I’ve read a lot of church hurt and deconstruction/deconversion books over the years. Among my favorites is one by Brian Zahnd appropriately titled When Everything is on Fire. Although I don’t agree with everything in it (that’s true of most books), here are just two reasons I appreciate his book:
- I’ve seen it resonate in helpful ways with those who actually are deconverting or deconstructing.
- It’s a great challenge to certain fundamentalist views of Scripture, a challenge that calls all Christians with a high view of Scripture to be more honest and nuanced.
Here’s a sample to give you a feel from a section with the provocative heading “The Bible is Not the Foundation of the Christian Faith”:
“Christians who have founded their faith on the Bible often face the moral conundrum of slavery. The fact is, in neither Testament does the Bible give a clear denunciation of slavery. The Bible simply takes for granted the institution of slavery and doesn’t present any clearly identifiable vision for its abolition. (Though I do insist in some of Paul’s Epistles, we find the trajectory for a theology of abolition.) Recently, I was speaking to a group of teens at a youth camp in Colorado. My assigned topic was “What’s the Deal with the Bible?” I opened my talk with this text from Exodus 21:
‘When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property.’ (Ex. 21:20-21)
I then made it painfully clear to my young audience what this bronze-age scriptural text says: A Hebrew slaveowner was permitted to beat his slave to unconsciousness; if the slave dies a day or two later as a result of the beating, the slaveowner was immune from punishment because ‘the slave is the owner’s property.’ I then asked the teens how many of them disagreed with this scriptural law. I waited until all of them had their hand raised.
I pointed out that they were contradicting the Bible and apparently claiming to have a moral vision superior to the Bible regarding the subject of slavery. They nervously agreed. I then congratulated them, saying, ‘Of course you have a superior vision regarding the subject of slavery than what is found in Exodus, as you should because you believe in Jesus!” Was I trying to undermine the value of the Bible in the lives of these young Christians? No! I was trying to give them a way to hang on to the Bible for a lifetime. I was trying to head off the possibility of them later in life saying something like, ‘The Bible supports slavery! I’m done with the Bible and Christianity.’ To conflate the Bible and the Christian faith into the same thing is a dangerous gambit.
I gave this talk in the Rocky Mountains in an outdoor chapel beneath a grove of tall pine trees. In a moment of inspiration, I gave the teens this illustration: Christian faith is a living tree rooted in Christ and nourished by the soil of Scripture. You cannot remove the tree from the soil and expect it to survive, but neither are we to think that the tree and the soil are the same thing! The Bible and Christianity are not synonymous. Yes, they are connected, but they remain distinct. So if the Bible assumes that slavery is both a tolerable and inevitable institution, even explicitly saying that slaves are the property of slaveowners, that doesn’t mean this is the Christian ethical position on slavery. Christianity is not a slave to the Bible—Christianity is a slave only to Christ! Out of the soil of Scripture grows a mature Christian faith that is not only able but required to oppose all forms of slavery in the name of Jesus.
Since the canon of Scripture is closed, the soil of the Christian faith is unchanging. But that doesn’t prevent the living Christian faith itself from growing, changing, developing, and maturing over time. Of course, how it grows and changes will often be a matter of fervent debate within the church, but that’s just the way it goes. (And I understand the deeply fractured nature of the church compounds the complexity of this problem.) The Bible may be stuck with the assumption that slavery is an inescapable institution, but the living faith of Christianity is capable of growth and can produce entire boughs of abolition.
To say that Christian faith is forever rooted in Scripture yet distinct from Scripture is both theologically conservative and theologically progressive: conservative in that it recognizes the inviolability of Scripture; progressive in that it makes a vital distinction between the living faith and the historic text. To say that the Christian faith is one and the same as the Bible is a fundamentalist mistake that is ultimately untenable. In the name of biblicism, you can end up defending sin. I’ve encountered fundamentalists backed into a biblicist corner attempting to defend the Bible by saying, ‘Sometimes slavery is a good thing,” and “There were good masters.” And this was said in reference to American slavery! This is not defending the Bible; this is abusing the Bible… when your biblical foundation requires you to defend the sin of slavery, it’s time to get a new foundation.”[1]
If you find Zahnd’s candor intriguing or even a little unsettling, I hope you’ll give his words deeper consideration and maybe pick up or listen to his book for more context. The old hymn says, “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord,” but do we really believe that?
[1] Brian Zahnd, When Everything’s on Fire (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2021), 97-100.