The Puritans – A City on a Hill

• History:
  • America became identified as “The City on a Hill” from Matthew 5.
  • America claimed promises and judgements intended only for Israel or the church.
• Evaluation:
  • America does not have a special covenant with God but is subject to the Noachian covenant like all nations.

The Revolutionary War – Loyalists versus Patriots

• History:
  • Loyalists focused on The New Testament while Patriots focused on The Old Testament.
  • Romans 13 (about submitting to governing authorities) was the central debate.
  • Loyalists advocated submitting to the King. Patriots claimed Romans 13 only applies when the ruler exercises reasonable and just authority.
• Evaluation:
  • We should view Romans 13 as a general posture toward governing authority.
  • We need to incorporate the whole of Scripture and let passages help interpret each other.

The Civil War – Slaveholders versus Abolitionists

• History:
  • Slaveholders used the “curse of Ham” idea that God cursed Noah’s son as support for a racialized slavery in America.
  • Slaveholders separated spiritual freedom from earthly freedom to convert slaves to Christianity without freeing them from slavery.
  • Abolitionists looked for universal truth behind the superficial reading of the text.
  • Black people drew on Biblical narratives, prophecy, and judgement and applied them to their own context of American slavery.
• Evaluation:
  • Slaveholders used specific prooftext while abolitionists used the overall narrative.
  • Social location determines biblical interpretation. Black Americans identified themselves within the text.
  • Slaveholders and abolitionists both used Scripture to determine abstract moral principles, while Black Americans focused on particular stories. We need to evaluate the context we find ourselves in.

The Social Gospel

• History:
  • The social gospel came out of liberal theology and inner-city contexts.
  • Evangelicals focus on personal conversion has a social component and the social gospel is a part of evangelical history as well.
  • The social gospel sought to Christianize society by submitting political, economic, and social life to the power of Christ.
• Evaluation:
  • The social gospel reformers highlighted neglected passages about justice, but they abstracted them away from their biblical context.
  • Liberals focused on the prophets, the life of Jesus, and read the text as having primarily social and political meaning.
  • Conservatives emphasize Old Testament law, wisdom literature, doctrinal teaching in the epistles, and read the text as having primarily individual and spiritual meaning.
  • We need to examine the biases of our own theological framework and read the whole Bible.
  • The main character in the story of Scripture is God. Sin is both personal and communal. The depth of sin in the world requires divine action.

The Civil Rights Movement

• History:
  • Theology motivated many civil rights activists.
  • Segregationists appealed to God’s natural order to enforce hierarchy.
  • White moderates focused on individual sin and separated social justice from the gospel.
  • God’s aid for the oppressed in the exodus motivated Martin Luther King Jr.
• Evaluation:
  • The church is the proper location for biblical exegesis, and we need caution when interpreting history.
  • Rather than stepping back and evaluating the Bible from a place of supposed objectivity, Black preachers stepped into the text.
  • When we read the Bible, where do we see ourselves? Are we willing to be confronted by the Bible?

The 1980s – Reagan and the Economy

• History:
  • Biblical faith became intertwined with small government and economic freedom.
  • Religious leaders like Pat Robertson were concerned with inflation, currency devaluation, and productivity and saw state power as a threat to the market and the church.
  • Ronald Reagen solidified the relationship between Christians and the Republican political party by combining America’s special favor with God and biblical justifications for a small government.
  • Conservative Christians (e.g. Ronald Nash) argued that the Bible teaches general ethical principles, but science teaches neutral principles of economics. Capitalist economics is just a matter of getting the facts right. The Bible does not provide any systematic teaching on economics.
  • Other Evangelicals (e.g. Ronald Sider) argued that the Bible calls for equalizing mechanisms, prioritizing needs of others, and other social reforms.
• Evaluation:
  • The Bible is concerned with both the spiritual and material.
  • The Bible is written to both individuals and communities.
  • The Bible does not give us a blueprint for government.
  • The Bible isn’t the only source of truth, but it should shape how we interpret all other sources.
  • The Bible does not fit predetermined political categories.
  • The clearest teaching in the Bible about politics is that we should treat our opponents fairly.

The Cold War – Eschatology in The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess

Top Takeaways from The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess

Improving our Interpretation

It is clear from the review of American history that many serious Christians interpreted the same Bible but came to different conclusions about the best biblical approach to political situations. My takeaway from this fact is that there are better and worse ways to interpret the Bible and we need to be intentional to not use the Bible to support what we have already decided is true. We must let the Bible illuminate our own assumptions and biases. We must step back and look at the way we look at Scripture. Then we will be able to humbly submit our biblical understanding and application to God. We don’t just access the power of biblical references without submitting to their content.

As we attempt this approach, there are several themes that we can take away from reviewing The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess. Firstly, we must look at the whole Scripture. What do specific verses say about particular situations or topics? What general principles can we abstract out of the general story of the God’s plan? How can we synthesize it all to apply to our current situation? Does this align with what we know about Jesus, as he is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan?

Literalism

Many people have claimed that their interpretation of the Bible is just the simple, plain, and literal reading of the text. This is approach is ignorant and naive. At a fundamental level, the Bible has already been interpreted for us because we are reading it in English. Languages aside, it was written in another culture and context. John Walton says that the Bible was written for us, but not to us. It was written to a variety of audiences over a long period of time. It is also important to realize that this was God’s plan. He chose to reveal himself through Scripture that was inherently anchored in a specific time and place in human history.

No one actually approaches the Bible completely literally. Everyone understands the most basic usage of poetry, metaphor, and hyperbole. It appears that many people define a literal reading of the text to means a surface level reading, or what comes to mind as obvious. This approach seems intellectually lazy. A follower of Jesus who takes the Bible seriously should seek to understand what the Bible actually means. This primarily involves understanding the author’s intent, the original audience’s interpretation, and the genre of the text. A mere surface level reading cannot do this.

Literalism is Biased

A literal approach to biblical interpretation prioritizes the reader’s culturally created framework and biases. We are not blank slates. What comes to our minds from a surface level reading is formed by our worldview, social situation, and preexisting intellectual categories, which are always going to be different than the author and original audience.

Descriptive Versus Prescriptive

A literal approach to reading Scripture also neglects the vital distinction between what is descriptive and what is prescriptive. The Bible is a unified story of God’s plan for redemption. It is full of morally flawed characters. There are times when God accommodates to less-than-ideal situations because of our sin. It requires discernment to understand what is descriptive and when something should be emulated. From there, it is also a challenge to apply some of the prescriptive parts to a completely different culture and context.

Critique of The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess

Privilege of the Oppressed

I agree that there is a place of privilege for the oppressed in the Bible. The first sermon preached by Jesus after starting his ministry was based on a quote from Isaiah. Jesus says he came to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Read more in – The Gospel – What Did Jesus Think He Was Doing?)

My critique of the analysis of Kaitlyn Schiess in The Ballot and the Bible is the privilege she seems to give to the oppressed in interpretating the Bible. I don’t think that God being on the side of the oppressed implies that the oppressed are able to better interpret the Bible. While it may be true, it isn’t consistent to claim that it is wrong for Americans to appropriate the texts about God’s blessings and judgement written to Israel and the church but right for Black Americans to appropriate the texts written about the Israelites in the exodus narrative.

What is the standard interpretative principle that can be used consistently that would allow us to make this distinction? I don’t think it is based on race or power versus oppression. While it may be insightful to step into the story from different perspectives, we need to step back out in order to determine what to do in our current context. Going back to the top takeaways above, a better approach would be to synthesize the particular situations with general abstractions through the whole of scripture. We should all learn from each other’s perspectives without automatically privileging any one over others.

Evaluation of The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess

Overall, I give The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess a 6/10. Schiess does a good job surveying the way Scripture has been used in politics in American history. The chapters cover a good variety of significant points and provide insights from multiple perspectives.

The book is focused on methods of interpretation and less on specific policies. It may be more academic in style than some readers would prefer.

In most of the scenarios, it is easy to look back and see who was right in how they used the Bible historically. You are not going to find almost anyone today trying to defend slavery using the Bible. It is harder to take the lessons we learn and apply them in our contemporary situation without the benefit of hindsight. While much of the historical survey is new, the insights on how to interpret the Bible are not going to be new to most people who would consider reading this book.

This book is not focused on the history of how we got to the point today where many evangelicals support the Republican party or Donald Trump. For that, you will have to look elsewhere.

Conclusion