THE SBL COUNCIL has posted a resolution that was circulated at the SBL meeting in San Antonio last November, although I didn't encounter it then. Members are asked to agree or disagree with it and to comment if they wish to. No explanation is given of what will happen if a majority agree or disagree. The full text is as follows:

The United States election of 2004 witnessed the emergence of "values," often referred to as "Christian values" or "biblical values," as key political issues. The "values" most commonly identified in public debates were the issues of gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research.

The Society of Biblical Literature, which is the largest international, professional association of teachers and scholars of the Bible, calls attention to the fact that the "values" so prominently and divisively raised in this 2004 U.S. election are not major concerns in the Bible, and in fact are not even directly addressed in the Bible. Rather, they tend to reflect the underlying problems of homophobia, misogyny, control of reproductive rights, and restraint of expression (including scientific research) in U.S. society today.

With over 7,000 members representing a broad range of political and religious leanings, the Society of Biblical Literature has fostered discussions of such fundamental problems against the background of biblical ethics and respect for all human beings. As many of our members have indicated in publications and lectures, the moral issues dominating the biblical texts focus instead on concerns such as the well-being of individuals, the integrity of community, care for the powerless and the vulnerable, economic justice, the establishment of peace, and the stewardship of the environment.

The Society of Biblical Literature urges citizens and political agencies to direct their energies toward securing these goals and values of well-being and responsibility.

I think a number of points need to be made here. First, am I the only one who finds it odd that we are given no information on who wrote this resolution? The e-mail from Matthew Collins reads:

This resolution circulated at the San Antonio Annual Meeting. It is related directly to the US context. Council determined that it would be beneficial to survey all members in this regard.

Please respond before 25 January 2005.

Here is a link to the survey:
[snip]

Thanks for your participation,

Kent Harold Richards
Executive Director
Professor of Old Testament

The text of the resolution on the web page is unsigned. Why the ambiguous "circulated" in the message? Who circulated it? To whom? Who wrote it? Frankly, it makes me uncomfortable that the Society is requesting a response of its members to an anonymous resolution whose purpose is never explained. Evidently it was not composed by the Council. May we please have the name(s) of the writer(s) and a clearer explanation of what our vote means?

Second, there is the content of the resolution. I think it grants unnecessary ground to its fundamentalist opponents by implicitly accepting that the Bible is a unit that somehow addresses "major concerns" about "values" and political matters. The anonymous writer(s) also seem to grant the Bible authority in these matters. Presumably their view of authority is different from the fundamentalist view, but this is not spelled out or explained. In any case, it develops that "the moral issues dominating the biblical texts" are actually the values of the writer(s), not those of their opponents who hold the rejected political positions. (The views of the opponents have a much more sinister origin.) In fact, it turns out that the core values of the biblical texts happen to be pretty much identical to those of American academics in the humanities in the early twenty-first century.

This claim is not easy to maintain. True, the Bible doesn't address gay marriage directly, but Leviticus does call for the execution of homosexuals (20:13), which tends to imply that the writer opposed state ratification of their unions. It's a horrible passage, but it's there. And does the Bible really focus on the "well-being of individuals" (like the women and children supposedly slaughtered at Jericho by Joshua and his army at God's behest); "the integrity of community" (like the foreign women and children driven away from their husbands and fathers by Ezra and Nehemiah); "care for the powerless and the vulnerable" (see the two previous items), and so on? Sure, many places in the Bible support most of these values (although the business about "stewardship of the environment" is a stretch), but many don't. From a historical perspective this is a remarkably selective and, frankly, myopic list. The fundamentalists have as good a claim (maybe better) on the Bible for their agenda as the trendy-but-laudable laundry list of the anonymous writer(s) of this resolution.

For what it's worth, here's my view. Why start by granting so much ground to fundamentalist assumptions? Challenge these. The Bible is a collection, a library of Biblia expressing many different viewpoints; some lofty, some barbaric, and some merely human. It does not speak with one voice. This is not controversial: it's Bible 101 for undergraduates. It is up to us as critical and responsible readers to decide what we accept in it and what we don't. Sure, let's pick and choose; that's the rational thing to do. But let's be up front about doing so and not kid ourselves that we're discovering the Bible's true message and it happens to be congenial with everything we already thought anyway. Then a real discussion can start. (It may well be that the authors of the resolution would agree with me here, but if so, they need to express themselves more clearly and with some historical sophistication.)

Third, and to my mind most important, there is the question of whether the SBL has any business promoting this sort of political statement. I submit to you that the answer is no, absolutely not. I dare say that some people will ask, Shouldn't biblical scholars get out of their academic ivory towers and show concern with important social issues? The answer, of course, is yes - on an individual basis. Not just biblical scholars; everyone should take an active role in the politics of their society. We as individuals should all be active in promoting the political issues and views that we as individuals believe in. That's part of living in a pluralistic society and a democracy. But the Society of Biblical Literature is not a political society. It is an academic organization for scholars who specialize in biblical studies and related fields - whatever their political persuasion. Let me repeat that: whatever their political persuasion. The Society is not an organization for promoting political views. Its leadership has no reason to assume that all members agree with them on their political views and they have no right, let alone obligation, to speak for the members on political matters. (The fact that I agree broadly with the anonymous writer(s) on the three specific issues they mention - and let's face it, their basic positions aren't hard to guess - is neither here nor there.) I can and do pick my own political causes and activist groups. I don't need any help from the SBL.

As the resolution notes, the Society's membership has "a broad range of political and religious leanings." Some members disagree with the anonymous author(s) of the resolution (and with me) about gay marriage, abortion rights, and stem-cell research. Fine. I recognize that there are issue to discuss regarding each, some of them difficult, and my views are nuanced and open to development. I like to discuss political issues with those who disagree with me, in the hope of persuading them to my view, but also with the desire to learn from them. But meanwhile, even if a majority of the Society chose to vote in favor of this resolution, it would not speak for all members and would not be valid as a statement of the Society. It would be a form of tyranny by majority, because the SBL is not a political society.

Your job, SBL, is "to foster biblical scholarship," as it says on the masthead of the SBL web page. That means to support me in my academic role as a biblical scholar. Just as you would never assume that I belong to a particular religion and that you can speak for me about it, so you are in no position to assume anything about my political beliefs or to speak for me on political matters.

This resolution is inappropriate for many reasons and it goes without saying that I oppose it. I hope you do too, gentle reader. The SBL is an extraordinarily useful academic organization for biblical scholars and I appreciate their support immensely. In turn, they have my unwavering support for that purpose. While I commend the Council for seeking our view on the resolution, I don't think it should have gone even that far. Such statements amount to mission creep. Let's put them aside and get back to our scholarly work (and our individual political activism).

UPDATE: I see that Ed Cook has similar thoughts about the resolution and that most of his commenters agree. Eric Sowell too (later: also here). Danny Zacharias isn't so sure.

UPDATE: Jim West points out that the URL to the resolution asks not to be copied (the e-mail said nothing about this) so I have deleted it. But why wasn't the survey password-protected (with the members' SBL membership passwords)? Seems to me this whole thing could have been better thought out. As to whether the issues should be discussed in public, I assume that the writer(s) of the resolution wishes it to become a formal public statement of the SBL in due course. I think it's entirely appropriate that the discussion about it, and about the appropriateness of the SBL making political statements at all, take place in public.

UPDATE: Maxine Grossman e-mails:

I've been thinking a lot about your post on the SBL statement, and I had to write you with a few thoughts.

First, I agree with your view that the statement is a bad one. It follows the logic of the people it is trying to oppose, by arguing that the Bible is actually about the issues that it has been interpreted to address.

I agree that a better statement would talk about the diversity of biblical texts and their origins in history. I would also want to see something about the options for interpretation open to diverse faith communities in their reading. I'm sure you're (not) surprised about that last one.

But I have to disagree with your suggestion that the proper response is an individual one. I have two reasons for this.

1. The SBL doesn't have authority to make policy or determine social practice. But it does have the authority to talk about the Bible and its interpretation. It would not be mission creep for the Society to stand up and criticize the way other people are using the Bible. Not to do so cedes the floor unnecessarily.

2. The current presidential administration is famous for being "on message." The people who are finding sources for anti-abortion legislation (etc.) in the Bible are also remarkably good at presenting a single, clear, authoritative argument. The best answer to this kind of presentation is an equally authoritative collective message. Individual statements are good, but the message of a professional organization will be taken more seriously.

Public discourse this fall made the claim that "moral values" and "religion" required acceptance of a specific political agenda. This is a spurious claim and one that the SBL is within its rights to contradict.

One last thing: whether the message is collective or individual, it needs to be clear, concise, and to the point. I'm not arguing for being simplistic or dumbing down, and I know it's hard to be nuanced and brief at the same time. But it's important to recognize the discursive assumptions of the medium. Careful caveats sound either like you don't know what you're talking about or you don't believe it.

If there is a way for the Society to make your points without advancing a specific political agenda of its own, I might be sympathetic. Diversity of biblical texts, their origins in history, and options for interpretation open to diverse faith communities all seem pretty integral to the Society's mission. A scholarly statement on how to look at the Bible from a multifaith (or lack of faith) perspective could have some potential. Presumably it would have to allow for fundamentalist positions while undercutting their claim to sole authority. I worry that people who attempted to put it together would be unbearably tempted to build their own political agenda into it, as happened with this resolution. But there's a way to prove me wrong. How about a draft proposal?

UPDATE (15 January): Tim Bulkeley weighs in: "So, I'll join the chorus of bibli*bloggers, and pray that good sense causes such a backlash of Biblical Scholars for Academic Freedom that SBL will pull back from the brink of the abyss of totalitarian 'liberalism'!" And Stephen Carlson: "I doubt John Locke would have been in favor of the proposed resolution being circulation among SBL members."

UPDATE (16 January): Maxine Grossman publishes an alternative (and much better) statement here.

UPDATE: More comments from (non-SBL members, I think) Apikorsos (thanks, Elf) and Razors Kiss. The latter will not be including me on his Evangelical apologists blogroll, for which I take no offense. Meanwhile, Steven I. Weiss, former Elder of the now-defunct Protocols blog, is, uh, not taking the survey very seriously. And illustrating my point that it should have been password protected.

UPDATE (18 January): Mark Goodacre comments at length, covering many of the same points Ed Cook and I made. He sums up, "I propose that this survey is voided as a well-meaning but ultimately not very well thought through experiment."

UPDATE (19 January): Is "fundamentalist" the right term? Maybe not.

UPDATE 19 February): More here (another security hole), here (the results and a response from Ed Cook), and here (again on the security issues - looks as though the survey was secure after all).