The Rev. John L. Bell
Greenbelt Conference 2013
We were up early this morning to take Meghan to Edinburgh Airport for her flight to London and then Washington. So ends her five years at St. Andrew’s.
It took us nearly ninety minutes to get there because we ran into early rush hour traffic outside Edinburgh. Then we were on to St. Andrew’s for Anna’s 10:00 appointments with the manager of the Lloyd’s Bank to open her account.
I have spent most of my time on this blog talking about people. But now I want to share ideas I gleaned from the conference..
First, John Bell.
Wikipedia says this about John Bell:
John Lamberton Bell (born 1949, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire) is a hymn-writer, a Church of Scotland minister, a member of the Iona Community, a broadcaster, and former student activist. He works throughout the world, lecturing in theological colleges in the UK, Canada and the United States, but is primarily concerned with the renewal of congregational worship at the grass roots level.
In 1999 he was honoured by the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the Royal School of Church Music which bestowed a Fellowship on him, and in 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow.
Bell has produced (sometimes in collaboration with Graham Maule) many collections of original hymns and songs and two collections of songs of the World Church. These are published by the Iona Community in Scotland and by G.I.A. Publications (Chicago) in North America. Several collections of his work have been published in translation in Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Dutch, Frisian, Japanese and GermanIn 1999 he was honoured by the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the Royal School of Church Music which bestowed a Fellowship on him, and in 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Glasgow. Bell has produced (sometimes in collaboration with Graham Maule) many collections of original hymns and songs and two collections of songs of the World Church. These are published by the Iona Community in Scotland and by G.I.A. Publications (Chicago) in North America. Several collections of his work have been published in translation in Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Dutch, Frisian, Japanese and German. He is a frequent broadcaster, and often presents programmes on the BBC, majoring on contemporary religious songs from various parts of the world. He is quite a regular contributor to “Thought for the Day”, part of Radio 4’s Today programme.
The focus of John Bell’s talk was how scripture is to be used and understood.
Each piece of the Bible was addressed to particular people in a particular context at a particular time that was quite different from our own. Yet too often it is read or used as if it is addressed to a contemporary context. This can be very armful to our faith.
“A text without a context becomes a pretext,” said Bell. Scripture tests out of context have been used as a pretext for marginalizing and oppressing minorities or those who seem different from us. Recently it has been used to oppress Gay and Lesbian persons. In early times, a text taken out of context became a pretext for slavery, the restrictions against women’s rights, racism, etc.”
The use of Biblical texts taken out of context has increased with the ability to read the Bible. “We who are in the West read the Bible while many before us or in other parts of the world are illiterate and cannot read it. But it does not mean they are not intelligent. The ancients in the UK would tell the Bible as telling a family story. The monks would tell people the stories with the kind of avidness with which you would tell a bedtime story to a child.”
The monks on Lindisfarne would walk into the water up to their navel and recite the 150 Psalms. People would learn the poetry of the psalms and put them besides their own family poetry.
The great difference between those who hear the Bible and those who read the Bible is that those who hear the Bible are more likely to integrate the poetry of what they hear into the poetry of their lives.
Reading the Bible, on the other hand, can lead to the perception that we are engaged mainly in an intellectual pursuit because we read to increase our knowledge. We do not argue with the text because we assume those who wrote it are experts.
Jesus had more problems with the text collectors than the tax collectors – who tried to make universal applications out of texts which were to speak to a specific context.
Text collecting is still alive and well. A text without a context becomes
a pretext.
Reading the Bible can be bad for our faith if we don’t begin to argue with the text. If we can learn to let these words of Scripture seep into us, argue with them and allow them to become the stuff of our prayers, then we will find the Bible is there for our savoring and enjoyment and not just for our instruction.
Sacred Meetings 