Biblical and Religious Literacy as Social Practice

“…The church in North America is often said to face a crisis of biblical or religious illiteracy, but in the discourse on the topic, ”

Team Members/Contributors

Christiane M Lang Hearlson Princeton Theological Seminary Contact Me

About this dissertation fellowship

My project defines biblical and religious literacy as social practices and describes young people as apprentices to those practices who try out both knowledge and identity in community.

In my first chapter, I show that the discourse of biblical illiteracy employs the rhetoric of the jeremiad. Citing the work of Andrew Murphy, I argue that the jeremiad exaggerates the glories of the past and the degeneracy of the present, as well as distorts and neglects certain voices. I show how The Barna Group, Gallup, and historian Stephen Prothero all distort young people's voices.

In Chapter Two, I explore the historical roots of the discourse of religious illiteracy. I focus on the Puritan jeremiad, the 19th-century Bible Cause, and the work of Walter Athearn, an early 20th-century religious educator who coined the term "spiritual illiteracy." I show that Protestant complaints about religious ignorance are perennial and argue for a critical retrieval of Athearn's view of spiritual literacy.

In Chapter Three, I discuss New Literacy Studies (NLS), which defines literacy as a social practice to which people are apprenticed. NLS has given rise to Adolescent Literacy Studies (ALS), which rejects a deficit model of young people, seeks to hear their voices, and builds on their pre-existing literacies. I describe the potential of NLS and ALS for Christian education.

In Chapter Four, I provide a Reformed, feminist theological basis for viewing biblical literacy as contextual social practice, and I also draw on the work of Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Michel de Certeau.

In Chapter Five, I discuss case studies I conducted in two congregations where I explored the specific biblical literacies of those churches and how young people experience them.

Chapter Six offers a proposal for teaching biblical literacy in ways that intentionally apprentice youth, build on their other literacies, honor context, and help them engage in religious and inter-religious dialogue.