Taming ‘tyrannical’ texts: Gench dives into PCUSA dispute over Biblical authority
By Jason P. Reagan, The Layman, November 17, 2011
The gulf between Presbyterians’ interpretation of Biblical authority can only be crossed with increased study and avid listening according to one speaker at a recent conference on Presbyterian reconciliation.
Speaking at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians National Conference on Nov. 4, Dr. Frances Taylor Gench told a packed audience at First Presbyterian Church in Durham, N.C. that both liberals and conservatives have been guilty of accusing the other side of error concerning the validity and authority of the Bible.
“How many times have we heard adversaries claim that the issue over which we’ve been conflicted – lo, these many years—is not human sexuality but Biblical authority,” Gench said, speaking from the liberal aisle during a lecture titled “Wrestling with Scripture: Progressive Presbyterians, Biblical Authority and the Ministry of Reconciliation.”
Sexuality and the Bible have been a major issue for the Covenant Network. For the past 14 years, the group has attempted to delete traditional ordination standards from the Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Order – a deletion that took effect in July with the passage of Amendment 10A.
Gench said that conservatives have accused liberals of “failing to honor” the Bible, instead honoring “experience over Scripture.”
“To be fair, we’ve propagated caricatures of our own, often alleging our conservative kin are just proof texting – reading very selectively,” she said.
“We have all been bearing false witness about Presbyterians with whom we disagree,” she added.
In order to achieve reconciliation between the two camps, Gench said, both sides must reflect on how each engages Biblical texts.
‘Tyrannical texts’
Gench said that, for some Presbyterians, a crisis may occur when faced with Biblical texts that “do not sit well” and that may cause the reader to disagree with the content.
She added that many had been faced with “texts that we find offensive, problematic or even down-right tyrannical.”
She mentioned texts from Romans 1, Ephesians 5 and, especially 1 Timothy 2. Drawing laughter from the crowd, she also cited “Leviticus in its entirety.”
She added that, when she was a teenager, her solution to “tyrannical texts” was to “take my Magic Marker and X these portions out of my Bible.”
“When I came to Ephesians 5, I did get out the scissors,” she said, referring to Ephesians 5: 22-24 (NIV):
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
“These were words that had to forcibly removed, banished, excised from my canon of Scripture,” Gench said. Although she now has a different attitude in her treatment of Scripture, she said the Bible is nonetheless “chocked full of repellant, tyrannical texts of terror for women, slaves, Jews, Native Americans [and] gays,” and can be used as “instruments of oppression.”
She said, as a student she felt herself to be the victim of “textual harassment” and that the best solution for her then was “radical surgery on the canon.”
“I was confirming every caricature of a progressive Presbyterian,” she said. Gench also admitted, “Sometimes we are a bit cavalier in our treatment of them.”
She told the audience that such a method was not the most constructive way of “wrestling with difficult texts,” and called upon all Presbyterians to engage in public conversations about Biblical authority.
She offered three suggestions in considering “troublesome texts:”
- · “Attending to the integrity of our own engagement of Scripture;
- · “Articulating our understanding of Biblical authority;
- · “Reading the Bible in the company of those who disagree;
Within the context of her first suggestion, Gench offered five sub-recommendations:
- · “Remember that ‘the difficult text is worthy of charity from its interpreters.’
- · “Argue with the text, confident that wrestling with Scripture is an act of faithfulness.
- · “Resist the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
- · “Learn from the dangers as well as the insights that Biblical texts present.
- · “Don’t let anyone tell you that you are not taking the authority of the Bible seriously.”
2 Timothy
Under the heading of arguing with the text, Gench said that one of the most difficult verses for liberal Christians to accept was 1 Timothy 2:8-15 (NIV):
“Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.
“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”
Gench said there are two kinds of Biblical texts — prescriptive and descriptive. She said readers of prescriptive texts “should not assume it provides a description of actual behavior or practices as it really is” but rather “presents the author’s ideal about what a congregation should look like according to his vision.”
1 Timothy 2 is clearly prescriptive, Gench said, and added that such material is “often the best historical evidence we have that the opposite is happening.”
She agreed with author Deborah Krause, who wrote: “Rather than an edict to silence women, [the text] has become transformed into a debate about who can and cannot have a voice in the church. The power to speak is something women have fought about for a long time, from the very origins of the Church.”
‘Sacred conversation’
Gench added that establishing a personal understanding of Biblical authority would allow liberals and conservatives to better discuss the issue.
“I do not believe that the Bible was divinely dictated or faxed from heaven but rather it is every bit as fully human as was Jesus Himself,” she said, in outlining her perspective. “1 Timothy 2, I have to conclude is one point that the lens of faith is distorted — marked by the shortsighted perspective of its author as he tackled predicaments before him.”
She said she no longer advocated throwing out the text, however, since she found insight about the Church’s “checkered ecclesiastical history” and about how to challenge injustice.
Gench concluded that the Bible is a “sacred conversation between God and humanity and … among believers about what it means to be God’s people.”
“To give any one voice in Scripture or tradition the authority to silence other voices surely distorts the text,” she said, adding, “The Bible is not self-interpreting – it demands to be newly interpreted for new historical situations.”
In order for liberals and conservatives to reconcile, Gench said, both sides have to study the texts in the presence of each other in public conve
rsations and must have an ongoing dialogue to listen to the logic and integrity of each point of view, Gench said.
“We are part of the same church, part of the same family. Writers and readers of Scripture constitute one family of faith,” she said.
Gench is a professor of Biblical interpretation at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Va., and a parish associate at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. She is the author of, among other publications, Faithful Disagreement: Wrestling with Scripture in the Midst of Church Conflict, Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels and Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel of John.
The Covenant Network National Conference was held Nov. 3-5 in Durham. Organizers say the conference theme was meant to inspire discussion about how the PCUSA can remain united despite the variety of opinions concerning Scriptural interpretation and authority recently highlighted in the ordination-standard debate – a debate that has resulted in an increasing exodus of disaffected churches. The title of the conference was “Reconciling Voices, Visions, Vocations.