- Scripturalizing Life and Culture: The Plain People
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Prof. Peter Auksi
Dept. of English, University of Western Ontario, London,
Ontario, Canada.
Although the Reformation unlocked access to the Bible
for all common readers, certain religious communities like
the Mennonites, the Amish, and the Hutterites interpreted
Scripture almost literally as a warrant for with- drawing
from visual ostentation, secular education, and worldly
achievement or involvement, in the process citing a number
of specific texts (including, for example, 1.Peter 2:9,
“an holy nation, a peculiar people”; Rom. 12:2,
“be not conformed to this world”; 2.Cor. 6:17,
“be ye separate”) for their distinctively plain
clothing, domestic decorative art, and the material
accoutrements of worship. In the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries the Shaker sect in America took biblical
directives concerning simplicity and plainness even further
into unexpectedly creative avenues, producing furniture,
tools, hymns, quilts, clothing, and buildings truly worthy
of the designation ‘art’ and beautiful enough
for twenty-first century art galleries and museums.This
paper explores the influence which biblical texts had on
the culture, art, and mode of living of ‘The Plain
People.’
- Tyndale's Unicorn
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Mrs Mary Clow
Vice-Chair Tyndale Society, New York, USA.
From 'Star Wars' to 'Lord of the Rings', American
popular culture has never been more enthralled by myth.
Such modern epics are full of strange gods, fearsome
monsters, impossible quests and no-hope battles where only
the hero's trust in a Higher Power gives the courage to win
through, in spite of his own frequent failures of belief
and back-slidings.
This paper is an examination of some of the origins of
these powerful con- cepts in ‘The Fifth Book of Moses
called Deuteronomy'. William Tyndale's historic first
translation into English from the original Hebrew was pub-
lished in 1530. His work is the unacknowledged basis of the
later Geneva and King James Bibles, and thus widely
influential throughout the USA up to the present day.
As Tyndale wrote in his introduction to
Deuteronomy:
This is a book worthy to be read in day and night and
never to be out of hands.
And the unicorn — under the law of Moses given in
Deuteronomy it is permitted to eat a Unicorn.
- “The Government Upon His Shoulders”:
Exploring the Impact of the English Bible in United States'
Presidential Inaugural Speeches
-
Prof. Mara Lief Crabtree
Associate Professor, Regent University, Virginia, USA.
United States Presidential inaugural speeches often
include references from the English Bible. Which American
Presidents included quotations from the English Bible in
their inaugural addresses? What was the discernible context
of meaning in which these quotations appeared? Furthermore,
what might these quotations indicate to us about: (a)
Individual presidential beliefs in regard to significant
historical events, current national needs, challenges or
crises, and possibilities and hopes for the future? (b) A
president's sense of “prophetic” meaning in
relating certain references to current situations or
possible future events? (c) The existence of overarching
patterns evident in the English Bible references of
individual addresses or the collective body of inaugural
addresses? This paper explores these questions with the
goal of signifying the specific impact of the English Bible
in the important realm of American presidential
leadership.
- The Vine and Fig Tree Motif
-
Prof. Daniel Dreisbach
Depart. of Justice, Law and Society, American University,
Washington, D.C., USA.
The “vine and fig tree” motif (Micah 4:4; I
Kings 4:25; Zechariah 3:10; 1 Maccabees 14:12; see also II
Kings 18:31; Isaiah 36:16) figures greatly in the
literature of the founders of America. Special attention
will be focused on the works of George Washington, who
referenced this phrase from the English Bible nearly four
dozen times in his writings. The paper will address the
question of why George Washington and so many of his
contemporaries were drawn to this biblical metaphor.
- The Impact of the English Bible on the American
Revolution
-
Dr Hector Falcon
Regent University, Virginia, USA
This paper describes how Tyndale's English Bible
established the bat- tleground for the ideas that led to
the English Reformation, England's subsequent civil
revolutions, and the foundation for America's revolution
with England. It sheds light on the often missing
historical link between the English Bible and its impact on
the American Revolution.
- The Puritan Bible and the Westward Expansion
1789-1860
-
Douglas R. Forrester
William Tyndale College, Farmington Hills MI, USA.
The English Bible came to America in the first
migrations. But it was the Puritans of England's East
Anglia, arriving in Boston in 1629 to establish the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, who made the English Bible so
dominant in the American culture that theirs became know
early as the “Bible Colony”. There are numerous
accounts of the progress of the Bible in the colonies, its
seeming declension in the early seventeenth century, it
revival with the first American printings in 1777, and the
subsequent establishment of Bible Societies by 1817 with
the goal of putting a Bible in every American home. But a
less understood story of the Early Republic was the
settlement of the Northwest Territories by several
generations of migrants from New England who settled in
western New York following the Erie Canal. After revivals
under Charles Finney in the 1820's, subsequent generations
migrated to northern Ohio and southern Michigan to
establish a “Yankee” culture there. Ohio's
Western Reserve and Michigan's southern Yankee tier were
the result. Every township in these new states was required
to provide a school as soon as fifty families had settled.
The schoolmasters were pastors and the primary text was the
Bible. The result was that the transplanted Yankees from
New England and New York established a tier of Armenian
churches and col- leges along the Michigan-Ohio border that
still exist. The leaders of these schools became leaders in
the anti-slavery movement and the founding of the
Republican party in Jackson Michigan in 1856.
- The Impact of the Bible on Asian American Writing: The
Cases of Richard E. Kim, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Li-Young
Lee
-
Dr. John Han
Associate Professor of English, Missouri Baptist
University, St. Louis, MO, USA.
In his article, “The Influence of the King James
Version on English Literature,” Cleland Boyd McAfee
identifies three areas of biblical influence on English
literature: style, language, and material. English writers
influenced by the Bible typically use simplistic style,
refer liberally to the Bible, and turn to the Bible for
their characters, illustrations, and subject matters.
Numerous books and articles have been written about the
influence of the English Bible on mainstream authors. A
substantial amount of research has also focused on the
impact of Scripture on Afro-American writers.
Unfortunately, little critical attention has been given to
the use of the Bible by Asian-Ameri- can writers. The
purpose of this paper is to examine how three critically
acclaimed Asian American writers Richard E. Kim, Theresa
Hak Kyung Cha, and Li-Young Lee turned to Scripture for
their style, language, and material. Biblical themes and
techniques permeate The Martyred,
Kim's first novel that existentially examines Christian
faith in the face of a Communist persecution. Li-Young
Lee's collection of poetry Book of My
Nights, which addresses God, eternity, and heaven,
among others, illustrates not only the poet's familiarity
with Scripture but also his biblical vision of reality.
Finally, biblical motifs and themes are prominent in
Dictee, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's
volume of poetry. The conclusion of this paper addresses
some of the implications of the use of Scripture by Asian
American authors.
- The Bible as Cultural Keel and Rudder for Individual
Faith and Duty
-
Dr Beverly M. Hedberg
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Regent University,
Virginia, USA.
In the prologue of his Five Books of
Moses, Called The Pentateuch, William Tyndale gives
an insightful and thought-provoking perspective on the
usefulness of the scriptures — one refined in the
furnace of tragedy and affliction and plucked from the
flames of dedication and commitment. “So now the
scripture is a light and sheweth vs the true waye, both
what to do, and what to hope.”
A culture benefits from the principal timbers of its
frame drawing their support from eternal and unchanging
truth. For such a culture then to thrive requires that
there be a yielding of its collective will to the guidance
and governance of an omniscient reality.
In its voyage over the seas of time, that particular
segment of a culture responsible for the administration of
public affairs also derives benefits from the willing
service of individuals with keels of faith and rudders of
duty set upon the fixed, uniform and universal principles
of the Word of God.
The culture and the individual find in that single
source, the light — as Tyndale saw it — that
reveals, not only “what to do” in the present
but also “what to hope” for the future. For it
is not only in current reality that the “true
waye” surfaces, it is also in what that
“light…sheweth” of the future that fuels
the assent of our minds and the setting of our moral
obligations. Through a review and analysis of relevant
literature, patterns surface suggesting a sense of the
impact of the Bible within these cultural and individual
dynamics.
- ‘Why so much on religion?’ The Bible in
Teaching American Literature
-
Prof. Donald J. Millus
Professor of Renaissance Literature, Coastal Carolina
University, South Carolina, USA.
Some years ago, a student from France asked me at the
beginning of a survey course in American Literature, why I
place so much emphasis on religion and the Bible. My
response was that it is impossible to understand our
literature without knowledge of both. From our contemporary
writing and film back to the roots of the Pilgrim and
Puritan settlers and thence forward through the Romantic
writers of the nineteenth century, the Bible looms large
even with agnostic writers from Paine through Melville.
The presentation is both practical and anecdotal, based
on my thirty years of teaching American Literature with
Tyndale on my mind.
- The Eliot Bible of 1663
-
Dr Herbert L. Samworth
Sola Scriptura, Orlando, Florida, USA.
The official seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
depicted a Native American uttering the Macedonian cry of
“Come Over and Help Us.” Many people are aware
of the political events in England that brought the Pilgrim
and Puritan colonies to the New World during the 1620's.
Fewer are aware of the settlers' interest in bringing the
Gospel and the Word of God to them.
One individual who was vitally interested in this task
was John Eliot (1604 – 1690). Following his
graduation from Cambridge, and assisting Thomas Hooker as a
schoolteacher near Chelmsford, Essex, Eliot immigrated to
the New World in 1631 and settled the following year in
Roxbury, Massachusetts.
From the beginning, it appeared that Eliot saw his life
work as providing the Native Americans with the Word of God
in their own language. It is nearly impossible to document
accurately all the obstacles that he faced. Yet through
them all, Eliot persevered and in 1661 the Massachusetts
New Testament was printed. The entire Bible followed just
two years later in 1663.
The story of this Bible, known familiarly as the
Eliot Bible, and how it was
published provides one of the most exciting chapters of
American Colonial History. Addendum: The Sola Scriptorium
holds one of the eighteen surviving copies of the Eliot
Bible.
- The Bible in America Museum
-
Dr Diana Severance
Curator, Houston Baptist University, Houston, USA
See entry below
- The Southern Bible: Society and Scripture in the Old
South
-
Prof. Glen Spann
Associate Professor of History, Asbury College,Wilmore,
Kentucky, USA.
On 11 December, 1863, George Browder, minister in the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South Kentucky, recorded these
words in his diary: “Times now look like slavery is
doomed. If such be the will of God I say Amen—but I
cannot so understand the Bible.” Although a resident
of the non-seceding state of Kentucky, Browder sympathized
with the Confederacy and was himself a slave owner. His
terse comment reveals not only his own view of slavery but
also that of many of his contemporaries. In the antebellum
era many Americans - North and South - turned to the pages
of holy writ as they grappled with the reality of slavery.
That many Southerners (as well as some Northerners) thought
they discovered there a justification for African slavery
comes as no surprise to those familiar with the story of
the debate over the “peculiar institution”.
But, often many have considered this biblical pro-slavery
defense nothing more than a religious gloss for
slavery.
This paper considers the ways white Southern Americans
utilized their Bibles to shape their communities, their
society, and their institutions, including the practice of
holding slaves. The major purpose is not so much to rehash
the well-documented fact that Southerners crafted a
pro-slavery defense from scripture, but rather to
demonstrate how such an exercise was not a crass attempt to
“bring in the Bible” as a justification for
human bondage and how Southern people understood their
society in all its contours as manifesting the principles
of biblical faith.
- Missionary Efforts toward the Christianization and
Religious Instruction of Negro Slaves 1701-1765
-
Quency E. Wallace
Williamsburg, Virginia, USA.
This paper explores the impact of the English Bible and
the Anglican and Methodist efforts to Christianize African
Slaves in the period of 1701-1765 in America. Methodology
for instruction of African Slaves in the English Bible is
discussed, as well as the impact of this effort in the
development of the black itinerant ministry and subsequent
birthing of the black church in America.
