How do you study the Scriptures?
The problem of interpretive plurality, of course, is not restricted to evangelical
groups.
24 Nor is it the only problem that contemporary Christian communities face regarding
the use and interpretation of Scripture. Stephen Prothero’s, Religious Literacy: What Every
American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t, draws attention to the widespread phenomenon of
biblical illiteracy characteristic of American Christianity.
25 Despite the fact that significant
percentages of Americans—whether evangelical, mainline Protestant, Catholic, or other—
affirm the authority and centrality of Scripture for their faith, knowledge of its contents is
abysmally low.26
When contemporary readers, whether scholars, laypeople, exegetes, or theologians,
do engage Scripture, they are frequently perplexed by the “strange new world” which they
encounter depicted within it.
27 The historical, moral, and even religious distance that has
opened up between the worlds of meaning mediated by the texts of Scripture—to the extent
that we can understand them and make correct judgments about them