Readings of the Bible within dominant theology and theologies of liberation which perpetuate the myth of Christendom in a post-religious context are unlikely to have little impact beyond a declining Christian remnant. Readings of the Bible within dominant theology and theologies of liberation which neglect diversity and implicitly promote theological camp mentality implicitly preserve the hegemony of an excluding political and religious elite. A new urban Biblical hermeneutic is needed which is rooted in a nitty-gritty reading convention where the awkward questions of marginalised urban communities are not avoided, moralised or fenced off behind doctrinal orthodoxy.
This new approach will be underpinned by the insights garnered from reception theories within cultural studies and a reader response model of Biblical hermeneutics, comparable to that utilised by Rowland, Vincent and Davies and Beckford.[i] Writing from a postcolonial perspective Segovia illustrates the dynamic challenge embodied by reader response approaches to the Bible which locate the act of meaning-making, not in text or church, but in the encounter between the reader and scripture. This implies that there can be a range of alternative readings and invites, as Beal notes.[ii] Such fluidity can tend towards relativism unless it is informed by a guiding hermeneutical stance, or reading strategy. However, as Segovia notes, reader response hermeneutics can wrestle the privilege of interpretation away from ‘experts’, instituting a new democracy within Biblical hermeneutics.[iii] Fowler describes this paradigmatic shift, ‘No longer can meaning be understood to be a stable determinate content that lies buried within the text, awaiting excavation… meaning becomes a dynamic event in which we ourselves participate.’[iv]
It is because the act of reading the Bible is potentially a subversive co-operative venture that a political urban Biblical hermeneutic premised upon liberative difference and an option for the oppressed avoids the charge of relativism. In the hands of a conscientised reader the Bible can become a source of liberative reflection and counter hegemonic praxis, not an irrefutable canon of doctrinal orthodoxy as Tamez, Bauckham, Pixley and Clodovis Boff confirm.[v] Through the use of ideological criticism, as Stratton observes, a new and liberative Biblical hermeneutic can arise which interrogates both text and dominant traditions of Biblical criticism on the basis of a careful examination of the nature and location of power and its hegemonic character.[vi] In a diasporan urban context such an approach should be supplemented by an engagement with the counter-hegemonic postcolonial Biblical hermeneutics exemplified by the work of Sugirtharajah.[vii]
On this basis a new urban Biblical hermeneutic will assert a paradigm of insignificance and reversal which is characterised by the counter-hegemonic use of scriptural symbols which, when framed by a hermeneutics of liberative difference, can be brought into a mutual dialogue with emancipatory descriptors of urban life and struggle. This new Biblical paradigm can feed emerging urban communities of faith and resistance which provide the interpretive communities within which this paradigm is articulated.
This new approach will be underpinned by the insights garnered from reception theories within cultural studies and a reader response model of Biblical hermeneutics, comparable to that utilised by Rowland, Vincent and Davies and Beckford.[i] Writing from a postcolonial perspective Segovia illustrates the dynamic challenge embodied by reader response approaches to the Bible which locate the act of meaning-making, not in text or church, but in the encounter between the reader and scripture. This implies that there can be a range of alternative readings and invites, as Beal notes.[ii] Such fluidity can tend towards relativism unless it is informed by a guiding hermeneutical stance, or reading strategy. However, as Segovia notes, reader response hermeneutics can wrestle the privilege of interpretation away from ‘experts’, instituting a new democracy within Biblical hermeneutics.[iii] Fowler describes this paradigmatic shift, ‘No longer can meaning be understood to be a stable determinate content that lies buried within the text, awaiting excavation… meaning becomes a dynamic event in which we ourselves participate.’[iv]
It is because the act of reading the Bible is potentially a subversive co-operative venture that a political urban Biblical hermeneutic premised upon liberative difference and an option for the oppressed avoids the charge of relativism. In the hands of a conscientised reader the Bible can become a source of liberative reflection and counter hegemonic praxis, not an irrefutable canon of doctrinal orthodoxy as Tamez, Bauckham, Pixley and Clodovis Boff confirm.[v] Through the use of ideological criticism, as Stratton observes, a new and liberative Biblical hermeneutic can arise which interrogates both text and dominant traditions of Biblical criticism on the basis of a careful examination of the nature and location of power and its hegemonic character.[vi] In a diasporan urban context such an approach should be supplemented by an engagement with the counter-hegemonic postcolonial Biblical hermeneutics exemplified by the work of Sugirtharajah.[vii]
On this basis a new urban Biblical hermeneutic will assert a paradigm of insignificance and reversal which is characterised by the counter-hegemonic use of scriptural symbols which, when framed by a hermeneutics of liberative difference, can be brought into a mutual dialogue with emancipatory descriptors of urban life and struggle. This new Biblical paradigm can feed emerging urban communities of faith and resistance which provide the interpretive communities within which this paradigm is articulated.
Within the Gospels Jesus prioritises insignificance as a vehicle for a series of liberative reversals which dubbed the religious and socio-cultural hegemony.
[i] See Davies and Vincent, Mark at Work; Rowland and Vincent, Bible and Practice; Beckford, God and Gangs and Jesus Dub and Chris Rowland in Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert, ed., Reading from this Place Volume 2: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in Global Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 169-182.
[ii] Timothy Beal, in A.K.M Adam, ed., Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2000), 128-130.
[iii] Segovia in Segovia and Tolbert, Reading from this Place Volume 2, 7-15.
[iv] Robert Fowler, Let the Reader Understand; Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 3. See also 25-26.
[v] Richard Bauckham, The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically (London: SPCK, 1989)
142-150; Pixley and Boff, The Bible, the Church and the Poor and Tamez, The Bible of the Oppressed.
[vi] Beverley J. Stratton Beverly, in Adam, Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation, 120-127.
[vii] See Sugirtharajah, Voices From The Margin and Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, especially 43-70 and 179-200. Sugirtharajah identifies a spectrum of counter-hegemonic postcolonial Biblical readings: Dissident, Resistant, Heritagist, Nationalist, Liberation and Dissentient.
[ii] Timothy Beal, in A.K.M Adam, ed., Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2000), 128-130.
[iii] Segovia in Segovia and Tolbert, Reading from this Place Volume 2, 7-15.
[iv] Robert Fowler, Let the Reader Understand; Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 3. See also 25-26.
[v] Richard Bauckham, The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically (London: SPCK, 1989)
142-150; Pixley and Boff, The Bible, the Church and the Poor and Tamez, The Bible of the Oppressed.
[vi] Beverley J. Stratton Beverly, in Adam, Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation, 120-127.
[vii] See Sugirtharajah, Voices From The Margin and Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, especially 43-70 and 179-200. Sugirtharajah identifies a spectrum of counter-hegemonic postcolonial Biblical readings: Dissident, Resistant, Heritagist, Nationalist, Liberation and Dissentient.
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