Literalism Is a Cracked Cistern

Last updated on: July 17, 2023 at 10:22 am by Rodney Kennedy

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Literalism Is a Cracked Cistern 2023-07-17T10:22:24-05:00 Rodney Kennedy

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Literalism struggles to hold its head above the high waters of the epistemic sea. Since evangelicals in America, treat the founding documents of the nation – the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights – the same way they treat the Bible, there’s merit in examining one of the most basic of American texts.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —THOMAS JEFFERSON, UNITED STATES DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

THESE THIRTY-FIVE WORDS ARE OFTEN taken literally by evangelicals. They are stirring words, but they present a difficult challenge to literal readers. The ideal that they express—the principle that all men (that is, all human beings) have certain basic rights just because they are human—is easy to resonate with, and to applaud. But Jefferson’s words beg a vexing question: the question of who, exactly, should be counted as human. Jefferson’s contemporaries weren’t certain. The uneasy relationship between the economic attractions of slavery and the Enlightenment vision of human dignity was a long-standing one, and for those torn between the demands of conscience and the seductions of self-interest, there was a way out of the dilemma. They could deny that African slaves were human, and in this way they could square the moral circle. By dint of a sleight of mind, the very men who insisted on the God-given right of all humankind to liberty could, in good faith, countenance and participate in the brutal and degrading institution of slavery. Many of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, who had championed the concept of individual human rights and defined the philosophical underpinnings of the great American experiment, routinely excluded nonwhites from the category of the human. The idea that the towering figures of the eighteenth century were champions of liberty for all is, in the words of Northwestern University philosopher Charles Mills, “profoundly misleading, deeply wrong.” It “radically mystifies the recent past, and … needs to be confronted and discredited if our sociopolitical categories are to be true to the world that they are supposed to be mapping.” It wasn’t just the highbrows who thought of blacks as less than human. The theoretical views of the intellectuals—the philosophers, statesmen, and politicians—merged seamlessly with ideological beliefs which, however poorly articulated, had long been entrenched in the popular consciousness.

The words of the Declaration of Independence were taken literally by white men to mean other white men. This opened the door to the dehumanization of persons of color for the entire length and breadth of American history. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, foreigners, gays, immigrants – the list of those not included in “all men” shames our history. It unravels all claims to a literal reading.
Everything in the statement depends upon the meaning of the word “men.” The word “all” is a throw away word for Jefferson. It is not an inclusive word. “All men” constituted a club that excluded many Others. Since the word used is “men” it excluded women. And we know that women didn’t even have the right to vote until 1920. A century later, the jury is still out on whether or not women have achieved equality of treatment. The literalism of the Declaration falls apart when women are excluded.

There’s evidence that people who claim to read the Bible literally no longer care what the Bible says. They have “literal” ideas loosely based on the notions of the Bible picked up in their common Christian culture. For example, in a Facebook debate thread about the inclusion of gays, I reminded by fellow Christian correspondent that the Bible endorsed slavery and that it was the law of the land until the Civil War. She fired back a question: “Where in the Bible does it say that God embraced slavery?” I suggested a few texts for starters – Philemon and Colossians 3:22. I didn’t have the time or space to explain the use of the Bible to justify slavery by Southern preachers in the decades prior to the Civil War. The point here is that a reader of the Bible had already decided what the Bible said and wasn’t interested in any reading that refuted her ideas.

Another reader, upset with my biblical exegesis of Leviticus 18 – 19 asked me why I didn’t use the Bible as a reference? When I suggested that the story of Sodom contains no reference to sex, only the intention of sexual activity, I was bombarded with tortured explanations from outside Scripture. Literalism hangs by a thread at this point.
The text makes plain that there was sexual intention: “‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.’ Then there’s the harsh rule of hospitality on Lot’s part: “Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” I have never heard a literalist preacher offer any satisfactory explanation for “Let me bring my daughters out to you, and [you] do to them as you please.” In a toxic male world, doing to women as you please is standard operating procedure.

Literalism is born of cultural understandings. Often these cultural understandings are pagan in nature but have been placed in the service of literal readings of the Bible. The alleged literal condemnation of gays in the Bible and the refusal to admit women to the ministry of preaching are two glaring examples of literalism based, not on Scripture, but on pagan cultural presuppositions. Literal readings of the Bible have been systematically used to include the torture, abuse, rape, murder, and exclusion of persons of color, women, slaves, Native Americans, immigrants, and gays.

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