Ron Hendel has left the SBL

RONALD S. HENDEL has left the Society of Biblical Literature:

The battle royal between faith and reason is now in the center ring at the SBL circus. While the cultured despisers of reason may rejoice—including some postmodernists, feminists4 and eco-theologians—I find it dispiriting. I don’t want to belong to a professional society where people want to convert me, and where they hint in their book reviews that I’m going to hell. As a scholar of the humanities—and I might add, as a Jew—I do not feel at home in such a place. What to do? Well, I’ve let my membership in SBL lapse. Maybe that’s a cowardly response, but sometimes, as Shakespeare wrote, “The better part of valor is discretion.” Sometimes it’s reasonable to avoid conflict. And like Pascal and Spinoza, I’m partial to reason in matters of scholarship. But my heart, for reasons of its own, gently grieves.

I didn't know about the change in the wording of the mission statement and I can't say I'm happy with it. I and others have noticed that since the departure of the American Academy of Religion, attendance at the annual-meeting SBL sessions has been disturbingly low, but diluting the mission of the Society is not the solution.