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Biblical Scholars ... Defined
by William Edelen
| The vast majority of ministers are NOT biblical scholars. I am not. I must depend on top scholars who have the highest academic credentials. Let me define biblical scholar. I am referring to those scholars who are considered competent authorities in the departments of religion in MAJOR universities or MAJOR theological seminaries. I don't mean someone in some small denominational seminary who must repeat the party line to hold his job, or some "teacher" in a fundamentalist seminary with such low standards of academic requirements that it cannot even be accredited. |
The vast majority of ministers are NOT biblical scholars. They have rather been indoctrinated with whatever their particular denomination wanted them to propagate. |
About 99 percent of ministers who are called "Dr." have not earned a Doctor's degree or a Ph.D. The doctorate is an honorary Doctorate of Divinity, presented usually by some small church college after a financial contribution from the church, or bought from a small, non-accredited school for 50 bucks. I have only known ONE minister with an EARNED Ph.D. in Religious Studies in my forty years of church associations. |
An Editorial in the Wall Street Journal once called us "a nation of religious illiterates." If you ask how that can be with so many people in church and Sunday School every week, the answer is easy. Only a few ministers have come from theological seminaries with really top-flight education. Those who have must repress it in order to hold a church who wants to hear only what mama told them about the bible. They cannot afford to lose their jobs, even for academic and intellectual integrity. And so they do not bring to their congregations the latest research being done by scholars in religion in the major universities of the world. |
I asked the Minister in one large Episcopal church why he did not bring a certain respected scholar in to speak. "God, Bill," he answered, "I would lose half my congregation and half the annual budget for the church!" |
When I was minister of a Congregational church in Idaho, one of the largest donors left the church after telling me: "I don't care what you learned in seminary and in your graduate studies…I want to hear only about my bible and my sweet Jesus." |
After my second year of teaching in the religion department of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, I found myself increasingly appalled at the religious illiteracy of the students. I asked the Chairman of the Department if my classes were unusual. His answer: |
"Bill, I have been teaching here for 28 years, and I still find it just beyond belief that these students can reach this University so untouched by learning, with most of them having had 14 years or so of Sunday Schools and sermons. They obviously have had nothing but pablum." |
What would it be if Sunday School teachers had to take competency and proficiency exams prior to being allowed to influence the minds and spirits of our young people? Examinations on their knowledge of the history of religions...mythological diffusion...language problems in biblical literature...the influence of other religious themes on Christian themes...and on and on into the bright light of knowledge. |
A nation of "religious illiterates" is the understatement of the year. |
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