this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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They do read the Bible though, at least in my experience. I've gone to a number of different churches, Evangelical and otherwise, and the Evangelical or otherwise Calvinist folks were the ones that read the Bible the most and in the most detail — but perhaps also the ones who came to horrible conclusions the most often. Like that you should shine the light of Christ into the world by blocking women for promotion at your job, because 1 Tim 2:12 says that Paul does not permit them to have authority over men. (Real example, if possibly the worst one I've seen.) Maybe my experience is not representative, but I don't think the problem is primarily that Evangelicals don't read the Bible.
I have a long theory about some of the ways that Evangelicalism distorts Scripture, but one root of the issue is that (IMHO) Scripture was written by humans, reflects the biases of the authors and their societies, and has a lot of horrible things in it. If you take a sola scriptura view and then read it through a lens that's been cultivated over years to reinforce patriarchy and supremacy (see e.g. Manifest Destiny, the curse of Ham, etc) then you will end up absorbing the genocidal and supremacist bits and not the hospitable and altruistic bits.
For sure. People don't want to repent. They want to find justifications for what they were already doing, or planning to do.
Agreed, over the years I've come to firmly believe the root cause of all the Christian extremism we have nowadays is the literal interpretation of the scripture by Evangelicals. When you take every word of that book as law and you refuse to acknowledge some of it shouldn't be relevant anymore, you end with some really absurd worldviews and beliefs. Especially in those small churches without affiliation to some larger religious body, without some authority dictating what is acceptable and what isn't, the insanity runs amok.
This is something I admire in the Catholic church, their willingness to reinterpret the Bible to current circumstances, they get a lot of flak (deservedly so) for some things, but at least they have that going for them.
Grew up Reformed Christian and you hit the nail on the head… Or hand, or whatever.