Intellectual Dishonesty and Bad Hermeneutics

education, interpretation, Jesus, Paul, science and religion, theological education, women,

People frequently ask Sophia faculty and trustees what we intend to prepare our students to be and do. This entry is the fourth and final installment in answer to that question. With thanks to my faculty colleagues, Drs. Melissa Jackson and Jon Barnes, it continues our statement concerning how Sophia seeks to prepare individuals and a community for having the mind and doing the work of Christ more authentically today.

Intellectual dishonesty – The science vs. faith dichotomy that predominates in much of the church seems to require that one divorce one’s mind from one’s belief. The result is two distinct realms of discourse, two distinct worldviews, or, as Stephen Jay Gould has put it, two “non-overlapping magisteria.” In such a situation, no communication whatsoever can occur across the boundary between faith and reason. The systems produce completely incompatible understandings of the world, of humanity, and of the “criteria for human flourishing.” Looking ahead, then, neither of the two options regarding the relationship between theology and empirical science—denial or divorce—has proven to be healthy or helpful. The former inevitably results in stances such as contemporary climate change denial; the latter forestalls any communication between faith and science in an untenable epistemological dualism. Thomas K. Johnson laments the direction of Christian theology that resulted in a false dichotomy between faith and science and, ultimately, in the diminishment of Christian influence on decision-making in the public square. As he put it, “We theologians disarmed God’s people on the eve of the battle with exclusive secularism, so our people did not know how to address the public square . . . without giving the impression that person or a society must follow Jesus to know the difference between right and wrong.” The problem reaches even deeper than the somewhat arrogant and exclusivist claim that Christian ethics has roots in a sphere of truth inaccessible to non-Christians. Disdain for empirical science subjects Christian ethics to charges that it is esoteric, blindly ideological, and anti-intellectual or at least intellectually dishonest. Christian anti-intellectualism eliminates any possibility of speaking a common language with non-believers. Vibrant faith does not deny reason and experience.

Bad Hermeneutics* – Intellectual dishonesty, in turn, contributes to the ignorance and misunderstanding of the tradition rooted in Scripture that pollutes the thoughts and actions of much of contemporary Christianity. Often, the problem manifests itself in the supposed conflict between biblical faith and modern science. The biblical authors did not have, could not even anticipate, and therefore could not incorporate into their writings, the vast knowledge about the universe revealed to us by modern science. Indeed, the Bible nowhere claims that it reveals the summation of knowledge about the world. This circumstance is not a problem for believers unless they are unwilling to “harmonize” the ancient and the modern, so to speak. The Bible intends to tell the story of God’s relationship with a community of faith, not to teach science. Worldviews change continually as people acquire more information and understanding. The need to harmonize modern and ancient worldviews does not always apply, however. On many questions, especially regarding matters of wisdom, faith, and righteousness (cf. 2 Tim 3:15-16), the worldviews of ancient Israel and the early church stand against modern understandings and practices. The Bible that commissions God’s people to be “light” to the world and that calls for loving others, even Samaritans and those who hate us, as we love ourselves, does not support protectionism, isolationism, or any actions that manifest lack of empathy – personally, communally, or nationally.

Bad hermeneutics fueled by intellectual dishonesty surfaces in hyper-emphases on certain texts, read without regard to cultural contexts, literary contexts, or the empirical evidence that the world surrounds us with. One example involves the patriarchy that functions as a substrate in both Testaments because it characterized the cultures of the world in which Israel and later the Church came into existence. As early as Genesis, however, the Bible undercuts the idea that gender hierarchy conforms to God’s will. God created humankind in God’s image; both male and female reflect God’s likeness (Gen 1:26-27), for example. A range of other texts about prominent women in the Hebrew Bible contribute to a critique of the notion that gender hierarchy represents God’s intention:  Deborah, Jael, Huldah, etc. Good biblical interpretation does not shoehorn the stories of these women into a construct of the “submissive woman.” Arguably the clearest example of a text dangerously misinterpreted through selective emphasis and intellectual dishonesty is 1 Tim 2:8-12:

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; also that women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. (RSV)

Perhaps the first thing one should note in this text involves the fact that the author reports his own position and practice: “I desire,” “I permit” (cf. 1 Cor 7:25-26). He makes no claim to be proclaiming a divine mandate. Second, the text notably expresses as much concern for women’s appearance as it does for their silence. The description of a well-dressed and well-coiffed woman speaking before a group of men calls to mind the hetairai or “courtesans” known in the Hellenistic Mediterranean world. Paul elsewhere expressed concern that Hellenistic converts who came from unsavory backgrounds (“And such were some of you,” 1 Cor 6:11, RSV) take care to distance themselves from their pasts. Notably, those today who emphasize the idea that women should “learn in silence” rarely also decry expensive clothing, fashionable hairstyles, pearl necklaces. Third, 1 Tim 2:8-12 should also be read in the literary context of the entirety of scripture, including and especially Paul’s statement concerning the equality in Christ of Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (Gal 3:28).

Sophia intends to focus on reading scripture honestly and taking seriously Jesus’ mandate to “love the Lord your God…with all your mind.”

* (Portions of this discussion have been adapted from entries dated to February through April of 2025.)

Cultural Captivity and Inhospitality

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People frequently ask Sophia faculty and trustees what we intend to prepare our students to be and do. This entry is the third installment in answer to that question. With thanks to my faculty colleagues, Drs. Melissa Jackson and Jon Barnes, it continues our statement concerning how Sophia seeks to prepare individuals and a community for having the mind and doing the work of Christ more authentically today.

In addition to addressing the fundamental inauthenticity that infects American Christianity, Sophia’s curriculum and pedagogy must confront the idolatrous cultural captivity – in an extreme form in Christian White Supremacism, but also in the normativity of middle-class values. As Robert Jones writes in White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,  “The historical record of lived Christianity in America reveals that Christian theology and the institutions that have been the central cultural tent pole holding up the very idea of white supremacy.”)  Allegiance to a particular culture or to the nation-state is idolatry and reflects a pseudo-soteriology. It is idolatry because it involves a penultimate entity calling for ultimate devotion. It is pseudo-soteriology because it confuses the state with the source of all blessing. Sophia’s response: rigorous and unflinching study of the scriptural witness and of the church’s historical struggle with the relationship between faith and political power (Constantinianism and the [ana]baptist insistence on the wall of separation, for example).

This cultural captivity also includes a chauvinism with regard to non-Western expressions of Christianity. Outsiders see the body of those called Christian as a social entity comprised of like-minded, like-race, individuals who value the maintenance of the status quo, the entertainment quality of worship services, and the attainment of middle-class security.  Nothing in this vision bespeaks the radical change Jesus brings to human lives. Nothing in it announces the call to Christ-like servanthood. Nothing in it points beyond the egocentrism of modern consumer culture. American Christians too easily identify a certain version of American culture as an expression of God’s will: American exceptionalism, which often means “America first” (both in terms of supremacy and priority, as it seems to right now) and often suggests an “America, love it or leave it” attitude.  American Christians tend to baptize market forces, even within the church, and to idolize the American system of government. As Philip Jenkins has noted, “[if] we want to visualize a ‘typical’ contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or a Brazilian favela” and not a white, middle-class family living in suburbia. Sophia’s curriculum will place special emphasis on developing critical awareness of one’s own culture and open-minded appreciation of the cultures of others.

This cultural captivity, along with the perceived normativity of Western forms of faith, often finds expression in a stark inhospitality that keeps us from being able to experience (and indeed celebrate!) the many ways Christian faith is lived in our world and the many gifts that can be shared and received. First, many do not feel welcome or valued because large swaths of US Christianity have made it clear that they don’t belong. Members of the LGBTQI+ community, the differently abled, and the immigrant are just a few examples. These beloved members of God’s family (and our family members and neighbors) are being told that, despite being created in the imago Dei, they are not worthy of being part of the church (contrast Isa 56:7 and Acts 8:26-40). Second, when looking at migration, our cultural captivity has made us unwilling or unable to recognize the gift of different understandings of God and expressions of faith that exist in our communities. The exponential growth of Christianity in places like Africa, Asia, and Latin America is not just being experienced “over there.” Jehu Hanciles writes that, “new immigrants have transformed America into the most religiously diverse nation on the planet…. [The] majority of … new migrants (at least 60 percent according to one survey) are Christians (from Africa, Asia, and Latin American) who are expressing their Christianity in languages, customs, forms of spirituality, and community formation that are almost as foreign to Americans as other religions. The new immigrant Christian communities are effectively ‘de-Europeanizing’ American Christianity.” While American Christians have the opportunity to worship, build friendships, and find common cause on issues of justice that affect all of us in the communities in which we live, the narrow understanding of faith by many in the US inhibits our ability to receive, learn from, and be transformed by these gifts. Sophia intends to broaden its students’ understanding of the rich diversity and complexity of faithful expression.

An Anti-Dote to Inauthenticity

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Honest Study of the Bible and the Tradition

With some clarity regarding the thorniness of the term “church,” my faculty colleagues at Sophia Theological Seminary, Drs. Melissa Jackson and Jon Barnes, and I have attempted a rough analysis of the negative forces pressuring the body of believers today.  Each element of this analysis, in turn, evokes as a response how Sophia seeks to prepare individuals and a community for embodying the ministry of reconciliation in today’s context.

First, a fundamental inauthenticity, even a profound hypocrisy, plagues the broader community that identifies itself as the body of Christ. The Gospel is clear concerning God’s love for everyone, concerning the fact that, in Christ, there is no gender, ethnic, or social hierarchy, and concerning the clarion call to make peace, to do justice, and to facilitate reconciliation.  Unfortunately, however, the history of the church is too often the story of being on the wrong side of affairs:  resisting civil rights advances, endorsing unjust wars, and perpetuating components of a social and economic structure that silently oppresses minorities. Currently, for example, many in the US who identify themselves as followers of Jesus support government actions apparently designed to intimidate, denigrate, injure, and even kill indiscriminately.  This attitude that divides and demeans contrasts sharply with Jesus’ congratulations for the “peacemakers, who will be called the children of God,” who have been charged with “the ministry of reconciliation.”

Sophia addresses this inauthenticity through careful study of the Bible’s (both portions) staunch insistence on the value of being human, on the notion that doing must be consonant with being, on the recognition that faith and action are but sides of a single coin. At Sophia, students and faculty together honestly examine and acknowledge the history of Christianity’s impact, negative and positive, on human history, human societies, and human beings. At Sophia, students and faculty together will explore avenues and means for redressing the plague of inauthenticity through an audacious commitment to following Jesus.

“Church”: Interrogating a Word

church, reconciliation, theological education, vocation, , , ,

People frequently ask Sophia faculty and trustees what we intend to prepare our students to be and do. In order to answer that question, in part, my faculty colleagues, Drs. Melissa Jackson and Jon Barnes, and I have attempted a rough assessment of the state of affairs prevailing in Western, particularly American, Christianity today. This will be the first in a series of the elements of our analysis. Each will include a statement concerning how Sophia seeks to prepare individuals and a community for having the mind and doing the work of Christ more authentically today.

First, of course, we need clearly to identify the entity/ies for whom we are educating leadership. In so doing, we must interrogate the word “church,” and we must seek clarity regarding the Gospel (“God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self”) and regarding the key function of believers in relation to the larger world (“the ministry of reconciliation,” peacemaking).

Because of its associations with denominationalism, with buildings, and with institutions, the continued use of “church” presents difficulties for some of Christ’s followers, including ourselves, who wish, rather, to focus attention on communities of people actively seeking to encourage and assist one another in the ministry of reconciliation. By implication, then, a Sophia education will not aim at preparing its students to fulfill denominational or institutional roles. Its students may certainly choose such a trajectory, but Sophia recognizes that any number of new incarnations of communities of faith, ‘para-church,’ or non-profit settings may be appropriate contexts for “the ministry of reconciliation.”

What term, then, can best serve as an alternative to “church” that can communicate primarily the idea of the gathered community, rather than of the structures that contain it, both physically and systematically, and too often stifle it. Kyriake (oikia), kyriakon doma, “house of the Lord,” used beginning in the third century CE suggests structures;  Hebrew qahal and Greek ekklesia, the origins of words used in Romance languages (eglise, iglesia, etc.), resonate with the idea of a “body convened for a purpose,” but quickly came to focus on institutional entities (as in usages like ‘the Catholic Church,’ ‘the Methodist Church’); German baptists refer to their congregations as Gemeinden “communities/fellowships,” an option that does not imply hierarchical structure or expectations of rigid doctrinal conformity, but that also does not point to any purpose other than togetherness. The recent coinage, the “kindom” of God, or the biblical image of “the body of Christ” may come closer to describing the entity for whom Sophia seeks to prepare servant leaders. A major factor influencing the erratic trajectory of Western Christianity today is a Christendom mindset that sees Western forms of faith as normative. The fact is that there is no normative, universal Christian faith defined as a set of doctrines or system of structures. There is no one way to live a “Christian life.” As Lamin Sannah has noted, the Christian faith is “infinitely translatable” and each manifestation is faith being lived and believed in a local, cultural idiom. This recognition implies something about the need for theological education to be honest about its limitations: it does not involve requiring assent to a set of answers – doctrines – concerning questions of faith, but engagement with the Christian tradition’s efforts at “faith seeking understanding” (Anselm’s definition of theology). Just as Sophia does not understand the body of Christ as a hierarchical human institution, it does not understand Christian faith as a structure of doctrinal statements. Along the lines of Orthodox apophatic theology, Sophia finds wisdom in acknowledging that, no matter how true a statement concerning God may be, it is also profoundly inadequate.

Protest can be Prophetic

Acts, Amos, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Jesus, justice, prophecy, , ,

Image – “Christ Cleansing the Temple” by El Greco

The actions of three individuals arrested for protesting ICE activities during a worship service at Cities Church (Southern Baptist Convention) in the Minneapolis area early this year (2026) quickly became a topic of debate among Christians. The protesters chose this church, at least in part, because one of its bi-vocational ministers also leads an ICE field office. According to an AP account, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention has voiced one side in the debate over the propriety of protesting in a church during a worship service.  According to them, “compassion for migrant families cannot justify violating a sacred space during worship.”

I have devoted my professional career, my vocation, to the proposition that the Bible can and should serve as the vital and vibrant source of Christian faith and living when interpreted and understood rightly, but that it can also represent a dangerous and destructive factor when read and treated incorrectly (see The Curse of Ham: An Admonitory Case-Study in Misreading Scripture and the series on the Ethical Interpretation of the Bible published February through April, 2025). With respect to voices raised in opposition to the mistreatment of “the least of these,” the SBC leadership seems to have engaged in what I would call “selective interpretation” of scripture – the foundation of their faith tradition – which suggests, rather, that protest can be prophetic, even when conducted in the sanctuary.

Amos 7:12-17 records the admonition of Amaziah, the priest at the sanctuary in Bethel, for Amos to cease protesting/prophesying against Israel’s worship practices in the absence of justice and righteousness (Amos 5:21-24; cf. 4:4). Amos responded that he was only preaching the message God had given him to preach and that the fate awaiting Amaziah and Israel would be bleak. Over a century later, in his famous Temple Sermon (Jer 7 and 26), the prophet Jeremiah stood in the Temple on God’s instruction and denounced the Judeans for their unfaithfulness to God and their unethical treatment of one another (7:5-9) and for their unfounded confidence in their sacrificial piety (7:21-26). Their behavior belied their claims to be “saved” (7:10). Indeed, by their presence, they had turned the sanctuary into the gathering-place of criminals! Consequently, God warned them through Jeremiah, that, if they persisted in their misdeeds, the Jerusalem temple would suffer the same abandonment and destruction that once befell the sanctuary at Shiloh. Jeremiah 7 seems to focus on the content of the sermon; Jeremiah 26 apparently reports the audience response to it. The priests, prophets, and people seized (i.e. arrested) Jeremiah and charged him with treason (26:8-9, 10-11)!

Significantly, although they differ on chronological and other details, two of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt 21:12-13 and Luke 19:45-47; cf. John 2:14-16) draw direct parallels between Jesus’ act known as the “Cleansing of the Temple,” in which Jesus drove the money-changers from the Temple along with the animals (pigeons according to Matt; sheep and oxen according to Luke) on sale there for use in sacrifice, scattered their coins, and overturned their tables. According to both of the Synoptics, Jesus’ justified his actions with a statement combining the vision of a bright future found in Isaiah 56:7 (“for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations”) and, tellingly, recasting the rhetorical question of Jeremiah 7:11 (“Has this house, which is called by name, become a den of thieves”) as the declaration, “but you make it/have made it a den of thieves.” It is equally telling that, as with Jeremiah, the religious leadership later interpreted Jesus’ attitude toward the temple as treasonous, even blasphemous (cf. Matt 26:57-66).

These three examples of many biblical instances of prophetic protest raised in a sanctuary setting (e.g. Ezek 8-11; Acts 4) suffice to demonstrate that voices of truth belong in the context of worship. Two ironies strike me. First, historically, baptists belong in the Protestant (“protesting”) branch of Christianity. Second, contemporaneously, many of those who decry this protest in a church do not decry immigration enforcement officers arresting worshipers.

May we have the courage to stand in the tradition of Amos, Jeremiah, and Jesus! May we have the understanding to distinguish between a false security in the structures and institutions, on the one hand, and a living faith that loves mercy and does justice (Mic 6:8).

Introducing Sophia Theological Seminary

community, education, environment, ethics, harmony and diversity, inclusivity, little b baptist, ministry, theological education, Uncategorized, wisdom

I am the founding dean of Sophia Theological Seminary.  This blog entry introduces Sophia.

A standard seminary curriculum overly fragments the subject matter into discrete and disjointed specialized disciples, too often leaving students on their own to integrate blocks of knowledge into a coherent and holistic understanding. Social forces undermine traditional community/communities and alienate individuals and communities from vital connections with nature, the land, and the rhythms of creation. Sophia re-imagines theological education to address these concerns through a curriculum emphasizing wisdom over data, a funding scheme stressing self-sufficiency and sustainability, and an ethos accentuating context and cooperation – in God’s good creation, in the world, and as a community.

Sophia Theological Seminary re-imagines the educational program based on the insight that the best theological education integrates the traditional fields of theological study, with one another and with life (of the individual, the community, and the world) and ministry. Consequently, its curriculum will be integrated across disciplines, seminar-based, and focused around specific, “everyday” ministry topics. Sophia recognizes that ministers of the Gospel need to be equipped with data, information, knowledge – in Sophia’s case, the traditional disciplines of theological education – in order to serve well the kindom of God, but it acknowledges further that, in the complicated and confusing modern context, ministers also need the wisdom “from above” to guide them in making their knowledge and skills relevant. Ministers need real community and experience in maintaining it; they need to harmonize with the rhythms of work and rest built into the created order; they need firm connections with the goodness of God’s world so that they can envision what redemption looks like.

Sophia expresses its core sensibilities as follows:

  • being a community of inclusive welcome [which] is foundational to the life, work, and self-understanding of the seminary.
  • theological education [as a] holistic endeavor, with a curriculum that is integrated across disciplines, both ‘classical’ and practical,” and that moves freely between “church” and “academy.”
  • theological education …undertaken with rigor, [with] all members of the community …considered to be learners in need of continued growth and challenge.
  • governance of the community [through] a collaborative partnership amongst all constituencies invested in the life of the seminary, each represented with a full and equal voice.
  • its heritage as little “b” baptist, understanding this heritage as historical, transcending specific denominational confines, [while] equally commit[ting] itself to ecumenical and interfaith work, locally and globally.

One other important aspect of Sophia’s structure addresses the problem of declining denominational economic support for theological education. This circumstance has necessitated that seminaries rely for funding primarily on increased student tuition and the generosity of donors, each with a negative consequence. Students regularly graduate from seminary now with student debt resembling that of law and medical school graduates, but with significantly less prospect for earning enough to repay the debt comfortably. One result is a decline in the numbers of those willing to take the time and incur the debt to earn a theological education. Donors, meanwhile, have begun to tire of seeing their gifts go primarily into the operating budgets of seminaries, rather than into endowments that could sustain the viability of institutions. Consequently, seminaries all over the country and from virtually every denomination are closing or otherwise curtailing their activities. The earnings of Sophia Seminary’s sister institution, Sophia Farms, a 501(c)3 vegetable farm operating with sustainable, responsible farming techniques, will go to fund the operating budget of the seminary. The marketing model addresses carbon footprint issues, embraces ecologically-responsible farming practices, and, through Sophia’s commitment to “tithe” produce directly to local organizations that address food insecurity and nutrition education, responsibility to the community. If you’d like to know more, visit www.sophiasem.org and www.sophiafarms.org.

Thinking Like Christ – Paul’s Call to Harmony Amid Diversity (Philippians), Part 4

harmony and diversity, Uncategorized, , , , ,

This is the fourth of a four-part study with the Covenant Class of First Presbyterian Church, Richmond VA in the fall of 2025.

I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to have the same mind in the Lord. Phil 4:2

Thinking Like Christ – Paul’s Call to Harmony Amid Diversity (Philippians), Part 3

church, egocentrism, harmony and diversity, missio dei, selfishness, suffering

This is the third part of a four-part study with the Covenant Class of First Presbyterian Church, Richmond VA in the fall of 2025.

Their destiny is destruction, they worship their appetites, and they revel in their shame…Phil 3:19

Thinking Like Christ – Paul’s Call to Harmony Amid Diversity (Philippians) Part 2

church, egocentrism, harmony and diversity, Uncategorized

This is the second part of a four-part study with the Covenant Class of First Presbyterian Church, Richmond VA in the fall of 2025.

Have this mind among you which is also in Christ Jesus… Phil 2:5

Thinking Like Christ – Paul’s Call to Harmony Amid Diversity (Philippians), Part 1

church, egocentrism, harmony and diversity

This is the first part of a four-part study with the Covenant Class of First Presbyterian Church, Richmond VA in the fall of 2025.

For you have been granted the gift, for the sake of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. Phil 1:29