The Bible in Political Debate: What Does It Really Say?

• Publisher: Bloomsbury T&T Clark
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 217
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Politicians and pundits regularly invoke the Bible in social and political debates on a host of controversial social and political issues, including: abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, the death penalty, separation of church and state, family values, climate change, income distribution, teaching evolution in schools, taxation, school prayer, aid for the poor, and immigration. But is the Bible often used out of context in these major debates?
This book includes essays by fourteen biblical scholars who examine the use of the Bible in political debates, uncovering the original historical contexts and meanings of the biblical verses that are commonly cited. The contributors take a non-confessional approach, rooted in non-partisan scholarship, to show how specific texts have at times been distorted in order to support particular views. At the same time, they show how the Bible can sometimes make for unsettling reading in the modern day. The key questions remain: What does the Bible really say? Should the Bible be used to form public policy?

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I The Bible in Contemporary Political Debate
1 The Bible and Family Values
2 Diasporas “R” Us: Attitudes toward Immigrants in the Bible
3 Ending a Life That Has Not Begun—Abortion in the Bible
4 Senators, Snowballs, and Scripture: The Bible and Climate Change
5 Work, Poverty, and Welfare
6 Culture Wars, Homosexuality, and the Bible
7 The Bible and the Divine Sanctioning of Governments
8 Teaching Evolution versus Creationism
PART II The Bible in Historical Political Debate
9 Tracing the Use of the Bible in Colonial Land Claims in North America
10 The Bible, Slavery, and Political Debate
11 Women, the Bible, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
PART III Concluding Thoughts
12 What Is “the Bible”?
13 Compromise as a Biblical Value
Notes