>On Apr 9, 2008, at 8:35 AM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> > http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080408/lf_nm_life/reading_survey_dc
> >
> > [WS:] Disgusting, but not surprising.
>
>Back in the late 1970s when I taught a couple of sections of English
>at UVa, I was amazed at how little the students knew of the Bible. I
>knew more of it than they did. They say they love and read the Good
>Book, but, aside from a hard core, I'm not sure they really do.
>
>Doug
Jeff Fisher, who's probably lurking and too busy to post right now, taught theology in West Virginia. He used to say that, IIRC, about his students from Evangelical backgrounds especially. Jeff? You reading?
When I was a kid, a neighbor belonged to a fundamentalist Baptist congregation. They'd invite me along on weeknight and weekend shindigs for the kids. Weeknights, there was a gym where we all played games, interspersed with sessions sitting in the pews. Someone would stand at the altar and quote passages. The kids would grab their bible, flip frantically through the pages, so that they could be the first to call out the correct chapter and verse. I was always in awe that they knew where to find the answer, but looking back on it, and thinking about how this might be applied to some secular "great book" (say, Moby Dick) you wonder what is really learned. It's not exactly interpretive exegesis, it's just knowing the basic structure and key phrases, and not really thinking about what it all means. Which, IIRC, this is what Jeff was trying to get at when he brought up his students' relationship to the bible.
Shagarella
http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)