Our recent discussion on California’s new state-sanctioned marriages generated some comments from me on issues I’ve been meaning to put on the front page for months. They were addressed to P Mike, Bill Harrison, and “Bad,” who all had interesting things to say that I wanted to respond to. These are not “you’re all wrong you dorks” comments, but they are responses I thought useful to understanding a broader issue, so I wanted to put them here on the front page for discussion in their own right. (To see or take part in the original discussion, go here, but if you comment on this current front page article please restrict your remarks to the issues of religion and American political life and history, not the “same-sex marriage” controversy.) My comments are as follows:
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Oh, as to your other points Bill: More than one of the Founders actively and vociferously denied any notion that the United States was founded to be in any way a "Christian Nation." And no, I don’t just mean Thomas Jefferson. I mean the likes of George Washington (who went out of his way to assure early Jewish Americans that America was not a Christian Nation) and John Adams, who himself was anti-Christian (or at least anti-Trinitarian, putting him outside more than 90% of the world’s Christians), and who as President proudly endorsed and put before the Senate a treaty in the 1790s which boldly proclaimed to our allies that we were not, and never had been founded to be, a Christian Nation. That particular treaty was ratified unanimously by the Senate a scant 10 years after the Constitution was written, with many of America’s founders members of that prestigious body.
The United States was founded by a coalition of religious, non-religious, and semi-religious people. A certain subset of them argued hard for the U.S. on Christian grounds, but they were countered by Tories who claimed that the rebellion against His Majesty George III was rebellion against God (which the Bible clearly suggests that it was, by the way). Those founders who gave a damn about the religious arguments were mostly busy arguing with their fellow Christians about it, while others didn’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other they just wanted the bloody British out. The myth that most of the founders viewed Christianity as central is just that: a myth. Religiously, a lot of them hated each other’s guts if they cared about religion at all.
America was and is a Christian nation in the sense that most of its people are culturally Christian, and have been from the beginning. And, believing Christians have long made a huge impact on our development, and continue to do so. The remarkable notion that religious freedom and individual conscience are to be respected by the state is ultimately a Christian good, but if that value is embedded in Christianity then it should be a great source of shame to Christians that it took 1,800 years to find it. A little humility would seem in order on that front.
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P Mike and Bad: Well, I agree with much of what both of you say, but not all of it.
Protestantism was and remains the dominant strain of Christianity in the United States, even though Catholics have been here from the beginning and many fought for the Revolution, some of them quite heroically (Casimir Pulaski and the Marquis de LaFayette being notable examples). Still, while Protestantism was a crucial influence on multiple levels, culturally and otherwise, it’s key to understanding these issues to realize something that’s happened in the last few generations: particularly in certain parts of the country, "Protestantism" has frequently become a sort of amorphous blob of no-particular-creed Bible-Centric Christians who generally believe that if you’re not-Catholic you’re Protestant. It’s not clear to me that these folks even should be calling themselves Protestant, but I guess if they want to use that label they can. Let me explain why this is important, because it’s something a lot of people don’t grasp:
Probably the most dominant strain of Protestantism in America during the time of the Revolution was Episcopalianism, which for all practical purposes, especially at that time, can be viewed as "Catholic Lite." They maintained the hierarchy of bishops and the priesthood, in apostolic succession traced all the way back to the first Archbishop of Canterbury (Augustine). George Washington, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and many other founders were raised Episcopalians although some of them drifted toward Deism or its very close cousin, Unitarianism (i.e. anti-Trinitarianism that completely flies in the face of the beliefs of most Protestants).
Washington’s views are not clear but when he did go to Church he almost always went to Episcopalian services, just for example. The State Church of Virginia (and some of the other early states) was Episcopalian.
Indeed, one of the major forces behind the crafting of the 1st amendment was efforts by Southern Baptists, particularly in places like Virginia, who wanted to make sure that their religious liberty would not be hampered by Episcopalianism under the new Constitution. Those same exact Southern Baptists who were so instrumental in giving us the 1st Amendment also eventually gave us Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, as well as Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King.
Although I’m not fond of this particular Bible translation (the NIV) it is wildly popular amongst that minority of the world’s Protestants who are known variously as "fundamentalists" or "evangelical" (or what I think of as "Bible-Only"), and it is very easy to read and accurate on issues like this, so I have here a quote from it that should be useful:
"Romans chapter 13: 1 Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4 For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor."
This and other parts of the Bible was used by many early Americans on the anti-Revolutionary side to assert that rebellion against His Majesty George III was rebellion against God. Indeed, unlike the Roman authorities at the time that St. Paul wrote that passage, George III was a Christian, crowned by a bishop, who maintained the title "Defender of the (Christian) Faith."
Some of the quotes mined from the founders about God and the Revolution came from efforts by the rebels to assure their fellow Christians that the fight was legitimate. This context is key to understanding the occasional passages you’ll find from the likes of Jefferson, Washington, and others: political necessity forced some of them to turn to religious matters when they would have preferred to ignore the issue. The Christian faith was being used against them by their fellow Americans who were loyal to the Crown, and they had to fight back. (After the loyalists lost, some of the Christians among them even hightailed it up to Canada or to the UK or even to places like Australia, declaring the United States a work of the devil. Others basically turned inward and did their best to ignore the new government.)
Thus it is not quite right to suggest that Protestantism formed the core of the American experiment. But it, and Christianity in general, played an undeniably huge role. And yes, while the Lutherans maintained their own apostolic-succession-derived Bishops as well as the Episcopalians, they and the Calvinists and related Protestant groups like the Baptists, with a stronger focus on individual conscience than other Christians, were a huge influence on the idea of individual freedom of conscience being a key right.
Congregationalist Protestantism, which basically throws out the hierarchical authority of the bishops (and is anathema to Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, and many other Protestants), also is arguably part of where the idea of populist democracy gained a foothold in the popular imagination, although the idea also went back to the ancient non-Christian Greeks and Romans.
I might also note that the United States had, and still has, strongly Pagan roots. That’s what you’re looking at whenever you look at a statue or portrait of Lady Liberty, just for example. She’s Libertas, a Roman Goddess. Many of the intellectual Founders, like Jefferson and Franklin, were *huge* fans of Greek and Roman mythology; there’s even a semi-famous letter from John Adams to his son John Quincy Adams admonishing him not to neglect his studies of ancient Greek, which he viewed as indispensible to the educated and cultured mind. If you spend much time in Washington D.C. you’ll see an awful lot of statuary and such that’s straight out of Greek and Roman mythology–undeniably so.
The intersection of faith and politics has always been a complicated and fascinating business in the United States. It isn’t new. The friction’s always been there. I already gave the examples of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King, but it’s not like these religious folks went underground in the 1790s and popped back up in the early 20th Century. William Jennings Bryan, noted anti-Darwinist and social progressive, was three times nominated by the Democratic Party for President of the United States. His status as a Presbyterian minister and firey religious orator was inseparable from his political life, as he viewed Darwinism as both a religious abomination and a threat to the progressive, populist-liberal values he championed, and his best known speech contains his most famous line:
"Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
That speech was delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 1896. He was a pro-silver progressive, you see, because he wanted to increase inflation in order to help poor struggling farmers and laborers with easy credit. But don’t kid yourself that populist Christian rhetoric was not central to his popularity. It was. And while we’re on the subject of famous Democrats, let’s not forget ordained Baptist minister James Earl Carter, who wore his status as a "born again Christian" on his sleeve and still teaches Sunday School last I heard, and whose religious affiliation was crucial to his successful election in 1976.
So, it is not true that Christianity and/or its Protestant derivation all by itself was central to the American revolution, but it did play a crucial role on both sides. It is also not true that religion and politics only became a source of conflict and misunderstanding in recent decades. Our status as a "Christian nation" has never been official, and was actively denied by many of the founders. But it’s a fact that Christianity has played a huge role in our politics from day one, and that’s never stopped. I don’t see it stopping any time soon, either.
So there. :-)
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Discuss.
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I’m not sure why you phrase this as any sort of disagreement with me, even minor, since I think both your previous summary and this are basically accurate. There is no question at all that trying to tell the history, either intellectual or political, of the US without understanding Christianity is simply impossible. I think a lot less secularists dispute this than their critics would like to admit.
What I actually object to is the idea that the things we like about the American experiment today are uniquely or truly built on any one such thing as "Christianity." As you note, the very fact that all the people who argued AGAINST these innovations were all Christians as well makes that presumption highly problematic. Christianity took nearly two millenia to figure out that what Jesus really wanted was representative government in a bicameral legislature? Or that people should have the right to bear arms? Please. Ideas about individual liberty were just as much a reaction to religion as they were generated by it, and at base, what you have is not "religion" doing anything at all, but people: people who as often as not changed their religions for the better, rather than the other way around.
At base, all of these debates are not really about history, but about the feeling some modern Christians have that they and their particular religion, just because it falls under the same umbrella term as that of the founders, should get special treatment and special kudos. That if we aren’t Christian, we should feel especially indebted to Christianity for our freedoms and liberty.
That case would make a HECK of a lot more sense if it asked me to be specially thankful for some very specific sects of Christianity and not others, and some very specific Christian thinkers and not others, without pretending that they’re weren’t just as many Christians opposed to those guys as supported them. But even then, it’s all a sloppy, simplistic, trivializing stretch, and the genetic fallacy to boot. Ideas are as good as they are on their own merits, not their ancestry, even if that ancestry was easy to discern.
Let’s learn history because we’re fascinated by it, by a grand story impossible to sum up or distill down into any single ideology playing the hero.
Bad’s last blog post..The Bible: Read it as Being Correct OR Take Seriously What it Actually Says?
The most successful Christian-derived philosophy in the USA today, I think, might be Quakerism.
Not the formal version of the Society of Friends, but the radically pacifistic, ‘seeing that of God in others’, "speaking truth to power", etc. traditions – those, I think, have become so embedded within our Republic that we’ve some difficulty thinking that at one time those values were anathema to us, including to many of the Founding Fathers.
That this philosophy so derived is no longer formally Christian makes no difference to its essentially religious character.
I wouldn’t characterize the founders love of classical Greek and Roman imagery and style as any endorsement or affiliation with Pagan religious practices or beliefs. I don’t know of any evidence that any of the founders held those particular beliefs.Â
Certainly they held Roman and Greek imagery and thought in high regard (although that was not uncommon then) and deliberately stole imagery and terminology from that period but that isn’t the same has saying that the Pagan religions of the Greeks or Romans had a great deal of influence on the founders or America.Â
Dave Justus’s last blog post..Obama and Africa
Bad: Well, I did say that I wasn’t giving "you’re wrong" responses. However, you did say, amongst other things:
"In some ways, the only thing that was born half a century ago was the notion that nation was inherently Christian."
It was partly in response to that, and other things. The Christian character of the nation is undeniable, and its influence on our politics has always been vast, and I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that.
Secularism is a good value in and of itself, but the notion that we’re an inherently rigidly secular nation is every bit as daft as the notion that America’s founders whipped out their Bibles, found the basis of the Constitution there, and founded a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal because that was so clearly what their faith taught them.
Neither view is really reasonable.
Dave Justus: I don’t see how you can hold Greek and Roman religious tales and symbolism in high esteem, and then at the same time say those religions had no influence to speak of.
Here’s a pretty good article on the subject. To say that Paganism had no influence on their thinking seems odd. They often found rich symbolism and inspiration from pagan symbols and tales.
When I say that the idea that the nation was inherently Christian was born fairly recently, I don’t mean the idea that Christianity wasn’t the majority of civil society or that it didn’t play any important role in our history.
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What I mean is exactly what I said: that to the religious right of most our country’s history, our form of government was lamentably non-Christian in the sense that it held no official allegiance to Christianity, either for authority of its laws or the daily functioning of its powers. As I said: they called the founders heretics.
It’s only very recently that there’s been a substantial movement to claim just the opposite: that our laws and values only exist and function insofar as they hold fast to Christian/theistic principle as their true origin, and that this is an idea that the founders had that secularists have tried to subvert.Â
And it’s worked out a lot better for them this way around. How many people under a certain age even know what the original motto of our country was, or that we even have one? How many people think of the Ten Commandments as foundational to our system of laws, despite half of them being blatantly unconstitutional?Â
"Secularism is a good value in and of itself, but the notion that we’re an inherently rigidly secular nation is"
You should have ended this sentence with "…largely a straw man complaint leveled at secularists who don’t make any such claim." Secularism isn’t about the lack of religion. It’s about a framework in which religion is NOT a power abrogated to the government, but is instead kept in the hands of individual citizens, with which they can decide and debate their religious ideas for themselves without the government having any legitimate role.Â
Bad’s last blog post..The Bible: Read it as Being Correct OR Take Seriously What it Actually Says?
Meh. I’ve had rabid secularists pitch all sorts of preposterous nonsense like that at me. I remember being in a discussion wherein I was ostentatiously informed that the United States would never be a truly free nation so long as the words "In God We Trust" were still printed on the money.
The words "God Save The United States And This Honorable Court!" open every session of the Supreme Court. A copy of the 10 commandments, along with a portrayal of Moses, is to be found publicly displayed on the premises. So far, last I looked, no bands of beweaponed Bishops were waiting in the wings to behead any heathens present who objected.
President Jefferson, most frequently quoted on matters of separation of church and state, also made allowances for chaplains serving in the armed forces and signed legislation giving Federal funds to Christian missionaries in the Indian territories, and nobody thought to make much ruckus about it (they were even Catholic if I remember right, which might have been scandalous at the time). About half the states at the time of the ratification of the 1st amendment had official State Churches, and none of the states that ratified that amendment, and none of the men who wrote it, ever suggested it meant those state Churches had to go away–indeed, that’s why it’s phrased "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of a religion," which everybody understood to mean that they would neither attempt to establish a national religion, nor interfere with the right of states to have established religions of their own. (The states eventually did do away with their state religions, but only because those states each individually decided, one by one, to do away with such state sponsorship–because it seemed the right thing to do, not because they believed there was any Constitutional imperative to do so.)
Secularists do themselves no favors by failing to acknowledge such things, or that there are some secularists who are just plain borderline nuts about it.
Er, by the way, just to be a picky jackass, what does "abrogated to the government" mean? Or did you mean "allocated" or something? ;-)
Trivia note: the term "antidisestablishementarianism," which many kids learned in school is the longest regular word in the English language, specifically refers to the political movement opposing disestablishment of the state church. Antidisestablishmentarian forces did not prevail in the various U.S. States in the early 19th Century, but they did succeed in England, which still has an officially established Church of England. I suspect that the very secular English really do think they have religious freedom, not respecting the fact that they’ve got their very own state-sponsored, tax-subsidized Church with a state-appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. (It arguably hasn’t worked out very well for the Anglicans long-term, but that’s a completely different argument.)
Thus, again, I note that secularists have more than a little to answer for themselves when they get over-the-top with their claims about the dangers of allowing any lip service to God to creep its way into government affairs. Focusing on things that actually matter, like rational thought and free inquiry, is more important to me.
Re: "The Pagans"
I think the term is what throws people off, but it’s impossible to deny the enormous influence that classical thought has had on the development of America in particular and on Western Civilization as a whole. Our concepts of philosophy, government, science, rhetoric, architecture, and genre (tragedy, comedy, history, biography, satire) are firmly rooted in Greek thought, just to cite several salient examples. I am hard pressed to come up with something that is truly novel about our culture from the perspective of a classical thinker– especially so if we are to limit ourselves to considering elements of our culture that are "Christian" but not "classical." Indeed it is important to note that Christianity itself is a sort of amalgam of Greek philosophy (most notably stoicism– for example: the “holy spirit,” in addition to sharing the same name in Greek, is very much the same concept as the “logos”.), Judaic monotheism, and the reincarnation imagery of the mystery cult.
I agree with the point that it was not necessarily the religion of the classical Greeks and Romans that so captivated their successors- many of the most interesting classical thinkers had their own doubts about their religious system after all. There remains, however, an undeniable (and healthy) curiosity regarding pagan beliefs.
There’s just no doubt that they were strongly influenced by the Roman Republic, and also by the semi-democratic institutions of the classical Greek city-states, particularly Athens. And that they were strongly influenced by the Pagan symbolism that was so popular in both; the eagle holding a branch, the fasces, Liberty, Hercules, the Parthenon (a temple to Athena), the Muses, caryatids, and more. The Capitol Building and Supreme Court have images of Moses, but also images of Pagan thinkers like Papinian and Gaius and Confusius. You’ll find depictions of Roman gods in statuary and (what the heck is the name for sculptures carved into walls?) such all over Washington DC. Benjamin Franklin designed a medal commemorating the American Revolution and had a Roman God (I think Libertas, not sure) prominently displayed on it.
Pagan imagery and Pagan mythology were indelibly stamped on the thinking of the intellectual Founders. That did not make them Pagans, but some of them weren’t really Christians either, so even though they showed strong Christian influence that wasn’t the only influence.
I’m just as annoyed by people who insist that there must not be a jot or tittle of lip service to the Christian idea of God–which is and always has been the most influential in America–as I am by people who insist that this was founded for the purposes of being a Christian Nation. Both ideas are simply false-to-fact, and a little daffy.
I think you are missing or avoiding the point that the current "Christian Nation" movement is a reaction to the secular movement that envisions a nation never anticipated or even conceived of by the founding fathers. Rather than protecting the right to practice religion in the way we individually choose, the secular movement has managed to use government as a hammer to restrict it, exactly opposite to the original intent. Separation of Church and State today would not be foreign to the people alive when the nation was started, it is extremely similar to the way the Church of England treated other faiths; the fact that is lives under the guise of Constitutionalism would undeniably shock them. In fact the Constitution was intentionally and expressly supposed to prevent repression of religous expression, and there is a rather large body of examples where the recent interpretation of separation has managed to both restrict religous expression and create a hostile climate for such expression. The secular movement has figured out how to use government as a hammer to get religon off the street, and a wide variety of people including (but not limited to) Christian Fundamentalists see this as a wrong thing to do, if not a total perversion of the Constitution.
My understanding (I am open to correction) is that (1) the Church of England was born because the King of England wanted to be free from the authority of the Catholic Church, (2) the Church of England was loosely modeled on the organization of the Catholic Church, with the King being the ultimate arbitrator of morality instead of the Pope, and (3) the Church of England was a prime motivator of emigration to the colonies. From a Protestant point of view, the COE took the worst aspects of the Catholic Church (central authority) and the new nation went too far the other way, leading to near anarchy, which was corrected by the Constitution. Because of the clear rebellion against central authority, which began and was centered in a clear vision that people ought to be allowed to worship as they choose, the Bill of Rights specifies freedom of religous expression. Freedom of religious expression is now being restricted by a new notion of "separation of Church and State."
I don’t strongly disagree with much in your first paragraph, although I think some of that’s exaggerated.
Your generalizations about the Church of England are not exactly wrong, but kinda off. Prior to Luther, all Christians were organized more or less like the Catholic Church, including the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox. C of E was the first "Protestant" movement, and yes it started as a reaction against the Papacy by King Henry VIII, then it started incorporating a lot of doctrines from Luther and to a lesser extent Calvin. It was the foundation of the Episcopalian movement, which is the largest group of Protestants in the world, with over 77 million members. They of course have a priesthood and maintain their bishops, just like most Christians do, including Catholic, Orthodox, and some other Protestant groups. Lutherans also maintain the same basic episcopal structure as the Catholics, the Orthodox, and the Episcopalians, although they abolished their priesthood, having been the first Protestants to do that. (I don’t think they should have done so at all, but that’s another argument and it’s basically their business not mine.)
If you wonder why I grind my teeth whenever Bible-only Christians (who are very much the minority amongst the world’s Christians and even a minority just among Protestants) that’s a big part of why: their tendency to relate everything not in their system of belief and church structure to the Catholic Church and the Pope in Rome, and to assume that "Protestant" means "We just use the Bible, that’s all." Both are wildly inaccurate.
Dean,
I stumbled across a book, "The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States" (Benjamin Morris, originally written in 1864, reprinted in 2007, available at Amazon) that is not very easy to read, but pretty comprehensive (I’m tempted to say exhaustive and exhausting, this is actually a difficult read of using a LOT source material) in documenting – not arguing — that Protestant Christianity was the fundamentally tied to the foundation of the Nation, and that the separation of Church and State was an idea that religon is a personal and distributed matter, not organized and controlled by the State. I’m not enough of a scholar to check, verify, or otherwise evaluate the validity of the information, but it seems pretty straightforward.
Your observation
…to assume that "Protestant" means "We just use the Bible, that’s all." Both are wildly inaccurate.
misses (maybe too strong, "glosses over?") a point. No one takes every word in the Bible as straight-up truth in the absence of context. Even "whole Gospel" churches. It is true (in general) that very few people bother to look at context when they are trying to prove a point, somewhat like typical high school debate where a quote from a reputable source weighs more than logic. We (I was a HS debater) carried file boxes of 3X5 cards with quotes that supported our arguments, no matter if they made sense or not and no matter if the author or the parent article agreed or disagreed with our premise(s). Oddly, I find a lot of the "evidence" in "proofs" that the U.S. was not founded as a Christian nation follows HS debate practice (like a lot of religous arguments); it’s hard to prove a negative, and people feel strongly enough that they think they are right no matter the facts which leads to finding resonance in words out of context to support belief.
(NOTE: This whole paragraph is IMHO, please don’t take offense) I personally think if you are taking a position where the Bible seems contra, then you better do a lot of research and have a clear understanding of the apparent conflict. If the words are transparent, lucid and clear and the context applies to your situation but you just don’t agree, you are wrong. (Protestant view) religon is an individual matter, but there is an absolute and right answer AND it doesn’t change even if society does. A lot of care and effort went into identifing what scriptures were Holy and a lot were rejected. That does not mean there are not other true and God-inspired words and thoughts, just that the ones identifed as the Bible are sacred. All Christian churches (I think all churches, don’t know enough to prove it) believe that God speaks through other writing and sermons, homilies, prayers, thoughts, enviroment, circumstances, etc.
P Mike: I’m somewhat familiar with the book, although my interest in reading it is limited. I do not understand why I’m supposed to think there’s something significant about a book published in 1864, some 90 years after the Revolution. Heck, the President at the time, Abraham Lincoln (shot dead in 1865) was by all accounts never a churchgoing man, rarely invoked the Bible, rarely or never invoked Christ.
And, it is entirely possible to use "High School debating techniques" even in a very lengthy book, I’ve seen it many times from many pseudoscholarly sources, some modern and some vintage. I could give at least one prominent example I know of in the blogosphere, but I’m tired of fighting about it.
But I’ll also mention I’m a little suspicious of the people hawking this book, who prominently say things like how it’s the book "the ACLU doesn’t want you to read" and such, like it’s some secret hidden thing that proves something because it’s long and it’s 140 years old. If it were published in 1780 or 1790 (or better still, 1760 or 1770) I’d be a lot more impressed. I otherwise think I’ve given a fair summation of the views of some of our most prominent Founders and what the actual religious background of the United States looked like in the 1770s.
As for different views of the Bible: Just to be clear, I grew up steeped in two forms of Protestantism, mainline Presbyterianism and Bible-centric fundamentalism. In my personal views, I have a *lot* more respect for the former than the latter. I’m very familiar with both of those Protestant types of approaches to the Bible, and they’re vastly different. Having also studied Anglicanism (historic and modern) as well as Lutheranism and other forms of Protestantism (fundamentalist and non-), all I’m trying to tell you is that there is no one "Protestant" view on how to read and interpret the Bible. And it’s not merely about how to read what’s in the text, but also how to understand the context of the language and the times in which its various books were written, *and*, understanding who exactly chose the books of the Old Testament and which versions (the early Church used and quoted almost exclusively from the Septuagint, and that includes all the New Testament authors and Jesus), and who exactly chose which books, and which of the many VERSIONS of those books, to be canonical New Testament and not (and it will probably shock you to learn that it was the bishops of the Catholic/Orthodox church–no one else).
What Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and many mainline Protestants believe is that scripture cannot be properly interpreted by everyday people who just whip it open and decide for themselves what it means–no matter how hard they study, no matter even if they can recite the entire thing backwards and forwards. That *is* a Protestant idea (one that, for the record, I find wildly questionable), but it’s not accepted by all Protestants at all and never has been. Martin Luther would have spasms if he learned some of what fundamentalists say about the Bible. There *is* no one "Protestant" view of scripture. It just doesn’t exist, on more than very broad generalizations.
What most Christians worldwide believe now, and have always believed, is that the bishops maintain Holy Tradition, of which Scripture is an inseparable and vital part. But if you don’t understand something, or you’re in disagreement over something, you go to the Church for guidance, because Christ established a Church not a Book. That’s not just the Catholic view, it’s also the view of all Orthodox Christians and many Protestants.
I’ve written a series of articles that touch on these things. If you haven’t seen them I’ll link them for you.
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