Commentary
Oregon Daily Emerald
Thesday, April 26, 2005
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■ In my opinion
Following the Word
It seems to be open season on
“Christian fundamentalists” because
of their so-called narrow-minded
and unsophisticated practice of tak
ing the Bible literally. One myth I
want to clear up first is the notion
that Christians who take the Bible
literally are dangerous wackos, com
pletely out of touch with
mainstream Christianity.
In a special episode of “The West
Wing” made in the immediate after
math of the 9/11 attacks, Bradley
Whitford’s character resists an at
tempt to compare Islamo-terrorists
to fundamentalist Christians. The
character makes a good point when
he argues that comparing main
stream Islam’s relation to Islamic ex
tremism is more like comparing
Christianity to the Ku Klux Klan be
cause that’s how badly these people
have to distort scriptural integrity
and sound theology in order to
justify their horrific actions.
People who interpret the Bible liter
ally are not the same people who
bomb abortion clinics and kill in the
name of religion. The domestic terror
ists who claim to kill in the name of
God are drastically distorting the
Bible, not taking it literally.
What really shocks me, though, is
that people write off those who take
the Bible literally as uneducated rubes
who don’t approach the text with any
sophistication. In broad strokes they
paint those who take the Bible literal
ly as if they leave no room for inter
pretation, which couldn’t be further
from the truth.
Taking the Bible literally is not im
mune to interpretation. In fact, pure
literalism makes interpretation an ab
solute imperative. Think about it. To
take the Bible literally means to real
ize, for instance, that the Pentateuch
is God speaking through Moses to the
Hebrew people at a specific time and
GABE BRADLEY
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
a specific place in a particular social,
cultural and historical context. Liter
alism also means to realize that the
Gospels are God speaking through
particular people, to particular people,
in unique circumstances.
Taking the Bible literally means re
alizing that when God told the Da
vidic Israelites to kill the Philistines,
he meant just that; he wasn’t telling
you to kill anybody.
In an e-mail that’s been forwarded
countless times over the last several
years, an anonymous author lam
bastes Dr. Laura for her use of Scrip
ture to support her controversial op
position to homosexuality. Now
don’t get me wrong, I hate Dr. Laura
just as much as the next guy, maybe
more, but this e-mail demonstrates a
shockingly inept reading of Scrip
ture. The e-mail points out and
ridicules certain portions of the
Torah that seem to be out of place if
applied in today’s culture.
Few would be so foolish as to read
a few sentences from Aristotle and
claim to know exactly what he says
about motion. Few would be so fool
ish as to read a paragraph from Adam
Smith and claim to understand the
breadth and nuance of his classical
capitalism. Why, then, do so many
people — Christian and non-Christ
ian alike — approach the Bible
with a narrow-minded, totalizing
point of view?
The literalist understands that these
laws were not prescribed for us. They
were prescribed to a certain people in
a certain set of circumstances. The
laws and rules are not what count.
Understanding the underlying princi
ples given the specific social, cultural
and historical context is what counts.
Taking the Bible literally means
going way beyond face value. It
means employing exegesis and
hermeneutics in order to mine the
text for its original meaning in its
original context so that the transcen
dent personality of God can be re
vealed throughout. Though the per
sonality of God doesn’t change
throughout the Bible, the rules that
he plays by do change — a lot.
This is why so many lazy Bible
readers shy away from the Old Testa
ment. The cultural context is so far re
moved from our own that it requires
even more interpretation than the
New Testament in order to access the
underlying truths.
Taking the Bible literally is not the
dull-witted, unsophisticated ap
proach to scripture reading. It is an
almost unrivaled intellectual chal
lenge that requires an intense aca
demic rigor and a highly sophisticat
ed textual reading. Bending and
breaking the text to make it mean
whatever one wants in current so
cial circumstances and political real
ities is the unsophisticated approach
that ignores academic rigor and
intellectual honesty.
I’m not worried about the Chris
tians who take the Bible literally; I’m
worried about the ones who don’t.
There’s nothing more dangerous
than someone who claims to believe
the Bible is the word of God without
knowing what it says. These are
the ones who substitute their
judgment for God’s and commit ter
rible atrocities.
gadebradley® daily emerald, com
■ Guest commentary
Playboy applicants recharacterize
the meaning of being a feminist
I would like to express my appreci
ation to all of the women who had a
little pride in their image, themselves
and their power for applying to be in
the Playboy layout. As a student in
this extraordinarily protest-happy stu
dent body, wading through the pick
eters and speakers espousing ludi
crous and often contradictory
messages gets pretty old.
I would also like to offer my con
gratulations to the current feminists
on campus for recognizing the prerog
ative of women to model their bodies
however they choose.
In his guest commentary last week
("University activists fail to react to
pornography,” ODE April 14) Mr.
White argued that pornography
objectifies women and degrades
them into objects of lust. That is in
herently incorrect. Men (and more of
ten than not, other women) objectify,
label, and degrade women. It is not
the nudity that does it. A huge nude
statue stands in the window of Moth
er Kali’s Bookstore on Hilyard and
East 13th Avenue; art books teem
with nude paintings, breasts have fre
quently adorned the cover of National
Geographic; characters in the fresco
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are
naked. No one is protesting them.
Why? Because it’s intent, not content.
The difference between the ceiling
of the Sistine and the pages of Play
boy is the intent with which one
looks at them. What is degrading is
the insistence that women should feel
bad about choosing to take pride in
their beauty. One of the great failures
of the American feminist crusade is its
failure to encourage women to recog
nize and revel in the great power they
have by simply being female.
The great triumph of that crusade,
however, is in the manipulation of
American women into believing they
are catering to men (which is appar
ently bad) should they choose to live
their lives as wives, mothers or per
haps Playboy models. So thank you to
all the women who applied to appear
in the magazine, for redefining what
it means to be a feminist.
Allie Sender, junior
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■ Editorial
Fabricated news damages
journalistic credibility
Imagine this: former Michigan State players
Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson at the
April 2 Michigan State-North Carolina
NCAA semifinal, sitting in the stands, in their
Michigan State clothing, “rooted on their
alma mater.”
That’s exactly what Detroit Free Press
sports columnist Mitch Albom did — except
his imagination got carried away. When
Cleaves and Richardson never showed up to
the game, Albom’s April 3 column stating that
they did was quickly revealed as fiction.
Journalists have no right to tell the future
as though it is fact. So when Albom decided
to depend on interviews about what the play
ers were planning to do at the game and write
a piece about what happened at the game be
fore it occurred, he disappointed many. Not
only fans of his two decades of Detroit
Free Press work, but also fellow journalists,
still reeling from large-scale accuracy foul-ups
in The New York Times and USA Today, to
name a few.
However, we have to note Albom’s circum
stances: According to The Associated Press,
the Detroit Free Press required Albom to file
the column the day before the game, a Friday,
even though it was due to hit print on Sunday,
because the section was printed before the
game. We have to wonder if this schedule
made Albom feel pressure to fabricate a story
that would be “current” when printed.
Albom, and the four other Press employees
who were responsible for catching the errors,
will continue to work at the Press after facing
unspecified disciplinary action, according to
the paper. Albom apologized to his readers in
an April 7 column, and rightly so. Unfortu
nately, all it takes is one fabrication to discred
it years of work and cast a shadow of doubt
over others in the profession. We deeply re
gret yet another breech in what is, overall, an
ethical profession.
Media should remain wary
of frivolous speculation
The recent fiasco at a Wendy’s restaurant
in San Jose, Calif., where suspected con artist
Anna Ayala claimed she bit into a finger in her
bowl of chili, has underscored the dark side
of the litigious society in which we live and
the often detrimental effects of certain types
of media.
Primarily, this situation shows how easy it
has become to manipulate the whistle-blow
er’s role, twisting it from virtuous to vicious.
The Editorial Board sees great value in the
interaction between whistle-blowers and the
media, but the abuses of these frivolous
charges by citizens, and the media outlets’
subsequent sensationalism, are too much to
handle. Cable news channels saw the events
in California as a sunny day, and shamelessly
made hay for hour after hour and day after
day. After police and Wendy’s investigated,
the inconsistencies in Ayala’s case proved
more suspicious than convincing, eventually
leading to her arrest Thursday.
The San Jose Mercury News has now re
ported that following the initial publicity from
Ayala’s scam, Wendy's received “about 20
complaints in the last month — much more
than usual — from diners about foreign ob
jects in their chow.”
In these situations, media should aspire to
give the American public solid information,
not speculation.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Jennifer Sudick Steven R. Neuman
Editor in Chief Managing Editor
Ailee Slater Shadra Beesley
Commentary Editor Copy Chief
Adrienne Nelson
Online Editor