Seven Stories: A Journey Through Scripture From Violence To Forgiveness with Anthony Bartlett

Last updated on: February 14, 2018 at 10:11 pm by Lindsey Paris-Lopez

Seven Stories: A Journey Through Scripture From Violence To Forgiveness with Anthony Bartlett 2018-02-14T22:11:46-05:00 Lindsey Paris-Lopez

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Happy Ash Valentine’s Day!

For this Lenten season, I will be following Jesus on a journey of discovery as he leads me through heartscapes of human violence that are continually being transformed by his love into mercy and compassion. My vehicles for this journey will be prayer, meditation, and a Bible study guide called Seven Stories: How to Study and Teach the Nonviolent Bible by my friend, previous Raven award winner and hope-timist extraordinaire, Dr. Anthony Bartlett.

Dr. Anthony Bartlett is a former seminary professor who has taught at Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary in Rochester, General Theological Seminary in New York City, and Le Moyne College in Syracuse. He has written scholarly examinations of Christianity shaped by the work of René Girard with his books Cross Purposes: The Violent Grammar of Christian Atonement and Virtually Christian: How Christ Changes Meaning and Makes Creation New. He is also the author of Pascale’s Wager, which is the Gospel in sci-fi form. He and his wife Linda, who edited the Seven Stories coursebook, founded the “Wood Hath Hope” Bible study and prayer community, from which Seven Stories emerged.

You can listen to the MP3 above or watch the recorded video below.

Highlights from this interview include:

Tony explains the process of writing Seven Stories and how the writing of his novel Pascale’s Wager helped him trace the trajectory of scripture as story and condense nearly 20 years of Bible Study meetings into an easy-to-follow narrative format.
Learn why Tony believes that René Girard’s mimetic theory is “the most relevant and transforming and significant set of tools that Bible scholars have had since the Reformation…”
Each of the Seven Stories explores a semiotic shift. “Semiotics is the study of signs and their meaning. A shift is brought about by means of a set of words and a story which change the way humans think.” (Seven Stories, 57) Tony explains how God changes our thinking by taking signs and symbols from our culture and shifting their meaning, guiding us from violence to nonviolence. He uses the examples of “The Good Samaritan” and the Exodus as examples of stories in scripture that God uses to transform our minds away from violence.
One of the coolest things about Seven Stories is that, at the end of each story, it references the ways the Gospel permeates our culture by connecting the scriptures to popular motifs in movies, music, and literature that draw on scriptural imagery, really showing how Jesus has shifted our understanding at a cultural level. Shout out to Linda Bartlett, Tony’s wife, for connecting the “cup of wrath” that Jesus drinks when he is crucified (wrath that we discover is human, not divine) to the cursed goblet that Dumbledore drains to retrieve the horcrux in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
At the end of the interview, Tony points out another inbreak of the Gospel. Referencing a controversial commercial that featured in the 2018 Super Bowl which appropriated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “The Drum Major Instinct” sermon to sell trucks, Tony points out that, although the use of King’s speech was cynical, the commercial doesn’t diminish King’s message; rather, King’s message of the value of service comes through no matter how crass the vehicle.

Each of the seven stories in this Bible study is divided into 3 lessons, making it a perfect Lenten Bible study, as readers can take a couple of days with each lesson and get through all 40 days and Holy Week. The intriguing titles of the stories are: “Oppression to Justice,” “Violence to Forgiveness,” “The Land and its Loss,” “Wrath to Compassion,” “Victim to Vindication,” “The Temple and its Deconstruction,” and “History to its end.”

As I travel this journey of semiotic shifts, opening my heart and mind, I will post reflections on the Teaching Nonviolent Atonement Facebook Page. I hope you will join me in conversation and let the light of Christ, filtered through Anthony Bartlett’s Seven Stories, guide us toward a life-changing and world-changing peace.

Previous Post

February 12, 2018

Sermon: You Can’t Stay on the Mountain: Jesus and Mystical Experiences

Next Post

February 16, 2018 Another Mass Shootings at a School. What My Fellow Girardians Don’t Understand

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Atonement and Current Events Curriculum Faith and Families Interviews Jesus the Forgiving Victim Lent Montessori politics Reviews The Bible Explained Uncategorized Valentine's Day Wednesday Sermon Who is God?

Select a Month July 2020 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 January 2014 December 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz