hear that all of those things come together.
And these are the folks who are the most likely to say that they hold these positions because they quote, believe the Bible.
They are the most likely to claim, implicitly or explicitly, even if they don't use this particular slogan in this particular way literally, what they are saying is that they speak to these issues.
They hold the positions they do on these issues because they speak where the Bible speaks.
They are the ones who are the most likely to say on all of those issues that they hold it because they are Bible-believing Christians.
Okay?
And for any of us with any degree of critical distance, here's the problem, right?
Let's grant for the sake of argument, let's just pretend for a minute, let's imagine we're talking to, I don't know, Uncle Ron or whomever, and we say, okay, okay, fine.
For the sake of argument, let's say that the Bible says things condemning queer folk or abortion and so on, right?
Recognizing those are debatable, I say for the sake of argument, there are strong arguments against those positions, okay?
But let's just, for the sake of argument, let's just go with that.
Okay.
What about gun rights?
What about immigration opposition?
What about things like low property taxes?
What about tax rate cuts for corporations?
All those pro-business, pro-capitalist things that are part of that same quote-unquote Christian social vision.
What about opposition to environmental regulations?
What about even like really basic issues like the notion of equal rights and basic liberal principles?
Where do we find those in the Bible, right?
There's a good chance that Uncle Ron won't be able to give you any clear answer on that.
But maybe he'll reach out to his pastor and he'll ask for help, you know, he'll do that thing where he comes back a few days later or send you a long email, or maybe it's, I don't know, you had this conversation on the 4th of July cookout, so maybe Labor Day, he comes back, and this time he's loaded, he's ready, because he's talked to his pastor, and he'll give you some Bible verses to throw your way.
But even if he does, I can tell you what's going to happen if somebody does, and you look those up, is you're going to hear those verses, you're going to look at them, and you're going to be like, wait, what?
That's what you think that verse is about?
It doesn't say anything about, like, obviously the Bible doesn't say anything about guns because they didn't exist, right?
That's what's going to happen.
Here's an example of this, okay?
And I'm trying to choose an example that's maybe not quite as politically loaded and, you know, and so forth.
So here's an example.
Lots of those same conservative Christians are part of what is known as the quiverful movement, okay?
They believe that they are called by God to have lots of children and to raise them in the Christian faith to help expand the church's numbers.
That's basically what the Quiverful Movement is, is that Christians should be having lots of babies and they shouldn't use birth control and things like that, okay?
All right, fine.
This is a movement that appeals directly to the Bible for support, okay?
So here's the verse.
Let's imagine you're talking to somebody and, you know, maybe you're getting into a nitty-gritty conversation, they've already got three kids, they're trying for more, and you're kind of like, wow, that's crazy, I've got two, I can barely keep up, and they're opposed to birth control, and you ask why, and they start articulating this thing about, you know, God wanting them to have lots of kids.
Okay, cool.
Here's the verse, explicitly, the verses.
The tie-in to the Quiver Fool movement.
It is from the Book of Psalms.
It's a psalm in the Hebrew Bible.
Psalm 127, verses 3 through 5.
And this is what it says.
And I'm reading from the new revised standard version.
It says sons.
It says sons, not children.
Lots of translations will say children.
When you read a translation that says children, you're already modifying the translation because it literally says sons.
We can go back to things I talk about about how we're always reading a translation of the Bible by the time we get to it and so forth, but here's what it says.
I'll even change it to children, okay?
Children are indeed a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one's youth, or the children of one's youth.
Happy is the man, it says, who has his quiver full of them.
There's the quiver full language.
He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
That's the verse.
We get the image of a quiver, a quiver full of children, this metaphor of arrow children as arrows, and a quiver full of arrows, and so, you know, you got a big family, you got a quiver full, and so on.
But you read that and you might be like, wait, what?
How does that mean that contemporary Christians are supposed to have lots of kids so there are lots of Christians?
Like, it's...
Clearly talking about fighting enemies in the gate, and if we know anything, we know that this was written a really long time ago, and it sure sounds like some society where, you know, sons from the Lord are, you know, we're basically talking about warriors or something, right?
You've got your sons facing the enemy and so on.
Boy, it sure sounds like a stretch to say that contemporary Christians need to oppose birth control because they're supposed to have lots of kids.
It's a stretch.
It's especially a stretch if you've got somebody like Uncle Ron who likes to tell you that he reads the Bible literally, right?
This is not a literal reading, and I've talked about literal readings before.
This is not a literal reading.
Right?
Here's the point.
Here's the obvious point.
No one ever read that passage, Psalm 127, verses 3 through 5, Nobody ever read that passage first and concluded from it, oh, God commands Christians to have lots of kids, and so then they went out and they decided they had lots of kids.
They did not act or speak on that verse because the Bible speaks on it.
Here's how it actually works.
Here's how it works in practice.
And folks, there are mountains of sociological data about this, okay?
Conservative Christians adopt a social or political position or they affiliate with a political movement, as we've seen that this has been going on for decades.
They've affiliated with conservatives, political conservatives.
Or, in the case of the Quiverful moment, they confront shrinking church numbers because people are not converting to conservative Christianity anymore, and so they have turned from conversion growth to what's called biological growth of the church.
Their only way that they feel that they can keep church numbers up is to have lots of kids.
That's what actually confronts them.
So they go and they tell their congregation to have lots of kids, then after the fact, They turn to the Bible and find a purported reason for what they already believe or are already doing.
You start with your beliefs or your convictions and then you go to the Bible and you look around until you can find a verse that you can stretch or pull or shape in such a way that you can say that's the reason for what you were already doing or already believing.
So the slogan is not really, it shouldn't be, where the Bible speaks, we speak.
What they really are saying is, where we speak, the Bible has spoken.
In other words, whatever we say, we will go and find some Bible verse that we can cite and stretch to fit it?
Why?
Because it lends authority to our position.
What arises is a situation in which, by definition, the conservative Christian is in the position where anything they affirm is granted unquestionable authority because it purportedly comes from the Bible.
It's not the kind of deductive process that they usually develop where they say, well, you know what we're going to do?
We're going to start with the Bible.
We're going to see what it says.
We're going to build up from there to what we ought to be affirming.
And I think it's important to understand that the slogan works this way even for naive, well-meaning Christians.
Even if Uncle Ron means it when he throws up his hands and says, you know, this is just what I have to say.
Why?
And I get this from people all the time.
They'll be like, people say this about the Bible all the time, but they don't know where.
Here's the reality.
Many, probably a vast majority of Christians who desire to be biblical, who say and mean that they need to speak where the Bible speaks, that everything that they do should be based in the Bible, they haven't actually read the Bible.
They don't actually know it very well, and when they have read it, it's hard to understand, and they have the same experience many of us have when they read it, and they say, wow, it doesn't seem to say that.
But they trust that because their pastor said that that's what it means, they're just misreading it.
That it's there.
Right?
So all of these dynamics are often at work in their own identity formation and practice, without them even knowing it, so they can say and believe, hey, where the Bible speaks, I speak.
And also be putting forward positions that just really can't find a clear articulation in the Bible.
Okay?
So what's the takeaway as we wrap this up here?
It is that the slogan, where the Bible speaks, we speak, it turns out to be another statement that typically masks coercive, high-control religion.
When you hear it, your ears should perk up, because what is typically happening is not the case that somebody went to the Bible, found out what it said, and then affirmed a position.
It is usually that they hold a position, and then they claim the authority of the Bible to hold and legitimate a position that they already held, a practice they're already involved in.
That's what's usually going on.
I do want to note That I have come across a very different formulation of this principle.
I have met Christians who are part of typically very inclusive, inviting, very open Christian communities, and they pick up on the sort of flip side of where the Bible speaks, we speak.
And I know that some of you, as soon as I said that, are like, yeah, but what about the other half that sort of follows from that, which is where the Bible is silent, we're silent.
I have known people who practice a very open and inviting kind of Christianity.
The reason is they will say, look, the Bible speaks a lot about things like justice and love and forgiveness and a lot of stuff it doesn't talk about much or it's not clear.
So those things are clear, love and justice and forgiveness.
And so we're going to practice love and justice and forgiveness.
And we're not going to go too deep into the details or specificities of that because the Bible doesn't speak to them.
So we will remain silent.
That's an alternative articulation of this that exists.
I want to acknowledge that and let people know that.
But I think typically, when we encounter this, it's going to be the Uncle Ron's of the world.
And whether they know it or not, its function is to claim authority for positions, convictions, actions that people already hold or that they are already doing.
As a way of moving them beyond contestation from others, especially things that are very, very difficult to support or defend on any other grounds, you appeal to the Bible even when the Bible doesn't actually clearly articulate that position.
We need to wrap this up.
Again, thank you so much for listening.
Thank you for the feedback, the input, the insights.
Please keep them coming.
Daniel Miller Swaj, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
Keep those coming.
I value those so much.
I've been working with some transcripts of some of these episodes and it's funny because it always says It always has Daniel Miller swag Instead of swage, which is its own funny kind of thing, but it is Daniel Miller swage SWA J straight white American Jesus at gmail.com As always, thank you, value the insights, keep them coming.
I am closing the gap in communication, so if you have contacted me, you will eventually hear from me.
